want to win. But the devil was certainly in my system and win I did. I had the money to pay Bowles, I owned the shares, and I wished I had lost my last two hundred francs in the kitchen. After that I walked along the terrace— sometimes one gets ideas walking, but I didn’t. And then looking down into the harbour I saw a white boat which hadn’t been there before. She was flying the British flag and I recognized her from newspaper photographs. She was the Seagull. The Gom had come after all—he wasn’t much more than a week late. I thought, you bastard, if only you’d troubled to keep your promise, I wouldn’t have lost Cary. I wasn’t important enough for you to remember and now I’m too important for her to love. Well, if I’ve lost her, you are going to lose everything too—Blixon will probably buy your boat.
I walked into the bar and the Gom was there. He had just ordered himself a Pernod and he was talking with easy familiarity to the barman, speaking perfect French. Whatever the man’s language he would have spoken it perfectly—he was of the Pentecostal type. Yet he wasn’t the Dreuther of the eighth floor now—he had put an old yachting cap on the bar, he had several days’ growth of white beard and he wore an old and baggy pair of blue trousers and a sweat shut. When I came in he didn’t stop talking, but I could see him examining me in the mirror behind the bar. He kept on glancing at me as though I pricked a memory. I realized that he had not only forgotten his invitation, he had even forgotten me.
“Mr Dreuther,” I said.
He turned as slowly as he could; he was obviously trying to remember.
“You don’t remember me,” I said.
“Oh, my dear chap, I remember you perfectly. Let me see, the last time we met…”
“My name’s Bertram.” I could see it didn’t mean a thing to him.
He said, “Of course. Of course. Been here long?”
“We arrived about nine days ago. We hoped you’d be in time for our wedding.”
“Wedding?” I could see it all coming back to him and for a moment he was foxed for an explanation.
“My dear chap, I hope everything was all right. We were caught with engine trouble. Out of touch. You know how it can be at sea. Now you are coming on board tonight, I hope. Get your bags packed. I want to sail at midnight, Monte Carlo is too much of a temptation for me. How about you? Been losing money?” He was sweeping his mistake into limbo on a tide of words.
“No, I’ve gained a little.”
“Hang on to it. It’s the only way.” He was rapidly paying for his Pernod—he wanted to get away from his mistake as quickly as possible. “Follow me down. We’ll eat on board tonight. The three of us. No one else joins the boat until Portofino. Tell them I’ll settle the bill.”
“It’s not necessary. I can manage.”
“I can’t have you out of pocket because I’m late.” He snatched his yachting cap and was gone. I could almost imagine he had a seaman’s lurch. He had given me no time to develop my hatred or even to tell him that I didn’t know where my wife was. I put the money for Bowles in an envelope and asked the porter to have it waiting for him in the bar of the Casino at nine. Then I went upstairs and began to pack my bags. I had a wild hope that if I could get Cary to sea our whole trouble might be left on shore in the luxury hotel, in the great ornate Salle Privee. I would have liked to stake all our troubles en plein and to lose them. It was only when I had finished my packing and went into her room that I knew I hadn’t a hope. The room was more than empty—it was vacant. It was where somebody had been and wouldn’t be again. The dressing-table was waiting for another user—the only thing left was the conventional letter. Women read so many magazines—they know the formulas for parting. I think they have even learned the words by heart from the glossy pages—they are impersonal. “Darling, I’m off. I couldn’t bear to tell you that and what’s the use? We don’t fit any more.” I thought of nine days ago and how we’d urged the old horse-cab on. Yes, they said at the desk, Madame had checked out an hour ago.
I told them to keep my bags. Dreuther wouldn’t want me to stay on board after what I was going to tell him.
5
Dreuther had shaved and changed his shirt and was reading a book in his little lounge. He again had the grand air of the eighth floor. The bar stood hospitably open and the flowers looked as though they had been newly arranged. I wasn’t impressed. I knew about his kindness, but kindness at the skin-deep level can ruin people. Kindness has got to care. I carried a knife in my mind and waited to use it.
“But your wife has not come with you?”
“She’ll be following,” I said.
“And your bags?”
“The bags too. Could I have a drink?”
I had no compunction in gaining the Dutch courage for assassination at his own expense. I had two whiskies very quickly. He poured them out himself, got the ice, served me like an equal. And he had no idea that in fact I was his superior.
“You look tired,” he said. “The holiday has not done you good.”
“I have worries.”
“Did you remember to bring the Racine?”
“Yes.” I was momentarily touched that he had remembered that detail.
“Perhaps after dinner you would read a little. I was once fond of him like you. There is so much that I have forgotten. Age is a great period of forgetting.” I remembered what Cary had said—after all, at his age, hadn’t he a right to forget? But when I thought of Cary I could have cried into my glass.
“We forget a lot of things near at hand, but we remember the past. I am often troubled by the past. Unnecessary misunderstanding. Unnecessary pain.”
“Could I have another whisky?”
“Of course.” He got up promptly to serve me. Leaning over his little bar, with his wide patriarchal back turned to me, he said, “Do not mind talking. We are not on the eighth floor now. Two men on holiday. Friends I hope. Drink. There is no harm, if one is unhappy, in being a little drunk.”
I was a little drunk—more than a little. I couldn’t keep my voice steady when I said, “My wife isn’t coming. She’s left me.”
“A quarrel?”
“Not a real quarrel. Not words you can deny or forget.”
“Is she in love with someone else?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps.”
“Tell me. I can’t help. But one needs a listener.” Using the pronoun ‘one’ he made mine a general condition from which all men were destined to suffer. ‘One’ is born, ‘one’ dies, ‘one’ loses love. I told him everything—except what I had come to the boat to tell him. I told him of our coffee-and-roll lunches, of my winnings, of the hungry student and the Bird’s Nest. I told him of our words over the waiter, I told him of her simple statement, “I don’t like you any more.” I even (it seems incredible to me now) showed him her letter.
He said, “I am very sorry. If I had not been—delayed, this would not have happened. On the other hand you would not have won all this money.”
I said, “Damn the money.”
“That is very easy to say. I have said it so often myself. But here I am—” he waved his hand round the little modest saloon that it took a very rich man to afford. “If I had meant what I said. I wouldn’t be here.”
“I do mean it.”
“Then you have hope.”
“She may be sleeping with him at this moment.”
“That does not destroy hope. So often one has discovered how much one loves by sleeping with another.”
“What shall I do?”
“Have a cigar.”
“I don’t like them.”
