Edward Aubyn - A Clue to the Exit

As Patrick wondered how to revive his conversation with Crystal, a tap on the window drew his attention to a man waving at her from the platform. He recognized the Frenchman who had made a challengingly opaque presentation at the conference the day before.

I was forced to stop writing at this point. The waiter asked me for the fourth time whether there was anything more I wanted and I conceded a request for the bill. There was an atmosphere of insulation in that restaurant which Proust would have envied. A good casino is the perfect place to write: isolated without being lonely, single-minded and yet sophisticated, exclusive and welcoming at the same time; sealed off from the distractions of the world and sealed in a world of distraction, it has that oxymoronic tang that keeps one from falling asleep. I looked through the internal window of the restaurant at the gamblers drifting past like fish in an aquarium, drank the last of my coffee, closed my notebook, and plunged into the florid scene beyond the glass.

As I stepped into the Salle Privée, I immediately felt the uplift of its higher ceilings and the downpour of its weightier luxury. Two giant nymphs, representing Dawn and Dusk, reinforced the effort to arrest time by being interchangeable. Whether the sun rose or the sun set, nothing could interfere with their delicate self-absorption. Another night and several fortunes may have swirled down the plughole, and vast herds of human cells thrown themselves off the precipice of time, but nothing had really changed, because the evening’s twin was there to greet the haunted gambler, still loitering in a rosy-fingered landscape, still dressed in the semi-diaphanous nymphwear she had borrowed from her sister the night before. Although I had to refuse their gentle invitation to pretend that time was not cutting my throat, I was delighted to be among people who had decided to come to their endless party so decoratively dressed.

Giving in to a childish ambition to get rid of one million francs in under five minutes, I asked one of the croupiers to place half a million on 14 — the date of my birthday — and then walked over to the neighbouring table to place my second half million on red. An individual number seemed absurdly unlikely to come up and I’d already had some luck losing on red. Returning to the first table, I heard an ominous murmur of astonishment and was appalled to find thirty-six half-million franc counters stacked up for me like building blocks in a children’s game. Needless to say I was the centre of attention as I tried to stuff the unfortunate winnings into my pockets. I really needed a shopping bag, but I was too shy to ask. At the neighbouring table I found that red, at least, had not let me down, but the loss of one counter hardly made up for the burden of gaining so many more.

I was too shaken by my failure to carry on gambling. Instead of unloading all my money, I was now fifteen times richer than when I came in. With the money I still had in the bank, my total wealth had risen to nearly twenty million francs. One million francs a week for the rest of my life! Unless I gave up writing in order to bounce around in speedboats feeding caviar to the fish, I was never going to get rid of the wretched stuff.

I drifted into the bar, thoroughly depressed. At the same time I detected the return of that hollow acceleration, that dry-mouthed excitement, that I had noticed earlier in the evening. I wished I could just give the whole lot away, but a tramp is far harder to find in Monte Carlo than a roulette wheel. My situation was truly hopeless. Perhaps if I gambled again … no, that’s what all the desperadoes think.

Unable to drink alcohol, which now leaves me feeling sick for days, I celebrated my defeat with Vichy water. My gloomy financial reverie was interrupted by a half-familiar voice. Turning round I saw the woman I had ravaged on the afternoon of the countess’s death. The loose spirals of her golden-brown hair entangled me in nostalgia. No longer naked, we went through the introductions which our furious appetites had vaulted over. Her name, it turns out, is Angelique.

‘Why don’t you sit down?’ she said.

‘Well, it’s funny you should ask,’ I replied, emptying my trouser pockets, and stacking the counters up on the bar.

At least I could now move my legs freely. Only my top half felt as if I was wearing a flak jacket.

‘You’re having good luck tonight,’ she said admiringly.

I struggled to explain how badly things were going from my point of view, but although she seemed to grasp the principle of what I was saying there was a stubborn incomprehension in her eyes each time they came to rest on the five million francs stacked up in front of us.

‘I don’t think you get free until you die,’ she said, half-heartedly trying to participate in my preoccupations.

‘If only it were that easy.’ I smiled.

She had lost all her money earlier in the evening and, drawn by the inverted symmetry of our disappointments, I slid the counters along the mahogany and offered them to her.

‘Lose them for me,’ I said. ‘I’ll probably just win more.’

‘You’re not serious,’ said Angelique.

‘Absolutely serious.’

She leant over and kissed me on the mouth. ‘Do you want to watch me play?’ she asked, looking at me intently.

‘Sure.’

Her elegant evening bag was too compact to accommodate her new fortune and, after looking around discreetly, she slipped some of the counters into her underwear, a turmoil of lace and silk, straps and buttons.

‘You’re so great,’ I said, biting her earlobe. ‘You drive me crazy.’

Now that I’d learned her name and was watching her play with the desires we had merely caved into on our first meeting, I felt my passion tinged with gold, like raw liquor matured in oak. The potential for true feeling bared its teeth.

‘I could fall in love with you,’ I said anxiously.

‘This is just the beginning,’ she replied, running her nails over my unencumbered pockets.

‘If I became your slave, would you set me free?’ I asked.

‘No,’ she said, ‘but you wouldn’t want to be free.’

Walking back to the gambling tables, our interlocked fingers eagerly grinding each other’s knuckles, I felt the charge from her warm palm throbbing through my whole body. My imagination usurped the visual field: shotguns exploding in a paint factory, wrinkled rainbows thick as cream rippling across the floor, starbursts of wet colour climbing the walls.

‘Can you feel it?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘yes.’

She kissed me a second time. The crowd churned around us, animated by a duller force.

And then she unlocked her fingers and turned to concentrate on the wheel. I was left transfixed by the shattering of my loneliness. I stood in a rushing stillness, which was like the smooth curve of a once turbulent soon turbulent waterfall. There could be no more violent and perfect contradiction than the agony of my relief, like the sting of blood returning to a frostbitten limb it is already too late to save.

As I write this I am in Angelique’s apartment on the Avenue Princesse Grace. She is asleep in the bedroom, while I’m sitting out on the balcony, naked under my overcoat, washed in winter sunlight. She inherited my luck last night and there are about twenty-five million francs in gambling chips scattered around the drawing room.

The fire of our love, which was like a blowtorch the first time we met, is now a burning forest, leaping rivers and consuming landscapes. She knows that I’m always thinking about death and I know that she’s always longing to gamble. We reprieved each other, with every touch. With momentary impersonations, we flicked through the index cards of all our identities, and then burnt the file. There was nobody left for us to be except exactly who we are, doubly naked on an unprecedented dawn.