Watch Me: A Memoir (3 page)

*  *  *

A few days later, Apollonia arrived in London and came to see me. During dinner, she let slip that she’d slept with Jack at Ara’s the night I’d left. She told me they had been in a relationship before he met me. Now I understood the reason behind the lampshade hat and the tears. I hadn’t understood that she loved him. When I confronted Jack on the telephone, distraught, sad, mad, he said, “Oh, Toots, it was just a mercy fuck.” That was the first time I’d heard copulation described as an act of compassion—not that he’d ever vowed to be faithful to me, but somehow he thought it was an acceptable answer.

I met with Grace Coddington, the fashion editor of British
Vogue
, and David Bailey at his studio in Primrose Hill, and we left for Jean Shrimpton’s home in Berkshire, where we worked all day doing pictures with horses and rabbits. I returned to London just in time to do a big show for Zandra Rhodes at the Savoy Hotel. Jack arrived from New York, and we stayed together at the producer Sam Spiegel’s apartment at Grosvenor House. We were out every night. We went to the opera and to a Paul Simon concert at the Albert Hall, followed by jazz at Ronnie Scott’s. Lou Adler’s girlfriend, Britt Ekland, gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, Nicolai, at a private maternity hospital in Hampstead, and demanded caviar and champagne upon delivery. Lou, Annie, Jack, and I were all a bit unruly in the waiting room, and the matron almost got nasty.

Jack was still preparing for Antonioni’s
The Passenger
, which would span four countries—England, Germany, Spain, and Chad. Meanwhile, I was flying to Milan, where I would ride dangerously in a Missoni cloak on the back of
Oliviero Toscani’s Harley-Davidson, at night on the auto route, with Bailey hanging out the window of a big black Mercedes, taking photographs. Bailey had been drinking heavily the night before. His hands were shaking. “Wanker’s colic,” he called it. I was doing my best to keep up, but Bailey was on a roll.

From Milan we proceeded to Paris, where Jack was holed up at the George V. We went dancing; Bailey and Penelope Tree came by, and I met Nelson Seabra, a lovely older Brazilian gentleman whom Jack had seemingly adopted, and an attractive couple called the Le Clerys. Jack had met them the year before, when he was in Rio for Carnival. The following day, I worked again with Bailey, who photographed me with Yves Saint Laurent, a shy, sweet, timid creature, in his beautiful apartment on the rue de Babylone, surrounded by a stunning collection of chinoiserie, deco, lacquer, and art nouveau. Then we went on to Karl Lagerfeld’s house—much in the same style and very beautiful, though not quite as grand—to take more pictures. When I returned to the hotel, Jack announced that he was going to a garden party with Nelson, who was very much a part of the social scene in Paris. It surprised me and hurt my feelings that I was not included. After they left, I called my friend Tony Kent, who came over on his high-handled chopper and drove me all around Paris at top speed—over the bridges and through the tunnels by the Seine. If I couldn’t get a commitment from Jack, at least I was going to have fun on my own terms.

Bailey and I left for the little town of Cognac the next day on the train. When I talked to Jack on the phone that morning, I asked if I’d ever see him again. Jack was defensive. He asked me what I was talking about; he’d followed me all over
the place already! I asked if I should follow him. He said no, which hurt. Unrequited love is painful. If you give less, they give more, I thought. I should try to cool it.

*  *  *

A week later, when I returned to London, Jack and I met at San Lorenzo’s for lunch, and by that afternoon I had moved in with him at Andy Braunsberg’s apartment in Albion Close. So much for cooling it. Annie Marshall was staying there, too. We went to see Paul Scofield in
Savages
, and Jack took me to Glebe Place, in Chelsea, for tea one Sunday, at the home of Hercules Bellville. When I first heard that name, I thought it sounded like a sea captain’s. One knew one was in for something important. And not for a second did Herky disappoint. I instantly loved him; the perfect antithesis of his namesake bronze ogre in Hyde Park, Herky stood tall and poetic, eerily thin, with straw-gold hair waving to his shoulders. Herky had worked with Roman Polanski since 1965, when he had been hired as an assistant on
Repulsion
, and was now working as production manager for Antonioni. He was one of those rare beings who are well informed about almost everything; he had a vast knowledge of and affection for art, cities, music, movies, and people.

Herky became a dear friend and would always call to make a date when I was in London, or later, when he came to L.A. He had a penchant for rare perfumes, scarves from Antiquarius, and country music. An aficionado of out-of-the-way burger places, Herky liked specificity in all things; it was always a challenge to identify the least popular restaurants of South Kensington and the Kings Road, where we would meet for lunch. The date would be fixed in stone, and woe betide you if you were a moment late.

Herky was a kitten of the first order. Whenever I saw him, he presented me with a miniature object; I have an eclectic collection of gifts from him, often presented in little brown envelopes—framed Chinese stamps, tiny baguettes, thumb-sized pagodas, prints from his Pre-Raphaelite or orange-label collections, a lithograph by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema.

On the Sunday that Jack introduced me to Herky, tea was in the garden. Herky’s cats, Kitty and Pussy, wandered to and fro, and we drank mint tea and ate cake, and ran indoors when it started to rain. It was very British. Everyone was asking, “What are you reading?” And “Where’s that book I lent you?” Bernardo Bertolucci and his wife, Clare Peploe, were there. Clare’s brother, Mark, had written
The Passenger.
Mark’s wife, Louise, was doing the costumes. It was something of a family affair. Michael White was also there. A dear friend of Herky’s, he was the most important new theater producer in London, with
The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Michael’s girlfriend was the beautiful Lyndall Hobbs, an Australian who starred in her own television show.

One evening there was a party for Barbra Streisand given by Ryan O’Neal. Ryan stared at me from across the room. Jack was a little in his cups and refused to eat. We took a walk the next day in Hyde Park; there was a solitary runner, two white bodies swimming in the Serpentine lake, a military man arguing with his horse, a man on a bike surrounded by swans. The dew was heavy on the grass, drenching my espadrilles. Jack told me he was “broken up” about leaving me, which sent a thrill through my heart.

Annie and I saw Jack off at Heathrow Airport when he left for Munich, and I went to work. It was a miserable day; I was modeling furs in a hot studio. Annie and I stayed on at the
Braunsberg flat for a few more days, then Jack said he would like me to come to Germany. Ara would be coming, too.

*  *  *

Soon I was on my way to visit Jack in Munich. When I arrived, it became evident that he was an altered character. Jack was one of the least pretentious people I had ever met, but he was capable of the greatest actual pretense—of assuming the mantle of another character without reservation and with, to the smallest detail, a fearless, dedicated commitment to that identity. Sometimes it was an uneasy balance, and he didn’t much like it when real life intruded.

That night found us at a restaurant called the Weinerwald, then at a discotheque. Uschi Obermaier, a very sexy German model, joined us, along with Ara, Annie, and Veruschka’s boyfriend, Holger. Uschi and Jack were flirting. I stood up. Jack pulled me down by the wrist. “Don’t ever stand up like that to leave.” I enjoyed his brief flash of possessiveness.

The next day we went to visit Veruschka in the country. It was a beautiful ride down into Bavaria, the ripest, greenest landscape. It made Ireland seem almost pale by comparison. Veruschka’s home was a large terra-cotta farmhouse and barn. We spent the afternoon in a Moroccan tent pitched on the lawn. Veruschka, wearing a loose kaftan, had painted herself blue from head to toe. Upstairs, her sister was painting a self-portrait. Her mother showed us around. Straight out of a painting by Tamara de Lempicka, Countess Lehndorff wore riding britches, a tweed jacket, a riding stock, and high black boots. She smoked a chain of cigarettes. It was my birthday, the eighth of July. We listened to Van Morrison on a tape recorder in the tent, visited the dairy cows, and went for a swim by the last rays of the sun, our bodies rosy in the light.
Jack swam well, far out in the lake. We hauled ashore and sat on the grass, pulling off our wet swimsuits. It was chillier out of the water, the deep evening dropping off to dark. We were close, speaking in low tones as we walked back to the house for dinner.

We were staying at the Bayerischer Hof in Munich, an extremely pricey hotel. The bathroom had obviously been recently redone. It had canary-yellow furry nylon pasted halfway up the walls, and an enormous Jacuzzi bathtub. We’d been in it a couple of nights before, and Jack had left a cigarette on the edge of the bathtub that had made a little nicotine spot. He had received something like a three-thousand-dollar bill from the hotel and was outraged. He was complaining about this the following morning over breakfast, before going to the set, where Michelangelo Antonioni was waiting for him. As he ranted away, I noticed a pool of water creeping under the door of the sitting room, which only could have meant that it was coming through from the bedroom. I thought, “That’s odd.” When I opened the door, the water just gushed out. The entire big grand bedroom was soaked. Jack had turned on the tap and forgotten all about it.

In the bathroom, the huge Jacuzzi tub was flopping over with water. Jack took one look at this and said, “I’m late for work. Don’t call nobody,” and off he went. Whenever he was in a spot, Jack would use the double negative, Jersey-style, for emphasis. I was left to bail water with a wastepaper basket, and it took hours for the Jacuzzi to drain.

But if Jack could be inconsiderate, he also could be wildly generous—he might buy you a Rolls-Royce off the cuff. When we got back to California, he actually did buy me a beautiful Mercedes-Benz sports car. I took a few driving lessons and
passed the test (I don’t know how), and when I picked it up from the garage, I immediately rear-ended a woman going up Laurel Canyon. The brand-new Mercedes got mashed on its first day. I never admitted it to Jack. I told him it must have happened in a parking lot. He chose to believe me.

*  *  *

From Munich I traveled with Jack and Annie to Barcelona. I remember Jack having an explosive temper tantrum at the airport because our combined luggage was overweight and he had to pay the excess baggage fees. If you screamed like that these days at an airport, they’d arrest you.

On our first morning in Barcelona, I dressed all in white, and when I walked outside the hotel, a pigeon shat on my head. I think it was a flying cow, actually. My outfit was ruined. These things can be embarrassing when you’re newly in love, but Annie said it was lucky.

Jack, Annie, and I went to the beach and lay under the fierce Costa Brava sun amid empty beer cans and bleached plastics. Jack read, and Annie and I turned our towels south and tried to shoo away the sand fleas. Then Jack had the idea of going to a bullfight. I went with him but lasted only five minutes. I saw one bull killed and dragged from the ring, and the next bull seemed intent on goring a horse. I went to sit outside the arena to wait for Jack and missed the high point of the day, when another bull ripped into a matador and cut his leg badly. When we returned to the hotel, Jack got a call from Nelson Seabra. Their beautiful Brazilian friend Regina Le Clery had died in a plane crash at Orly Airport.

Jack and I talked for a long time that night about Mum and Regina and ghosts. He took a sleeping pill and I held him in my arms; I was wearing my mother’s pearls, and he went
to sleep playing with them. The next day we rented a boat. It was, however, incapable of making it out to the high seas, so we chugged around the oily Barcelona harbor and looked at the pleasure liners, the tankards, and the vessels of the Spanish navy. We ate a lot of fishy paella. Jack was beginning to look and sound like Michelangelo Antonioni; he had adopted Antonioni’s tic, a wince and simultaneous half-shrug, for his part in
The Passenger.

Annie and I had become friends in Spain, particularly when the company moved to Almería, where we’d spent an exuberant evening at a local bar meeting the bullfighter Henry Higgins and downing tequila sunrises. I have a recollection almost as vivid as the drink, of Annie driving down a winding road over precipitous cliffs in the black night and me singing loudly and off key to Joni Mitchell on the tape player: “Went to a party down a red-dirt road / There were lots of pretty people there, reading
Rolling Stone
, reading
Vogue.
”

Jack was less than enchanted when, upon arriving at the hotel, I began to serenade him in our room. He was not feeling particularly well, having received that day in the mail a gift from Lou Adler of eight-day-old green corn tamales covered in mold from his favorite Mexican restaurant, El Cholo, in L.A., and having devoured them, green mold notwithstanding. And he had an early call.

Maria Schneider, the actress from
Last Tango in Paris
, was playing his lover in
The Passenger
; I didn’t fear Maria as a rival, despite her sexiness. She was having a wild, volatile affair with Joey Townsend, another beautiful and interesting girl, largely conducted beside the hotel swimming pool. David Bailey had asked me to go on a trip to Corsica for British
Vogue
, but I was very torn about leaving Jack, even briefly. Ara counseled
me with a quote from the
I Ching
—to paraphrase somewhat, “If he belongs with you, the horse shall return,” or some such sage advice. Since the Apollonia incident, I was sure that Jack would forget me instantly and have an affair with someone else. However, I followed Ara’s counsel.

It was only after my bags were packed and the car that was taking me to the airport was idling downstairs that Jack looked deep into my eyes and said, “Please stay.” But it was too late. I left for Paris.