We were separated yesterday evening. Veiled, I was led out across the courtyard between walls ringing with the white sun and transported in a closed donkey cart across the town. I saw little of it and cannot even guess at the size of it. The building into which I was led is located somewhere near the market. Men and donkeys loaded with fruits were turning a corner nearby and from that direction came the usual market sounds, the guttural voices, an occasional shout and the cries of whipped beasts. Up a flight of wooden stairs, through a door, and into a long passage. They left me in this room at the end of the corridor. The shadows grew longer towards evening. From the slit window I could see the last reflection of the sun on the uneven planes of the roofs. The strains of pipe and zither music rose from somewhere below. A muezzin was crying in a weird singing voice from a minaret. It soon became dark in the room.
The bed is comfortable, broad enough for two.
A short while afterwards a fat Arab woman entered. She grinned at me. Her teeth protruded slightly and she had one gold one. She carried a small oil lamp which she left on the table. She handed a small bowl to me. It contained a mixture which seemed to be of crushed almonds and honey. ‘Gut!’ she said in pidgin English, rolling her eyes and rubbing her fat paunch with the flat of her hand. I tasted the mixture. It was very pleasant, slightly gritty, and seemed to cause my mouth to tingle slightly. ‘Gut!’ she repeated with a broad smile. Evidently she was going to remain there until I had finished it. I did so, but quite slowly, partly because the mixture was so sweet and partly because with each successive swallow my stomach tightened, again not unpleasantly, but I found myself breathing more heavily. As I finished the mess in the bowl I lay back on the bed and closed my eyes. Some unknown force seemed to have taken control of my body. I could feel the blood push its way through my veins, my heart seemed to be pounding, and I was involved deliciously and completely in a hypersensitive world of feeling. ‘Gut?’ she said. I nodded vaguely and she went out.
After she had gone I realised that I had been drugged. My body attained a terrible immediacy of consciousness. If I touched my thigh, it quivered and prickled. I had an urge to bare my belly and watch it rise and fall beyond all knowledge of breathing. The very atmosphere seemed to have weight. It lay on my sensitized skin like an invisible hand. My temples were throbbing. A vast expansion was taking place inside me. I tore off my clothes and lay naked on the bed. In the vast eddying whirlpool of my sensations I lost all consciousness of time. My very breathing afforded me a sexual pleasure. When I touched my mound with my fingertips the acuteness of my pleasure almost caused a spasm, or rather, the sensation was as deliriously brittle as an ordinary spasm, but below, suppurating like a vast nuclear potential, the actual spasm lay in wait, willing blindly to be stimulated. On the other hand, my mind appeared to be unaffected. I saw clearly that I had been drugged for one purpose. For this reason I fought and quenched the desire to precipitate the spasm myself. Instead, I contented myself with brushing the skin of my belly and thighs with my fingertips, and felt my buttocks heave and thrill with an almost unbearably ecstatic sensation. Soon I gave way to an urge towards unconsciousness and seemed to hang impotently between two worlds, heedless of direction. A prickling seizure mounted in the extremities of my limbs, rising gradually and deliriously through every fleshy drain till it lay like steel bands of paralysis at my thighs and armpits. I found myself unable to move a muscle, my consciousness wheeling farther and farther backwards towards utter extinction. At the same time, by thinking casually of my genitals, I hung ecstatically in the balance, a knife of pleasure to its hilt in my sex. This led to the realisation that my throat muscles were not constricted and I uttered a hoarse sob of lust. My eyelids were tightly closed, leadweight, and I lacked the strength to open them. I became, except for the palest eidolon of consciousness, a seamy and pullulating furrow, dark and warm as earth awaiting the sprinkle of seed. Vaguely, through the misted vision of this hothouse paralysis, I heard the door open. A bearded man was bending over me.
As he lowered his naked front on top of me, my bodily reactions were beyond my control. I had the sensation of being a voracious gullet which had been starved for a score of centuries. As his dark member entered me every hair on my bristling body partook of the pleasure. It is impossible to express in any word known to man the impossible peak of pleasure to which his sex transported me. On one level, my vital juices rose up within my belly like the waters of a dam of infinite capacity. I thought it would never end. Literally, no matter how high the waters rose, the limiting walls of potentiality towered massively above. On another level, I experienced a thousand spasms each minute at every pore. On a third and more dispassionate level I was conscious at every moment of the marvellous soft texture of his skin, of the fibrous strength of his short hairs, and of the voluptuous putty-like quality of his tongue. Towards the end, however, I passed out of personality entirely. I became a vessel which threatened and willed at any moment to burst. That burst, when it finally did come, was the most excruciating thing I have ever experienced. If giving birth were pleasant – perhaps it could be – I would compare it to that. The excessive difficulty of the orgasm, the final frantic lurch of the hips in their ecstasy – these things are beyond description. The sting of the reality cannot be contained in words. What, under normal circumstances can be compared with an extremely pleasurable shifting of sands in the womb, became, for a seemingly endless space of time, a vast broiling cauldron of shooting planets. The universe itself suffered annihilation within my womb, and when my limbs, their soft surfaces, swung back into consciousness it was in the sureness and certainty of an utter and oblivious peace.
The man, whoever he was, left as silently as he had come. I lay alone, sweating profusely, and too contented to move. Some time later, another man came. The vast convulsion began all over again. And again, for I counted six others before dawn broke out like a disease on the epidermis of the sky.
It is after noon. I have struggled hard to write what I have written. It seems rather pointless now. But I am so near the end of my story, so near the point at which my leaving Marseilles merges with my present life, that it would be a pity not to go on.
I was fed a short while ago. The same fat woman. The food more succulent than that which I have been used to. Stewed lamb and eggplants. Some kind of rich honeyed pastry afterwards. I rubbed my stomach as the woman did last night, made motions of eating from the small bowl, and said: ‘Gut!’ questioningly. She laughed with her broad mouth, smacked her large belly, and nodded comprehendingly and said, ‘Ya ya ya ya ya ya!’ over and over again. I am sure she means I will have more of the mixture tonight. And so meanwhile I shall go on with my story.
But it is difficult to concentrate. My imagination is held by her broad friendly mouth saying, ‘Ya ya ya ya ya ya!’
Devlin sat facing me. The train had just pulled out of Toulon on its way to that string of pleasure-spots which constitutes the French Riviera: St Tropez, St Raphael, Cannes, Juan les Pins, Antibes, Nice, and so on to Monte Carlo. We had taken tickets as far as Ventimiglia because in the haste of our departure we had been unable to decide the exact location of our ‘honeymoon.’ We had eloped. Pretending to have business to do in Marseilles, we had left Nadya in Mario’s company, secured our suitcases, and boarded the first train of the Côte d’Azur.
Devlin was in high spirits. We were both, I believe, almost as excited as newlyweds.We had never slept together, and this was in fact a kind of honeymoon. The excitement was heightened by the fact that we had as yet not decided upon our destination, and, as we left each station behind us, unable at the last moment to make up our minds to get off, we experienced a feeling of loss almost, for perhaps we should have got off at St Tropez, or at Cannes, or at Antibes. How were we to know? By the time we reached Nice, we were both feeling a little desperate, but neither one of us was willing to make the necessary decision to get off. Thus we found ourselves running along the coast past Villefranche, St Jean Cap Ferrat, Eze, Cap d’Ail in the direction of Monaco. At Monaco station, Devlin finally took action.
‘Let’s get the bags,’ he said. ‘We’ll get off at Monte Carlo. It’s about two minutes. If we don’t, we’ll find ourselves in Italy!’
Laughing, I helped him down with the bags, and a few minutes later, the porters were bundling our luggage onto a taxi.
We took rooms at the Hotel de P . . . , bathed, and walked out of the luxurious foyer onto the square.
‘That’s the Casino,’ Devlin said, pointing to the Christmas cake-like structure that obscured our view of the sea. ‘Gambling is one of my vices. We’ll go there this evening. Later, we’ll go to the Sporting Club, it’s a bit more chic. The old Casino’s become rather a barn since the First World War.’
Devlin was a mine of information, and his happy and very shy American manner endeared him to me.
I thought little of the fact that our presence here was part of a complicated plan to protect Nadya from him. I accepted the present moment and luxuriated in it. We were sitting on the terrace of the pleasant café that looks onto the Casino square gardens.
‘Fabulous things have happened in that Casino,’ he said, shaking his head.
‘Tell me some of them!’
‘Did you never hear the story of the Russian admiral?’
I shook my head.
‘I’m not sure when it was,’ he said. ‘Sometime before the First World War. Part of the Russian Fleet, a couple of heavy cruisers and things were lying offshore. The Admiral came ashore one night and lost a fortune, literally a fortune at the wheels. He returned to his ship in a helluva stew.’ At this point Devlin ordered two fines à l’eau from the waiter. ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘the Admiral returned the next night with the entire payroll of the Russian Fleet. As was to be expected, he lost every penny. He was a broken man. He went to see the boss, whoever he was, and explained to him that he had not only lost his personal fortune, but his honour. He would face a court martial on his return to Russia. He pleaded with this guy to return at least the money which belonged to the Russian Navy. The Casino official was polite but firm. In the way these men have, he explained that if the Admiral had won, the Casino would not have expected reimbursement. The Admiral had to admit that and was persuaded to return to his ship. That might have been the end of the story, but it wasn’t. About eleven o’clock in the morning, the Admiral’s barge entered the harbour. He took a coach up to the Casino and asked to see the boss again. The boss was none too pleased to see him but the Admiral appeared to be in a very good humour, so he offered him a drink and conducted him into a private room. He asked him what he could do for him. The Admiral explained again that he wanted his money back, only he wanted it all back and not only the money that belonged to the Navy. Of course the official turned nasty. But the Admiral interrupted him. Did the official realise that he (the Admiral) would have to commit suicide? The official said that he was sorry and all that but that there was nothing he could do. The Admiral just smiled. He told the official that the money had better be produced immediately because he had left orders with the fleet that it was to open fire and destroy every stick and stone of Monaco if he had not returned to the flagship by noon. And if he returned without the money he would give the order to open fire himself. It was all the same to him, he explained. If he had to die, he might as well have this little bit of revenge! It was a quarter past eleven. At a quarter to twelve the Admiral’s barge returned to the flagship with all the money on board. At twelve-thirty the Russian Fleet steamed away on its Mediterranean cruise!’
Devlin told me of this and many other legends, of the lost fortunes and of the suicides. ‘There’s a regular graveyard of suicides here,’ he said with a laugh.
Later in the afternoon we visited the tropical aquarium, the gardens, drove around the town in an open carriage, did, in fact, all the things which a young honeymoon couple would have done, dined well at our own hotel and ended the evening at the Casino, where Devlin lost a few hundred dollars at roulette.
That night, slightly tipsy and inspired by all the silly things we had done during the day, we lay naked in one another’s arms, like a pair of newlyweds, sleeping only when the first light broke through our window.
Looking back, that was the only entirely happy day we spent in each other’s company.
As the days passed Devlin drank more and more. He had been losing heavily at the Casino. On the third night he lost $25,000. He kept repeating that it wasn’t serious, that he could afford it, but he drank more and by the end of the first week he was going to the Casino at ten o’clock in the morning when it opened. Several times, I tried to get him to cut his losses, but he grew more and more bad-tempered and began to blame me for ill-luck.
‘If you don’t want to come with me, then for God’s sake stay in the hotel! Do you think a man can gamble when there’s someone looking over his shoulder watching every move he makes? Stay in the hotel, goddamn you, and leave me alone!’
I did so for two nights, but he lost more heavily than ever, returning completely drunk to our room in the early hours of the morning. I tried to encourage him to leave Monte Carlo.
The third night we went out together. We walked silently upwards away from the Casino. He had obviously no wish to go there with me. And yet I felt he was quite glad to have my company.
I had a sudden brainwave.
‘Let’s drive to Nice tonight,’ I said. ‘It’ll do you good to get away from here for a few hours.’
He was immediately eager.
‘We’ll hire a car,’ he said.
It was still light. We drove along the Moyenne Corniche with the Mediterranean down below us to the left, exposed suddenly between rocks and villas, glimmering blue-grey patches of darkening sea. Devlin was driving and he didn’t speak much. He pointed out an occasional villa whose owner he knew or had read about.
‘Some people live here all the year round,’ he said, ‘but that type usually hasn’t much money. Nice is different. It’s also a city.’
We descended at last, ran quickly through Nice to the sea front, and drove slowly along the Promenade des Anglais. We came to a halt opposite a side street whose discreet neon bar signs stretched backwards in the near darkness towards the old city.
‘A drink?’
I nodded. ‘Park the car, anyway,’ I said.
A moment later we entered a softly lighted bar and sat in one corner at the back.
Three single women were sitting at the bar. They were dressed rather daringly in unfashionable evening dresses, cut low to expose a naked expanse of back. Their legs, their heavy thighs smooth under silk, dangled indolently from high stools. They glanced at us occasionally. Two of them were not remarkable in any way, women merely, like taxis waiting, over a small drink, for whatever men might enter. But the third, though obviously a prostitute also, was different. Her curves were softer than those of the other two, who were almost hard in their angularity. She had richly flowing black hair which sprouted out of a low and startlingly white forehead. Her fleshy face, with its big lips and high cheekbones, was, I felt, softly desirable, as the warm breadth of her hips certainly was, and the heavy but well-shaped flesh of her arms. Devlin, I could see, was obviously attracted by her. She glanced at us more than the other two, almost inviting us to call her over.
‘What about it?’ I said to Devlin with a smile.
He pretended not to understand.
‘What about what?’ he said.
‘That woman,’ I said. ‘We could take her to a hotel.’
He flushed. ‘We?’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘You don’t expect me to wait for you, do you?’
‘Who said anything about her?’ Devlin said.
‘Don’t be silly! You’re dying to take her to bed with you!’
Devlin laughed. ‘I think you’re exaggerating!’
‘Well, you’d like to anyway.’ As he didn’t deny it, I went on. ‘And she’s just the right build. She’d make love very smoothly. It’d be a pleasure to watch her.’
‘Now we’re getting at the truth,’ Devlin said with a smile.
‘Let’s call her over.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Of course I am,’ I said.
I watched Devlin make what was meant to be a discreet but what turned out to be a very obvious gesture.
Smiling, the woman slipped down off the stool and approached us with a voluptuous walk. The other two looked at us almost with contempt, but I held their eyes and theirs were lowered first.
‘Hillo! You want something?’ said the big girl who confronted us.
‘Won’t you join us in a drink?’ Devlin said with his most attractive smile.
‘I like to very much,’ the woman replied.
Devlin seated her and called the waiter. The woman wanted whisky and soda. It was brought to her.
‘You are on holiday?’
‘We’re on our honeymoon,’ I said with a smile.
The woman didn’t seem the least put out.
‘I have many friends on their honeymoon,’ she said ambiguously, for she didn’t speak much English.
‘In that case you will know roughly what we want,’ I said suggestively.
‘Roughly? I don’t undersatained roughly . . .’ said the woman, somewhat nervously.
Devlin laughed. ‘C’est-à-dire, rien,’ he said in his best French.
‘Rien? Comment rien?’
Devlin waved his hand in the air as though to erase what had been said.
‘Elle vous a demandé,’ he said slowly, ‘si vous savez faire comme il faut.’ He ended his sentence with a vague motion of the hand.
‘Moi!’ said the big girl with a broad smile, ‘mais bien sûr!’
‘Because if you don’t,’ I said with a smile, ‘you’re going to learn!’
‘Ah weee!’ said the girl, ‘I teach you. No worry!’
We were all smiling at one another. The girl said to Devlin: ‘She is vairy beautiful, you wife.’
‘But he’s going to enjoy you all the same,’ I said.
‘Aren’t you, Harry?’
‘What she say?’ said the girl.
‘Elle a dit que tu es belle aussi,’ Devlin said.
‘Ah oui, moi!’ said the girl bursting into laughter.
‘Look at all that flesh, Harry,’ I said cruelly. ‘Aren’t you just dying to knead it in your hands?’
‘It was your idea,’ he said, somewhat hurt.
I laughed. ‘Yes, I know it was, darling. I’m just dying to see you mount her!’
‘I’m not so sure it’s a good idea,’ he said pompously.
‘What he say?’ the girl said.
‘He says it’s time we started,’ I said.
‘Good,’ the girl said. ‘I got hotel. You come with me.’
Harry paid up silently and followed us out.
‘I do for mainy honeymoons copples,’ said the girl as we walked through the revolving door into the street. ‘They all have very good time!’
I put my arm round her waist. ‘I’m sure they do,’ I said.
Harry followed a few paces behind, like a scolded dog.
I watched the girl’s superb buttocks mount the narrow stair in front of me, glossy and full of promise as ripe melons, and I imagined her then and there opening her thighs for a man, and, like a ripe melon from which a large slice had been extracted, she was at that part hung with a wet and ambiguous core, her clung seam voracious between her widening knees. And there indeed she was after a few moments, after she had taken Devlin into the cabinet, and returned in her various body garters to set herself like a goblet of lust on the bed. She was fatter, the flesh thicker, than I had expected.
A moment later, Devlin came through from the cabinet. He was naked except for his socks and obviously embarrassed.
‘Come make me warm!’ the girl said. ‘Your wife watch just now.’
With a last glance, almost of hatred, towards me, Devlin laid himself down close to the woman’s gleaming chops. When she laughed, the voluptuous heaviness of her belly quivered. She reached out and drew him towards her. His reluctant body arched and then fell passively against her. She wrapped him in her folds and with softly muttered words inspired a slight rotatory movement at his hips. She grunted as though with pleasure, allowed her thick dark head to fall backwards onto the pillow, and, cupping him in her hands at the buttocks, urged him forwards towards his passion. Then she allowed her head to roll sideways like a doll’s, his face buried in her neck, and she looked up at me and said throatily: ‘It wonderful!’
I smiled. The woman was obviously bored. But that, after all, was what she was paid for. I moved forward and knelt beside the bed, watching closely as in the increasing wetness the hairs of his belly combed hers, voluptuously with a ripple at the meeting of muscles. I couldn’t resist what I did next. I slid one hand in between the oiled heat of their bodies, searching between two glowering brows of hair for the rising masticity, and found it, with the delicate hooks of my fingers, pleasant to stimulate, the woman breathing harder under my experienced touch, and the flat bounding wall of my lover almost frantic now to bring about its assertion.
But how for me?
Swiftly, I removed all my clothes and threw myself naked beside them. I had to prise my knee between them to separate them, my thigh as it moved between the slickness of their sweat wedging them apart. I was concerned now only with my own urgency. But I had counted without the strength of Devlin’s desire. He was beyond thought. His one desire was to be sucked right into the pit of his bought woman. He had no time for me. He grasped me at the knee and prised my leg outwards again, causing his belly to meet again in a hot flap with the dark girl’s. Her thighs were now working like pistons.
I struck backwards, wet a towel under the tap, and, using it as a whip, I struck the pair again as they rolled about the bed. But my blows only made them more passionate and finally, in disgust, I hurled the towel aside. At that moment, his whole frame quivering, Devlin uttered a groan of fulfilment. The prostitute, with the slickness of an electric light switch, became business-like. She slipped from underneath him, and, grinning at me, walked over towards the cabinet. Devlin lay with his face buried in the pillow.
‘What about me?’ I said angrily.
He didn’t answer. I crossed to the door and threw it open. As it happened, coming down the stairs was a Negro soldier. When he saw me naked at the door he stopped and grinned. I beckoned to him to follow me. I lay down on the other bed and opened my arms to the unknown man. He took in the situation at a glance, grinned, and, a moment later, was at me with his hard core. All the while as I groaned with passion and pleasure. Devlin watched, his head on one cheek on the pillow, but his obvious horror only acted as a catalyst to my delicate lust. And, a few moments later, when the prostitute returned fully dressed, I felt the delicious shift at my vital centre and I slid softly like a tadpole’s moving into my delirium.
As I returned to my senses, the woman was hooting with laughter, and Devlin, already dressed, was disappearing through the doorway. What a bore! I remember thinking. By the time I had extricated myself from the clutches of my Negro lover, Devlin was completely gone, that’s to say the car was missing from the place we had parked it.
More bored than angry, I returned to Monte Carlo by taxi.
We made it up the following day, but he was already back in the clutches of his gambling mania. Things had gone too far.
‘I’ll try once more, Helen. I promise, that’ll be the last time. Only you come with me tonight.’
I agreed, happy that he seemed to be coming to his senses. We arrived in the Casino after dinner towards ten o’clock at night. He wrote a cheque for $1,000 and began to play roulette. I watched him play an indecisive game for some time, winning and losing, winning and losing, being slightly down after the first half hour. I noticed that many of the habitués, that breed of human being which lingers on at Monte Carlo, having come there and lost everything or almost everything before 1914, the person who bets approximately the same number of francs as he did half a century ago and pretends not to notice that the currency has depreciated. They took a vicarious pleasure in watching the undulations of Devlin’s fortune, sharing his small triumphs and sneakingly triumphant at his sudden misfortunes. Old gentlemen with white hair, clad dapperly in moth-eaten black suits, old women in unfashionable evening dresses, supporting gaudy strings of artificial pearls, and fixing a tense face, built up of layers of powder and rouge, on the spinning wheel. I suppose they recognised in Devlin a compatriot, that is to say ‘a born loser,’ a man who is going to win, but always tomorrow, and were fascinated by the familiar ritual of a man on his way to destitution. I thought I glimpsed a certain sadness, a certain reluctance to take this young man’s money, in the eyes of the croupiers. As he became more reckless – they had watched him now for over a week – their faces assumed a wooden unexpressiveness. As I turned away to go to the bar, I caught the eye of an old lady who was sniffing eau de cologne in her handkerchief. Her eyes left the ambiguous blur of the spinning wheel, and as she looked at me almost – I felt it with a shiver – with a gleam of lust in her watery eyes, her bird’s head seemed to nod in a kind of occult sympathy with the clock-clock-clock-clock of the settling ball.
I walked quickly away in the direction of the bar.
In my haste, I walked at full tilt into a young man in a white dinner jacket. He apologised profusely and I found him leading me into the bar.
Over our drinks he introduced himself as Youssef . . .1. He was some kind of sheikh. His yacht, he said, was in the bay. At any other time I would have been fascinated by the dark good looks of this young Arab, but at that moment, I could think of little else but of Devlin’s madness. Ten minutes later, out of the corner of my eyes, I saw my lover pass across the floor of the next room and return a moment later with hands and pockets stuffed with large chips. He had obviously been to cash another cheque.
‘The young American,’ Youssef said, ‘you are his friend?’
I nodded.
‘It is a great pity,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I have watched him now for over a week. He has lost a small fortune.’
‘Do you play yourself?’
‘Sometimes, when I feel I’m on a lucky streak. I actually win. But it takes a certain amount of discipline.’
I didn’t reply.
‘Have another drink,’ he said kindly. ‘It will make you feel better. He is not your husband?’
‘No.’
‘I’m glad of that, for there is little you can do.’
‘About his gambling?’
He nodded.
About midnight, Devlin lurched into the bar. He was as pale as a ghost. He glanced for a moment at us and then strode over to the bar. He drank a number of brandies one after the other. I made to get up and go over to him but Youssef restrained me.
‘It’s better not,’ he said. ‘He’ll come when he’s ready.’
Five minutes later Devlin came.
He looked at the Arab with something approaching a look of hate.
‘Are you with him or with me?’ he snapped.
Youssef stood up apologetically. ‘Please sit down, sir. I was merely keeping the lady company until you returned.’
‘Blow, wog!’ Devlin said coarsely.
‘Harry!’
‘And you shut your damn little mouth!’
Youssef was staring dangerously at Devlin’s drunken face.
‘I thought I told you to blow?’
‘I will leave in my own good time,’ the Arab said with an effort. ‘To lose is stupid, but to lose badly is disgusting.’
‘Oh, you think so, do you?’ Devlin leered. ‘Well, I’ll let you into a little secret. Your opinion doesn’t concern me, wog! Savvy? Speakada Inglees?’
The sheikh controlled himself. ‘If you hadn’t already lost your fortune as well as your manners,’ he began . . .
Devlin laughed hoarsely. ‘What do you know about it? You want to play for high stakes, you perfumed camel man?’
‘Don’t play with him, Youssef!’ I cried.
‘Don’t play with him!’ mimicked Devlin, and then he turned to me. ‘You keep out of this, you bitch! Just . . . keep . . . your . . . trap . . . shut!’
‘I believe we are staying at the same hotel,’ Youssef said calmly. ‘My suite is on the first floor.’ He turned to me, ‘Goodnight, mademoiselle.’
‘If you go to his rooms, I shall leave you,’ I said after the sheikh had gone.
‘What was the proverb about the rats?’ Devlin asked into the air as he made his way over to the bar for another drink.
3 a.m. I sat up late in our room, waiting for Devlin to return. For the first time in my life I was certain, absolutely certain, of my own motives. I wanted to leave him because I disliked him. I found it difficult to forgive his coarse insults. At the same time, his remark about the rats affected me deeply. It was true that he had lost a great deal of money, more than he could afford, and now I was quite certain that he was on the first floor in Youssef’s suite. If I was any judge of character, it would be Devlin who would lose. It was this reluctance to desert him when he was down that caused me to await his return. I had smoked almost a packet of cigarettes since returning to the room.
When he came in, he was paler than before but apparently sober. He flopped down on an armchair without a word and stared at the carpet. I fixed him a drink and carried it across to him. He took it quietly. A moment later he said:
‘I’m finished, Helen.’
His voice sounded so small and pathetic that I ran over to his side and sat on the floor beside his chair. He ran his fingers through my hair.
‘I’ve written cheques for over $100,000 at the Casino,’ he said slowly. ‘And as for that damn Arab, he has my notes for more than $120,000. God knows whether I’ve got that amount of money in the world!’
‘Oh, Harry! Look, darling. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll speak to Youssef. I’ll get him to give you your notes back.’
‘You’ll do no such thing! I’d rather die.’
‘Don’t be a fool, Harry!’
‘Good God, do you think I could let you do that after the way I insulted him?’
‘You could apologise.’
‘To him!’
‘I think you’re being foolish, Harry.’
‘You want me to go creeping on my knees to him?’
‘If necessary, yes!’
‘You’ll wait a long time and more for that!’
‘I don’t think it would be necessary. I’m sure he would give the notes to me.’
‘I’ll see him in hell first!’
I shrugged hopelessly, walked across to the mantelpiece, and lit a cigarette.
‘What do you intend to do?’
‘I’ve been thinking, Helen,’ he said eagerly.
‘It’s about time,’ I answered drily.
‘Don’t be like that, Helen! What’s done’s done. As for the future, that all depends on you.’
‘How?’
‘I shall have to go back to the States and get a job.’
‘Well?’
‘I want you to come with me,’ he said eagerly.
‘We’ll be poor for a while but we’ll make out somehow. If only you’ll come with me . . .’
‘That’s out of the question.’ I tried to say it as gently as possible but he looked as though I had struck him on the face.
‘What do you mean “out of the question”?’
‘Just that, Harry. I won’t go with you.’
‘Am I so repulsive all of a sudden?’ he sneered.
‘You’re not repulsive at all, at least not now you aren’t. The point is that I’m not in love with you and, anyway, I wouldn’t make a good poor man’s wife.’
‘So you’re going to walk out on me?’
‘That’s hardly a fair way to put it. I’ll do as much as I can. I’ll stay with you for a few weeks if it will help. I could let you have a few thousand dollars.’
‘Conscience money!’
‘You’ve no right to talk that way, Harry! You brought it all on yourself.’ I had been about to say, ‘You’ve had your fling,’ but I didn’t have the heart to.
‘Are you walking out on me or aren’t you?’
‘I’ve already answered that question.’
‘Very well,’ he said bitterly. He was looking pale and drawn. He got up and walked through into the other bedroom. I sat down unsteadily on the arm of the chair he had vacated. I wasn’t feeling altogether hopeless about Devlin’s situation because I felt sure that Youssef would return the notes to me. As far as the Casino losses were concerned, there was nothing we could do. Devlin wasn’t a Russian Admiral and he had no fleet anchored in the bay. And anyway, perhaps only a Russian could have acted in such a swashbuckling manner.
I stood up. There was no point in wasting time. I would go at once to see Youssef. Devlin would undoubtedly feel better when he had cut his losses by more than half. But as I walked towards the door a loud explosion took place in the next room. I froze momentarily and then, with a wild cry, threw myself towards the bedroom.
Horrified, I was standing staring at the corpse which a few minutes ago had been a live and passionate man. I was shivering with terror, rooted to the spot, when I felt a hand take me at the elbow. It was Youssef.
‘The young fool!’ he said, looking down at the lifeless body. ‘I was just on my way to give him the notes back.’
‘It will not be necessary for you to go ashore again,’ Youssef said as he approached me along the deck.
Shortly after the suicide, he had spirited me on board his yacht, and I was standing on the quarterdeck looking at the ghostly early morning outline of the prince’s castle at Monaco.
‘The police are quite satisfied that it is a clear case of suicide. I asked for you to be excused to avoid publicity. They were quite understanding about it.’
I thanked him.
‘Why did he do it?’ Youssef said suddenly.
‘What do you mean?’
He laughed nervously. ‘I mean, did he say anything to you? Give you any indication?’
‘None whatsoever. I told him I wouldn’t marry him and he got angry and said I was running out on him.’
‘Were you?’
‘It was hardly like that. I offered to stay with him for a while.’
‘But he must obviously have blamed you for his suicide, I mean he did it to impress you.’
‘I don’t see how you can say that! I wouldn’t marry him and go and live in America with him. But surely that was no reason for him to go and shoot himself.’
‘I think it probably was his reason.’
‘And what about you! It was you who ruined him!’
‘We were both to blame, perhaps,’ Youssef said gently.
‘Or neither of us. He was mad. I told him you would give him his notes back. I was just coming to you when I heard the shot.’
‘A postmortem won’t help anyway,’ Youssef said. ‘Look, Helen, we’re both of us upset about this. Why don’t we get out of here, now, this minute. A couple of weeks holiday would do you the world of good.’
‘Where?’
‘North Africa,’ he said. ‘We can make for Algiers.’
‘For two weeks?’
‘As long as you care to come for,’ he said, looking into my eyes.
‘Yes, I think I’d like that,’ I said finally.
Half an hour later the sleek white yacht slipped quietly out of the harbour into the Mediterranean.