Three Score & Ten

I sipped the drink. The old man licked his lips watching me, over and over again, drawing one lip slowly across the other with a funeral absorption, like an undertaker dry-washing his hands.

‘Tell me about yourself, Mr Marlowe. I suppose I have a right to ask?’

‘Sure, but there’s very little to tell. I’m thirty-three years old, went to college once and can still speak English if there’s any demand for it. There isn’t much in my trade. I worked for Mr Wilde, the District Attorney, as an investigator once. His chief investigator, a man names Bernie Ohls, called me and told me you wanted to see me. I’m unmarried because I don’t like policemen’s wives.

‘And a little bit of a cynic,’ the old man smiled. ‘You didn’t like working for Wilde?’

‘I was fired. For insubordination. I test very high on insubordination, General.’

Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

In that cry of pain and flood of tears that follows it, my whole secret leaks out. I bury myself against my stern friend, and she strokes my shoulder and comforts me with same ‘Poor little one!’ that she used a moment ago to the sick Brabancon.
‘There, there now, poor little one, there, there. It’ll soon be all right. Look, here’s some boracic lotion to bathe your eyes, I’d just prepared it for Mirette’s. Not with your handkerchief! Take some cotton-wool… there! Poor little one, so your beauty’s very necessary to you at present, is it?’

‘Oh yes! …Oh Margot!’

‘”Oh Margot!” Anyone might think I’d beaten you. Look at me. Are you very sore with me, poor little one?’

‘No, Margot.’

‘You know very well,’ she goes on in her gentle, level voice, ‘that you can always count on finding here every kind of help, even the kind that hurts most: the truth. What was it I said to you? I said: you’ve gotten older.’

‘Yes… Oh, Margot…’

‘Now don’t begin again! But you’ve got older this week. You’ve got older today. Tomorrow, or in an hour’s time, you’ll be five years younger, ten years younger. If you’d come yesterday, or tomorrow, no doubt I should have said: “My word, you’ve got younger!”’

Just think, Margot, I shall soon be thirty-four.’

‘Don’t expect me to pity you, I’m fifty-two!’

‘It isn’t the same thing, Margot, it’s so important for me to be pretty, and young, and happy. I’ve…I…’

‘You’ve got a lover?’

Collette, The Vagabond