ATDTDA (17): Whatever happens, 474-475

[Paul Nightingale]

Recollection of the "three-party household" (269): given the way the
previous section marginalises her, it is worth recalling Lake's role there,
as victim or canny operator, learning how to manipulate the two men. Here,
she is described as a better poker player, "a thousand small tells he had
remained too unschooled in deceit to know how to keep from letting slip"
(474). Again, for Deuce, the trip back to his youth, "all he had ever wanted
to rise above" (473), is juxtaposed to another kind of quest, "pursuit of
her forgiveness" (474). And when, finally, she speaks, is allowed by the
text to speak, she asks about his father: "Waited for her to go on with it,
but only got the careful face." Cf. the opening lines of the chapter: "...
in each face Deuce's criminal palps could sense an imminence almost painful,
unremitting, agents of a secret infiltration ..." (472).
 
Inscrutability; and patience, folding hand after hand until the one that
works. Cf. her failure/refusal to respond to Hope on 473. 

He "blunder[s] in small, stupid ways" (474), seeking opportunities to "beg
her forgiveness"; a repetitive performance, each event standing in for the
one that won't be spoken of. There follows a dialogue passage, which again
is one that recurs ("... she would say something like ..."), this exchange
standing in for all the others.

And then, after so much (poker-faced) silence, Lake launches into "I'm done
'th all my crying" (475). He knows he should "cut his losses and just dummy
up", retire from the game, fold, but goes on to making excuses: "... it
ain't like once they hire you on that you have the choice". And: "Wa'n'
nothing special about me, just I was there." From "pursuit of her
forgiveness" to some kind of special pleading, an attempt to absent himself
from her narrative as she was, more or less, absent from the narrative of
his return home. Unable to remain silent, or avoid being provoked by her:
"something simpler than self interest was pushing him, and he didn't know
what it was but it frightened him because he couldn't control it".