We sat in the gardens afterwards in the early evening sun and I worked hard on my system, for I felt as though I were working against time. I said to Cary, “Give me a thousand francs. I’ve got to check up.”
“But, darling,” she said, “do you realize we’ve only got five thousand left. Soon we shan’t have anything even for rolls.”
“Thank God for that. I can’t bear the sight of a roll.”
“Then let’s change to ices instead. They don’t cost any more. And, think, we can change our diet, darling. Coffee ices for lunch, strawberry ices for dinner. Darling, I’m longing for dinner.”
“If my system is finished in time, we’ll have steaks…”
I took the thousand and went into the cuisine. Paper in hand I watched the table carefully for a quarter of an hour before betting and then quite quietly and steadily I lost, but when I had no more tokens to play my numbers came up in just the right order. I went out again to Cary. I said, “The devil was right. It’s a question of capital.”
She said sadly, “You are getting like all the others.”
“What do you mean?”
“You think numbers, you dream numbers. You wake up in the night and say ‘Zero deux’. You write on bits of paper at meals.”
“Do you call them meals?”
“There are four thousand francs in my bag and they’ve got to last us till the Seagull comes. We aren’t going to gamble any more. I don’t believe in your system. A week ago you said you couldn’t beat the bank.”
“I hadn’t studied…”
“That’s what the devil said—he’d studied. You’ll be selling your system soon for a glass of whisky.”
She got up and walked back to the hotel and I didn’t follow. I thought, a wife ought to believe in her husband to the bitter end and we hadn’t been married a week; and then after a while I began to see her point of view. For the last few days I hadn’t been much company, and what a life it had been—afraid to meet the porter’s eye, and that was exactly what I met as I came into the hotel.
He blocked my way and said, “The manager’s compliments, sir, and could you spare him a few moments. In his room.” I thought: they can’t send her to prison too, only me, and I thought: the Gom, that egotistical bastard on the eighth floor who has let us in for all this because he’s too great to remember his promises. He makes the world and then he goes and rests on the seventh day and his creation can go to pot that day for all he cares. If only for one moment I could have had him in my power—if he could have depended on my remembering him, but it was as if I was doomed to be an idea of his, he would never be an idea of mine.
“Sit down, Mr Bertram,” the manager said. He pushed a cigarette box across to me. “Smoke?” He had the politeness of a man who has executed many people in his time.
“Thanks,” I said.
“The weather has not been quite so warm as one would expect at this time of year.”
“Oh, better than England, you know.”
“I do hope you are enjoying your stay.” This, I supposed, was the routine—just to show there was no ill- feeling—one has one’s duty. I wished he would come to an end.
“Very much, thank you.”
“And your wife too?”
“Oh yes. Yes.”
He paused, and I thought: now it comes. He said, “By the way, Mr Bertram, I think this is your first visit?”
“Yes.”
“We rather pride ourselves here on our cooking. I don’t think you will find better food in Europe.”
“I’m sure you’re right.”
“I don’t want to be intrusive, Mr Bertram, please forgive me if I am, but we have noticed that you don’t seem to care for our restaurant, and we are very anxious that you and your wife should be happy here in Monte Carlo. Any complaint you might have—the service, the wine…?”
“Oh, I’ve no complaint. No complaint at all.”
“I didn’t think you would have, Mr Bertram. I have great confidence in our service here. I came to the conclusion—you will forgive me if I’m intrusive—”
“Yes. Oh yes.”
“I know that our English clients often have trouble over currency. A little bad luck at the tables can so easily upset their arrangements in these days.”
“Yes. I suppose so.”
“So it occurred to me, Mr Bertram, that perhaps—how shall I put it—you might be, as it were, a little—you will forgive me, won’t you—well, short of funds?”
My mouth felt very dry now that the moment had come. I couldn’t find the bold frank words I wanted to use. I said, “Well,” and goggled across the desk. There was a portrait of the Prince of Monaco on the wall and a huge ornate inkstand on the desk and I could hear the train going by to Italy. It was like a last look at freedom.
The manager said, “You realize that the Administration of the Casino and of this hotel are most anxious— really most anxious—you realize we are in a very special position here, Mr Bertram, we are not perhaps”—he smiled at his fingernails—“quite ordinary hoteliers. We have had clients here whom we have looked after for—well, thirty years”—he was incredibly slow at delivering his sentence. “We like to think of them as friends rather than clients. You know here in the Principality we have a great tradition—well, of discretion, Mr Bertram. We don’t publish names of our guests. We are the repository of many confidences.”
I couldn’t bear the man’s rigmarole any more. It had become less like an execution than like the Chinese water-torture. I said, “We are quite broke—there’s a confidence for you.”
He smiled again at his nails. “That was what I suspected, Mr Bertram, and so I hope you will accept a small loan. For a friend of Mr Dreuther. Mr Dreuther is a very old client of ours and we should be most distressed if any friend of his failed to enjoy his stay with us.” He stood up, bowed and presented me with an envelope—I felt like a child receiving a good-conduct prize from a bishop. Then he led me to the door and said in a low confidential voice, “Try our Chateau Gruaud Larose 1934: you will not be disappointed.”
I opened the envelope on the bed and counted the notes. I said, “He’s lent us 250,000 francs.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“What it is to be a friend of the Gom. I wish I liked the bastard.”
“How will we ever repay it?”
“The Gom will have to help. He kept us here.”
“We’ll spend as little as we can, won’t we, darling?”
“But no more coffee and rolls. Tonight we’ll have a party—the wedding party.” I didn’t care a damn about the Gruaud Larose 1934: I hired a car and we drove to a little village in the mountains called Peille. Everything was rocky grey and gorse-yellow in the late sun which flowed out between the cold shoulders of the hills where the shadows waited. Mules stood in the street and the car was too large to reach the inn, and in the inn there was only one long table to seat fifty people. We sat alone at it and watched the darkness come, and they gave us their own red wine which wasn’t very good and fat pigeons roasted and fruit and cheese. The villagers laughed in the next room over their drinks, and soon we could hardly see the enormous hump of hills.
“Happy?”
“Yes.”
She said after a while, “I wish we weren’t going back to Monte Carlo. Couldn’t we send the car home and stay? We wouldn’t mind about toothbrushes tonight, and tomorrow we could go—shopping.” She said the last word with an upward inflexion as though we were at the Ritz and the Rue de la Paix round the corner.
“A toothbrush at Carrier’s,” I said.
“Lanvin for two pyjama tops.”
“Soap at Guerlain.”
“A few cheap handkerchiefs in the Rue de Rivoli.” She said, “I can’t think of anything else we’d want, can you? Did you ever come to a place like this with Dirty?” Dirty was the name she always used for my first wife who had been dark and plump and sexy with pekingese eyes.
“Never.”
