Loser Takes All

Contents

LOSER TAKES ALL

Graham Greene was born in 1904. On coming down from Balliol College, Oxford, he worked for four years as sub-editor on
The Times.
He established his reputation with his fourth novel,
Stamboul Train.
In 1935 he made a journey across Liberia, described in
Journey Without Maps
, and on his return was appointed film critic of the
Spectator.
In 1926 he had been received into the Roman Catholic Church and visited Mexico in 1938 to report on the religious persecution there. As a result he wrote
The Lawless Roads
and, later, his famous novel
The Power and the Glory. Brighton Rock
was published in 1938 and in 1940 he became literary editor of the
Spectator.
The next year he undertook work for the Foreign Office and was stationed in Sierra Leone from 1941 to 1943. This later produced the novel,
The Heart of the Matter
, set in West Africa.

As well as his many novels, Graham Greene wrote several collections of short stories, four travel books, six plays, three books of autobiography –
A Sort of Life, Ways of Escape
and
A World of My Own
(published posthumously) – two of biography and four books for children. He also contributed hundreds of essays, and film and book reviews, some of which appear in the collections
Reflections
and
Mornings in the Dark.
Many of his novels and short stories have been filmed and
The Third Man
was written as a film treatment. Graham Greene was a member of the Order of Merit and a Companion of Honour. Graham Greene died in April 1991.

Novels

The Man Within

It's a Battlefield

A Gun for Sale

The Confidential Agent

The Ministry of Fear

The Third Man

The End of the Affair

The Quiet American

A Burnt-Out Case

Travels with my Aunt

Dr Fischer of Geneva
or

The Bomb Party

The Tenth Man

Stamboul Train

England Made Me

Brighton Rock

The Power and the Glory

The Heart of the Matter

The Fallen Idol

Our Man in Havana

The Comedians

The Human Factor

Monsignor Quixote

The Honorary Consul

The Captain and the Enemy

Short Stories

Collected Stories

The Last Word and Other Stories

May We Borrow Your Husband?

Travel

Journey Without Maps

The Lawless Roads

In Search of a Character

Getting to Know the General

Essays

Collected Essays

Yours etc.

Reflections

Mornings in the Dark

Plays

Collected Plays

Autobiography

A Sort of Life

Ways of Escape

Fragments of an Autobiography

A World of my Own

Biography

Lord Rochester's Monkey

An Impossible Woman

Children's Books

The Little Train

The Little Horse-Bus

The Little Steamroller

The Little Fire Engine

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Epub ISBN: 9781409040392

Version 1.0

  

Published by Vintage 2001

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

Copyright © Graham Greene 1954, 1955

A serial version of this book appeared in

the United States of America in
Harper's Magazine

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

First published in Great Britain by

William Heinemann 1955

Vintage

Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,

London SW1V 2SA

Random House Australia (Pty) Limited

20 Alfred Street, Milsons Point, Sydney

New South Wales 2061, Australia

Random House New Zealand Limited

18 Poland Road, Glenfield,

Auckland 10, New Zealand

Random House (Pty) Limited

Endulini, 5A Jubilee Road, Parktown 2193,

South Africa

The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 0 09 928622 X

1

I
SUPPOSE
the small greenish statue of a man in a wig on a horse is one of the famous statues of the world. I said to Cary, ‘Do you see how shiny the right knee is? It's been touched so often for luck, like St Peter's foot in Rome.'

She rubbed the knee carefully and tenderly as though she were polishing it. ‘Are you superstitious?' I said.

‘Yes.'

‘I'm not.'

‘I'm so superstitious I never walk under ladders. I throw salt over my right shoulder. I try not to tread on the cracks in pavements. Darling, you're marrying the most superstitious woman in the world. Lots of people aren't happy. We are. I'm not going to risk a thing.'

‘You've rubbed that knee so much, we ought to have plenty of luck at the tables.'

‘I wasn't asking for luck at the tables,' she said.

2

T
HAT
night I thought that our luck had begun in London two weeks before. We were to be married at St Luke's Church, Maida Hill, and we were going to Bournemouth for the honeymoon. Not, on the face of it, an exhilarating programme, but I thought I didn't care a damn where we went so long as Cary was there. Le Touquet was within our means, but we thought we could be more alone in Bournemouth – the Ramages and the Truefitts were going to Le Touquet. ‘Besides, you'd lose all our money at the Casino,' Cary said, ‘and we'd have to come home.'

‘I know too much about figures. I live with them all day.'

‘You won't be bored at Bournemouth?'

‘No. I won't be bored.'

‘I wish it wasn't your second honeymoon. Was the first very exciting – in Paris?'

‘We could only afford a week-end,' I said guardedly.

‘Did you love her a terrible lot?'

‘Listen,' I said, ‘it was more than fifteen years ago. You hadn't started school. I couldn't have waited all that time for you.'

‘But did you?'

‘The night after she left me I took Ramage out to dinner and stood him the best champagne I could get. Then I went home and slept for nine hours right across the bed. She was one of those people who kick at night and then say you are taking up too much room.'

‘Perhaps I'll kick.'

‘That would feel quite different. I hope you'll kick. Then I'll know you are there. Do you realize the terrible amount of time we'll waste asleep, not knowing a thing? A quarter of our life.'

It took her a long time to calculate that. She wasn't good at figures as I was. ‘More,' she said, ‘much more. I like ten hours.'

‘That's even worse,' I said. ‘And eight hours at the office without you. And food – this awful business of having meals.'

‘I'll try to kick,' she said.

That was at lunch-time the day when our so-called luck started. We used to meet as often as we could for a snack at the Volunteer which was just round the corner from my office – Cary drank cider and had an unquenchable appetite for cold sausages. I've seen her eat five and then finish off with a hardboiled egg.

‘If we were rich,' I said, ‘you wouldn't have to waste time cooking.'

‘But think how much more time we'd waste eating. These sausages – look, I'm through already. We shouldn't even have finished the caviare.'

‘And then the
sole meunière
,' I said.

‘A little fried spring chicken with new peas.'

‘A
soufflé Rothschild
.'

‘Oh, don't be rich, please,' she said. ‘We mightn't like each other if we were rich. Like me growing fat and my hair falling out . . .'

‘That wouldn't make any difference.'

‘Oh yes, it would,' she said. ‘You know it would,' and the talk suddenly faded out. She was not too young to be wise, but she was too young to know that wisdom shouldn't be spoken aloud when you are happy.

I went back to the huge office block with its glass, glass, glass, and its dazzling marble floor and its pieces of modern carving in alcoves and niches like statues in a Catholic church. I was the assistant accountant (an ageing assistant accountant) and the very vastness of the place made promotion seem next to impossible. To be raised from the ground floor I would have to be a piece of sculpture myself.

In little uncomfortable offices in the city people die and people move on: old gentlemen look up from steel boxes and take a Dickensian interest in younger men. Here, in the great operational room with the computers ticking and the tape machines clicking and the soundless typewriters padding, you felt there was no chance for a man who hadn't passed staff college. I hadn't time to sit down before a loudspeaker said, ‘Mr Bertram wanted in Room 10.' (That was me.)

‘Who lives in Room 10?' I asked.

Nobody knew. Somebody said, ‘It must be on the eighth floor.' (He spoke with awe as though he were referring to the peak of Everest – the eighth floor was as far as the London County Council regulations in those days allowed us to build towards Heaven.)

‘Who lives in Room 10?' I asked the liftman again.

‘Don't you know?' he said sourly. ‘How long have you been here?'

‘Five years.'

We began to mount. He said, ‘You ought to know who lives in Room 10.'

‘But I don't.'

‘Five years and you don't know that.'

‘Be a good chap and tell me.'

‘Here you are. Eighth floor, turn left.' As I got out, he said gloomily, ‘Not know Room 10!' He relented as he shut the gates. ‘Who do you think? The Gom, of course.'

Then I began to walk very slowly indeed.

I have no belief in luck. I am not superstitious, but it is impossible, when you have reached forty and are conspicuously unsuccessful, not sometimes to half-believe in a malign providence. I had never met the Gom: I had only seen him twice; there was no reason so far as I could tell why I should ever see him again. He was elderly; he would die first, I would contribute grudgingly to a memorial. But to be summoned from the ground floor to the eighth shook me. I wondered what terrible mistake could justify a reprimand in Room 10; it seemed to be quite possible that our wedding now would never take place at St Luke's, nor our fortnight at Bournemouth. In a way I was right.