At this point Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall leads all the other molls back from their break in the bar. At the sight of Camilla, who brazenly flaunts her wedding ring, Diana seems ready to go on tilt; but her acute sense of public relations will surely come to her rescue. Anne Hathaway and Constanze Mozart embrace their husbands affectionately, but Vivien Leigh and Joan Plowright start a ferocious row behind Olivier, all but clawing each other’s eyes out – to the point where the Grim Reaper is again obliged to intervene, moving them all to a safe distance.
‘Thank God mine didn’t turn up,’ mutters Tchaikovsky, no doubt remembering his suicide attempt three weeks after marrying one of his students, in a vain attempt to hide the fact that he was gay. ‘My poor Marianne will be sick, or busy with our ten children,’ sighs Hunt. Neither of mine has shown, either, for all Cindy’s delight in playing ‘The Moll’ in my book Big Deal. Just as well. With immortality at stake here, as the Reaper keeps reminding us, I’ve got to concentrate.
The next hand brings the first elimination. In prime position Shakespeare again raises before the flop – too much for Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Olivier and myself (another seven-deuce) – but Hunt decides to take him on. ‘You are undoubtedly the finest writer who ever lived,’ declares the Bard of Horsemonger Lane, ‘but you’re a really lousy poker-player, Will. Far too loose. No doubt bluffing half the time. But now you’ve met your match, O great one. All-in go I!’
‘What the dickens?’ harrumphs Olivier. Hunt shudders at the name, remembering how cruelly he was lampooned as Harold Skimpole in Bleak House.
‘No, not that Dickens,’ I reassure him, feeling for this vulnerable man’s still raw sense of injustice. ‘Merry Wives of Windsor. Three hundred years before Jarndyce-v-Jarndyce and all that. The sixteenth-century Dickens was a maker of wooden bowls who just couldn’t help losing money . . .’
Whoops. Not, perhaps, the perfect moment to draw that parallel. The Bard looks at me as if I’m giving him some sort of clue. Hunt is on my left, after all; can I have caught a glimpse of his hole cards? No, methinks – well, mehopes – that Will knows even I would never stoop so low. But he’s definitely got some sort of vibe from my burst of Shakespeareana.
‘Call!’ he cries, and stands up, rolling over pocket kings.
‘The game is up!’ retorts Hunt – knowing he is quoting his opponent’s Cymbeline – and flips pocket aces.
Oh no, we’re not going to lose the Bard, are we? All my life I’ve ached for the chance to meet him, ask him a bottomless pit of questions. The Grim Reaper – for he himself steps in to deal such potentially terminal hands – burns the top card and rolls . . .
A-K-J. Hunt fist-pumps. Calmly, a resigned Shakespeare begins to gather up his ruff and quill pens. The turn brings an irrelevant deuce, the river . . . the quad king.
Hunt slumps back into his seat in disbelief. Even the Bard looks pretty startled, and makes his elegant way around the table past Charles and Di to commiserate on the bad beat of the evening. Poor Hunt: luck was never exactly, I reflect, his middle name. He shakes hands with Shakespeare, evidently used to this sort of thing, and declares: ‘I leave you more in sorrow than in anger.’
‘That’s Hamlet!’ cries Olivier.
‘Yes,’ replies Hunt. ‘And now I am naught but that ghost . . .’ With which he bows to all and retires gracefully from the fray, heading straight for the free buffet.
Mozart looks baffled. Tchaikovsky’s face shines with admiration. Charles and Di are still bickering. Graham Young gives me a sly look. Says Olivier of Hunt, with due solemnity: ‘Nothing in his game became him like the leaving it.’
As Shakespeare resumes his seat, hauling in the pot of the night, the whole table around him begins to talk at once – to the point where I can hear only snatches: ‘He’s vanished into thin air’ . . . ‘played fast and loose’ . . . ‘more sinned against than sinning’ . . . ‘refused to budge an inch’ . . . ‘insisted on fair play’ . . . ‘a tower of strength’ . . . ‘in a pickle’ . . . ‘hoodwinked’ . . . ‘tongue-tied’ . . . ‘short shrift’ . . . ‘cold comfort’ . . . ‘too much of a good thing’ . . . ‘seen better days’ . . . ‘stood on ceremony’ . . . ‘danced attendance upon him’ . . . ‘in a fool’s paradise’ . . . ‘it was high time’ . . . ‘the long and the short of it’ . . . ‘he won’t sleep a wink’ . . . ‘knitted his brows’ . . . ‘made a virtue of necessity’ . . . ‘green-eyed jealousy’ . . . ‘his wish was father to the thought’ . . . ‘I laughed myself into stitches’ . . .
The Bard looks at me conspiratorially. I smile back warmly; yes, I know what he knows. As the Reaper’s angry calls for silence finally calm the hubbub, there follows a moment of shaken calm, into which I announce to all and sundry: ‘None of you knows it, but every word you just said comes from Shakespeare.’
Charles slumps in his seat.
‘Surely,’ says the Bard with a smile, ‘it wasn’t all that bad?’
Looking pleased with himself, Graham Young gets up and declares he must go to the bathroom.
‘No!’ I say in alarm. ‘The poisoned cup. It is too late!’
‘I know what you mean,’ says Shakespeare, grimacing. ‘Not one of my best lines. Actors tell me it is cringe-making to deliver. Too melodramatic. Stating the obvious. Not like me. Even worse than Lady Macbeth’s “What, in our house?” ’
‘No!’ I yell again. ‘Young has slipped something into Charles’s martini . . .’
Paramedics are summoned, but it doesn’t look good. As HRH is borne off on a stretcher, the deceased at the table start asking about the succession.
‘It’ll be my Will!’ shrieks Diana. ‘I must go and phone him . . .’
Shakespeare looks perplexed.
As she departs, Di whispers into my ear: ‘See you later in the Sinatra bar . . .’
She never comes back. Nor does Young.
Suddenly we are down to five. The Grim Reaper is about to distribute black armbands, just in case, when news arrives that Charles has been resuscitated. Mozart and Tchaikovsky have declined them, anyway, saying they’ve no idea who Charles is, and they’re getting rather bored. They’ve never played this game before, and still don’t understand it.
‘It takes a moment to learn,’ I tell them unoriginally, ‘and a lifetime to master.’
But no, it seems, these two would rather talk music. So off they go, too, taking the Big Band with them. The Reaper directs them towards the casino’s showroom. Part of me wishes I could go with them; it sounds like a helluva floor-show.
As it is, Olivier and I look respectfully towards Shakespeare.
‘When shall we three meet again?’ asks Larry.
For once, I know whereof he speaks.
‘When the hurly-burly’s done,’ I muse. ‘When the battle’s lost and won.’
‘That,’ we all say in unison, ‘will be ere the set of sun.’
Which seems to settle that, so we hunker down to play on.
It doesn’t take long to eliminate Larry, who has one last thing he wants to say before he leaves. ‘I know most of your lines have passed into history, Will, but Charles there reminded me of a literary reference no one else has ever noticed.’
Olivier looks at me. ‘You of all people know that, when Charles and Diana announced their engagement, they were asked on TV if they were in love. Diana promptly said “Of course!” and Charles said . . .?’
‘Whatever love means,’ I sigh, wondering where he is going with this.
‘Exactly,’ says Larry. ‘And do you know I said those very same words only some twenty-odd years before, as Archie Rice in The Entertainer? John Osborne?’
Shakespeare looks at me inquiringly.
‘Significant mid-twentieth-century playwright,’ I tell him. ‘Pioneered what they called kitchen-sink drama. A bit like your tavern scenes. Falstaff and Mistress Quickly, Doll Tearsheet in the Boar’s Head – that sort of thing. Slices of real life.’
Now he’s getting interested. But again the Reaper intervenes.
�
�Gentlemen, we are now heads-up. There is no prize for second place. The winner will live for ever!’
Larry wants to stay and watch, but he is told that no spectators are allowed – apart from some guy called Faust, with whom the prize apparently involves some sort of pact. ‘Ah, yes,’ says Shakespeare, ‘Kit Marlowe told me all about him.’
The Bard and I will now be escorted to a salle privée for the solemn denouement. So Olivier wishes us both luck, and reluctantly takes his leave – with a seriously redundant ‘Exit pursued by bear!’ We both groan.
‘Of all men else, I have avoided thee,’ I quip to Shakespeare.
‘May I call you Will?’ I ask him respectfully as we follow the Reaper into the casino’s V-V-VIP zone.
‘Feel free, Antonio,’ he smiles graciously.
‘Will, how did you learn to play poker so well? It wasn’t even invented in your day . . .’
‘Ahah!’ says he. ‘Have you never heard of primero?’
‘I’ve heard of it – even seen paintings of some of your contemporaries playing it – not least Milord Burleigh – but I don’t know much about it.’
‘But you seem quite familiar with my work. Any references?’
‘Well, of course, your Henry VIII plays primero with his brother-in-law, the Duke of Suffolk. And in Merry Wives, in the Garter Inn, Falstaff says “I never prospered since I forswore myself at primero”. But . . .’
‘Do you remember that Lancelot Gobbo, in my Merchant, confides in his father that “For mine own part, as I have set up my rest to run away, so I will not rest till I have run some ground”?’
‘Vaguely . . . that line’s usually cut these days . . . but . . .’
‘To “set up your rest” was a gambler’s manoeuvre in the Italian version of primero,’ he continues. ‘The groundlings loved that line!’
Will goes on to explain that primero originated in Europe at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The Tudors really took to it. Henry VIII’s daughter Mary – that same ‘Bloody Mary’ who married the King of Spain, thus helping to popularise the game in England – was constantly diverting funds ‘for the playe at cardes’. Elizabethan paintings show large piles of cash on the table, mostly gold and silver.
Will has even heard primero called ‘the mother of poker’, but he had never known what was meant by ‘poker’. Until now. ‘The playing cards were just as they are today, but longer and thinner, with plain white backs. Primero was played with only four cards in a hand, but all the principles – flush, straight, etc. – are exactly the same as poker. It didn’t take me long to catch on!’
He stops and turns to me: ‘You seem to know your Cymbeline. Remember what the First Lord says to the wretched Cloten, to which he replies: “It would make any man cold to lose”?’
This time, I’m stumped. So he helps me out: ‘Your lordship is the most patient man in loss, the most coldest that ever turned up ace.’
The Bard himself was always a bit of a gambler, of course, in life as in art. I’m tempted to ask him if he’s read Big Deal, but for once rein myself in. He tells me that versions of primero are still played today around central Europe, especially in Spain and Italy, under such names as goffo or bambara. But the original version he knew eventually gave way to a game called Trump. ‘Especially in the New World,’ he laughs. We both grimace. ‘As for that hideous new coinage “Brexit” . . .’
‘Come on, you two!’ The Grim Reaper is again losing patience with our banter.
Well, it’s not every day you get the chance to table-talk with the Swan of Avon – or indeed to meet the self-styled ‘Doctor’ Faust, who turns out to be the casino’s owner, oozing hollow charm. He reminds me of Mozart’s dastardly Don Giovanni.
‘Viva la liberta!’ I cry, but neither of them seems to get the reference. Beneath me, nevertheless, I can feel a heat as raging as the flames of hellfire. Under-floor heating, it strikes me, seems somewhat redundant here in 120-degree Vegas.
As Will and I settle down to our monumental heads-up, and I put on my best primero face, even I know which one of us deserves immortality – already, indeed, enjoys it – and for once it sure ain’t me.
But I’m not going to throw this game, not even out of respect for my revered ‘rude groom’ of Stratford. Fiercely competitive as we both are, we play on deep into the night, to the point where I even forget about my date with Di.
‘Diana?’ says Will, when I mention it. ‘To Di, to sleep, perchance to dream . . .’
That last word finally jolts me awake. As always, the Bard has hit upon le mot juste. Dreaming – that’s what I’ve been doing all this time, dammit, in spectacularly lurid fashion, not without troublingly egomaniac undertones. Aye, there’s the rub.
As I begin to drift inexorably downwards, even the roar of infernal flames cannot drown out Will’s touching farewell: ‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.’
Mrs Beast
from The World’s Wife by Carol Ann Duffy
These myths going round, these legends, fairytales,
I’ll put them straight; so when you stare
Into my face – Helen’s face, Cleopatra’s,
Queen of Sheba’s, Juliet’s – then, deeper,
Gaze into my eyes – Nefertiti’s, Mona Lisa’s,
Garbo’s eyes – think again. The Little Mermaid slit
Her shining, silver tail in two, rubbed salt
Into that stinking wound, got up and walked,
In agony, in fishnet tights, stood up and smiled, waltzed,
All for a Prince, a pretty boy, a charming one
Who’d dump her in the end, chuck her, throw her overboard.
I could have told her – look, love, I should know,
They’re bastards when they’re Princes.
What you want to do is find yourself a beast. The sex
Is better. Myself, I came to the House of the Beast
No longer a girl, knowing my own mind,
My own gold stashed in the bank,
My own black horse at the gates
Ready to carry me off at one wrong word,
One false move, one dirty look.
But the Beast fell to his knees at the door
To kiss my glove with his mongrel lips – good –
Showed by the tears in his bloodshot eyes
That he knew he was blessed – better –
Didn’t try to conceal his erection,
Size of a mule’s – best. And the Beast
Watched me open, decant and quaff
A bottle of Château Margaux ’54,
The year of my birth, before he lifted a paw.
I’ll tell you more. Stripped of his muslin shirt
And his corduroys, he steamed in his pelt,
Ugly as sin. He had the grunts, the groans, the yelps,
The breath of a goat. I had the language, girls.
The lady says Do this. Harder. The lady says
Do that. Faster. The lady says That’s not where I meant.
At last it all made sense. The pig in my bed
Was invited. And if his snout and trotters fouled
My damask sheets, why, then, he’d wash them. Twice.
Meantime, here was his horrid leather tongue
To scour between my toes. Here
Were his hooked and yellowy claws to pick my nose,
If I wanted that. Or to scratch my back
Till it bled. Here was his bullock’s head
To sing off-key all night where I couldn’t hear.
Here was a bit of him like a horse, a ram,
An ape, a wolf, a dog, a donkey, dragon, dinosaur.
Need I say more? On my poker nights, the Beast
Kept out of sight. We were a hard school, tough as fuck,
All of us beautiful and rich – the Woman
Who Married a Minotaur, Goldilocks, the Bride
Of the Bearded Lesbian, Frau Yellow Dwarf, et Moi.
I watche
d those wonderful women shuffle and deal –
Five and Seven Card Stud, Sidewinder, Hold ’Em, Draw –
I watched them bet and raise and call. One night,
A head-to-head between Frau Yellow Dwarf and Bearded’s Bride
Was over the biggest pot I’d seen in my puff.
The Frau had the Queen of Clubs on the baize
And Bearded the Queen of Spades. Final card. Queen each.
Frau Yellow raised. Bearded raised. Goldilocks’ eyes
Were glued to the pot as though porridge bubbled there.
The Minotaur’s wife lit a stinking cheroot. Me,
I noticed the Frau’s hand shook as she placed her chips.
Bearded raised her final time, then stared,
Stared so hard you felt your dress would melt
If she blinked. I held my breath. Frau Yellow
Swallowed hard, then called. Sure enough, Bearded flipped
Her Aces over; diamonds, hearts, the pubic Ace of Spades.
And that was a lesson learnt by all of us –
The drop-dead gorgeous Bride of the Bearded Lesbian didn’t bluff.
But behind each player stood a line of ghosts
Unable to win. Eve, Ashputtel. Marilyn Monroe.
Rapunzel slashing wildly at her hair.
Bessie Smith unloved and down and out.
Bluebeard’s wives, Henry VIII’s, Snow White
Cursing the day she left the seven dwarfs, Diana,
Princess of Wales. The sheepish Beast came in
With a tray of schnapps at the end of the game
And we stood for the toast – Fay Wray –
Then tossed our fiery drinks to the back of our crimson throats.
Bad girls. Serious ladies. Mourning our dead.
So I was hard on the Beast, win or lose,
When I got upstairs, those tragic girls in my head,
Turfing him out of bed; standing alone
On the balcony, the night so cold I could taste the stars
On the tip of my tongue. And I made a prayer –
Thumbing my pearls, the tears of Mary, one by one,
Like a rosary – words for the lost, the captive beautiful,
The wives, those less fortunate than we.
The moon was a hand-mirror breathed on by a Queen.
He Played for His Wife and Other Stories Page 12