Graham Greene
Loser Takes All
PART ONE
1
I suppose the small greenish statue of a man in a wig on a horse is one of the famous statues of the world. I said to Cary, “Do you see how shiny the right knee is? It’s been touched so often for luck, like St Peter’s foot in Rome.”
She rubbed the knee carefully and tenderly as though she were polishing it. “Are you superstitious?” I said.
“Yes.”
“I’m not.”
“I’m so superstitious I never walk under ladders. I throw salt over my right shoulder. I try not to tread on the cracks in pavements. Darling, you’re marrying the most superstitious woman in the world. Lots of people aren’t happy. We are. I’m not going to risk a thing.”
“You’ve rubbed that knee so much, we ought to have plenty of luck at the tables.”
“I wasn’t asking for luck at the tables,” she said.
2
That night I thought that our luck had begun in London two weeks before. We were to be married at St Luke’s Church, Maida Hill, and we were going to Bournemouth for the honeymoon. Not, on the face of it, an exhilarating programme, but I thought I didn’t care a damn where we went so long as Cary was there. Le Touquet was within our means, but we thought we could be more alone in Bournemouth—the Ramages and the Truefitts were going to Le Touquet. “Besides, you’d lose all our money at the Casino,” Cary said, “and we’d have to come home.”
“I know too much about figures. I live with them all day.”
“You won’t be bored at Bournemouth?”
“No. I won’t be bored.”
“I wish it wasn’t your second honeymoon. Was the first very exciting—in Paris?”
“We could only afford a week-end,” I said guardedly.
“Did you love her a terrible lot?”
“Listen,” I said, “it was more than fifteen years ago. You hadn’t started school. I couldn’t have waited all that time for you.”
“But did you?”
“The night after she left me I took Ramage out to dinner and stood him the best champagne I could get. Then I went home and slept for nine hours right across the bed. She was one of those people who kick at night and then say you are taking up too much room.”
“Perhaps I’ll kick.”
“That would feel quite different. I hope you’ll kick. Then I’ll know you are there. Do you realize the terrible amount of time we’ll waste asleep, not knowing a thing? A quarter of our life.”
It took her a long time to calculate that. She wasn’t good at figures as I was. “More,” she said, “much more. I like ten hours.”
“That’s even worse,” I said. “And eight hours at the office without you. And food—this awful business of having meals.”
“I’ll try to kick,” she said.
That was at lunch-time the day when our so-called luck started. We used to meet as often as we could for a snack at the Volunteer which was just round the corner from my office—Cary drank cider and had an unquenchable appetite for cold sausages. I’ve seen her eat five and then finish off with a hard-boiled egg.
“If we were rich,” I said, “you wouldn’t have to waste time cooking.”
“But think how much more time we’d waste eating. These sausages—look, I’m through already. We shouldn’t even have finished the caviare.”
“And then the sole meuniere,” I said.
“A little fried spring chicken with new peas.”
“A souffle Rothschild.”
“Oh, don’t be rich, please,” she said. “We mightn’t like each other if we were rich. Like me growing fat and my hair falling out…”
“That wouldn’t make any difference.”
“Oh yes, it would,” she said. “You know it would,” and the talk suddenly faded out. She was not too young to be wise, but she was too young to know that wisdom shouldn’t be spoken aloud when you are happy.
I went back to the huge office block with its glass, glass, glass, and its dazzling marble floor and its pieces of modern carving in alcoves and niches like statues in a Catholic church. I was the assistant accountant (an ageing assistant accountant) and the very vastness of the place made promotion seem next to impossible. To be raised from the ground floor I would have to be a piece of sculpture myself.
In little uncomfortable offices in the city people die and people move on: old gentlemen look up from steel boxes and take a Dickensian interest in younger men. Here, in the great operational room with the computers ticking and the tape machines clicking and the soundless typewriters padding, you felt there was no chance for a man who hadn’t passed staff college. I hadn’t time to sit down before a loudspeaker said, “Mr Bertram wanted in Room 10.” (That was me.)
“Who lives in Room 10?” I asked.
Nobody knew. Somebody said, “It must be on the eighth floor.” (He spoke with awe as though he were referring to the peak of Everest—the eighth floor was as far as the London County Council regulations in those days allowed us to build towards Heaven.)
“Who lives in Room 10?” I asked the liftman again.
“Don’t you know?” he said sourly. “How long have you been here?”
“Five years.”
We began to mount. He said, “You ought to know who lives in Room 10.”
“But I don’t.”
“Five years and you don’t know that.”
“Be a good chap and tell me.”
“Here you are. Eighth floor, turn left.” As I got out, he said gloomily, “Not know Room 10!” He relented as he shut the gates. “Who do you think? The Gom, of course.”
Then I began to walk very slowly indeed.
I have no belief in luck. I am not superstitious, but it is impossible, when you have reached forty and are conspicuously unsuccessful, not sometimes to half-believe in a malign providence. I had never met the Gom: I had only seen him twice; there was no reason so far as I could tell why I should ever see him again. He was elderly; he would die first, I would contribute grudgingly to a memorial. But to be summoned from the ground floor to the eighth shook me. I wondered what terrible mistake could justify a reprimand in Room 10; it seemed to be quite possible that our wedding now would never take place at St Luke’s, nor our fortnight at Bournemouth. In a way I was right.
