In the event, of course, The Springfield was as plain as its name.
And stranger, too, than anything I had yet conceived under the spell of my touched, teched, chosen, prenuptial fairytale life.
It was as drab as anything else in that drab port town and, in lieu of the safe lions, gardens, and tigers of my overheated imagination, hadn’t even the advantage of a view of the sea. And rather than the cunningly restored castle I’d imagined, the structure itself was nothing more stately than both sides of an ordinary semidetached. Nor was there anywhere to be seen the extravagant, requisite fashions of the London clubs. Here, the men’s suits and ladies’ dresses could have been seen between five and seven P.M. on the station platforms, or staked out along the steep ascending and descending escalators, and in every car on the London Underground.
Here the unadorned men and prosaically clothed women — many more men than women — not only hadn’t arrived as couples but, one understood, if they recognized each other at all it was only what they had observed of one another’s habits at the gaming tables. One understood — and this was not my overheated imagination rekindled — that one was in the presence if not of disease then at least of obsession. The Springfield, like some sanitarium-in-reverse, was given over to the practice of gaming as sanitariums were once given over to a cure for tuberculosis, or, nowadays, to losing weight, say, or weaning people off drugs.
Macreed Dressel, Larry’s old pal (though it was never clear to me how Larry had met him, he proved so entirely strange I never pressed the Prince on the subject), was standing in the doorway when we arrived. Unlike anyone else I was to see there that evening, Mr. Dressel was got up, in a sort of costume like Rick’s in Casablanca, as if the white dinner jacket and the carnation in his lapel were meant to identify him as the owner/manager of the place.
“Larry!” he shouted as we stepped out of the car.
“How are you, Macreed?”
“Is this she? Oh, it is! It is indeed, but take my advice, my dear,” Dressel said while we were still several yards off, “what those photographers have done to you is actionable! Were I your solicitor I’d advise you to haul them up on charges! The most beautiful woman in Europe and they shoot you as if you were some common starlet!”
“What’s an old poof like you know about beauty in women?” Larry said.
“Oh nothing, nothing at all. You’ve quite found me out, yes you have.”
“Have you seen my brothers and sisters?” Larry asked.
“What do you take me for?” said Macreed Dressel as if he’d been insulted.
“Have you?”
“No, of course not! Certainly not! I should say not! Not in ages!”
“You’re quite certain?”
“Quite certain! Absolutely! I’d take my oath on it! You have my word!”
(Oh, I should have been a queen, I really should. I have the temperament, I mean, certain passive instincts. I am, I mean, occasionally visited, as women are supposed to be, by great illuminating flashes of knowledge, received as Sinai conviction. Because I knew what this was all about. The Prince, who was no gambler, in exchange for Macreed’s promise never to admit his siblings into the casino — that fast crowd, those ne’er-do-wells, the fortunes they owed in gambling debts — had undertaken to come to Llanelli in their place, volunteering to dip into his own Royal-Duke- of-Wilshire-Heir-Apparent’s funds rather than have them, though more experienced in these matters than he, venture from their smaller reserves and diminished reputations one solitary pound. I asked myself, Louise, say what you will about him, is not this Lawrence the Steady one hell of an honorable man? Then thought to myself— Whoops, Louise, whoops there, what about Alec and Denise and company, aren’t they not only the fastest runners in that pack of ne’er-do-wells and compulsive gamblers, but Princes and Princesses of the Realm in their own right as much as Lawrence himself? What’s to prevent a three-star bully and photo hog like Prince Alec who doesn’t lack for the temerity to enter any low pub in the kingdom to demand of the locals that they stand him drinks, or to provoke dust-ups with no thought to his victims’ safety and well- being, no matter what he may have for his own, and then come away, barreling his Quantra at one hundred, one hundred twenty-five, and one hundred seventy mph with a souped-up, one thousand hp Rolls-Royce engine under its bonnet through the narrowest passageways in Bond Street, from going into any damn gambling den he thinks to take it in his head to go into and not only playing for, but actually determining what the table stakes will be? And, Sid, because it’s you I’m talking to in case you didn’t catch on, I knew the answer to that one, too. It was because, even though they were Princes and Princesses in their own right, they were never as much so as Lawrence. Who was Heir Apparent, practically as good as King already. By virtue of which, at least to pledged professionals like Mary and Robin and Alec and Denise, oathed to primogeniture, to the simple principles of fealty and liegeship and obligation, were servants to Order, to some pure, attainable ideal of Succession, wouldn’t their brother have loyalty and compliance, if not actual out-and-out faith, practically coming to him? An Heir Apparent who stood above those mere Heirs Presumptive as confidently as Alec, who not only felt at ease in those low pubs and on those only just civic lanes and roads and motorways, and who, the Heir Apparent, were he of a mind to, could have commanded of the younger brother that he stand him to the same stout that the younger brother had just expropriated from the day laborer in the low pub. So that all he ever had to say to any of them was, “Steer clear, no little romps at the gaming tables for you kids, but, whatever you do, stay the hell away from The Springfield!”)
“Will you be purchasing any chips this evening?” Macreed Dressel asked me after we’d freshened up.
“I’m not much of a gambler.”
“Oh,” said Macreed, “but it’s so boring to stand by watching someone else hazard. I don’t care how much in love two people are, it makes for a damned tedious evening. No, surely you ought to put yourself at some risk.”
“No, really, thank you, I’m fine. I’ll try to bring Larry some luck.”
“I can’t sell you a few chips? Two or three thousand pounds?”
“Louise?” said Larry, turning to me.
Well, I’m not much of a gambler, and Dressel was right, it is tedious to watch other people make bets. When I was in America, I noticed that every local television news program would run the winning lottery numbers across the screen. What could have been of interest to no one except the three or four people out of the several hundred thousand who’d purchased tickets seemed to take up an immense amount of time as the numbers went by. Then they’d put the numbers up a second time. (I have the same reaction watching the weather report or listening to the scores of games.) Actually, when the only thing at stake is money and depends on chance — oh, I know there’s a certain skill, and even bits and pieces of character involved in understanding house odds, in knowing when to risk and when to stand pat — I have trouble developing a rooting interest. I’d have to know all the gambler’s circumstances before I could get involved. The kick I got in those London clubs had more to do with watching how people behaved, what winning or losing meant to them and, well, quite frankly, the clichés about English character are quite accurate. We’re too stiff- upper-lip to give much away.