The King of Fools

1
When I saw her climb into my car, I thought she was planning
to steal it, and hurried out of the restaurant, still clutching my
napkin. Outside, in the harsh midday sun, I found her settled
in the passenger seat, leafing through a tourist guide. She was
small, with a ruddy complexion and colourless hair matted
with seawater. She wore a green towelling beach robe, and
the water trickled down her neck, losing itself in the opening
of her bathing suit. The sudden cast of my shadow across the
pages of her book caught her attention. She raised her eyes and
gazed thoughtfully at me, trying to discover what this fellow
in swimming shorts, idiotically twisting his red-and-white
chequered napkin, could possibly want from her. Curiously, it
was I who felt awkward. We stared at one another in this way
for some time. She seemed perfectly at ease, like a person with
right on their side.
“I’m so sorry,” I stammered, at length. “You’re… you’re in
my car.”
She had thick eyebrows which she obviously never plucked;
they gave a depth to her pale eyes. The eyebrows were frowning
in surprise now.
“I don’t understand – your car?” she said quietly.
She was English, and spoke French with an almost comically
English accent. Her small, girlish voice didn’t suit her at all. It
put me in mind of the shrill, silly tones of the sheriff’s daughter
in a badly dubbed Western. It irritated me.
“You’re sitting in my car,” I ventured, glumly. “Not that I
have a particularly acute sense of private property, but I should
like to know why.”
She listened attentively, her lips silently forming one or
two words whose meaning was unclear. The effect was rather
like an operatic diva singing her partner’s words in her head
during a grand duet. She shut her book and stared around her
in astonishment, then promptly burst out laughing and pointed
to a white MG parked in front of my vehicle, and identical to
mine in all points. It bore a British number plate.
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry!” she breathed, opening the passenger
door.
It was my turn to laugh, at her embarrassment. This was just
the sort of mistake a person was likely to make in the bustle of
Juan-les-Pins in August, coming up from the beach with sand,
salt and sun in their eyes.
“It’s the same, isn’t it?” she said, pointing to the other MG.
“They might be twins,” I agreed.
“Yours has red upholstery too.”
“Yes. But your steering wheel’s on the right!”
Her expression darkened, as if my remark had annoyed her.
“How stupid. I don’t understand…”
“What don’t you understand?”
“How I could have made such a mistake.”
And then, suddenly, she was very British once again. She
realized she was talking to a man to whom she hadn’t been
introduced, and left me standing outside the restaurant, with
its wooden deck that smelt like a floating lido. I returned to
my meal, trying hard not to glance outside. When I emerged,
the Englishwoman’s MG had disappeared.
I settled myself behind the wheel of my car and drove to
my hotel, a short distance out of town. Each day after lunch
I took a siesta in my room, since it was impossible to sleep at
night: an open-air nightclub raged just twenty metres away.
Jumping out of my open-topped car, I spotted her beach bag
lying forgotten under the dashboard, unnoticed by me until
now because it was black, like the carpet covering the floor of
the MG. It contained an English novel, a bottle of suntan oil,
sunglasses, a towel and a tiny soft toy – a lion. The gold plastic
glasses case contained a thousand francs. The forgotten bag
worried me. I had no desire to go looking for the ruddy-faced
girl to give it back. I took the bag and tossed it into the empty
half of my wardrobe.
The air in my room was mild, even cool. The closed shutters
kept the room dark and filtered the sluggish afternoon sounds,
though they were useless at night against the din from the
“Makao”. I stretched out naked on my bed. I crossed my arms
behind my head and drifted into a daydream. At this time of
day I was clear-headed and at peace. It was the mornings that
depressed me more than anything, after a few hours of poor
sleep. Then, life seemed empty and I hated this holiday.
I should have been with Denise, but we had broken off just
two days before leaving, on some petty pretext. For a moment,
I had considered cancelling my trip, but then decided the
Côte d’Azur would be a timely distraction, and left anyway.
I regretted it now. Holiday resorts are best approached in a
happy frame of mind, or they can seem more depressing than
all the rest. Truth be told, my sorrow was not acute. Rather, I
experienced a feeling of intense disenchantment that left me
weak and vulnerable.
I felt the nagging torment of physical regret too. With
Denise, the act of love had been easy, and reassuring. At length
I fell asleep, as I had every other day. And like every other day,
I woke again around four o’clock in the afternoon. I closed the
shutter slats tightly against the relentless sun. The sounds from
outside took on a different quality now. The gravelly voice of
the sea rose above the racket of Juan-les-Pins.
I forgot all about the Englishwoman of that morning.
In the evening, when not tempted by a show, I would spend
an hour or two at the casino. I’m not a gambler, but I enjoy
the atmosphere in the gaming halls. I find their tense, solemn
mood exhilarating; I’m touched by the pale, serious faces
under the light of the table lamps, clinging hard to their
mask of composure. If Hell is staffed with attendants, they are
surely recruited from the deceased croupiers of this world.
Their unruffled insouciance is in such contrast to the punters’
veneer of fake calm that they seem truly demonic. I never sat
at the card tables, because I played little, and with none of the
systems and strategies that most players insist on following. I
preferred roulette, placing a straight-up bet two or three times
in a row. Each time, I would concentrate like an athlete before
attempting some feat of prowess. I would think hard about a
number until it came to seem so obvious, so utterly natural,
that a moment later I was astonished to see the ball drop into
a different pocket. I felt that Luck herself had made a mistake,
or humiliated me quite deliberately.
That evening, I remember playing the 5, then the 14, and
then the 5 once again. Within minutes, I was fifteen thousand
francs down. Par for the course. And so I played one last time,
but differently: I placed fifteen thousand francs on red. If the
ball dropped into a black pocket, I would be thirty thousand
francs down. But if the number was red, I would recoup my
losses and leave. A true player would smile at my low-roller
methods; and indeed, I caught a few ironic glances from one
or two regulars who had been following my stakes. I didn’t care.
I’m the son of provincial shopkeepers, and my parents taught
me one thing above all: the value of money.
Slightly shame-faced, I placed three five-thousand-franc
chips on red.
As I withdrew my hand, I saw a ravishing young woman
smiling at me from across the table. She held a small pile of
chips in her left hand. She counted fifteen thousand francs and
placed them on black, her eyes fixed upon mine all the while. I
was astonished; her gesture was clearly a challenge. I wondered
where I had seen her before. The croupier spun the wheel and
tossed the ball with a small, practised flick of the wrist.
I kept my eyes fixed on the young woman, wondering where
and how we had met. A long time ago, it seemed to me. I
searched her features for a different face, like someone determined
to rediscover the child’s visage in that of an adult.
The ball landed on red. The girl pursed her lips in disappointment,
and in that small expression of frustration I recognized
her. My Englishwoman of that morning. I was spellbound. How
could the ruddy-faced girl in the MG have transformed into
this elegant, attractive young creature? I rounded the table.
“What a delightful surprise!”
“You’ve forgotten your winnings,” she whispered, indicating
the expanse of green baize.
I shrugged carelessly.
“Play again,” I said quietly, struggling to affect the light
tones of a man for whom a fifteen-thousand-franc stake is a
mere trifle.
“I was wrong to try and play against you!”
She wore her hair in a swept-up style that enhanced its
warm chestnut colour and reddish tints, held in place on top
of her head by a narrow gold clip decorated with closely spaced
links like the scales of a fish. Her complexion had looked ruddy
that morning, but in reality it was just a touch of sunburn – a
natural foundation that offset her understated make-up to
astonishing effect. She wore a green dress, not too low-cut,
with a black lace rose pinned to her chest. Not exactly the last
word in Parisian chic, but it suited her well.
I heard the clicking of the ball on the mahogany track. This
time, the number was black, swallowing my thirty thousand
francs. I seized the moment to escort my companion to the bar.
“Champagne?”
She laughed.
“Of course! We impoverished English never miss the chance
of a glass of bubbly.”
“You know you forgot your beach bag in my car?”
“Yes. I was annoyed about the sunglasses, but I hoped I
would see you again…”
She hoped she’d see me again, to retrieve her sunglasses.
But the way she said it did me the power of good. I couldn’t
take my eyes off her. She was charming, graceful, with a gentle
beauty I had never seen in a woman before.
“Why are you staring at me like that?” she asked, eventually.
“Is something the matter?”
“Yes. You’re very beautiful.”
She glanced away, then after a brief pause, she spoke again.
“The first time I came to France was on an organized tour,
when I was a little girl. Before we left, the guide gave us heaps
of advice. Among other things, he said that the first thing a
Frenchman will do once he’s alone with a woman is to tell her
she’s beautiful.”
“So glad I didn’t disappoint, Mademoiselle.”
“Madame!”
“Oh! I’m so sorry. And I still haven’t introduced myself:
Jean-Marie Valaise.”
“My name is Faulks. Marjorie Faulks.”
The waiter brought our champagne and prepared to pour.
But I told him to let the bottle chill. I wanted to prolong our
tête-à-tête.
“I said you were beautiful precisely because this morning
you seemed quite the opposite,” I declared, coldly.
She nodded.
“This morning you took me for a thief, and worse still, I
had just come up from the beach, red as a lobster. But I think
you’re mistaken now. I’m not pretty.”
I stared at her, unabashed, as if contemplating a portrait. Was
she pretty? Perhaps not, indeed. She had an Englishwoman’s
mouth, with a receding lower jaw. She traced her upper lip
with her fingernail. She must have been reading my thoughts.
“And then there are my freckles,” she sighed.
“Des bulles de champagne!”
“Des… what?”
“Champagne bubbles – perhaps you don’t know the word?”
“No.”
I showed her the bottle of Pommery.
“Look, there.”
Her face took on a delighted expression, and she repeated
the word bulles wonderingly, several times over, watching the
champagne sparkle. Except she pronounced it “bool”, and my
best efforts to teach the proper elocution produced nothing
but a comical “bee-yool”. I noticed with surprise that her voice
was fuller and deeper than this morning.
We drank a first glass of champagne. Marjorie savoured her
drink with eyes closed. Suddenly, it occurred to me that she
had not come to the Côte d’Azur alone. She had climbed into
the passenger seat of my car, and seemed to be waiting for
someone. The thought was vaguely annoying.
“Are you staying at a hotel?”
“No, I’m with some friends from home. They’ve rented a
villa in Cap d’Antibes.”
“Are you here for long?”
“I’m flying back tomorrow evening.”
I felt an almost physical pang of disappointment. I was the
boyish flirt, rubbing his neighbour’s foot at dinner, delighted
to discover she wasn’t moving it away, only to find it was the
table leg all along.
“What a shame.”
The champagne tasted warm, and too young.
“Yes, it is a shame. I love it here on the Côte d’Azur. English
people always… Well, it was we who discovered it, after all!”
“Indeed. It was a British colony for years. Are you travelling
with your husband?”
“No, he hasn’t been able to take any holiday yet, this year.
Too much work. He’s an architect. He’s building a big school on
the outskirts of London at the moment. And what do you do?”
“A great deal of travelling!” I replied. “I sell office adding
machines for an American firm.”
“And how many do you sell?”
“I couldn’t say exactly, I’d need an adding machine…”
We chatted for almost an hour, against the murmur of the
casino. Pale plumes of smoke curled around the lamps, and our
eyes drooped. Marjorie pulled herself up so suddenly that it
took me a moment to realize she was leaving.
“I’m meeting my friends, and I’m terribly late. Thank you
for the champagne…”
“Your beach bag!” I stammered, startled by her sudden
departure.
“Which is your hotel?”
“The Palmier Bleu. It’s—”
“I’ll send someone for it! Goodbye!”
She disappeared into the crowd. I would have chased after
her, but I had to pay for the champagne, and the barman was
busy.