Friends in Low Places

by Simon Raven

  “What’s so funny then?”

  “I’ll maybe tell you later. Lunch.”

  Behind the closed shutters the bedroom, which faced north, was cool and reassuring. Angela, fed and pleasured, slept, pinching the nipple of her left breast between the first two fingers of her right hand, for all the world like a Rubens goddess about to squirt milk into the open mouth of a cherub. Mark Lewson’s mouth was open, but not in expectation of Angela’s milk: he always gaped when he was thoughtful. He was thoughtful just now because he was wondering whether he could open Angela’s bag on the dressing table, remove two of the four ten thousand franc notes which he had seen in it before lunch, and then get out of the bedroom and out of the house without waking Angela, who, however well pleasured, was a light sleeper. Although this plan, which would conclude with a visit to the afternoon session in the Casino, offered action of a kind, something to offset the stagnation of Sunday in Menton, it had several disadvantages. First, Mark did not care for gambling and usually lost; and secondly, even if he returned the money later, Angela would almost certainly find out that it had been taken. She would turn nasty, she would probably turn him out. This danger, however, was the less deterrent as it had become increasingly plain, from Angela’s demeanour over the last few days, that she was going to turn him out in any case. Before marrying the Contessa, Mark had had much experience of this kind of sojourn: he could read the signs as a poacher can read the weather, and they heralded the rapidly approaching end of this particular idyll. So what the hell, he thought: nothing to lose.

  Stage one: to ease himself off the bed, inch by inch, so that it did not give out a tell-tale creak. This was easier said than done, for the bed, a huge and ancient letto matrimonale from over the border, was much given to creaks, and indeed making love on it to Angela always sounded like being in the bowels of a wind-jammer which was running before a gale. But Mark was an agile mover and had devoted much of his life to studying such skills; after a few discreet wriggles of his delicate buttocks, he had both feet hanging over the side of the bed, and with a final slow roll of his upper body he was safely and silently off. Angela, still posed as some goddess of peace and plenty, slept on.

  Stage two: to open the bag and take the money. While he was about it he might as well take the lot. (Nothing to lose.)

  Stage three: to open the door, which was almost as rackety an apparatus as the bed. Here luck was with him: Angela, frantic with post-prandial lust, had left it ajar.

  Stage four: to creep to the dressing-room down the little passage and get suitably togged up. (The Casino, while small and friendly, did not encourage informality of tenu.) Thank God he didn’t keep his clothes in the bedroom. Now then: the light grey suit, pink shirt, old Etonian tie (a falsity which he had sported for so long that he now almost believed that he had been at Eton), and the dark suede shoes. Hair: eau de cologne: mouth wash. (Since one of the troubles about this kind of life was that one was never in the same place long enough to take a proper course with a dentist, his teeth and gums were bad and he had, as he well knew, atrocious breath.) Cigarettes. Passport. And that (with Angela’s forty thousand francs) was the lot.

  Stage five: to go back past the bedroom, down the stairs and out. She could hardly stop him now, but he might as well keep up the charade. After all, if he could get out, make a profit, return the forty thousand, all without her knowing, so much the better. He might be able to hang on here as long as another week. He tip-toed past the bedroom, was pleased to hear a gross snore, slid down the short banister, opened the front door, left the latch up in order to re-admit himself (Angela refused to allow him a key), and emerged into the blue and sticky afternoon.

  Angela Tuck dreamt that she was back in India again, up in the hills near Oute, that day they came to arrest her father nearly fifteen years ago. They were sitting, she and her father, drinking gin before lunch. Since she had been playing golf and was very thirsty, she was having hers with lime juice and a lot of soda. Just as she was about to drink, her father said:

  “Make the best of it, girlie. There may not be many more where that came from.”

  She raised her glass again but now it was empty, except for a small cube of ice which slid along the tilted tumbler to burn her lips.

  “All gone,” her father said, in the tones he had once used in the nursery. He leaned forward and started tickling her, a favourite game when she was little. But then there was a curt, loud knock on the door of the bungalow; her father’s hands fell away from her; and in the moment before she awoke Angela knew that at long last they had found him out and had come to take him away.

  As indeed they had, she thought to herself, sweaty, dry-mouthed, wide awake. Cooking the Pay Rolls; a wonder he’d got away with it for so long. But never mind him, dead and unlamented in his Hongkong grave. That knock on the door. The empty half of the bed.

  “Mark?” she called.

  It was obvious what had happened. He had slipped out and woken her as he left. She rose from the bed to check her handbag. Forty thousand, the little rat. But never mind: if he’d gone for good, forty thousand was not too disastrous a price; and if he came back and tried to brazen it out, she’d have a good excuse for giving him notice to quit. Thinking of him without rancour she returned, with the handbag, to bed, lit a cigarette, crushed it out, thought of her father in Oute again, thought wistfully of the pretty race meetings and the green fairways on the golf course, and fell into a light doze from which she awoke without difficulty when, ten minutes later, the door bell rang downstairs.

  The patrons of the Casino at Menton have always been a predictable bunch. Since the stakes are low and the furnishings shabby, since the croupiers are for the most part ageing and kindly men who, too wise to aspire higher, too honest to sink lower, have spent a placid lifetime here, the place has acquired a ‘‘family” atmosphere in which even the Casino detective behaves with prim geniality, like nanny supervising a tea party of well conducted children. These latter are the regulars, expatriate ladies and gentlemen of the English upper-middle class with an addition of tight-faced French women of the indigenous commercial bourgeoisie, all of whom, English or French, are as well known to each other as they are to the management and staff.

  If we leave aside the ethnical division, the regulars fall into two groups: those who come when the Casino opens at two in the afternoon and those, more resourceful, who do not arrive until after an early dinner. Both groups, as soon as they enter, seat themselves at the double-ended roulette table and stay there until it closes down at two in the morning, those who have exhausted the funds set aside for the day being quite happy to sit and watch, and not dreaming of giving up their seats to any more serious players who may (even in Menton) occasionally appear.

  “Routine”, then, is the Casino motto, and right loyally both staff and clients live up to it. The only variation is itself routine: every Sunday afternoon both groups, instead of arriving at two and eight-thirty respectively, arrive at half past four to take tea and anticipate the grand treat of the week - a two-hour game of chemin-de-fer which runs from five till seven and is never prolonged, no matter how earnestly the players may implore, for fear, no doubt, of over-exciting the children and disturbing the wholesome discipline which must rule the remainder of the week. But from the given hours of five to seven something near anarchy is permitted: some six of the regulars, who are rich enough to afford the higher stakes, will be joined at the Chemmy table by two or three outsiders (a sensitive Italian, perhaps, sickened by the noise and crowding in the rooms at San Remo, and a local embezzler or two, anxious to risk their loot in the most discreet venue available); while the rest of the regulars, enjoying brief freedom from the tyrannous wheel, will stand round and kibbitz, occasionally soliciting a good-natured banker to take bets of a few hundred francs from the floor.

  It was just as this weekly period of licence was about to begin that Mark Lewson entered the Salon. The chef du parti, who was, as tradition prescribed, the most benign and atr
ophied of all the croupiers, retained enough professional instinct to sniff money in Mark’s demeanour; and since there was still one vacant seat, he smiled and beckoned, with both coquetry and command, like a worldly uncle who is just about to put one on to “a good thing” - a quicker cure for clap or advance intelligence of a new issue of stock. Mark, while he was not impressed by this bonhomie, recognised the convenience of the empty chair and the necessity of starting at once if he was to have any chance of getting back before Angela awoke. He grinned like a juvenile vampire, passed Angela’s forty thousand to the croupier, received plaques and counters in exchange, ordered himself a bottle of champagne from a rusty waiter, lit a cheroot, and sat.

  The empty place which he had filled was place five, dead opposite the croupier. To his left was an ample French woman who had crumbs of icing in her moustache; to his right an ageing and distingué Englishman (writer? poet? don?) with long and obscenely youthful hair, Marlborough suit buttoned high, wing collar and bow. The French woman looked at him as though judging, objectively, whether or not he might be edible; the Englishman smiled, very sweetly, and murmured something about the spring weather. The game began. The first three bankers lost at the first coup, and the shoe was with the French woman, who put down an opening bank of ten thousand francs - rather more than this table normally ran to.

  “Banco,” said Mark, and lost to a natural eight.

  “Banco” he said again, and again lost to a natural eight.

  “Bad luck, dear boy,” said the writer-don, sentimentally patting Mark’s hair. “If you’re not going to follow again, I’ll take it myself.”

  Mark was not going to follow again. He had already lost three quarters of his capital and must use his remaining 10,000 with care if he was to survive at all.

  “You’re more than welcome,” he said.

  “Banco,” chirped his neighbour, dewlaps foaming over the wing collar.

  The French woman emitted four words, like a sharp burst of bren-gun fire aimed straight at the croupier’s false teeth. No, he replied, Madame could not garage any of her winnings, under the house rules, until after the third coup of her bank. Madame, who knew this as well as she knew her married name, announced that it was “effroyable” and that the bank would nevertheless continue.

  “Banco,” repeated the Marlborough suit, and eventually won with a two to Madame’s baccarat.

  The bank now passed to Mark, who put down the minimum starter of 2,000, immediately lost it with a natural eight to the Marlborough suit’s natural nine, and received another pat of sympathy on the hair. He was about to retaliate with the burning end of his cheroot, when he remembered that he now had only 8,000 francs left and had better preserve good relations. In return for the right to pat away for the rest of the session, wing collar might perhaps “do” him a small loan or a cheque.

  This question became pressingly pertinent after the bank had passed rapidly round the table, arrived at Mark once more, and cost him immediately the 5,000 francs which he rashly put up for it. Only 3,000 to go (and the champagne to be paid for).

  Wing collar’s frail hand now pushed 5,000 forward to start his new bank. The old idiot was in luck: cash in on it.

  “Can I come in with you?” asked Mark. “Half shares?” Hopefully he proferred 2,500, leaving himself only a miserable lozenge, of what looked like hotel soap, worth 500.

  “Couldn’t do that, dearest boy. Never play with other people’s money. Makes for nasty quarrels, don’t you know.” The Marlborough suit then won ten times running and received, when he finally went down, the better part of 200,000 francs from the croupier. If the old Yid had let me share, thought Mark viciously, I’d have been up, off and clear. And now the old bugger’s got the cheek to pat my hair again.

  “I’ve got my cheque book here,” he began casually: “as one Englishman to another ...”

  The hand was unhurriedly removed from Mark’s head. “Try the Caisse.” The dewlaps wobbled like two buttocks parted by a crack in the chin. “They know all about that. Classical man myself - get confused by figures.”

  Deftly the pale hands sorted and counted the glittering bijoux delivered by the croupier’s rake. Mark began to sweat in the crutch. Only 3,000 left. Stuck. Back to Angela? Peccavi? God, you look so sexy I can’t wait? How bored he was with being tied to that bloody woman; if she wasn’t so mean, none of this would have happened.

  Meanwhile, another large bank was running. The hair-patter’s right-hand neighbour, as often happens, was repeating his predecessor’s luck. After his sixth win the new banker consulted with the croupier; a large pile of chips was placed to one side, a second, even larger, left in the middle.

  “Cent milles pour la banque.”

  “Banco,” said Mark on impulse. They might let him play without seeing the money; in which case the penalty for loss would probably be gaol. That was what it said in one of Fleming’s novels, but of course they might just turn him out and leave it at that. In any case this was action.

  “Banco,” he said again.

  The kibbitzers muttered blithely: banco on 100,000 was a rare treat. The hair-patter looked bland, the female cake-eater sceptical, the rest of the players expectant. The atrophied croupier’s mind began to click over. The residual instinct which had led him to beckon Mark to the table had told him that the young man was worth perhaps 60,000. Not more. But the champagne, the carelessness over what he had lost....? On the other hand, the rather worn suit, the placatory whispering to the English professor .... What was one to think? No, he decided, one must see the money first.

  “M’sieur . . . l'argent?”

  “Up to your old tricks, Lewson?” said a soft voice in Mark’s ear. “I’ll stand you this one, provided you give me your seat when it’s over. Win or lose.”

  A chunk of mauve plastic proclaiming 100,000 francs landed by Mark’s right hand. The professor smiled genially. The cake-woman fingered her moustache with the practised effrontery of a colonel of dragoons. Two cards were passed to Mark: a ten and a king - makes nought. “Carte, s’il vous plait” The banker turned up his own to reveal a seven and a knave, and flicked Mark an eight. “Je reste.” “Sept pour la banque et” - turning over Mark’s two openers - “buit pour m'sieur” All over. Mark received a second mauve plaque for his winnings and turned to his benefactor.

  Even though he had only met him once, three years ago and briefly, he could not have failed to recognise, from the numerous photographs which had since appeared in the press, the gambling impressario, Max de Freville. The furrows arching down from the base of the nose were quite unmistakable. But what was de Freville doing at a seedy little game in Menton? De Freville, who was worth half a million (so they said), who no longer gambled himself, who merely organised discreet games for the big money and took his cut on the turnover?

  “De Freville?”

  “I’ll have the stake money back, if you don’t mind. And my seat.”

  Mark rose, passed one mauve plaque to de Freville and put the other in his pocket. Clear, out and up - by 60,000. Time to get back to Angela, replace the money he had borrowed. But curiosity held him. It wasn’t every Sunday afternoon that one encountered as notable a figure as Max de Freville, whose presence here certainly needed explanation. Furthermore, he was impressed that de Freville should have remembered so clearly his own name and reputation although they had done no more than pass in (literally) the night. Having waited until de Freville lost his bank on the second coup, Mark ventured:

  “Haven’t seen you in three years odd. Not since that dance of Donald Salinger’s. What are you doing in Menton of all places?”

  “I come here when I can. There’s a smell of middle-class mortality which I find pleasing. And of course there’s some good, stuff to be seen inland.”

  He gestured out of the Casino and over the hills, away into Provence.

  “They said you’d given up playing.”

  “I have.” The voice was slightly blurred, as though coming from a great dis
tance, from under many layers, formed by the inexorable years, of ennui and regret. “I’m only sitting here to keep you out of trouble and give them a sporting chance to get their money back. My professional conscience. I can’t allow a seat to be vacated without warning. But we’ll leave when the shoe’s over. I don’t think they can reasonably ask more.”

  “You came here because of me?”

  “Because of Angela. I dropped in just now and I've been hearing about you. Banco. It seems she wants you out of the way, and so, since I'm to be here a few days, do I. She thought you might have gone for good, but I said, not you, your type never go until they’ve squeezed the last drop. So I volunteered to take a look around. And since you are still here - ”

  “ - You know what to do about it.”

  “Carte.... I've already done it. You can cash in that mauve plaque, give Angie her 40,000 and keep the balance. For the rest, if it were up to me, I'd kick you out and leave it at that.” He pushed over a pile of chips which he had just lost. “But Angie reckons she owes you a bit more for her good time. She wants to see you in business, as she puts it. Luckily we can give you a start.”

  “In your organisation?” said Mark eagerly.

  “I wouldn’t employ you, Lewson, to clean my lavatory floors. No. Last time I was here I heard an interesting story which may add up to occupation for you. If I give you the right introduction.”

  The tin rattled out of the shoe. De Freville rose, bowed to the French woman, and nodded to the Marlborough suit on his right.

  “Come on,” he said to Mark: “cash that plaque, pay for your fizz, and back to Angie’s.”

  While Mark and de Freville walked back to Angela’s villa, she was preparing with love and happiness an enormous English tea - this meal, as she knew, being de Freville’s favourite.

  The relationship between Angela and de Freville, now of two years’ duration, was curious. It had started with a chance meeting on the promenade of Menton, when Angela had tripped over an Algerian carpet on display at the side of the pavement. She had fallen full length, badly grazed both her knees, suffered minor shock and major humiliation, and had been very relieved when a tall, taciturn and tactful Englishman had picked her up, brushed her down and settled her in a chair for a drink. Unsettled by the childish nature of her performance and slightly loosened by alcohol, she had treated him, as a kind of smoke-screen for her embarrassment, to an account of her recent widowhood and of the motives (love of peace induced by a rackety and uncertain youth, together with the residual need to know that racket was still readily available in her neighbourhood) which had brought her to harbour in Menton. Since de Freville’s motives for frequenting the place were similar, a provisional sympathy had immediately grown between them. Later they had walked, dined, talked of local and domestic life, discussed the price of fish and the insolence of cashiers in French banks, danced together closely but without excitement, and had finally, sympathy being by this time absolute, gone to bed together without passion and without any attempt at consummation.