Loser Takes All Read Online Free PDF Page A

cup of coffee. They always say you ought to leave when you win.’
    â€˜We haven’t really won. We are down four bob.’
    â€˜ You’ve won.’
    Over the coffee I said, ‘Do you know, I think I’ll buy a system just for fun? I’d like to see just how they persuade themselves . . .’
    â€˜If anybody could think up a system, it should be you.’
    â€˜I can see the possibility if there were no limit to the stakes, but then you’d have to be a millionaire.’
    â€˜Darling, you won’t really think one up, will you? It’s fun pretending to be rich for two days, but it wouldn’t be fun if it were true. Look at the guests in the hotel, they are rich. Those women with lifted faces and dyed hair and awful little dogs.’ She said again with one of her flashes of disquieting wisdom, ‘You seem to get afraid of being old when you’re rich.’
    â€˜There may be worse fears when you are poor.’
    â€˜They are ones we are used to. Darling, let’s go and look at the harbour again. It’s nearly lunch-time. Perhaps Mr Dreuther’s in sight. This place – I don’t like it terribly.’
    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.
    â€˜Do you think that’s Mr Dreuther?’ Cary asked.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜Perhaps he’s simply forgotten,’ Cary said.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜The small room,’ Cary said.
    The receptionist was a little crass. ‘ One room, sir?’
    â€˜Yes, one room. The small one.’
    â€˜The small one? For you and madame, sir?’
    â€˜Yes.’ I had to explain. ‘We are being married this afternoon.’
    â€˜Congratulations, sir.’
    â€˜Mr Dreuther was to have been here.’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜We haven’t even a witness,’ Cary said.
    â€˜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