Second Violin (21 page)

‘They’re cocky,’ his father said by way of summary. ‘The French seem confident that the line will hold when the time comes, that the Germans will not roll over France as
they did in 1871 or even a corner of it as they did in 1914. I keep hearing the same words, “impregnable”, “impenetrable”.’

‘Sounds like morning assembly . . . “im-something, in-something . . . God Only Wise . . .” have they not noticed the German troops rolling over Poland right now? God knows what
the Poles had thought before-hand. Impregnable?’

Alex shrugged.

‘It remains, however, an untried army,’ Troy added.

‘Untried?’

‘They fought no battle for Austria, none for Czechoslovakia. Are they fighting anything more than skirmishes in Poland?’

‘All that means is that no one has called their bluff.’

‘My point in a nutshell, Dad.’

‘No one has called it . . . to find out that they’re not bluffing.’

This was one of the things that made talking to his father awkward. The bugger had a way of trouncing you in two sentences.

‘And you still want to go on to Monte Carlo and Italy?’

Their next breakfast together was on the sleeper train heading for Monaco.

Alex had spent most of the previous evening in conversation with a party of Italians – in Italian. At breakfast he chose to eat with his son and switched to Russian, something he hardly
ever did – he had embraced the English language with fervour – but when he did it meant he sought confidentiality.

‘I have some business to attend to when we get to Monte Carlo,’ he said, taking the top off his egg with a knife.

‘But you’re not going to tell me what?’

Alex shrugged.

‘So it isn’t a holiday after all?’

‘Of course it is.’

‘What am I supposed to do while you get involved in another of your conspiracies?’

‘It is not a conspiracy. It is . . . an arranged meeting. And you will, as we agreed, have the opportunity to sin.’

‘You mean gambling?’

Alex nodded

‘I thought I got to pick the sin?’

‘Then pick . . . chemin-de-fer, roulette . . . the choice is yours, just don’t expect three-card brag or Glewstone Donkey . . . it’s a far cry from the Snug in a London pub . .
. land I can tell you now roulette is a mug’s game, a mug’s game of no perceptible skill.’

‘Dad, they none of them hold the appeal of a cold omelette.’

‘Indulge me, my boy. Indulge yourself. It will only be for one evening.’

‘At least tell me who you’re meeting.’

‘I can’t.’

Alex got stuck into his second egg, Troy pushed away his cold omelette. A rustle of skirts at their table and a black-haired beauty of a woman brushed past them, her backside all but perched on
the edge of their table as she passed the waiter coming the other way. Troy turned to follow her trail down the car to an end table. She sat facing him, neat as ninepence in her black suit and
matching hat, looked straight at him, smiled and vanished behind the menu.

‘I told you you’d find another sin,’ his father said in English. ‘I admire your taste. She is a fine-looking woman.’

‘Dad . . . in the parlance of my generation, she’s an absolute stunner. That’s why I won’t stand a cat in hell’s chance.’

He turned again, stealing a last look. A tall, grey-haired man in his fifties was now taking the seat opposite her, a proprietorial touch of his hand on her arm as he did so, and she
wasn’t just smiling at him, she was beaming.

Fat chance.

Troy was in a muddle with his bowtie.

‘It’s not essential, my boy.’

‘You’re wearing one.’

His father declined the jibe and stood behind Troy much as he had done ten minutes before every formal occasion of Troy’s childhood, and in a couple of swift motions had tied the tie with
what he referred to as his ‘bugger’s grip’.

‘And don’t go in there with any sense of awe. It’s all grandiose rather than grand. A mock-palace full of one-armed bandits much as you might find in a London pub – and
at that managed by bank clerks and mechanics.’

Troy said, ‘It looks intimidating. It looks awesome.’

‘Before the war – the last war I mean – that might have been true. They still used coins in those days – gold Louis d’Or. In 1909 I saw an English ship’s
captain win a small fortune at roulette by putting down one of the shiny buttons off his jacket.’

‘And they paid up?’

‘Of course they paid. He staggered back to his ship with his pockets stuffed with gold. However, I have no such expectations of you. I’d be happy if you won the price of a good
dinner for the two of us.’

Troy wandered. He could see why his dad had warned him of the danger of ‘awe’, it would be easy and it would be a misperception. The casino made Versailles and Les
Trianons look understated – tempting as it might be, awe did not strike. This was the lurid fantasy of a king layered with the even more lurid fantasies of commerce. It might look like a
royal palace, but it was also, Troy felt, tacky. Tacky and unreal. As unreal as a film set. As unreal as the sets of the silent epics of his childhood, like
Ben-Hur
and dozens of others that
had never lodged in his memory. It came almost as a surprise to pass through the doors and not find the struts and props that supported the papier-maché façade. Inside it was overblown, grandiose
to the hilt – too many columns, too much onyx, too much stained glass – and too many characters who looked like leftovers from Central Casting.

He watched roulette for a while. Indeed, gambling for the first time struck him as a spectator sport – as many people watching as playing. And he concluded his father was right. No skill
was required and none possible. All the same, the looks of concentration and calculation on the faces of the players showed that they believed in some sort of system. A large woman, wearing a small
fortune in diamonds – Troy’s immediate mnemonic for her was Mrs van Hopper from
Rebecca
– repeatedly bet the same number and repeatedly lost. And no doubt she thought of it
as her lucky number.

Troy moved on to chemin-de-fer. The game his dad had recommended. The old man had said ‘it’s like that English game you appear to have learnt furtively in your schooldays in some act
of adolescent rebellion behind the bike sheds’. ‘What,’ Troy had replied, ‘Conkers?’ ‘No,’ said his father, ‘Pontoon . . . vingt-et-un, pay
twenty-one . . . whatever.’ Only when Troy sat down at a chemin-de-fer table in one of the casino’s inner rooms did he realise it wasn’t exactly like pontoon, and that, really, he
hadn’t a clue what he was doing. And that now people were watching him.

The shoe was in the hands of an Englishman of about Troy’s own age. Unlike Troy he seemed completely at his ease, drawing on a distinctive custom-made cigarette with three gold rings,
gunmetal case and lighter set out like props on the table, staring back at his opponents with unflinching self-confidence, a lock of unruly hair curling over one eye like a comma – he looked
to Troy like a raffish version of Hoagy Carmichael, an effect at once dispelled by the cruel twist of his lips as he mocked Troy openly for putting down a jack and an ace in the fond illusion that
he had won.

‘Learn the rules, old man,’ he said. ‘We’re not playing for ha’pennies in a London pub. Face cards don’t count.’

With that he passed the shoe, scooped up his winnings, tossed a hefty chip to the croupier and left. Troy was tempted to follow, give up and go to bed early with a good book. He’d still
got most of the money his dad had given him – that alone would buy dinner for two. Just as he put a hand on the table to lever himself up, there was a swish of silk and the chair the
Englishman had vacated was taken by a woman. It was the same woman he had seen on the train, the simple black suit replaced by an equally simple, but rather daring black dress, and the hair that
had been so neatly tucked up into a pillbox hat now bouncing off her shoulders in thick black ringlets. She was a study in monochrome. A fantasy in black and white. And she was talking to him.
Softly, leaning in to keep her words private.

‘What a snob! Don’t judge the English by him. We’re not all Lord Muck, you know.’

‘I am English,’ Troy replied, and before he could explain further, the table was betting again. He wasn’t even sure she had heard him.

‘Five is the sticky point,’ she whispered. ‘Simple maths really. Everything comes down to numbers in the end. You’re aiming for nine. Five and four make nine. Double
figures, say sixteen, only count the last digit so really you’ve only got six, which is not much better than five. And what Snobby forgot to tell you is tens don’t count
either.’

Troy watched a painfully thin, deeply lined old man – so many old Englishmen seemed to end up looking like Ernest Thesiger in
The Bride of Frankenstein
– lose twice, and then
heard the woman say ‘
Banco.
My friend will play.’

The young Arab – more Charles Boyer than Valentino – holding the shoe dealt two cards. The croupier scooped them up on his giant fish slice and set them in front of Troy. Then the
banker dealt himself two, face up – an ace and a seven. More than enough to stick at. Troy looked at his own hand – the ten of clubs, the five of hearts. Five was what he had, all he
had, if the woman’s method of calculation was correct.

‘I always ask for another card at five,’ she whispered, ‘because the bank will usually do the same. You’re simply evening up the odds.’

‘The bank already has eight,’ Troy said.

‘Just play,’ she said.

The banker was looking at Troy. A hint of impatience. Troy hesitated. The banker had won twice in a row. The pot had tripled to two million francs. He had enough to cover the bet and no more.
And he needed the maximum to win. Lose this and dinner would be brown bread and dripping.

‘Remember,’ she said, ‘You bet the two million when you said
banco
.’

‘I didn’t say
banco
. You did.’

‘You have, trust me, absolutely nothing to lose.’

‘
Suivi
,’ Troy said.

The banker slipped a card out of the shoe and turned it face up.

Four of diamonds. Troy hoped he wasn’t smirking. More than that he hoped the woman, whoever she was, had got the rules right. One more put-down and he’d feel obliged to leave the
table.

‘
Huit à la banque. Neuf seulement
,’ the croupier said.

Troy turned over his first two cards.

‘Well done, M’sieur,’ said the banker. ‘I can only wish the same muse would whisper in my ear.’

Troy had now amassed in the region of four million. Almost, as he felt, inadvertently.

The woman spoke softly to him, less a whisper now than a confidence.

‘Often as not the banker would pass the shoe now, but he can still play another round – if he has the funds that is.’

The banker spoke directly to her.

‘Will Madame be playing? The seats are really meant for players not guardian angels.’

She smiled at him, a smile that would have disarmed the Mongol Horde, and tipped her purse out on the table.

‘Quite,’ she said ‘I think our apprentice is
au fait
with the game now. Please, deal me in.’

Then she spoke to Troy again, ‘Made quite a killing on the roulette wheel. Only came in with the price of a packet of crisps.’

‘So much, he thought, for the mug’s game.

The Arab lost with good grace. After the woman took another six million from him, he kissed her hand, thanked her for the pleasure of the game, passed the shoe to the monocled Frenchman on his
left – a Gallic Oliver Hardy as Troy saw him – and quit the table.

‘I think we should follow, don’t you,’ she said to Troy ‘I don’t believe in luck, and I don’t believe in pushing it either.’

Coming up the steps to the
caisse
they encountered the Englishman who had been so rude to them – casually tapping another cigarette against the gunmetal case, with all the sang
froid that Troy never seemed to be able to muster.

‘If I’d known we had lady luck at the table, I’d’ve stayed for the second house,’ he said, slightly sibilant on his s’s – ‘shecond houshe’
– all but leering at the woman, utterly ignoring Troy.

‘Bastard,’ she said, kicked him on the shin, and left him hopping on one leg.

‘Bastard, I know his sort. Sort of man who thinks you’re just waiting to be tumbled into bed.’

Out on the front steps, beyond the papier-maché façade once more. A large wad of notes in his pocket, a larger one in her handbag.

She said, ‘Where are you staying?’

‘At the Paris, just across the square.’

‘Me too. But of course . . . I’m sharing a room.’

‘I’m not. I have a suite to myself.’

‘That settles it then, doesn’t it?’

Crossing the square, she said, ‘Did you notice the waxworks?’

‘Waxworks?’

‘All those people who looked like characters from the old silent films. As though the place preserved them and rolled them out on special occasions.’

‘Yes. I noticed. What do you think the special occasion is?’

She slipped an arm through his. It was a small but startling gesture. It should not have been. She had taken possession nearly an hour ago. He looked. She was his height. The same black hair,
the same dark eyes. A looking glass.

‘Oh . . .’ she replied, ‘I think we’re both about to find out. Now, did you spot Fatty Arbuckle?’

‘I thought he was Oliver Hardy?’

‘Oh no . . . far too jowly, and besides you never see Ollie without Stan.’

One of the many things a boy is not taught in an English public school is what to do with a full condom. Or even how to do it. What is the post-coital protocol? Men buy condoms
in an all-male-world – the barber shop. Once used they seemed to Troy to default to that all-male world. There seemed no place for a woman in an awkward moment or more made up of smelly latex
and cooling semen. Does one discreetly head for the bathroom – always supposing there is one? Does one perch on the side of the bed, peel the damn thing off a detumescent member, knot it with
one of the many knots learnt in the boy scouts and fling it carelessly to the floor with the air of a man-of-the-world who has sexual relations daily and doesn’t care that the woman might be
watching?