American Lady : The Life of Susan Mary Alsop (9781101601167) (8 page)

So it happened that there was a modest position to be filled. Susan Mary occupied it with talent, carefully disguising her passion under a light and carefree manner, expecting nothing in return. She walked into adultery as tremulously as a governess
into her first job; yet she turned out to be a natural, maneuvering like a seasoned courtesan.

Laughter and Nectarines

On May 13, 1947, Odette Pol-Roger and Susan Mary went to England. Odette had been invited by Churchill, her respectful admirer, and Susan Mary had been invited by Ronnie Tree, an American by birth and fortune who lived in England. He had been elected to the House of Commons and was known for his perfect manners and hospitality. He and his wife, Nancy, had bought and renovated Ditchley Park in Oxfordshire, but were undergoing a separation at the time of Susan Mary’s visit. Even by British standards, Ditchley was exceptionally luxurious. Susan Mary, joined by Bill for a few days, slept in the best bedroom, decorated in yellow silk, with views of the deer and the follies in the park. She caught a severe cold and had to stay in bed, where she spent most of her time reading Duff’s biographies of Field Marshal Haig and King David. She missed lunch with Churchill at Chartwell, but after Bill’s departure, she felt well enough to visit Blenheim Palace, see
The Tempest
in Stratford-upon-Avon, and lunch in Oxford with her philosopher friend Isaiah Berlin, whom she had met in Washington and who would soon come to Paris to work on setting up the Marshall Plan.

Shakespeare, the rolling countryside, charming towns named Chipping Norton, Stow-on-the-Wold, and Bourton-on-the-Water—everything in England reminded her of Duff. She had always preferred lords to cowboys, and the ones she met—Ismay and Salisbury—were old friends of the man she could not stop thinking about. In spite of her fever, Susan Mary was a delightful houseguest, talking politics in the drawing room and listening to Ronnie sing the praises of her old friend Marietta FitzGerald, with whom he had fallen in love—they would get married in July. But when she received a letter from Duff, she would impolitely fly off to her bedroom. “Goodnight Lady Moore, goodnight Lady Beatty, Jakie Astor, Sir Richard, Odette, goodnight, goodnight you pack of fools, I am madly in love in the month of May and I have a letter from my lover.”
¹¹
She and Duff probably became lovers on May 30 at the Dorchester Hotel, where Duff always stayed when he was in London. “There was a large moon,” he wrote in his diary.
¹²

Their relationship soon fell into a pattern. Susan Mary and Duff saw each other often during the week, at the embassy or at the houses of mutual friends, a cosmopolitan set that included the Cabrols, who were close to the Windsors; Denise Bourdet, the wife of playwright Edouard Bourdet; Charlie de Beistegui; rich Mrs. Corrigan; and Mogens Tvede and his wife, Dolly Radziwill. On weekends, the Pattens went to Senlis, a country town near Paris, to a pretty house that their American friends the Carters rented to them. From outside, they could see the towers of the Senlis cathedral. Wild strawberries grew in the vegetable garden, and the forest of Chantilly was not far away.

This rural retreat was conveniently located near the château de
Saint-Firmin, which the Coopers rented from the Institut de France. In this light-flooded house with pale-gray rooms, plaster bas-reliefs, and grotesques, Diana became a pastoral Marie Antoinette, pulling ideas for parties out of her hat while John Julius, the Coopers’ beloved son, whom Susan Mary dearly liked, played the guitar. The two couples went back and forth, having bridge and tennis at one house, picnics and cocktails at the other. Duff met the Americans who came to visit the Pattens, such as John Alsop and his wife, Gussie; Susan Mary’s cousin Charlie Whitehouse; her aunt Aldrich; and the severe mother-in-laws, Mrs. Jay and Mrs. Davies. In Saint-Firmin, Susan Mary saw Churchill and Bevin again. With Bevin she chatted about the Marshall Plan, the importance of which the British statesman had recognized at once. Churchill, on the other hand, insisted on talking with Susan Mary in his incomprehensible but fluent French, something he did when in a good mood. Duff admired the young woman’s savoir faire. “Her great charm is her admiration for intelligence and her enthusiasm.”
¹³

Bill gladly followed his wife into this social whirlwind and got along well with the Coopers. It was not clear whether he knew that their quartet was hiding a duet, but Susan Mary was convinced he did not. At any rate, Bill never showed any sign of torment or bother, just real satisfaction at his wife’s obvious happiness.

This was one of the most glorious summers of Susan Mary’s life. A sparkling creature seemed to have replaced respectable Mrs. Patten. She wore New Look gowns that Christian Dior lent and even gave her because they flattered her slender waist and handsome bust. “Madame, it does me good to see so much
joie de
vivre,
” the maître d’hôtel at Maxim’s exclaimed one evening after she had stumbled and fallen into his arms. Knowing herself to be loved by Duff, she took to flirting with other men out of pure amusement. For the first time in her life, she stopped equaling happiness with virtue. She was convinced that the only two friends she had confided in about her affair (Odette Pol-Roger and Loelia, the Duchess of Westminster) would keep her secret. She felt protected by her reputation as a modest, even prudish woman. Still, caution was necessary. When her friend Pam Berry, who held a political salon in London, asked her to lunch with Loelia and Ann Rothermere, the future wife of author Ian Fleming, she flatly turned down the invitation, fearing she would be drawn onto dangerous ground by these experts in extracting personal confessions. “I felt slightly like the President of Estonia being asked by Stalin, Vichinsky, and Molotov for a cosy cup of tea to discuss border problems,” she wrote to Duff.
¹⁴

Susan Mary stopped worrying about Diana because she had come to understand the unusual and unbreakable relationship that united the Coopers. Her own jealousy remained, but she was determined to keep it in check. “You are one of those people who like to love three or four people at the same time for different reasons and in different ways and that is OK.”
¹⁵
Happily for her, Duff was an expert in keeping his affairs separate and liked the thrill of multiple clandestine relationships. Susan Mary’s self-proclaimed tolerance was never put to the test.

She and Duff saw each other often, but they were seldom alone. As ambassador, Duff had a considerable entourage and little time to himself. He was always surrounded by colleagues and secretaries. A tête-à-tête, like the lunch in Belle Époque style
they had in Chennevières on the banks of the Marne on July 16, was a rare occasion. Most of their communication was limited to letters and the telephone. Susan Mary wrote ceaselessly, often in pencil from bed. Her letters were tender and witty, recounting stories from her daily life, passing on gossip and asking for advice on books. She resisted the temptation to slip into introspection and feverish declarations of love, but when she could not take it any longer, she would turn to quotes—“
Ce soir je t’aime trop pour te parler d’amour
”
¹⁶
—or poke fun at her own ardor. “It would no doubt be more
convenable
if I could feel platonic about you darling (‘Young American woman hero-worships Great Author and Ambassador’ sort of thing) but nothing about you arouses the platonic in me.”
¹⁷

How could Duff resist the charms of this newcomer to his life, who entertained and flattered him, asking innocently, “Is there a life of you?,”
¹⁸
revealing her intelligence with flirtation and her charm through solemnity. Susan Mary learned and loved, a tearless and guilt-free Madame de Tourvel.

In the autumn of 1947, Duff went on holiday to San Vigilio on Lake Garda in Italy. On September 15, Susan Mary wrote to him, “My pleasant spoiled life has become a mechanical series of days to be got through somehow till I see you again.” On September 17: “Even my toes feel excited”; and on the same day: “My life has reduced itself to the simple fundamentals of seeing you as much as possible and keeping Bill happy.” She continued writing from London on September 28: “What I really want is to lie in your arms again and not think at all.” September 30: “Darling, darling will I really see you in three days?” On October 3, they were reunited at Ditchley, now the home of the newly wedded Ronnie
and Marietta Tree. Bill was at a London clinic treating his asthma. “The arrangement of the rooms was admirable,” wrote Duff in his diary, “Susan Mary and I, in the pink and blue bedrooms respectively, had practically a flat to ourselves. I enjoyed every minute of the day and most of the night.”
¹⁹
Susan Mary would later write of “the perfect happiness of those two days and three nights at Ditchley.”
²⁰

None of this kept Duff from making the most of an opportunity. When he learned that Susan Mary was in bed with a cold she had caught from him at Ditchley, he chuckled to himself that the cold had probably come from a girl to whom he had made love one night outdoors. Shortly afterward, he turned down a lunch invitation from Susan Mary, pretending he had an important business meeting. In fact, he had a lunch date with two women. One was a former mistress, and he hoped to add the second to his list of conquests. When he went to pick her up, he was horrified to discover she lived next door to the Pattens. “It was unlucky but not, as far as I am aware, discovered.”
²¹
Two days later, the woman was in his bed.

A Farewell Party

Storm clouds gathered over Paris during the winter of 1947. The disastrous economic climate was causing a wave of strikes. To make things worse, the cold war had begun. In early 1947, the American administration had come to the conclusion that the threat of Soviet expansion in Europe had to be counterbalanced through financial aid to its allies. Harry Truman’s speech on March 12, 1947, followed by that of Secretary of State George
Marshall at Harvard on June 5, introduced the plan that would use dollars to fight Communism. Financial aid was refused by the U.S.S.R., which forced Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia to do the same. The Marshall Plan would cause the final rupture between the United States and the U.S.S.R.

France chose sides. The government needed American aid to pursue the modernization plans begun by Jean Monnet in order to improve the daily life of the population. But while waiting for aid, the country’s economy fell deeper into crisis. In November, three million workers went on strike to protest against rising prices and stagnant wages. Public buildings were taken by assault, arms factories occupied, telegraph lines cut, and rail lines sabotaged. Electricity was cut off and mail delivery was interrupted. The Communist Party, which had no cabinet ministers since their dismissal by Paul Ramadier in May, decided to oppose the government and play on national fears, proclaiming that the Marshall Plan was aimed at rebuilding Germany so that it could better fight Russia in the forthcoming war. At the height of the violence and provocations, the CGT, one of France’s major trade unions, unexpectedly called off the strike on December 9. In Le Havre, the dockworkers returned to their jobs just in time to receive the first Marshall Plan shipments arriving from America.

During those troubled months, the American ambassador, Jefferson Caffery, kept the State Department informed of the situation, which was, according to his French colleagues, close to insurrection. As usual, Susan Mary tried to keep a balanced view. Although she fumed about France being “a nation of
frondeurs
,”
²²
she saw the strikes as coming from a determined minority rather
than reflecting, as claimed, popular will. She also knew that wages were too low and that many of the workers’ demands were justified. She was nevertheless extremely relieved when the flare-up came to an end. It meant the Coopers’ farewell ball could take place. Duff had been told in September that his time was up, and he had scheduled the ball for December 10.

Many people came from England to see the embassy lit by candlelight one last time and to find out whether Parisian women were really better dressed than their English counterparts. To Susan Mary’s disappointment, the Trees did not come: Ronnie was afraid of riots and Marietta did not think it fitting to dance while Paris burned, displaying a political conscience that displeased her husband’s friends. Churchill, however, did not want to miss the opportunity of seeing his dear Odette Pol-Roger and of being acclaimed by the crowds gathered in front of the embassy. The French government was represented by René Mayer, Jules Moch, and Robert Schuman, the new president of the French council of ministers, who Susan Mary thought had the handsome, sensitive expression of an intellectual. The Empire china had been brought out, the men wore their decorations, and the women their most beautiful gowns: blue satin and tulle for Diana, black velvet from Grès for Nancy Mitford, and for Susan Mary, a mauve satin and ivory grosgrain creation that Elsa Schiaparelli had insisted on making. She had a wonderful time and danced until five in the morning.

It was closing time in the embassy gardens. Duff and Susan Mary lunched together at Lapérouse on December 15. The final farewell was played out in the Gare du Nord late in the morning of December 18. It was quite a dramatic scene. Louise de Vilmorin
hurried toward the train as though she might throw herself on the tracks, declaring she couldn’t live without the Coopers and that she was leaving for England with them. (This, in fact, had been planned long ago. Her luggage was already on the train.) The train pulled away and those left behind on the platform went off to rest after having had a delicious cry. Susan Mary turned homeward, heartbroken.