Was that what Whitehead meant? Was there respect for a Maker, thanks for Creation, or even some anticipation of Judgment in Heseltine’s prayer?
“No,” was Marty’s reply. “Not really God-fearing. I mean, what’s the use…?”
There was more where that thought came from, and Whitehead waited for it with a vulture’s patience. But the words sat on Marty’s tongue, refusing to be spoken. The old man prompted them.
“Why no use, Marty?”
“Because it’s all down to accident, isn’t it? I mean, everything’s chance.”
Whitehead nodded, almost imperceptibly. There was a long silence between them, until the old man said: “Do you know why I chose you, Martin?”
“Not really.”
“Toy never said anything to you?”
“He told me he thought I could do the job.”
“Well, a lot of people advised against me taking you. They thought you were unsuitable, for a number of reasons we needn’t go into. Even Toy wasn’t certain. He liked you, but he wasn’t certain.”
“But you employed me anyway?”
“Indeed we did.”
Marty was beginning to find the cat-and-mouse game insufferable. He said: “Now you’re going to tell me why, right?”
“You’re a gambler,” Whitehead replied. Marty felt he’d known the answer long before it was spoken. “You wouldn’t have been in trouble at all, if you hadn’t been obliged to pay off large gaming debts. Am I right?”
“More or less.”
“You spent every penny you earned. Or so your friends testified at the trial. Frittered it away.”
“Not always. I had some big wins. Really big wins.”
The look Whitehead gave Marty was scalpel-sharp.
“After all you’ve been through-all your disease has made you suffer-you still talk about your big wins.”
“I remember the best times, like anyone would,” Marty replied defensively.
“Flukes. ”
“No! I was good, damn it.”
“Flukes, Martin. You said so yourself a moment ago. You said it was all chance. How can you be good at anything that’s accidental? That doesn’t make sense, does it?”
The man was right, at least superficially. But it wasn’t as simple as he made it out to be, was it? It was all chance; he couldn’t argue with that basic condition. But a sliver of Marty believed something else. What it was he believed, he couldn’t describe.
“Isn’t that what you said?” Whitehead pressed. “That it was accident.”
“It’s not always like that.”
“Some of us have chance on our side. Is that what you’re saying? Some of us have our fingers”-Whitehead’s forefinger described a spinning circle”-on the wheel.” The circling finger stopped. In his mind’s eye, Marty completed the image: the ball jumped from hole to hole and found a niche, a number. Some winner yelped his triumph.
“Not always,” he said. “Just sometimes.”
“Describe it. Describe how it feels.”
Why not? Where was the harm?
“Sometimes it was just easy, you know, like taking sweets from a baby. I’d go to a club and the chips would tingle, and I’d know, Jesus I’d know, I couldn’t fail to win.”
Whitehead smiled.
“But you did fail,” he reminded Marty, with courteous brutality. “You often failed. You failed till you owed everything you had, and more besides.”
“I was stupid. I played even when the chips didn’t tingle, when I knew I was on a losing streak.”
“Why?”
Marty glowered.
“What do you want, a signed confession?” he snapped. “I was greedy, what do you think? And I loved playing, even when I didn’t have a chance of winning. I still wanted to play.”
“For the game’s sake.”
“I suppose so. Yes. For the game.”
A look, impossibly complex, crossed Whitehead’s face. There was regret in it, and a terrible, aching loss; and more: incomprehension. Whitehead the master, Whitehead the lord of all he surveyed, suddenly showed-all too briefly-another, more accessible, face: that of a man confused to the point of despair.
“I wanted someone with your weaknesses,” he explained now, and suddenly he was the one doing the confessing. “Because sooner or later I believed a day like today would come; and I’d have to ask you to take a risk with me.”
“What sort of risk?”
“Nothing so simple as a wheel, or a game of cards. I wish it were. Then maybe I could explain to you, instead of asking for an act of faith. But it’s so complicated. And I’m tired.”