Loser Takes Al

We had two minutes to spare when the furniture man helped us out on to the little square at the top of the world. To the south there was nothing higher, I suppose, before the Atlas mountains. The tall houses stuck up like cacti towards the heavy blue sky, and a narrow terracotta street came abruptly to an end at the edge of the great rock of Monaco. A Virgin in pale blue with angels blowing round her like a scarf looked across from the church opposite, and it was warm and windy and very quiet and all the roads of our life had led us to this square.

I think for a moment we were both afraid to go in. Nothing inside could be as good as this, and nothing was. We sat on a wooden bench, and another couple soon sat down beside us, the girl in white, the man in black: I became painfully conscious that I wasn’t dressed up. Then a man in a high stiff collar made a great deal of fuss about papers and for a while we thought the marriage wouldn’t take place at all: then there was a to-do, because we had turned up without witnesses, before they consented to produce a couple of sad clerks. We were led into a large empty room with a chandelier, and a desk—a notice on the door said Salle des Mariages, and the mayor, a very old man who looked like Clemenceau, wearing a blue and red ribbon of office, stood impatiently by while the man in the collar read out our names and our birth-dates. Then the mayor repeated what sounded like a whole code of laws in rapid French and we had to agree to them—apparently they were the clauses from the Code Napoléon. After that the mayor made a little speech in very bad English about our duty to society and our responsibility to the State, and at last he shook hands with me and kissed Cary on the cheek, and we went out again past the waiting couple on to the little windy square.

It wasn’t an impressive ceremony, there was no organ like at St Luke’s and no wedding guests. “I don’t feel I’ve been married,” Cary said, but then she added, “It’s fun not feeling married.”

EIGHT

There are so many faces in streets and bars and buses and stores that remind one of Original Sin, so few that carry permanently the sign of Original Innocence. Cary’s face was like that—she would always until old age look at the world with the eyes of a child. She was never bored: every day was a new day: even grief was eternal and every joy would last for ever. ‘Terrible’ was her favourite adjective—it wasn’t in her mouth a cliché—there was terror in her pleasures, her fears, her anxieties, her laughter—the terror of surprise, of seeing something for the first time. Most of us only see resemblances, every situation has been met before, but Cary saw only differences, like a wine-taster who can detect the most elusive flavour.

We went back to the hotel and the Seagull hadn’t come and Cary met this anxiety quite unprepared as though it were the first time we had felt it. Then we went to the bar and had a drink, and it might have been the first drink we had ever had together. She had an insatiable liking for gin and Dubonnet which I didn’t share. I said, “He won’t be in now till tomorrow.”

“Darling, shall we have enough for the bill?”

“Oh, we can manage tonight.”

“We might win enough at the Casino.”

“We’ll stick to the cheap room. We can’t afford to risk much.”

I think we lost about two thousand francs that night and in the morning and in the afternoon we looked down at the harbour and the Seagull wasn’t there. “He has forgotten,” Cary said. “He’d have telegraphed otherwise.” I knew she was right, and I didn’t know what to do, and when the next day came I knew even less.

“Darling,” Cary said, “we’d better go while we can still pay,” but I had secretly asked for the bill (on the excuse that we didn’t want to play beyond our resources), and I knew that already we had insufficient. There was nothing to do but wait. I telegraphed to Miss Bullen and she replied that Mr Dreuther was at sea and out of touch. I was reading the telegram out to Cary as the old man with the ear-appliance sat on a chair at the top of the steps, watching the people go by in the late afternoon sun.

He asked suddenly, “Do you know Dreuther?”

I said, “Well, Mr Dreuther is my employer.”

“You think he is,” he said sharply. “You are in Sitra, are you?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’m your employer, young man. Don’t you put your faith in Dreuther.”

“You are Mr Bowles?”

“Of course I’m Mr Bowles. Go and find my nurse. It’s time we went to the tables.”

When we were alone again, Cary asked, “Who was that horrible old man? Is he really your employer?”

“In a way. In the firm we call him A.N. Other. He owns a few shares in Sitra—only a few, but they hold the balance between Dreuther and Blixon. As long as he supports Dreuther, Blixon can do nothing, but if Blixon ever managed to buy the shares, I’d be sorry for the Gom. A way of speaking,” I added. “Nothing could make me sorry for him now.”

“He’s only forgetful, darling.”