Loser Takes All Read Online Free PDF

finishing a story. She said, ‘and so they lived unhappily ever after’; the old man chuckled and said, ‘Tell me that one again.’ I looked at Cary and hoped she hadn’t heard but she had. ‘Darling,’ I said, ‘don’t be superstitious, not today.’
    â€˜There’s a lot of sense in superstition. How do you know fate doesn’t send us messages – so that we can be prepared. Like a kind of code. I’m always inventing new ones. For instance’ – she thought a moment – ‘it will be lucky if a confectioner’s comes before a flower shop. Watch your side.’
    I did, and of course a flower shop came first. I hoped she hadn’t noticed, but ‘You can’t cheat fate,’ she said mournfully.
    The cab went slower and slower: it would have been quicker to walk. I looked at my watch: we had only ten minutes to go. I said, ‘You ought to have sacrificed a chicken this morning and found what omens there were in the entrails.’
    â€˜It’s all very well to laugh,’ she said. ‘Perhaps our horoscopes don’t match.’
    â€˜You wouldn’t like to call the whole thing off, would you? Who knows? We’ll be seeing a squinting man next.’
    â€˜Is that bad?’
    â€˜It’s awful.’ I said to the cabby, ‘Please. A little faster. Plus vite .’
    Cary clutched my arm. ‘Oh,’ she said.
    â€˜What’s the matter?’
    â€˜Didn’t you see him when he looked round. He’s got a squint.’
    â€˜But, Cary, I was only joking.’
    â€˜That doesn’t make any difference. Don’t you see? It’s what I said, you invent a code and fate uses it.’
    I said angrily, ‘Well, it doesn’t make any difference. We are going to be too late anyway.’
    â€˜Too late?’ She grabbed my wrist and looked at my watch. She said, ‘Darling, we can’t be late. Stop. Arrêtez . Pay him off.’
    â€˜We can’t run uphill,’ I said, but she was already out of the cab and signalling wildly to every car that passed. No one took any notice. Fathers of families drove smugly by. Children pressed their noses on the glass and made faces at her. She said, ‘It’s no use. We’ve got to run.’
    â€˜Why bother? Our marriage was going to be unlucky – you’ve read the omens, haven’t you?’
    â€˜I don’t care,’ she said, ‘I’d rather be unlucky with you than lucky with anyone else.’ That was the sudden way she had – of dissolving a quarrel, an evil mood, with one clear statement. I took her hand and we began to run. But we would never have made it in time if a furniture-van had not stopped and given us a lift all the way. Has anyone else arrived at their wedding sitting on an old-fashioned brass bedstead? I said, ‘From now on brass bedsteads will always be lucky.’
    She said, ‘There’s a brass bedstead in the small room at the hotel.’
    We had two minutes to spare when the furniture man helped us out on to the little square at the top of the world. To the south there was nothing higher, I suppose, before the Atlas mountains. The tall houses stuck up like cacti towards the heavy blue sky, and a narrow terracotta street came abruptly to an end at the edge of the great rock of Monaco. A Virgin in pale blue with angels blowing round her like a scarf looked across from the church opposite, and it was warm and windy and very quiet and all the roads of our life had led us to this square.
    I think for a moment we were both afraid to go in. Nothing inside could be as good as this, and nothing was. We sat on a wooden bench, and another couple soon sat down beside us, the girl in white, the man in black: I became painfully conscious that I wasn’t dressed up. Then a man in a high stiff collar made a great deal of fuss about papers and for a while we thought the marriage wouldn’t