65 Short Stories (33 page)

‘You go right off to sleep again.’

‘Kiss me before you go.’ He bent down and kissed her. ‘You’re a sweet boy and a wonderful lover. 
Bon voyage.’

Nicky did not feel quite safe till he got out of the hotel. The dawn had broken. The sky was unclouded, and in the harbour the yachts and the fishing-boats lay motionless on the still water. On the quay fishermen were getting ready to start on their day’s work. The streets were deserted. Nicky took a long breath of the sweet morning air. He felt alert and well. He also felt as pleased as Punch. With a swinging stride, his shoulders well thrown back, he walked up the hill and along the gardens in front of the Casino-the flowers in that clear light had a dewy brilliance that was delicious-till he came to his hotel. Here the day had already begun. In the hall porters with mufflers round their necks and berets on their heads were busy sweeping. Nicky went up to his room and had a hot bath. He lay in it and thought with satisfaction that he was not such a mug as some people might think. After his bath he did his exercises, dressed, packed, and went down to breakfast. He had a grand appetite. No continental breakfast for him! He had grapefruit, porridge, bacon and eggs, rolls fresh from the oven, so crisp and delicious they melted in your mouth, marmalade, and three cups of coffee. Though feeling perfectly well before, he felt better after that. He lit the pipe he had recently learnt to smoke, paid his bill and stepped into the car that was waiting to take him to the aerodrome on the other side of Cannes. The road as far as Nice ran over the hills and below him was the blue sea and the coastline. He couldn’t help thinking it damned pretty. They passed through Nice, so gay and friendly in the early morning, and presently they came to a long stretch of straight road that ran by the sea. Nicky had paid his bill, not with the money he had won the night before, but with the money his father had given him; he had changed a thousand francs to pay for supper at the Knickerbocker, but that deceitful little woman had returned him the thousand francs he had lent her, so that he still had twenty thousand-franc notes in his pocket. He thought he would like to have a look at them. He had so nearly lost them that they had a double value for him. He took them out of his hip-pocket into which for safety’s sake he had stuffed them when he put on the suit he was travelling in, and counted them one by one. Something very strange had happened to them. Instead of there being twenty notes as there should have been there were twenty-six. He couldn’t understand it at all. He counted them twice more. There was no doubt about it; somehow or other he had twenty-six thousand francs instead of the twenty he should have had. He couldn’t make it out. He asked himself if it was possible that he had won more at the Sporting Club than he had realized. But no, that was out of the question; he distinctly remembered the man at the desk laying the notes out in four rows of five, and he had counted them himself Suddenly the explanation occurred to him; when he had put his hand into the flower-pot, after taking out the cineraria, he had grabbed everything he felt there. The flower-pot was the little hussy’s money-box and he had taken out not only his own money, but her savings as well. Nicky leant back in the car and burst into a roar of laughter. It was the funniest thing he had ever heard in his life. And when he thought of her going to the flower-pot some time later in the morning when she awoke, expecting to find the money she had so cleverly got away with, and finding, not only that it wasn’t there, but that her own had gone too, he laughed more than ever. And so far as he was concerned there was nothing to do about it; he neither knew her name, nor the name of the hotel to which she had taken him. He couldn’t return her money even if he wanted to.

‘It serves her damned well right,’ he said.

This then was the story that Henry Garnet told his friends over the bridge-table, for the night before, after dinner when his wife and daughter had left them to their port, Nicky had narrated it in full.

‘And you know what infuriated me is that he’s so damned pleased with himself Talk of a cat swallowing a canary. And d’you know what he said to me when he’d finished? He looked at me with those innocent eyes of his and said: “You know, father, I can’t help thinking there was something wrong about the advice you gave me. You said, don’t gamble; well, I did, and I made a packet; you said, don’t lend money; well, I did, and I got it back; and you said, don’t have anything to do with women; well, I did, and made six thousand francs on the dear

It didn’t make it any better for Henry Garnet that his three companions burst out laughing.

‘It’s all very well for you fellows to laugh, but you know, I’m in a damned awkward position. The boy looked up to me, he respected me, he took whatever I said as gospel truth, and now, I saw it in his eyes, he just looks upon me as a drivelling old fool. It’s no good my saying one swallow doesn’t make a summer; he doesn’t see that it was just a fluke, he thinks the whole thing was due to his own cleverness. It may ruin him.’

‘You do look a bit of a damned fool, old man,’ said one of the others. ‘There’s no denying that, is there?’

‘I know I do, and I don’t like it. It’s so dashed unfair. Fate has no right to play one tricks like that. After all, you must admit that my advice was good.’

‘Very good.’

‘And the wretched boy ought to have burnt his fingers. Well, he hasn’t. You’re all men of the world, you tell me how I’m to deal with the situation now’ But they none of them could.

‘Well, Henry, if I were you I wouldn’t worry,’ said the lawyer. ‘My belief is that your boy’s born lucky, and in the long run that’s better than to be born clever or rich.’

GIGOLO AND GIGOLETTE

♦

The bar was crowded. Sandy Westcott had had a couple of cocktails and he was beginning to feel hungry. He looked at his watch. He had been asked to dinner at half past nine and it was nearly ten. Eva Barrett was always late and he would be lucky if he got anything to eat by ten-thirty. He turned to the barman to order another cocktail and caught sight of a man who at that moment came up to the bar.

‘Hullo, Cotman,’ he said. ‘Have a drink?’

‘I don’t mind if I do, sir.’

Cotman was a nice-looking fellow, of thirty perhaps, short, but with so good a figure that he did not look it, very smartly dressed in a double-breasted dinner jacket, a little too much waisted, and a butterfly tie a good deal too large. He had a thick mat of black, wavy hair, very sleek and shiny, brushed straight back from his forehead, and large flashing eyes. He spoke with great refinement, but with a Cockney accent

‘How’s Stella?’ asked Sandy.

‘Oh, she’s all right. Likes to have a lay-down before the show, you know. Steadies the old nerves, she says.’

‘I wouldn’t do that stunt of hers for a thousand pounds.’

‘I don’t suppose you would. No one can do it but her, not from that height, I mean, and only five foot of water.’

‘It’s the most sick-making thing I’ve ever seen.’

Cotman gave a little laugh. He took this as a compliment. Stella was his wife. Of course she did the trick and took the risk, but it was he who had thought of the flames, and it was the flames that had taken the public fancy and made the turn the huge success it was. Stella dived into a tank from the top of a ladder sixty feet high, and as he said, there were only five feet of water in the tank.

Just before she dived they poured enough petrol on to cover the surface and he set it alight; the flames soared up and she dived straight into them.

‘Paco Espinel tells me it’s the biggest draw the Casino has ever had,’ said Sandy.

‘I know. He told me they’d served as many dinners in July as they generally do in August. And that’s you, he says to me.’

‘Well, I hope you’re making a packet.’

‘Well, I can’t exactly say that. You see, we’ve got our contract and naturally we didn’t know it was going to be a riot, but Mr Espinel’s talking of booking us for next month, and I don’t mind telling you he’s not going to get us on the same terms or anything like it. Why, had a letter from an agent only this morning saying they wanted us to go to Deauville.’

‘Here are my people,’ said Sandy.

He nodded to Cotman and left him. Eva Barrett sailed in with the rest of her guests. She had gathered them together downstairs. It was a party of eight. ‘I knew we should find you here, Sandy,’ she said. ‘I’m not late, am I?’

‘Only half an hour.’

‘Ask them what cocktails they want and then we’ll dine.’

While they were standing at the bar, emptying now, for nearly everyone had gone down to the terrace for dinner, Paw Espinel passed through and stopped to shake hands with Eva Barrett. Paw Espinel was a young man who had run through his money and now made his living by arranging the turns with which the Casino sought to attract visitors. It was his duty to be civil to the rich and great. Mrs Chaloner Barrett was an American widow of vast wealth; she not only entertained expensively, but also gambled. And after all, the dinners and suppers and the two cabaret shows that accompanied them were only provided to induce people to lose their money at the tables.

‘Got a good table for me, Paw?’ said Eva Barrett.

‘The best.’ His eyes, fine, dark Argentine eyes, expressed his admiration of Mrs Barrett’s opulent, ageing charms. This also was business. ‘You’ve seen Stella?’

‘Of course. Three times. It’s the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen.’

‘Sandy comes every night.’

‘I want to be in at the death. She’s bound to kill herself one of these nights and I don’t want to miss that if I can help it.’

Paw laughed.

‘She’s been such a success, we’re going to keep her on another month. All I ask is that she shouldn’t kill herself till the end of August. After that she can do as she likes.’

‘Oh, God, have I got to go on eating trout and roast chicken every night till the end of August?’ cried Sandy.

‘You brute, Sandy,’ said Eva Barrett. ‘Come on, let’s go in to dinner. I’m starving.’

Paw Espinel asked the barman if he’d seen Cotman. The barman said he’d had a drink with Mr Westcott

‘Oh, well, if he comes in here again, tell him I want a word with him.’

Mrs Barrett paused at the top of the steps that led down to the terrace long enough for the press representative, a little haggard woman with an untidy head, to come up with her note-book. Sandy whispered the names of the guests. It was a representative Riviera party. There was an English Lord and his Lady, long and lean both of them, who were prepared to dine with anyone who would give them a free meal. They were certain to be as tight as drums before midnight There was a gaunt Scotch woman, with a face like a Peruvian mask that has been battered by the storms of ten centuries, and her English husband. Though a broker by profession, he was bluff, military, and hearty. He gave you an impression of such integrity that you were almost more sorry for him than for yourself when the good thing he had put you on to as a special favour turned out to be a dud. There was an Italian countess who was neither Italian nor a countess, but played a beautiful game of bridge, and there was a Russian prince who was ready to make Mrs Barrett a princess and in the meantime sold champagne, motor-cars, and Old Masters on commission. A dance was in progress, and Mrs Barrett, waiting for it to end, surveyed with a look which her short upper lip made scornful the serried throng on the dance floor. It was a gala night and the dining tables were crowded together. Beyond the terrace the sea was calm and silent. The music stopped and the head waiter, affably smiling, came up to guide her to her table. She swept down the steps with majestic gait

‘We shall have quite a good view of the dive,’ she said as she sat down.

‘I like to be next door to the tank,’ said Sandy, ‘so that I can see her face.’

‘Is she pretty?’ asked the Countess.

‘It’s not that. It’s the expression of her eyes. She’s scared to death every time she does it’

‘Oh, I don’t believe that,’ said the City gentleman, Colonel Goodhart by name, though no one had ever discovered how he came by the title. ‘I mean, the whole bally stunt’s only a trick. There’s no danger really, I mean.’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. Diving from that height in as little water as that, she’s got to turn like a flash the moment she touches the water. And if she doesn’t do it right she’s bound to bash her head against the bottom and break her back.’

‘That’s just what I’m telling you, old boy,’ said the Colonel, ‘it’s a trick. I mean, there’s no argument’

‘If there’s no danger there’s nothing to it, anyway,’ said Eva Barrett ‘It’s over in a minute. Unless she’s risking her life it’s the biggest fraud of modern times. Don’t say we’ve come to see this over and over again and it’s only a fake.’

‘Pretty well everything is. You can take my word for that’

‘Well, you ought to know,’ said Sandy.

If it occurred to the Colonel that this might be a nasty dig he admirably concealed it. He laughed.

‘I don’t mind saying I know a thing or two,’ he admitted. ‘I mean, I’ve got my eyes peeled all right. You can’t put much over on me.’