Empress Bianca (7 page)

In the nine years between ending his engagement to Fernanda, Ferdie developed a reputation in Mexico for being a playboy, even though he felt himself to be merely a man whom circumstances had cast into the twilight world where the living was fast and the women faster.

He travelled extensively on business. Always, he went first class, crossing the Atlantic on such liners as the SS
United States
, the
Queen Elizabeth
and the
Andrea Doria
. It was on one of those crossings that he met the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Thereafter, whenever he was in Paris, he called in upon them at their Bois de Boulogne residence, unless, of course, they were all in New York, in which case he merely went up a floor to their apartment at the Waldorf Towers, where Ferdie customarily stayed. He was well on his way to earning a reputation as a sybarite when he first encountered Gloria Gilberto, Mexico’s leading soprano, a tall, slender, statuesque brunette who resembled the movie star Delores del Rio and had been rated as a potential challenger to Maria Callas,
although, it has to be said, more in the Mexican than the Greek or American press.

The whole course of Ferdie’s life altered when he went backstage at La Scala in Milan to congratulate her on the fine performance she had given in the title role in Bellini’s
Norma
. Upon meeting her, Ferdie felt something he had not experienced since first dating Fernanda. There was an immediate sympathy. A desire. A feeling of possibilities above and beyond the ordinary. Gloria, moreover, was no girl. She was a woman. An experienced woman of the world. A woman who promised excitement, satisfaction. An interesting, indeed fascinating, woman. Two years older than Ferdie, she had lived for ten years with the multimillionaire Prince Vittorio dell’Oro, a man two and a half decades her senior. There was no chance of her becoming the Principessa dell’Oro, however. That role was already filled, by a hawk-nosed Papal
contessina
who had provided the prince with eight children, the last of whom was only four years old, despite the fact that he and his wife were never together, save for family holidays.

Although Gloria’s prince and his
contessina
were effectively separated, divorce was not a possibility in Italy in the fifties, and the nature of the relationship between Gloria and her prince was therefore not exceptional. Indeed, Italy at that time had many couples who were not married (at least, not to each other) but who, like the prince and the soprano, were accepted as established couples. In some ways, Gloria was even happy about the situation. She was only too aware that, but for Italy’s archaic ban on divorce, she might never have been the declared consort of a prince because the Italian aristocracy seldom married outside of their own caste; and Gloria was only one of many women who secretly hoped that the state did not reform its divorce laws and force public humiliation upon them when their men refused to marry them.

Within days of their meeting, Ferdie asked Gloria to join him in Capri for a long weekend. ‘Why not?’ Gloria told herself, aware that a single multimillionaire with his future before him was a better prospect than a married multimillionaire with a past.

That first night in Capri, Ferdie and Gloria consummated their romance. From his point of view, it was interesting, exciting and fun. From hers, it was also interesting, exciting and fun; but neither of them had been profoundly moved by the other, even though they both wanted to meet
someone with whom they could fall in love and ultimately marry.

By the end of their time together, they had enjoyed themselves enough to be prepared for more, despite the fact that what they had experienced was far from the real thing, merely a pleasant diversion.

However, they both wanted it to be more than it was, and in their anxiety to mistake it for something more profound, neither of them listened to the inner voices as they whispered their doubts.

For Gloria, the moment to listen ought to have been when Ferdie told her he loved her after they had made love on the morning of their departure. Pleasant as they were to hear, those three magical words seemed slightly out of place. Slightly optimistic. Slightly anticipatory. They were words she wanted to hear, words she might even want to hear from him one day, but if she had been honest with herself, she would have acknowledged that she did not want to hear them from him at that time and in that place.

As for Ferdie, he ought to have listened to his doubts that first time he said ‘I love you,’ to Gloria, for, as he was doing so, a small voice within him said: ‘No, you don’t. Not yet. You might one day, but you don’t now.’ But Ferdie ignored his inner voice, rationalizing that if those three words might one day be true, it was all right to use them now. After all, he lived in Mexico City, Gloria in Rome; and they could hardly conduct a long distance romance without some declaration of intent.

‘I’m so glad you do,’ Gloria responded, as the gap between the words she was uttering and her true feelings started to hit her.

Tactics. Tactics. A girl had no other option but to use tactics unless she was prepared to ruin her chances. And Gloria was not about to do that. Not with someone who was as attractive, as interesting, dynamic, interesting and rich as Ferdie Piedraplata.

‘I don’t want to lose you,’ Ferdie said.

‘Nor I you.’

‘You’re not coming to Mexico for a while, are you?’

‘I wasn’t planning to.’

‘I’ve got a hell of a week of appointments ahead of me. All unbreakable. In Madrid, Barcelona and Paris.’

‘I’m singing in London next week and New York the week after.’

‘Would you ever give up your career for the right man?’

‘I suppose I would, though he would really have to be the right man,
because my career is more to me than making money. It gives me so much else besides.’

‘I can see that.’

‘The difficulty with being a soprano is that your voice reaches its peak, just as mine is doing, just when you’re at your most marriageable. Life really presents opera singers with cruel choices. Do you marry and give up your career, or do you have your career and give up marriage? Needless to say, the voice begins to decline just as you’re losing your attractiveness as a woman. It’s as if a sadist created the choices for a female singer.’

‘Surely there are men who won’t make a woman choose between him and her career?’

‘I don’t know of any, except Giovanni Battista Meneghini, who isn’t a man at all,’ Gloria said, referring to her rival Maria Callas’ ancient husband, who was more manager than lover.

‘I wouldn’t force you to choose if we were married.’

‘You’re an exceptional man in that case.’

‘So I’ve been told,’ Ferdie laughed.

‘No, I mean it,’ Gloria said, raising her head from his chest and looking at him directly. ‘You are an exceptional man. Most wouldn’t allow their wives the liberty of having their own career.’

‘I have to return to Mexico next week, but why don’t we meet in New York week after next?’

‘Sounds like a good idea, as long as you realize that I’m working and have rehearsals as well as the performance, and I’ll have to cosset my voice. Being around a soprano isn’t all fun and games, I can assure you.’

Ferdie laughed. ‘You’re a woman after my own heart. I like professionalism and dedication.’

Two weeks and five days later, after another intensive period of being together, Ferdie proposed over a late dinner at Le Pavillon, the legendary French restaurant on East 57th Street. ‘I’d love to say yes,’ said Gloria. ‘We get along so well and have so much in common. But we know each other so slightly.’

‘That’s true. But I feel we have something special. Either we can see each other occasionally and hope it amounts to something - thereby reducing the chances of things working out between us - or we can have a leap of faith and commit to making it work. But I’m a reasonable man.
At least, I hope I am.’ Ferdie laughed. ‘And you’re right…we don’t know each other as well as we could. So why don’t we go into this with our eyes open? If it works, great. If it doesn’t, we have a friendly divorce after a year, and I give you a settlement and alimony for, say, ten years, and we remain friends. That way, we have everything to gain from things working out and nothing to lose if they don’t.’

‘You’ll be losing the settlement and alimony.’

‘I’d be happy to give them to you. You’d have taken a leap of faith. That courageousness alone warrants its own reward. We’d have had an interesting - shall we say? - experiment…not that I mean to trivialize what we would have had between us. Two people who get married will always have a unique bond, and I would hope we’d always want what’s best for each other.’

‘Ferdie, it will be an honour and my privilege to be married to someone as big-hearted as you,’ Gloria said, seeing for the first time that Ferdie was not only exceptionally desirable but also that rarity, a true life-enhancer.

I
t all began innocently enough at a recital of
lieder
at the Wigmore Hall, which also happened to be Gloria’s second appearance at that prestigious London venue since becoming Señora de Piedraplata. The audience was more of a mixture than usual: some ladies in long dresses and some gentlemen in black tie, although the majority were in lounge suits or short dresses. A good sign, Ferdie knew from Gloria. Society audiences were notorious in classical music circles for being the worst, with the result that the more ladies and gentlemen there were in formal attire, the more a performer dreaded appearing before them. ‘They mask their lack of knowledge either with excessive appreciation or a pronounced lack of it, believing, erroneously, that too overt a display of enthusiasm might unmask them,’ Gloria had explained to Ferdie shortly after their marriage, the first time she released a palpable breath of relief at the sight of the poorer-dressed members of the audience. ‘It is therefore a relief for a performer to know that the larger percentage of the audience is in street clothes and has not come for social motives but because they love music and want to hear the performer perform.’

When Gloria Gilberto de Piedraplata came out onto the stage, she was pleased to see that there was indeed a healthy percentage of genuine music lovers among the tuxedoed crowd. As she sang, she was encouraged by their response. Pauses were honoured, instead of being filled with inappropriate clapping, and at the end of the song, she received applause which was just measured enough to inform her that this audience knew its music. By her own accurate estimation, she had been good, but she had
not warmed up fully, so she was not as she ought to be, and both she and the audience knew it. Only a few of the smart crowd clapped too exuberantly, but she was able to discount them good-naturedly because the weight of their numbers did not unbalance the scales of proper musical appreciation.

By the end of her second song, ‘Melancholie’, from Robert Schumann’s
Spanisches Liederspiel No 74
, Gloria had warmed up enough to be almost excellent. This time the applause of the knowledgeable was less measured, but it was only at the end of the first half, when she was in full flow, that the informally attired section of the audience really erupted into vociferous appreciation, shouting ‘
Brava
!’ to Gloria, who was now performing at the absolute limit of her talent.

Great recitals are a marriage of performer and audience, and by the time the second half of the programme was under way, this September evening in 1959 was becoming one of the most memorable recitals in
lieder
history. Neither Gloria nor the music-lovers in the audience wanted the occasion to end. Finally, after her fourth encore, the audience, many of whom knew that the Wigmore Hall allocated only so many minutes to each recital, after which it had to be cleared or the staff would have to be paid at overtime rates, marked the occasion by refusing to stop their applause. Even after she had departed from the stage, they clapped for a further four minutes until Gloria had to come out one last time, take another bow and, blowing kisses to them, say: ‘Thank you. Thank you so much. But it really has to be “goodnight” this time.’

An audible but affectionate groan of disappointment rippled through the audience as one or two diehards screamed, ‘More, Gloria, more!’

Resorting to humour, Gloria waved at them as if she were about to depart on one of the ocean liners upon which she had been photographed so frequently over the years. Appreciating the joke, the audience erupted into laughter, and within seconds most of them began drifting out through the exit doors.

About forty of them, however, formed a queue on the left-hand side of the hall, in front of the door leading to the reception room backstage.

These were the die-hard aficionados, the musical cognoscenti. Some were musicians themselves, others members of the London musical scene, music-lovers who mixed in music circles and whose sole claim to fame was their love and knowledge of music. Standing out from this crowd
were three people in black tie: two men and a tall, willowy, blonde woman. She was attractive rather than beautiful, obviously well bred, aquiline features, a Norman Hartnell dress, and a Georgian
tremblant
diamond brooch some six inches in length, with a central diamond of at least eight carats, and another thirty or so carats dispersed throughout the roses, leaves and stem.

‘Her phrasing’s exquisite,’ the younger and better-looking man said.

‘Très Elisabeth Schwarzkopf,’ the older and decidedly unattractive man added.

‘She’s even better looking than Elisabeth Sckwarzkopf,’ the girl said.

‘And the style of the woman. The way she moves. That dress. The jewels.

‘Balenciaga and Van Cleef, I’d say.’

‘Amanda can always be relied upon to know precisely where a lady’s costumes and jewels come from,’ the younger man laughed.

‘That’s what comes from having gone to school at Roedean,’ Amanda replied, joining in the laughter. ‘Those South American millionaires’ daughters were an education in themselves. Not to mention their mothers, none of whom would be seen dead, even at ten in the morning, without complete maquillage, couture dresses and jewels to die for. They turned grooming and its accoutrements into an art form, I can tell you.’

‘And you learned their lessons well,’ the older one teased.

‘Thank you, Hugo,’ Amanda said, as they approached Gloria Gilberto, who stood, flanked by Lillian Hochauser and her impresario husband, Victor. Victor Hochauser stepped towards the older man, who was a music critic for
The Times
. As they started to talk, a tall, good-looking Latino brought Gloria a glass of champagne. By way of thanks, she pecked him on the cheek.

Amanda recognized the man from his photographs in the gossip columns and glossy magazines as Gloria Gilberto’s husband. She was surprised at how sexy he was in the flesh. In his pictures, he always looked stiffer, more cardboard, like a Scott Fitzgerald character rather than a living, breathing,
fuckable
man. She felt her loins stir just as Hugo was introducing her to Gloria Gilberto. After a few pleasantries, Amanda moved on, only to be introduced to Ferdie Piedraplata by Lillian Hochauser.

‘Your wife is such a fine artist,’ Amanda said, aware that good manners
required her to limit her conversation to the purpose of her visit.

‘Yes, she is, if I do say so myself. I don’t think it’s immodest to agree.’ Ferdie laughed heartily. ‘After all, I have nothing whatever to do with her talent, and, in the absence of being able to take the credit, I feel that anything less than recognition on my part would be laying claim to what isn’t mine.’

‘What an adorable man,’ Amanda thought and laughingly riposted: ‘I’ve never heard modesty described in quite those terms before. Of course, you’re absolutely right. A wife’s talent is not her husband’s, and to treat it with false modesty is not only unacceptable possessiveness but also trespassing on her territory.’

Just then, Lillian Hochauser came up and spoke to Ferdie so softly that Amanda could not hear what the other woman had said. She did, however, hear Ferdie’s response: ‘Absolutely. It will be my pleasure. Our pleasure, I mean.’

Lillian Hochauser returned to the group consisting of her husband, Gloria and the two tuxedoed men. ‘Mrs Piedraplata would like to extend her invitation to all of you to join us for dinner at the Mirabelle.’

While the others were accepting the invitation, Ferdie said to Amanda: ‘You will join us too, won’t you?’

‘I’d be delighted,’ she replied, wondering if she was imagining things, or did Ferdie find her as attractive as she found him?

A possible answer to that question came towards the end of dinner, after the forty or so other guests had departed. It was clear that this was the end of the evening. All their glasses were empty, and so was the restaurant, the waiters standing by politely. As he pushed back his chair to indicate that dinner was at an end, Ferdie said: ‘This evening has been such fun. I’ve never before enjoyed myself so much in your lovely country. My wife leaves for New York the day after tomorrow, and I shall be a grass widower for two days. Shall we repeat this at the Ritz the evening of her departure? As long, of course, as you have no objections?’

‘Of course not,’ Gloria said. ‘Enjoy yourselves.’

‘We won’t be able to come, I’m afraid,’ Lillian Hochauser said. ‘We have a Festival Hall recital being given by another artist.’

‘We’re game,’ Hugo said. ‘As long as you want us without the esteemed Mr and Mrs Hochauser.’

‘I take it that means Gloria is getting a good review?’ Ferdie laughed.

‘More than good,’ Hugo replied. ‘
Glowing
, my dear Señor Piedraplata.’

‘In that case, we must celebrate.’

‘You do that,’ Gloria said good-naturedly.

Two days later, both of Amanda’s concert escorts telephoned to cry off.

She toyed with the question of whether she should go on her own or cancel as well. Two things made her decide not to back out. The first was that Ferdie had not called off the evening, and because she liked him, she did not want to leave him in the lurch in a strange country. The second was that she liked him so much she wanted the opportunity to get to know him better. Being the lady she was, however, Amanda was not about to involve him or herself in anything compromising or disagreeably surprising, so she telephoned the Ritz Hotel and left a message explaining that the numbers had shrunk, and he was to let her know if the evening was still on.

Ferdie received the news after returning from an appointment with his Savile Row tailor. ‘How elegant of her to give me an out,’ he thought as he picked up the receiver and asked the operator to connect him to the telephone number she had left with her message.

‘Amanda? Ferdie Piedraplata here. As long as you’re up and running for this evening, I can think of nothing I’d like more than seeing you.’

‘Shall I join you at eight-thirty, as planned?’

‘I wouldn’t dream of letting a beautiful young lady fight her way across London on her own. I’ll send a car and driver for you. What’s your address?’

‘One hundred and twenty-one, Eaton Square,’ Amanda said.

‘I know Eaton Square well. It’s so elegant. Your family home, I take it?’

‘Oh no,’ Amanda said. ‘Mummy and Daddy could never afford anything so grand. The estate eats up all their money. They have a maisonette on Queen’s Gate Terrace. I share with my cousin, Duckie. Her father is Lord Paulington, of the Starboard Shipping Company,’ she added by way of explanation, assuming, rightly as it turned out, that Ferdie would know precisely of whom she was speaking.

‘Not Piers Paulington, surely?’ Ferdie said, having learned when dealing with the English that one had to speak in their disclaiming manner, otherwise one jarred. ‘I do business with him. In fact, we had lunch only yesterday. What a small world it is. I’ll have my driver with you by eight-fifteen.’

At six o’clock, Amanda was in the library, idly flipping through the latest issue of
Tatler & Bystander
, in which both she and Duckie were featured, when her Uncle Piers arrived home from the office.

‘You’ll never believe whom I’m having dinner with this evening,’ Amanda said. ‘A business associate of yours.’

‘Are you going to keep me dangling, or are you going to tell me who it is?’ Piers asked.

‘Ferdie Piedraplata.’

‘The richest man in Mexico, they say…though one always has to take what
they
say with a pinch of salt.’

‘Is he seriously rich?’

‘Without a doubt. Whether he is actually the richest man in Mexico may be a moot point, but what is indisputable is that the man is a veritable Midas. Everything he touches turns to gold. He’s recently branched out into shipping, which is how we met, and I have to tell you, watching him in action has been an education in itself. Nice chap as well.’

‘I thought so too. We had dinner the other evening after his wife’s Wigmore Hall recital…that is, James and I trailed along with Hugo, who was writing it up for
The Times
.’

‘Charming woman. Beautiful too. We’ve been to dinner with them once or twice and had them to dinner last year when they were here for Royal Ascot. Apparently, she’s on the way to being a huge opera star. The next Callas, they say. Not that I can abide all that screeching. I understand that they married very quickly, but that it’s worked out well and they’re happy together.’

‘I liked her. Him too.’

‘Give them my regards.’

‘I’m only seeing him. She left today. She’s doing Lucia at the Met in New York.’

‘Well, have a good time, my dear.’

During dinner, the attraction Amanda felt for Ferdie became so overpowering that she had to excuse herself and go to the ladies’ room to calm herself down, lest she succumb to the temptation to lean across the table and kiss him. ‘This is ridiculous,’ she scolded herself in the mirror.

‘He’s a happily married man. He’s years older than me. He most likely hasn’t even noticed that I’m a woman. Hit terra firma, girl, and don’t let
your feelings run away with you.’

Having managed to get some kind of grip on her emotions, she returned to the table. Ferdie, ever well mannered, stood up. She took her seat. He resumed his. They reached for their napkins and, inadvertently, their hands touched. Amanda felt as if she had been electrified. Powerless to mask her feelings, she looked in Ferdie’s direction and saw him experiencing the same thing. They were both caught up in the moment, in emotions that were too strong to conceal. He slid his hand over hers, while she blushed as never before. For a moment their gazes locked. He smiled slightly. So did she, wanly - afraid and hopeful at the same time. He took her hand in his. He stroked it. Almost imperceptibly, she leaned towards him. ‘I’d like to kiss you right now,’ he said, slipping their hands under the table so that they could continue to hold hands without being observed.

‘I wish you would,’ Amanda said, overcome with desire. ‘I love this man,’ she thought to herself as she looked into his eyes.