Loser Takes Al

“You can trust no one at a wedding. It brings out a strange atavistic cruelty. Now that they are not allowed to bed the bride, they try to damage the bridegroom. Look,” I said, clutching Cary’s arm. A small boy, encouraged by one of the sombre matrons, had stolen up to the door of the car and, just as the bridegroom stooped to climb in, he launched at close range a handful of rice full in the unfortunate young man’s face.

“When you can only spare a cupful,” I said, “you are told to wait until you can see the whites of your enemy’s eyes.”

“But it’s terrible,” Cary said.

“That, my dear child, is what is called a church marriage.”

“But ours wouldn’t be like that. It’s going to be very quiet—only near relatives.”

“You forget the highways and the hedges. It’s a Christian tradition. That boy wasn’t a relation. Trust me. I know. I’ve been married in church myself.”

“You were married in church? You never told me,” she said. “In that case I’d much rather be married in a town hall. You haven’t been married in a town hall too, have you?”

“No, it will be the first time—and the last time.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Cary said, “touch wood.”

So there she was two weeks later rubbing away at the horse’s knee, asking for luck, and the great lounge of the Monte Carlo hotel spread emptily around us, and I said, “That’s that. We’re alone, Cary.” (One didn’t count the receptionist and the cashier and the concierge and the two men with our luggage and the old couple sitting on a sofa, for Mr Dreuther, they told me, had not yet arrived and we had the night to ourselves.)

SIX

We had dinner on the terrace of the hotel and watched people going into the Casino. Cary said, “We ought to look in for the fun. After all, we aren’t gamblers.”

“We couldn’t be,” I said, “not with fifty pounds basic.” We had decided not to use her allowance in case we found ourselves able to go to Le Touquet for a week in the winter.

“You are an accountant,” Cary said. “You ought to know all about systems.”

“Systems are damned expensive,” I said. I had discovered that we had a suite already booked for us by Miss Bullen and I had no idea what it would cost. Our passports were still under different names, so I suppose it was reasonable that we should have two rooms, but the sitting-room seemed unnecessary. Perhaps we were supposed to entertain in it after the wedding. I said, “You need a million francs to play a system, and then you are up against the limit. The bank can’t lose.”

At the period of this story the franc stood at about 1,200 francs to the pound.

“I thought someone broke the bank once.”

“Only in a comic song,” I said.

“It would be awful if we were really gamblers,” she said. “You’ve got to care so much about money. You don’t, do you?”

“No.” I said and meant it. All I had in my mind that night was the wonder whether we would sleep together. We never had. It was that kind of marriage. I had tried the other kind, and now I would have waited months if I could gain in that way all the rest of the years. But tonight I didn’t want to wait any longer. I was as fussed as a young man—I found I could no longer see into Cary’s mind. She was twenty years younger, she had never been married before, and the game was all in her hands. I couldn’t even interpret what she said to me. For instance as we crossed to the Casino she said, “We’ll only stay ten minutes. I’m terribly tired.” Was that hint in my favour or against me? Or was it just a plain statement of fact? Had the problem in my mind never occurred to her, or had she already made up her mind so certainly that the problem didn’t exist? Was she assuming I knew the reason?

I had thought when they showed us our rooms I would discover, but all she had said with enormous glee was, “Darling. What extravagance.”

I took the credit from Miss Bullen. “It’s only for one night. Then we’ll be on the boat.” There was one huge double room and one very small single room and a medium-sized sitting-room in between: all three had balconies. I felt as though we had taken the whole front of the hotel. First she depressed me by saying, “We could have had two single rooms,” and then she contradicted that by saying, “All the beds are double ones,” and then down I went again when she looked at the sofa in the sitting-room and said, “I wouldn’t have minded sleeping on that.” I was no wiser, and so we talked about systems. I didn’t care a damn for systems.