‘Let’s toss,’ she suggests. ‘I’ve always liked the idea of running your life by the toss of a coin.’
‘Or a dice. Throwing a dice.’
‘A die. One die, two dice.’
‘Pedant. Anyway, we all die.’
‘It’s a good idea for a novel. Using dice to govern your life. And at the end, you die.’
‘Called what?’
She thinks for a moment, frowning. ‘Alea iacta est. The Die is Cast. No, The Dice Man Cometh.’
‘The Tosser,’ he suggests, and wins her laughter. She is, he decides for the hundredth time, entirely lovely like that. No makeup, her hair in disorder, her features strongly shaped, giving her a look that is a fraction older than her real age. Unusual in a girl. He feels like a younger brother at times, which is not what he wants.
‘Well, go on then. Toss.’
He takes a coin from his pocket, a half-crown that still lies there amongst the Belgian and Luxembourg francs he has already collected. He holds the coin poised on his curled forefinger, his thumb cocked beneath.
She stops him. ‘Wait, there’s another possibility.’
‘What?’
‘It’s Sunday. Crap hitching, you said so yourself.’ She looks round the little square. ‘We could stay the night here.’
‘Where?’
‘Not in your bloody tent. A hostel perhaps, or a pension.’
‘Heads we stay, tails we move on.’ The coin rings out, flickering in the sunshine, and comes up heads.
The auberge de jeunesse is in the ditch below the city ramparts, down by the river, with a railway viaduct looming over the roofs. It’s an ancient, dank building that might once have been a factory of some kind. ‘Looks like one of the Yorkshire mill towns,’ James decides, which pleases Ellie. She seems to derive a certain satisfaction at the idea of living amongst the proletariat. But the only proletarians here are the transient occupants of the hostel, a disparate collection of Americans, Australians, New Zealanders, leavened with German, French and Dutch. Everyone smiles naively across the various language divides, exchanging mispronounced words of greeting but little else. Banality is the order of the day. ‘This town is so old,’ one of the Americans exclaims. ‘And amazing. I mean, who’s heard of Luxembourg? And here it is – walls and towers and stuff, and real cute.’
Ellie becomes a focus of attention and James feels angry at the loss of her, annoyed that she has enthusiastically embraced this kind of communal living, even laughing and agreeing with the American about the age and cuteness of the town. She flirts with an Australian youth who wants to know all about Paris, argues with another American – or is he Canadian? – who is insisting that de Gaulle is once again the saviour of France. And he understands, with a sudden shock, that she might just as well decide to go off with someone else to somewhere else; that there is little keeping the two of them together. At least Lis had been bound to Fando by bonds of dependence.
That evening they eat an impoverished meal with a dozen others in the gloomy refectory. The talk is all the Vietnam War and the approaching American election and what a shit LBJ is but thank God he’s going and how two of the Americans are evading the draft. Afterwards someone produces a guitar. That was the curse of those days – someone always had a guitar and the ability to strum a few chords and all of a sudden it ain’t me babe and we’re no longer thinking twice about whether there’s any real talent because it’s all right. At eleven o’clock an argument breaks out with the warden over whether too much noise is being made, and the group breaks up. Ellie goes outside with the Australian. James follows.
‘A smoke,’ she says, seeing accusation in his face. ‘That’s all.’
The Australian grins. His name is Declan. ‘Hey,’ he says, ‘I don’t want to get in anybody’s way.’ He has blond hair and scorched skin. James can imagine him at a Pacific beach, surfing or wrestling sharks or something else requiring much muscle and little brain.
‘It’s just James,’ Ellie tells him. She has her Gold Flake tin open and is rolling a cigarette with great concentration. ‘You’re not in his way.’
‘Aren’t you two together?’
‘That’s right, we aren’t together. Just friends.’ She strikes a match, lights the cigarette and blows smoke away as though dismissing the very idea of friendship.
‘For fuck’s sake.’
‘Hey, don’t get riled, mate.’
There is a moment when James considers staying and arguing, with Ellie, not with the Australian. But he knows it would be pointless. Ellie is best left alone when she is in this kind of mood, so he just turns away and goes off to the men’s dormitory to sleep on a top bunk and wonder what she is doing apart from flirting with the Australian and smoking her home-rolled ciggies.
He drifts off into a disturbed sleep. Trains rattle overhead throughout the night. In the men’s dormitory, lying in racks like overgrown fruit, they groan and complain in their sleep. A couple – is the female voice Ellie’s? The sound is too indistinct to identify – argue for hours in the street outside the hostel. Morning leaks light through veils of grey cloud and James feels he hasn’t slept more than an hour or two.
‘You look like death warmed up,’ she remarks. She herself is bright with energy, her eyes glistening, her mouth, that could be so sullen, drawn into that summer morning of a smile. Is it the presence of the Australian in her life?
‘Where is he?’
‘Who?’
‘Declan.’
‘Oh, him.’ She grimaces. ‘As thick as a plank. He can’t understand why they don’t speak English here in Luxembourg.’
‘Why should they?’
‘Because they do on the radio.’ She pauses. ‘He was, my dear, thinking of Radio Luxembourg.’ She laughs and James laughs with her. That was the trick. Laughter. Whatever she finds in other men, she’ll find laughter with James. And laughter is a powerful weapon to wield in the tortured world of male–female relations.
After breakfast they pack their rucksacks under the critical eyes of Declan and a couple of others. ‘Where are you off to?’ Declan asks.
Ellie looks up at the Australian with complete indifference. ‘Don’t know yet. Toss of a coin.’
‘Toss of a coin? You serious?’
‘How we make all our decisions.’
‘Cool.’
They sling their rucksacks and straighten up, feeling like two warriors setting off into battle.
‘Well, go on, then.’ Declan’s tone is challenging. ‘Let’s see you toss your fucking coin.’
‘That,’ Ellie says, ‘has to be done in private. At the moment of choice.’ Her tone is prim, as though tossing a coin involves physical intimacy. With James following, she leads the way out of the hallway of the hostel into the grey morning. He’s feeling absurdly happy, warmed by her unexpected inclusion of him into her world. Coin-tossing has been elevated to a shared personal philosophy. Thus connected by tenuous bonds of familiarity and companionship, and the promised toss of a coin, Fando and Lis are still together.