A Story Lately Told (28 page)

Now he told me that the Monet had sold to Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts and that the house was being dismantled. He said, “Select one thing from the house, one thing you would like to have.” I could tell that the fantasy had died for him. The dream had shattered.

I chose a little Rodin sculpture that had lived on the mantelpiece in the drawing room. A man, woman, and child molded as one in bronze, the perfect family that never was. For me it symbolized the thing I had wanted most as a child—for my parents to love each other and be together. With the abandonment of St. Clerans, all that had belonged to us, all that we felt was ours, was sold, scattered, and squandered. I didn’t talk to Tony about this. I am not sure what he was doing at this time; probably he had met Margot Cholmondeley, his future wife and later the mother of three of his children. I do not believe that Dad gave Tony the same consolation prize that he offered me.

Without delay, we flew to La Paz the following morning. We were met by a driver who took us a long way down to the tip of Baja in a tour van, past miles of deserted coastline bordered by jungle and old palm trees. We stopped for lunch at a hotel and ate rice and beans alongside the residents, at a long refectory table in a dining room that felt like an army mess hall. After lunch we continued on past more brackish landscape to reach our final destination, a hotel with a forlorn row of condominiums on a stark yellow beach, next to a tuna cannery. It looked the way I imagined Algeria looked in the fifties. Down on the ocean, a few rusty white fishing boats bobbed alongside a concrete pier, and the smells of petrol and decaying fish were pungent on the dry, hot night air. Seemingly, we were the only guests. We were shown to our rooms, two duplex apartments side by side, with paper-thin walls and a trickle of running water in the shower.

I speculated that Dad was laying down a blanket of complaint and criticism to Cici on the subject of Bob, although I couldn’t decipher what was being said even when I put my ear to the wall. Our instructions from Dad were to freshen up and meet for a drink by the pool. Bob was already beginning to exhibit signs of stress; he declared as soon as we were alone that this felt nothing like a holiday. Nevertheless, we showered and heard their door slam as they made off to the bar. We ran to catch up. Dad was moving on long legs up the wooden slatted walkway, not a second to be wasted. At the otherwise deserted bar, on Bob’s recommendation, I ordered a banana daiquiri, and he ordered one for himself. Dad looked at Bob from behind his cerveza the way a silverback looks at a tourist.

The call was for seven the following morning. We were to have coffee and eggs and hit the harbor at the crack of dawn in
order to get a head start on the fishing. Marlin, described by Dad as the “king of the fighting fish,” was the day’s objective.

Cici and Dad had already finished their huevos rancheros by the time Bob and I arrived at the breakfast table. Our eggs were sitting, cold and oily, on plates in front of us. Dad was itching to get started, rising to move off as soon as we made our appearance. I had some suntan oil in my bag and little else, no hat and nothing to cover my shoulders or legs. I was wearing a bikini and was determined to get a tan to take back to New York. As we clambered onto the deck of the foul-smelling little fishing boat, I felt a wave of nausea and a stab of regret. Cici and Dad, speaking enthusiastic pidgin Spanish to a couple of boatmen who displayed little interest, were already flexing their fiberglass fishing rods and lowering themselves into two white plastic swiveling chairs on the back of the boat as, in a cloud of diesel, we putt-putted out to deeper waters.

No sooner had Cici cast out her line than a magnificent black sailfish took the bait and flew out of the boat’s wake in the opening arabesque of a death dance. Cici reeled him in after a prolonged fight, and the boatmen netted him against the side of the boat, slicing at the long aquiline head with a machete. The dorsal fin a row of bloody quills, life deserting the rainbow skin, the shining black crest of muscle was carcass in minutes. By now the sun was climbing high in a cloudless sky, and land had left the horizon. We drifted on the waves for a while, and Dad and Cici cast more lines. Dad hooked a shark, hoping it was a marlin, and cut it loose. After nearly five hours, as the sun rose to its full zenith, he decided to call it a day and indicated for the boatmen to restart the engine, but it had gone dead.

Nothing they did seemed to work—the engine caught fire briefly, and we were enveloped in toxic smoke. For an hour or
more we drifted in the oppressive glare of the afternoon. My skin was beginning to blister. The stench of petrol and dead fish was overwhelming. Black flies began to bite. The reluctant boatmen attempted to make contact on their radio and eventually another boat appeared and threw us a towline. It was sunset by the time we docked and weakly climbed the hill to the hotel bar. I asked for a strawberry daiquiri. Bob said, “You don’t want that.”

Dad cast a look in my direction. My face was swollen from sun poisoning. “She should have whatever she likes,” he said quietly.

The next morning, Cici informed Bob and me at breakfast that Dad had left for La Paz. He wanted to have a look at property along the coast that he thought might be a good investment. She said that he was also going in search of a black pearl for me. He had told me the night before that when he first lived in Mexico, when he rode with the cavalry as a young man in his twenties, La Paz had been the center for black pearls. Because of his tradition of presenting me with important gems on special occasions, or maybe because he’d married Mum in La Paz, the quest to find a perfect black pearl had assumed great importance in his mind.

All day I lay indoors and nursed my sunburn. Bob went to lunch with Cici. When he came back, he said, “She was totally coming on to me.” At dusk, I watched as Dad ambled stiffly down the wooden slats that led across the sand to the condominium. He carried two straw hats, one for Cici and one for me. He looked bone-tired.

“There are no pearls, black or white, left in La Paz,” he said.

The next morning, however, Dad was again determined to examine the acres of beach we had passed on our way down the coast. With a full day to spare before our return to California, his plan was that we should drive back to La Paz and stay
overnight in a motel. This time we had a Realtor in tow, and he parked the cars and walked us through the jungle down to the water. Dad was right; it was Eden—hundreds of miles of uninhabited beach. I often think that if we had followed his instinct, we would have bought a gold mine.

As soon as we reached town, Bob and I went for a swim in the pool at the motel. Then Dad called me into his room to discuss the property. I must have sat and talked with him for the better part of an hour. I was anxious to get back to Bob, because I had told him I would be with Dad for just ten minutes. When I returned to the pool, the shadows were long, and Bob had left the scene. I walked back to our room at the opposite end of the pool from Dad’s. When I opened the door, a bottle of tequila narrowly missed my head and shattered on the wall behind me. I flew out the door and ran around the corner of the building. My heart was beating loud.

As I pressed my cheek against the plaster wall, I heard Al Green singing “Livin’ for You” through an open window above my head. I did not have the courage to either reenter the room or go to Dad. Instead, I ran as fast as I could across the parking lot and down to the beach, where I fell to my knees on the sand and prayed to God for help. I was gagging for air. The beach was empty, but when I looked up, a red sun was setting behind a tall figure in the distance. As he drew closer, I saw that he was dark-skinned and dressed in white, a very beautiful-looking man in a serape and a wide straw hat. At a few yards away, our eyes met. He came closer. He crouched down on his heels and gazed deeply into my eyes for a long moment. My breath calmed and I stopped crying. He raised his hand and put it on my shoulder. I felt a wave of strength wash over me. He smiled and nodded. I nodded back. “Yes, I am all right.”

He stood up and quietly moved on, and strangely, the fear passed out of me. After a few minutes, I walked back to the motel. When I got to the room, I knocked and said, “Let me in.” The door opened. Glass covered the floor. Bob turned and lay down on one of the twin beds, his face to the wall. I entered quietly and began to clean up the mess.

When he finally turned his head to look at me, I said, “That’s the last time this will ever happen, the last time you will ever have the chance to do this.” I began to separate our clothes in the suitcases. At first he was contrite. For the rest of the night, by turn, he resorted to attacking me verbally, calling me names, then begging me to stay with him. The harangue continued through the following morning. He didn’t stop to draw breath until we got into the car with Dad and Cici to go to the airport, and then he fell silent through the flight, until we arrived in Los Angeles. I think he couldn’t believe the end had become a reality. I barely could.

I don’t know if I would have had the courage to leave him on my own. Dad was silently in my corner. It seemed unthinkable, but after four roller-coaster years, Bob and I were parting ways. When the suitcases appeared on the carousel, I took mine off. “I’m staying here,” I said. “This is goodbye.” He extended his hand. “If you were the last person alive, I wouldn’t shake it,” I said. I turned away to Dad and Cici and walked out of the airport to their car. That was the last time I ever saw Bob Richardson.

Shortly afterward, Dad left to make
The Man Who Would Be King,
in Morocco, with John Foreman producing. I stayed in the Pacific Palisades with Cici. It was like a liberation after being with Bob, like finding out I could breathe on my own.

Bob called every day for some weeks. He wrote letters to Dad, claiming that I had dragged him back into addiction.
The last time we spoke, he told me he was in love and going to be a father again. Then he contradicted himself and said he was drunk and asked if I loved him as much as he loved me. I pleaded with him not to phone me anymore. I asked if he could tell by my voice that he was driving me mad, that staying with him would be the death of me. I begged him to leave me alone. Eventually, to my great relief, the calls became less frequent. Then they stopped. I was unspeakably grateful that Dad never mentioned Bob’s name nor made any reference to him. It took Dad being there for me to vanquish that dragon, and I think we both knew it.

L
os Angeles was a dream that I’d cherished for some time. California symbolized light, warmth, glamour, and freedom, although I knew that I probably was not going to find work as a model, not being in the least the popular idea of a California girl. I nevertheless craved sun, the open space, the beach—the comparatively easy living. I put my old life behind me.

Down a rustic canyon, beside Will Rogers State Historic Park and the polo field off the Sunset Strip, Cici’s house was next to a beautiful old garden. It had a trail that led to a grove of mature camellia trees whose petals carpeted the dark mulch underfoot in a symphony of pink. I often wandered there for hours.

I loved Cici’s company, her easy laugh, and her ironic asides. She was delightful and irreverent, and said exactly what she thought, which was good if she was on your side. We fell into a happy routine—driving in her candy-apple red Citroën Maserati with the top down, the scent of lemon blossom heavy and sweet on the breeze; sunning ourselves on the back terrace of the house, alongside the succulents. After New York, it was a vision of paradise, and soon my most basic wish was fulfilled—I got a suntan.

There was a row of stables at the base of Cici’s driveway. Every day, we would saddle up and ride her horses on the winding yellow dirt trails chiseled into the Santa Monica Mountains, overlooking the vast Pacific coastline, and watch the sun rise like a mandarin, baking the mist from the canyons, the first hummingbirds dipping into the flowering hibiscus.

I was surprised that I felt removed from my recent past, as though I had awakened from a dark dream, and that my own resolve not to have anything more to do with Bob was, after years of uncertainty, steadfast. My only choice was to let go and move forward into a bright but unknown future. As Dad used to say to Tony and me when we were children, “Remember, you can always put your hands in your pockets and walk away.”

Well, I had done that. And now I was back up on the horse.

I hope that when inconsistencies, mistakes, and omissions appear on these pages they will not be held too severely against me. I am grateful to all the people whose names I have mentioned in this book, and to those we will meet in the next. I appreciate the time we have spent together and your influence on my life.

I’d like to thank my family, especially my darling sister Allegra, whose own memoir was an inspiration. And Tony, Danny, Matt, Laura, and Jack. And the little ones—Jasper, Rafa, Noah, Stella, Sage, and Mathilda, who make the sun rise.