Van Gogh's Room at Arles (24 page)

Lawrence is a steady and responsible man but not a stern one, and his tone, when he indicated it was time to begin the ordeal, was more pleasant than stoic or neutral. And though there was nothing inflated in his voice when he told his old friend he was ready to get on with it, no more blame or censure coming from him than if he’d been pulled up short by a kink in his muscle on a walk in the woods, just this perfectly agreeable signal that whatever it was that might happen to either of them on the rest of their ramble, for his money, rambles were a crapshoot anyway, no one was responsible, not him, not his old pal, all three of us knew where Macreed Dressel stood. These were the inflections of some accustomed, charming dominion, so maybe I wouldn’t have made such a hotshot Royal after all. I was too old to learn the language, I would speak it with an accent for the rest of my life.

At first, I didn’t even recognize that this was where the gambling happened. It looked as if gambling were still illegal in England and that Dressel had a tip that The Springfield was about to be raided by coppers from the flying squad. True, there were card tables, but these were all lightweight, the kind whose legs fold and that you put back in the closet when your company has left. There was a tiny toy roulette wheel on an upright piano pushed against the dark, flowered wallpaper, its keys uncovered as if the piano player had had to leave in a hurry. Indeed, it was as if almost everyone had left in a hurry. I knew better, of course. The seven not in our party, the five almost shabby men and two dowdy women, I took to be some of the highest rollers in Europe, though perhaps this was only my imagination, ready for awe, kicking in again, were seated around a couple of card tables, the two dealers (not, as it happens, the “house”; Dressel was the house) as quiet as the people to whom they dealt, not bothering to keep up any chatter about the value and implications of the face cards, a music I’d particularly enjoyed at the two clubs we’d visited in London. They didn’t, for that matter, even bother to look up when the future King of England came into the room. And, for my part, it was the first time in months, the first time since that funny little stutter step the Prince and I did outside the aloe shop in Cape Henry,
I
hadn’t been stared at. I was a little disappointed.

I’ve said I understood I was in the presence of obsession, that the plain clothes they wore were signs of their indifference to everything but the compulsive gambling they were engaged in inside the featureless, institutional-looking Springfield. In an odd way they could have been, caught up in their furious concentration on each other’s cards, a kind of support group. I was wrong though, as Larry later told me, to think that great fortunes were won and lost there. The truth was much scarier. These people were so rich that, while they gambled, just the interest compounding on their money in secret São Paulo, Seoul, Luxembourg, and Cape Town accounts, in banks in Spain and Peru, more than covered their losses. It was like that old premise in one of those films where characters have to get rid of great amounts of money within a specified time or forfeit their claim on even greater amounts of money. That would almost explain why the dealers dropped their customary running commentaries, all their clipped, kibitzless silences.

“Well,” Macreed Dressel said to the Prince, “what’s your pleasure then, sir?” Except for his white dinner jacket he might have been a publican asking a customer for his order.

“What’s that one?” asked the Prince.

“Bless me, Larry, your high rank hasn’t spoiled you not one whit, you’ve still your not inconsiderable instincts for the fun of a thing! That one, why that one’s bezique, those ladies are enjoying a friendly game of bezique! There’s aces, kings, queens, jacks, tens, and nines in bezique. You score your points by melding particular combinations of cards or taking tricks. Meld a queen of spades and a jack of diamonds and you win even extra points. It’s quite like pinochle. The difference is you play with sixty-four cards ins—— ”

“All right,” Larry said, “I’ll do the bezique one. How much?”

“Well,” Dressel said, “let’s see, I believe the ladies are playing for ten quid a point. Six or seven thousand quid should do you just grand for a few hands of bezique.”

“I’m new at this. I’m not much of a gambler. I’ll take ten thousand pounds.”

He didn’t watch as the women played out their hand. He didn’t sort his cards when he was dealt them. I don’t think he even looked at them. He was behind three hundred points at the end of two hands and, when it was his turn to deal, he wondered if the ladies minded if he raised the stakes to twenty pounds a point. It was up to them, he said, and they quickly agreed to the new arrangement.

“You’re both of you too good for me,” he told them after another two hands. “I’m quite out of chips, I’m afraid. How much more do I owe? Is it four hundred thirty pounds? Yes, I see it is. Macreed?”

He paid Dressel for an additional four hundred thirty pounds’ worth of chips and graciously thanked the women for permitting him to sit in on their game. He had, he said, to excuse himself now because he wanted to get back to London at a reasonably decent hour and he saw there were still some more games he needed to learn.

“What’s that other one?” the Prince asked his host.

“Well, that one,” Dressel said, “is chemin de fer.”

“All right,” Larry said.

“In chemin de fer two hands are dealt. The players bet against the dealer. See, Mr. Collganardo is dealing now. The winning hand is the one that comes closest to, but doesn’t go over, the count of nine on—— ”

“All right.”

“—two or three cards. It resembles baccarat.”

“All right.”

“You put up fifteen thousand pounds to start.”

Larry gave him the money. It took him only half an hour to lose seventeen thousand pounds over and above his original fifteen-thousand-pound investment. When it was his turn, one of the players told him it was dealer’s choice and that he could change the game if he wanted.

“Euchre, what’s euchre?” Larry said.

“Euchre is cards,” Macreed Dressel told him. “A player is dealt five cards and makes trump by taking three tricks to win a hand.”

“Only five cards but he has to take three tricks to win? I don’t know, it sounds to me that euchre can be pretty slow going. I like it when there’s a bit more action. What’s whist? I’ve heard of whist.”

“Whist is even slower than euchre.”

Larry let out a sigh. “If you gentlemen will excuse me,” he said apologetically, rose, and gave up his place at the table. “What’s the fastest?” he inquired of Dressel.

“Well,” Macreed said, “for your purposes I’d have to say that roulette is the fastest. Roulette lasts for only so long as it takes the wheel to slow down enough for the little steel ball to settle in one of the thirty-six little compartments.”

“And I bet on the number it will come to rest in? Is that about it?”

“That’s about it,” Macreed Dressel said. “You can always, what we call, ‘hedge your bets,’” he added. “You do that by putting your chips down on more than one number.”

“It doesn’t sound as exciting if I hedge my bets.”

“Well, no, it isn’t as exciting.” Macreed Dressel went over to the upright piano and took the toy roulette wheel down off its top and placed it on the piano bench. This was to be the venue for the game. “A moment, Prince,” he said. “I’ll fetch you a chair.”

“No no, don’t bother, I can stand. It will be more exciting if I stand.”

“As you wish.”

“How much?” Larry asked.

“I don’t know,” Dressel said quietly. “Whatever you want. I’m at your service.”

“Could you tell me,” said the Prince, “could you tell me how you make your money?”

“I take twenty percent of what a player gives for chips. If I sell you a hundred pounds, you get eighty pounds in chips. Between fifteen and twenty percent is pretty much the rate in private clubs.

“Ah, fifteen percent.”

“Twenty percent at the upscale clubs. I don’t impose a limit, I don’t employ dealers.”

“I see.”

“In roulette I’m the house. I pay if you win and collect if you lose.”

“I wonder, could you tell me,” said Larry, “in roulette, in roulette, do I purchase chips at the upscale rate? Is that about it?”

“Yes,” Dressel said, reddening.

“Let’s get on with it, shall we?”

The others had laid down their cards and were watching the Prince. It was very moving. My fiancé put all his chips on number twenty. Macreed spun the wheel. The steel ball settled in number five. It was very moving.

“You beat me?” the Prince said.

“Yes,” Dressel said, “it seems I have. Yes.”

“Good show, Macreed!” said the Prince. “Well played, old friend!”

All seven gamblers stared at him.

“We’ll be going back now,” Lawrence said, and took a check from his pocket, which I’d seen him make out earlier. He stuffed it into Macreed Dressel’s white dinner jacket. “Here,” he said, “for your trouble.”

It was very moving.

I’d never felt closer to him. He never said a word to Dressel about his brothers and sisters.

It’s been said that the life of a member of the Royal Family is as different from the life of a member of even the upper middle class as the life of a member of the upper middle class is from the life of a caveman.

I eat, I have clothes to wear, even in Cape Henry there was a place for me to go to sleep every night. But I have no
money.
Certainly they pamper me, they give me these clothes, they see to it I’m fed. They even seem fond of me. Still, the fact remains, I have no money. It would be unseemly of them to offer me any, it would be unseemly of me to take it, even walking-around money, even chump change. I have no money. By that measure alone—I’d never felt closer to him—we were separated by the greatest distances, the widest ways. So I did, I felt returned to myself. Can you understand what I’m trying to say?

Even two or three weeks after our visit to the club in Llanelli in Wales, it was still the montage, that blur, I mean, of love and courtship like a kind of tour. We felt (or I did) surrounded, protected by romance like some cloak of delighted (real or not, present or not), unseen onlookers—the forgiving interested, call them—whose psychic stand-ins Larry and I were, almost their representatives in some parliament of hearts, as emboldened by youth and looks and luck to get away with the outrageous, the murder of the daily, as someone genuinely funny, say, or as a pair of attractive, tired tipsies—— dressed-up, black-tie, wee- small-hours types in the back of someone’s milk truck, clippety-clop, clippety-clop—— so many of love’s and wooing’s vouchsafed antigens around us it seemed as if, though (the paparazzi called off, Larry’s parents, brother and sisters and cousins and all the peeraged rest of their high-placed pals on all their great stately estates given the slip) I had him to myself now, we were on some honeymoon
before
the honeymoon—but that’s what romance is, isn’t it?—a high holiday of mutual regard. It would have been impossible even to imagine a lovers’ quarrel. We’d have had to have drummed one up—— one of us take offense at the color of the other’s clothes, or argue whether this or that restaurant deserved a third star.

We went to the theater and never told them in advance we were coming. We didn’t ask for the royal box, or even dress circle (Larry wore off-the-rack clothes for the first time in his life), but chose the upper circle or took out-of-the-way seats deep in the Gods where we could hold hands. When we were recognized in restaurants—it was surprising how seldom we were—we refused the best tables and Larry tipped the maître d’ to find us something toward the back, near where the staff took its cigarette breaks, or waitresses traded their shifts with one another because they had dates, or their kids were sick, or blokes were coming to have a look at the spare room. Or sought out third- and fourth-world restaurants, restaurants from countries that hadn’t been completely charted yet, and sampled exotic meats killed in the Amazon rain forest, and exchanged spoonfuls of each other’s soups made from rare Indonesian and African birds, or puzzled how deeply into the rinds of seals and sea otters it was wise to eat and tried to figure out what to do with the beautiful phosphorescent skins and soft bones of tropical fish. And went to motion-picture houses where we stood on line with everyone else when the show was changing and, once inside, stared at ourselves in the newsreels as if we were other people, or laughed about Alec’s genius for omnipresence. And, if the feature was a romantic comedy, we watched it, completely absorbed, as forgiving of the slapdash principals as if we were those unseen onlookers, the forgiving interested, and the characters we forgave were ourselves.

It was like dating. Well, it
was
dating. It was dating exactly. The Prince confessed he’d never had so much fun and admitted that, yes, maybe he was a trading-places sort of prince after all—— just this poor Prince looking for a pauper.

(Sid, we were on the same wavelengths. I felt returned to myself and so, to hear him tell it, did Larry.)

And it was still the montage the night Larry took me in his crestless, unmarked Jag on a remarkable drive around London.

We crossed the Thames near where the original London Bridge once stood.

“It must have been quite gorgeous, London Bridge.”

“Hmn, yes,” Larry said, “and profitable. Our family once had the rents from it.”

“The rents? From London Bridge?”

“Many of the most fashionable homes in the city were built on it, some of the best shops, the smartest stalls. Well,” he said, “location is everything.”

“It’s possible for people to own bridges?”

“It’s possible for kings and queens to own bridges. Kings and queens may own anything, Louise. We could lay claim to the rents and rates on the entire London Underground if we wanted. On the Green, Blue, and Red Lines. On any of them. On the Number Thirty-nine and Seventy-four busses.”

“Oh, lay
claim,”
I said.

“There’s the rub,” he said.

We rode on in silence for a while. It was a beautiful evening. I let down my electric window. This time of night, the air was almost balmy. I relax in a car, and Larry was an excellent driver.