Loser Takes Al

I watched Bird’s Nest circling among the tables, making a quick pounce here and there, out of the croupier’s eye. She had a masterly technique: when a pile was large enough she would lay her fingers on a single piece and give a tender ogle at the owner as much as to say, “You are so generous and I am all yours for the taking.” She was so certain of her own appeal that no one had the heart to expose her error. Tonight she was wearing long amber ear-rings and a purple evening dress that exposed her best feature—her shoulders. Her shoulders were magnificent, wide and animal, but then, like a revolving light, her face inevitably came round, the untidy false blonde hair tangled up with the ear-rings (I am sure she thought of her wisps and strands as “wanton locks”), and that smile fixed like a fossil. Watching her revolve I began to revolve too: I was caught into her orbit, and I became aware that here alone was the answer. I had to dine with a woman and in the whole Casino this was the only woman who would dine with me. As she swerved away from an attendant with a sweep of drapery and a slight clank, clank from her evening bag where I supposed she had stowed her hundred-franc tokens, I touched her hand, “Dear lady,” I said—the phrase astonished me: it was as though it had been placed on my tongue, and certainly it seemed to belong to the same period as the mauve evening dress, the magnificent shoulders. “Dear lady,” I repeated with increasing astonishment (I almost expected a small white moustache to burgeon on my upper lip), “you will I trust excuse a stranger…”

I think she must have gone in constant fear of the attendants because her instinctive ogle expanded with her relief at seeing me into a positive blaze of light: it flapped across the waste of her face like sheet lightning. “Oh, not a stranger,” she said, and I was relieved to find that she was English and that at least I would not have to talk bad French throughout the evening. “I have been watching with such admiration your great good fortune.” (She had indeed profited from it on several occasions.)

“I was wondering, dear lady,” (the extraordinary phrase slipped out again) “if you would do me the honour of dining. I have no one with whom to celebrate my luck.”

“But, of course, colonel, it would be a great pleasure.” At that I really put my hand up to my mouth to see if the moustache were there. We both seemed to have learnt parts in a play—I began to fear what the third act might hold. I noticed she was edging towards the restaurant of the Salle Privée, but all my snobbery revolted at dining there with so notorious a figure of fun. I said, “I thought perhaps—if we could take a little air—it’s such a beautiful evening, the heat of these rooms, some small exclusive place…” I would have suggested a private room if I had not feared that my intentions might have been misunderstood and welcomed.

“Nothing would give me greater pleasure, colonel.”

We swept out (there was no other word for it) and I prayed that Cary and her young man were safely at dinner in their cheap café; it would have been intolerable if she had seen me at that moment. The woman imposed unreality. I was persuaded that to the white moustache had now been added a collapsible opera hat and a scarlet lined cloak.

I said, “A horse-cab, don’t you think, on a night so balmy…”

“Barmy, colonel?”

“Spelt with an L,” I explained, but I don’t think she understood.

When we were seated in the cab I appealed for her help. “I am really quite a stranger here. I have dined out so seldom. Where can we go that is quiet…and exclusive?” I was determined that the place should be exclusive: if it excluded all the world but the two of us, I would be the less embarrassed.

“There is a small new restaurant—a club really, very comme il faut. It is called Orphée. Rather expensive, I fear, colonel.”

“Expense is no object.” I gave the name to the driver and leant back. As she was sitting bolt upright I was able to shelter behind her bulk. I said, “When were you last in Cheltenham…?”

The devil was about us that night. Whatever I said had been written into my part. She replied promptly, “Dear Cheltenham…how did you discover…?”

“Well, you know, a handsome woman catches one’s eye.”

“You live there too?”

“One of those little houses off Queen’s Parade.”

“We must be near neighbours,” and to emphasize our nearness I could feel her massive mauve flank move ever so slightly against me. I was glad that the cab drew up: we hadn’t gone more than two hundred yards from the Casino.