Empress Bianca (37 page)

‘I suppose you could have a point,’ Dr Melhado said. ‘Maybe your mother overreacted when he assaulted her. She was worried he was going to kill her, but when we went to get him, he was sleeping peacefully in his bed.’

‘When was that?’

‘About nine o’clock in the morning.’

‘Dr Melhado, I was there when my brother and mother had their altercation. She assaulted him, not once but twice after goading him, as has always been her wont with him. It was only after she’d slapped him across the face for a second time that he grabbed her shoulders and shook her. He wasn’t trying to kill her but to stop her from assaulting him again. Now, we can do this easily, as I’ve suggested, or you can force me to do this the hard way and turn up with a battery of lawyers, which will do your reputation no good and might result in charges being filed against you for kidnapping and false imprisonment. Now which is it going to be?’

‘I’ll see you tomorrow and have a bill ready for the three-week stay your mother planned.’

‘That’s better,’ Julio said then added as an afterthought: ‘Incidentally, Dr Melhado, if you’re thinking of calling Juan or my mother to tip them off, I wouldn’t suggest that you do it. You might find that you’ve bitten off more than you can chew. Understand?’

‘I understand perfectly, Señor Calman,’ said Dr Melhado.

‘Now let me speak to my brother.’

‘He’s under sedation and can’t speak.’

‘He’d better be unsedated by tomorrow morning when I come to pick him up,’ Julio answered angrily, ‘or there’s going to be all hell to pay.’

Slamming down the receiver, Julio telephoned Antonia, who was at L’Alexandrine with Manolito, to tell her what their mother had done.

‘This time Mama has gone too far,’ Antonia said.

‘I think she’s trying to give Pedro a scare,’ said Julio, who never failed to incorporate his mother’s point of view into every question.

‘Julio, mothers don’t go around having their sons committed illegally just because they don’t get along. You’ve got to speak to Granny about this.’

‘I don’t want to get more involved than I already am. Pedro can tell her when he comes out. I’m going to fetch him in the morning and take him to Sintra for a few days.’

‘Ring me when you get to Sintra. Manolito’s out at the moment, but I’ll make sure he’s here so that we can speak to both of you.’

The following morning Julio rose bright and early. He took Biancita for a swim before breakfast. He and Dolores were still struggling to come to terms with the full horror of what his mother had done, and they spoke about it some more over their breakfast grapefruit. The conversation then switched to the logistics of getting to Santa Maria Hospital and Sintra and back with Biancita, the nanny, all the paraphernalia they would have to take, plus Pedro and themselves. They decided the only practical solution was to use separate cars, so Pedro opted to drive his two-seater convertible Mercedes Sports while Dolores would take the Range Rover with the nanny and Bianca and everything else.

After breakfast, Dolores and Julio loaded up the cars. Just as they were about to set off, Biancita asked her father if she could travel with him.

‘Sure, sweetie pie,’ he said, and transferred her car seat from the back of the Range Rover into the front seat of the Mercedes Benz. They then set off in convoy, with Julio and Biancita leading the way and Dolores and the nanny following.

At exactly nine-fifty seven, Julio turned into the driveway of Santa Maria Hospital. ‘Darling, you put the car seat back in the Range Rover while I go inside and fetch Pedro,’ he said to Dolores.

Less than ten minutes later, Julio returned with his brother. Dolores noticed that Pedro was visibly shaky, as if he were still drugged from his
stay at Santa Maria. But there was no doubting the look of happiness and relief on his face as he eased himself into the front seat beside Julio, having first stopped to give Biancita a big kiss.

Once more, the family set off in convoy, this time headed towards Sintra. They were no more than two miles away from the country house when a goat ran across the road. Julio swerved to avoid it. The car left the road, hit the bank and flipped over onto the driver’s side. Dolores, being right behind, saw exactly what happened. She jammed on her brakes, jumped out of the Range Rover and ran towards the overturned car. Its horn was blaring in an awful symphony of despair. By some miracle, Pedro, who had been wearing his seatbelt, was still alive. He crawled out on his belly onto the road. Julio, however, had taken the full force of the impact. He looked dead. The right side of his forehead was crushed, his arm pieced by a piece of metal. But he wasn’t dead, as they discovered when Dolores passed her compact under his nose and the mirror misted up. After what seemed an eternity but was a mere twelve minutes, the ambulance arrived and Dolores piled in with Julio for the journey to the Cuernevaca General Hospital while Pedro followed in the Range Rover. After a flurry of tests, including the most sophisticated brain scans the Mexicans were capable of doing, they determined that he had serious brain damage and would either die of them shortly or remain in a persistent vegitative state. Not content to take the word of Mexican doctors, Dolores and Pedro arranged for an air ambulance to fly Julio to the Forth Worth Hospital for Neurosurgery in Dallas, Texas. Waiting there to greet them four hours and thirty three minutes later was Rufus Rutherford, the eminent brain surgeon who Raymond and Begonia had contacted as soon as they had received word of the tragedy. Eight hours later, when Dr Rutherford had done all he could, he gave Pedro and Dolores the grim news. If – and it was a big if – Julio survived, he would be like the living dead, with no recognition, no cognitive or motor skills. His brain had been so severely damaged that there was no more medical science could do. His life, to all intents and purposes, had ended. The halcyon days for the family were over forever, and, with them, had gone the one person Bianca loved more than anyone else on earth. It was a loss from which she would never recover.

M
oussey Najdeh was making love to his wife Antonia when the telephone on their bedside table at L’Alexandrine started to ring insistently. Blotting out the sound, he continued the rhythmic thrusting that had Bianca’s daughter moaning ecstatically beneath him. However, the telephone persisted in its belligerence, becoming impossible to ignore.

Moussey and Antonia both knew that Louis, the butler, would never put through a call to them at this hour of the afternoon unless it was extremely important. Slowing momentum, the young man looked down at his wife, whose eyes were now open.

‘Shall I or will you?’ he asked.

By way of answer, Antonia stretched out her hand and picked up the receiver. ‘What is it?’ she said, doing her best to keep the irritation out of her voice.

‘It’s your brother in Texas,’ the butler said with the easy but respectful familiarity a good servant manages to bring to his relationships with employers. ‘You need to take this call.’

Without even knowing which brother was on the line, Antonia was now ready for something momentous. Not even that warning, however, could have prepared her for the news that Pedro conveyed. She listened for a moment and then let out a scream ‘What is it?’ Moussey demanded,
now deeply alarmed.

Hurling the telephone at Moussey, Antonia screamed again, as if by doing so she could somehow defend herself against what she had just heard.

She then crawled under the sheets and stuffed the corner of a pillow into her mouth while Pedro told Moussey about the accident that had just effectively claimed Julio’s life. He did not, however, tell him that his mother had ordered him to be locked up, nor did he say that none of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for her actions.

When Pedro finished the tale, Moussey said: ‘Does your mother know?’

‘No.’

‘Do you want us to tell her or will you?’ Moussey said, knowing the state of his brother-in-law’s relationship with Bianca.

‘I never want to speak to that cunt again until the day I die,’ Pedro said by way of reply. ‘But for her, Julio would still be fine.’

Deciding not to pursue that line of reasoning until they met face to face, Moussey tried to keep with the matter at hand.

‘Is she still in Mexico?’ he asked.

‘No. She left yesterday. She’s in New York. If I remember correctly, she’s supposed to be leaving for L’Alexandrine tomorrow. You call her and give her the news of her handiwork. God, what did we ever do to deserve a mother like this?’ Pedro added bitterly.

‘Hang on, Pedro. Antonia wants to speak with you,’ Moussey said, handing her the receiver.

For a further ten minutes, between bursts of sobbing, brother and sister talked together, with Pedro filling Antonia in on how the accident had happened.

When they rang off, Antonia did not even replace the receiver but dialled her mother’s New York number immediately. As luck would have it, she was at home, finalizing arrangements with her secretary for an evening at the opera in November. To her, this was a very important occasion, being in honour of P Adolphus Minckus and his wife of one year, the former Miss Cyprus, who had recently become, in New York parlance, her ‘newest best friend’.

The last thing on Bianca’s mind was anything familial. She was absorbed in her social campaign and was approaching the coming evening
as if she were Napoleon on the eve of Austerlitz. She had shrewdly assessed that the real estate tycoon and his new wife would be her vehicle to the upper firmament of European aristocracy. This group continued to elude her just as surely as New York’s Old Money did, so the importance of Mr and Mrs P Adolphus Minckus’ to her life could not be exaggerated.

Bianca’s priorities, at this juncture of her life, were plain. She had no major projects, such as houses to furnish or lawsuits to contend with; and her priorities had shifted away from deadlines and the discipline imposed by externals to the fulfilment of her own personal desires. This, of course, was a perk of being rich and established, which effectively meant she had only herself and her desires to think about. By nature, however, she was someone who needed goals, and she still craved the excitement of accomplishment, so the social world had become even more important to her than it had previously been. It is fair to say, therefore, that at this time the only world of any importance to Bianca was the social one. And the word on the social circuit was that P Adolphus Minckus had bought Belmont’s, the prestigious firm of auctioneers, which ranked alongside Sotheby’s and Christie’s as the Big Three, in order to provide his socially ambitious wife with an
entrée
to the Old Money set.

Bianca could readily see that this was a brilliant strategy and secretly wished that either she or Philippe had thought of buying the auctioneer’s first. Ownership of Belmont’s allowed one to acquire a supreme international social position while at the same time increasing one’s wealth.

For the socially ambitious New York resident with new money and age-old social aspirations, America’s Old Money circles would be forever closed, just as they had been for Philippe and herself. Not even the acquisition of Belmont’s, that patrician American and European firm of venerable lineage, would open the doors to New York’s crusty Old Money crowd, even though some of its members might well resort to trading off some socializing with the Minckuses in return for any items they might have for sale being pushed through the auction house with discounted commissions.

The European Old Money set were another matter entirely. Belmont’s, which was staffed almost exclusively by European aristocrats and royals, was virtually a refuge for the scions of the ancient European families. These men and women occupied positions in the company ranging from porters to chairmen, with every sort of art, antique, clothing
and luxury goods expert in between. It was not their professional positions that interested Bianca or the Minckuses, however. It was their social positions. By buying Belmont’s, Bianca discovered, Mr and Mrs P Adolphus Minckus had bought Belmont’s address book and all its society connections.

P Adolphus Minckus’ acquisition of Belmont’s was a stroke of genius. If the Earl of Iroton wanted to keep his job as chairman of Belmont’s, London, he would have to open his heart, hearth and social life to Mr and Mrs P Adolphus Minckus and their friends. The same was true of the other chairmen, Prince Tomislav Kropotkin in Geneva and Ambassador David van Alyn in New York, not to mention the myriad lords, ladies, princes, princesses, dukes, duchesses, marquises, marchionesses, earls, counts, countesses, barons and baronesses who proliferated throughout the various branches of that august establishment and whose livelihoods would hereafter depend on keeping P Adolphus Minckus and his startlingly blonde wife happy.

As far as Bianca was concerned, the opportunity to slip into the European Old Money set on the Minckus’s coattails was too good a temptation to pass up. In furtherance of her campaign, she had already cast aside the former Mrs P Adolphus Minckus and taken Stella to her bosom, generously hosting two dinner parties in honour of her and her ageing husband in New York and earning their undying gratitude in the process. Her newest best friends were even due to join her for a two-week stay at L’Alexandrine, starting in the middle of August, during which time she would take them cruising around the Mediterranean on the
Auriole
, the 214-foot ‘boat’ she and Philippe were chartering from a Greek shipping tycoon.

Bianca was enjoying planning her own social campaign with Mary van Gayrib, her New York personal assistant, a forty two-year-old WASP whose whole family had been in the
Social Register
since its inception, when Antonia’s call came through. Mary answered.

‘I need to speak to my mother,’ said Antonia, usually the soul of politeness and tact, without preamble.

‘Oh, hello, Antonia,’ Mary responded graciously. ‘How are you?’

‘Terrible. I’m sorry to be abrupt, Mary, but I need to speak to Mama.’

‘She’s desperately busy tying up loose ends before she goes to Europe and has instructed me to take all messages…’

‘I need to speak to her. Now. Tell her it’s a matter of life and death.’

‘Bianca, Antonia needs to speak to you urgently,’ Mary announced.

Bianca looked up from the menu she was arranging and pouted. She took the receiver. ‘Antonia,’ she began impatiently, ‘I’m in the middle of…’

‘Mama, the most terrible thing has happened,’ Antonia said then broke down sobbing loudly.

Knowing how even-tempered Antonia usually was, her mother realized at that instant that something was seriously amiss. ‘Calm down. Whatever it is, we can fix it.’

‘No we can’t,’ Antonia replied, howling like an injured animal.

Bianca felt her blood pressure rising. She did so hate scenes and uncivilized behaviour. No matter how important something was, people should always retain their composure. ‘Antonia,’ she snapped. ‘Get a hold of yourself. You’re not some Lebanese peasant from Tripoli. I can’t very well help you if I don’t know what I’m dealing with.’

‘Julio’s brain-dead, Mama.’

At those words, Bianca felt herself go colder than she had ever been in her entire life.

‘
This cannot be happening
’, she heard herself whisper.

‘That’s not possible,’ she said, numb with disbelief. ‘I saw him only yesterday.’

‘There was an accident. Julio swerved to avoid a goat that ran out into the road. His Benz flipped over. His skull was crushed. Pedro and Dolores flew his to Forth Worth and he’s just come out of brain surgery. The doctors don’t expect him to live, but even if he does, he’ll never be the Julio we know and love. They’ve done all they can for him but the brain damage was extensive and irreversible. He’ll be in a persistent vegitative state for the rest of his life. But Pedro’s all right. He crawled out of the wreck, and he’s fine, aside from a few bruises and scratches.’

‘What do you mean, Pedro’s all right?’

‘They were driving to Sintra together. Dolores and Bianca were behind them in the Range Rover with the nanny. They saw everything.’

‘Are they sure Julio is really…you know…?’

‘Yes, Mama, he really is…’

Bianca started to sob with quiet intensity. Unlike Antonia, she did not howl, but in its quietude her grief was even more violent.

Mother and daughter sobbed together for some minutes, while Mary,
who was not sure what was happening or what she should do, hung back to give them space.

Suddenly Bianca said with absolute loathing in her voice: ‘I blame that shit of a brother of yours for this, that’s who I blame. God only knows why he was going to Sintra with Julio. I should’ve crushed his skull between my legs while I was giving birth to him. He’s been the cause of nothing but trouble and grief all his life. But for him, none of this would be happening.’

‘Now come on, Mama,’ Antonia said, ‘Pedro may be many things, but he loves Julio every bit as much as you or I. I don’t see how you can blame him for an accident.’

‘But I do, my child,’ Bianca retorted. ‘I do.’

The day after the accident Antonia, Moussey and Manolito flew from Paris by Concorde, arriving in Dallas on the following afternoon. After visiting Julio and seeing for themselves the utter hopelessness of the situation, they boarded the Lear, which Philippe had instructed to fly down to that ill-fated city to meet them and take them back to Mexico City, Bianca having flown in on it the evening before.

A week later Bianca, Pedro and Dolores returned home with Julio, who was taken by ambulance directly from the airport to the intensive care unit of the Juarez General Hospital. There at the hospital awaiting their arrival were Antonia, Moussey and Manolito. As the family met the doctors and nursing staff now assigned to the case, it was immediately apparent who was calling the shots: Bianca. Within an hour, the siblings departed from the hospital, leaving Bianca there, at her insistence, alone with the second son she had now lost. It came as no surprise to Antonia, Moussey and Nanolito when Pedro announced that he was moving into Julio’s house, partly to comfort Dolores but also to avoid his mother. His family, who had learnt how his mother had arranged for him to be locked up in Dr Melhado’s psychiatric clinic while visiting Julio in Dallas, tacitly supported his decision.

‘And now she’s turning her beady eye on Dolores,’ Pedro said, filling them in on the latest developments.

‘Your mother has taken over all the medical arrangements,’ their sister in-law said, as they sat drinking long glasses of ice tea in the garden of the house she and Julio had rented, away from the grandeur of the Piedraplata
family home. ‘Every idea of mine has been vetoed. “You’re too young to have an opinion. Yesterday she even went so far as to reject my suggestion that Julio should have his favourite picture of Biancita and myself beside his bed. She said it would be insensitive in case he should wake up with memory loss and get upset when he becomes aware that he can’t remember his wife and child. But the neurosurgeon said there’s no chance of him ever waking up or remembering anything, and I don’t see why I can’t honour my own husband and the father of my daughter by showing the world that we exist and care about him. The way she’s acting, you’d think she was the wife, and I was just a passing ship in the night. Surely I have a right as Julio’s wife and the mother of his daughter to have a say in my own husband’s bedside arrangements? Your mother’s taken over, and the only voice that’s allowed to be heard is her own.’

‘That’s Mommie Dearest for you,’ Pedro remarked, while neither Antonia nor Manolito said a single word in Bianca’s defence.

‘Maybe we should say something to Aunt Bianca,’ suggested Moussey. In truth, he had just gained an insight into his mother-in-law’s conduct that left him decidedly nervous about getting on her bad side. It had formerly been inconceivable to him that any woman could lock away her own son on trumped-up grounds simply to bring him into line. Now that Bianca seemed to be indulging that same streak of wilfulness at the expense of Dolores’ rights as a wife, he felt it was his duty to take his sister-in-law’s side, irrespective of the consequences.