Loser Takes Al

We leant over a belvedere and looked down at the harbour—there wasn’t any change there. The sea was very blue and very still and we could hear the voice of a cox out with an eight—it came clearly over the water and up to us. Very far away, beyond the next headland, there was a white boat, smaller than a celluloid toy in a child’s bath.

“Do you think that’s Mr Dreuther?” Cary asked.

“It might be. I expect it is.”

But it wasn’t. When we came back after lunch there was no Seagull in the harbour and the boat we had seen was no longer in sight: it was somewhere on the way to Italy. Of course there was no need for anxiety: even if he failed to turn up before night, we could still get married. I said, “If he’s been held up, he’d have telegraphed.”

“Perhaps he’s simply forgotten,” Cary said.

“That’s impossible,” I said, but my mind told me that nothing was impossible with the Gom.

I said, “I think I’ll tell the hotel we’ll keep on one room—just in case.”

“The small room,” Cary said.

The receptionist was a little crass. “One room, sir?”

“Yes, one room. The small one.”

“The small one? For you and madame, sir?”

“Yes.” I had to explain. “We are being married this afternoon.”

“Congratulations, sir.”

“Mr Dreuther was to have been here.”

“We’ve had no word from Mr Dreuther, sir. He usually lets us know…We were not expecting him.”

Nor was I now, but I did not tell Cary that. This, after all, Gom or no Gom, was our wedding day. I tried to make her return to the Casino and lose a few hundred, but she said she wanted to walk on the terrace and look at the sea. It was an excuse to keep a watch for the Seagull. And of course the Seagull never came. That interview had meant nothing, Dreuther’s kindness had meant nothing, a whim had flown like a wild bird over the snowy waste of his mind, leaving no track at all. We were forgotten. I said, “It’s time to go to the Mairie.”

“We haven’t even a witness,” Cary said.

“They’ll find a couple,” I said with a confidence I did not feel.

I thought it would be gay to arrive in a horse-cab and we climbed romantically into a ramshackle vehicle outside the Casino and sat down under the off-white awning. But we’d chosen badly. The horse was all skin and bone and I had forgotten that the road was uphill. An old gentleman with an ear-appliance was being pushed down to the Casino by a middle-aged woman, and she made far better progress down than we made up. As they passed us I could hear her precise English voice. She must have been finishing a story. She said, “and so they lived unhappily ever after”; the old man chuckled and said, “Tell me that one again.” I looked at Cary and hoped she hadn’t heard but she had. “Darling,” I said, “don’t be superstitious, not today.”

“There’s a lot of sense in superstition. How do you know fate doesn’t send us messages—so that we can be prepared. Like a kind of code. I’m always inventing new ones. For instance”—she thought a moment—“it will be lucky if a confectioner’s comes before a flower shop. Watch your side.”

I did, and of course a flower shop came first. I hoped she hadn’t noticed, but “You can’t cheat fate,” she said mournfully.

The cab went slower and slower: it would have been quicker to walk. I looked at my watch: we had only ten minutes to go. I said, “You ought to have sacrificed a chicken this morning and found what omens there were in the entrails.”

“It’s all very well to laugh.” she said. “Perhaps our horoscopes don’t match.”

“You wouldn’t like to call the whole thing off, would you? Who knows? We’ll be seeing a squinting man next.”

“Is that bad?”

“It’s awful.” I said to the cabby. “Please. A little faster. Plus vite”

Cary clutched my arm. “Oh,” she said.

“What’s the matter?”

“Didn’t you see him when he looked round. He’s got a squint.”

“But, Cary, I was only joking.”

“That doesn’t make any difference. Don’t you see? It’s what I said, you invent a code and fate uses it.”

I said angrily, “Well, it doesn’t make any difference. We are going to be too late anyway.”

“Too late?” She grabbed my wrist and looked at my watch. She said, “Darling, we can’t be late. Stop. Arrêtez. Pay him off.”

“We can’t run uphill,” I said, but she was already out of the cab and signalling wildly to every car that passed. No one took any notice. Fathers of families drove smugly by. Children pressed their noses on the glass and made faces at her. She said, “It’s no use. We’ve got to run.”

“Why bother? Our marriage was going to be unlucky—you’ve read the omens, haven’t you?”

“I don’t care,” she said, “I’d rather be unlucky with you than lucky with anyone else.” That was the sudden way she had—of dissolving a quarrel, an evil mood, with one clear statement. I took her hand and we began to run. But we would never have made it in time if a furniture-van had not stopped and given us a lift all the way. Has anyone else arrived at their wedding sitting on an old–fashioned brass bedstead? I said, “From now on brass bedsteads will always be lucky.”

She said, “There’s a brass bedstead in the small room at the hotel.”