I went and fetched the money and we drew up the option right away on a sheet of notepaper and the nurse—who had returned by then—and the barman witnessed it. The option was to be taken up at 9 a.m. prompt in the same spot next day: the Other didn’t want his gambling to be interrupted before his dinner-hour whether by good or bad news. Then I made him buy me a glass of whisky, though Moses had less trouble in extracting his drink from a rock in Sinai, and I watched him being pushed back to the Salle Privee. To all intents and purposes, for the next twenty-four hours, I was the owner of Sitra. Neither Dreuther nor Blixon in their endless war could make a move without the consent of their assistant accountant. It was strange to think that neither was aware of how the control of the business had changed—from a friend of Dreuther to an enemy of Dreuther. Blixon would be down in Hampshire reading up tomorrow’s lessons, polishing up his pronunciation of the names in Judges—he would feel no exhilaration. And Dreuther—Dreuther was at sea, out of reach, playing bridge probably with his social lions—he would not be touched by the sense of insecurity. I ordered another whisky: I no longer doubted my system and I had no sense of regret. Blixon would be the first to hear: I would telephone to the office on Monday morning. It would be tactful to inform him of the new position through my chief, Arnold. There must be no temporary rapprochement between Dreuther and Blixon against the intruder: I would have Arnold explain to Blixon that for the time being he could count on me. Dreuther would not even hear of the matter unless he rang up his office from some port of call. Even that I could prevent: I could tell Arnold that the secret must be kept till Dreuther’s return, for then I would have the pleasure of giving him the information in person.
I went out to tell Cary the news, forgetting about our engagements: I wanted to see her face when I told her she was the wife of the man who controlled the company. You’ve hated my system, I wanted to say to her, and the hours I have spent at the Casino, but there was no vulgar cause—it wasn’t money I was after, and I quite forgot that until that evening I had no other motive than money. I began to believe that I had planned this from the first two-hundred-franc bet in the cuisine.
But of course there was no Cary to be found—“Madame went out with a gentleman,” the porter needlessly told me, and I remembered the date at the simple students’ cafe. Well, there had been a time in my life when I had found little difficulty in picking up a woman and I went back to the Casino to fulfil my word. But the beautiful woman had got a man with her now: their fingers nuzzled over their communal tokens, and I soon realized that single women who came to the Casino to gamble were seldom either beautiful or interested in men. The ball and not the bed was the focal point. I thought of Cary’s questions and my own lies—and there wasn’t a lie she wouldn’t see through.
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 Privee, 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 cafe; 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 Orphee. 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.
“A bit highbrow, what?” I said, glaring up as I felt a colonel should do at the lit mask above the door made out of an enormous hollowed potato. We had to brush our way through shreds of cotton which were meant, I suppose, to represent cobwebs. The little room inside was hung with photographs of authors, actors and film stars, and we had to sign our name in a book, thus apparently becoming life members of the club. I wrote Robert Devereux. I could feel her leaning against my shoulder, squinnying at the signature.
The restaurant was crowded and rather garishly lit by bare globes. There were a lot of mirrors that must have been bought at the sale of some old restaurant, for they advertised ancient specialities like ‘Mutton Chopps’.
She said, “Cocteau was at the opening.”
“Who’s he?”
“Oh, colonel,” she said, “you are laughing at me.”
I said, “Oh well, you know, in my kind of life one hasn’t much time for books,” and suddenly, just under the word Chopps, I saw Cary gazing back at me.
“How I envy a life of action,” my companion said, and laid down her bag—chinkingly—on the table. The whole bird’s nest shook and the amber ear-rings swung as she turned to me and said confidingly, “Tell me, colonel. I love—passionately—to hear men talk of their lives.” (Cary’s eyes in the mirror became enormous: her mouth was a little open as though she had been caught in mid-sentence.)
I said, “Oh well, there’s not much to tell.”
