Painfully Rich

by John Pearson

  Three weeks later one more chance to meet another member of the royal family nearly failed as well. One of Gibbs’s friends and neighbours, Lady Katherine Farrell, had invited him and Paul and Victoria to a small luncheon party she was giving for her friend, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, whose curiosity had been aroused by what she’d heard about this strange American philanthropist. But while Paul was waiting for the Queen Mother’s arrival, panic overcame him, making him feel so unwell that he had to lie down in a room upstairs.

  ‘Such a pity,’ said the Queen Mother when informed of Mr Getty’s indisposition, but, practical as ever, she added, ‘I suppose we’d better have a little something and begin without him.’

  Luckily Paul recovered by the time the meal was over, and he was able to accompany the Queen Mother and show her Wormsley. Her Majesty was fascinated – by Paul as much as by his house – and they met later on a number of occasions.

  Like almost everyone, Victoria fell in love with Wormsley, as did Tariq and Zain, her two children. Hardly surprisingly, her marriage with Mohammed Alatas wasn’t working now that she was seeing Paul again. His health was improving, and the stronger and more confident he became, the happier he seemed when with Victoria.

  Now in her mid forties, she was still an elegant, rather nervous English beauty. As he was haunted by Talitha’s memory, her role with Paul had never been particularly easy and had been complicated by her diversionary marriages and romances. But by now she knew and understood him better than anyone, and he was particularly relaxed in her company. He bought her a comfortable house in Chelsea, but for Victoria, Wormsley was the house that really mattered, and inevitably she became the châtelaine of the establishment.

  Rossetti had gone – except for his famous painting Proserpine, which hung in Paul’s London flat like a souvenir from Cheyne Walk. Talitha’s portrait by Willem Pol still hung in his dressing-room. Queen’s House itself would soon be sold – to Gibbs’s partner Simon Sainsbury and his friend Stewart Grimshaw.

  Occasionally Paul would venture forth incognito to the world outside, sometimes bearded, sometimes not, and apparently enjoying the new-found freedom of his anonymity.

  That autumn he spent £4 million buying the Jezebel – a wonderfully elegant motor yacht built in Germany before the war for the head of the Chrysler car company. He would spend more than twice as much again restoring her, and although she would lie for several years in lonely luxury on the River Dart, her presence was a promise of foreign lands and travel and a more exciting life around the corner.

  It was as if his life was slowly starting up again after a massive interruption. Paul was building up an inner circle of extremely faithful friends. He was also rediscovering his past by bringing over some of the old members of the ‘Getty Gang’ from San Francisco like James Halligan and John Mallen, and having them to stay at Wormsley.

  There seemed surprisingly little bitterness about the past among his children. Tara was particularly relaxed and seemed to have inherited his mother’s happy nature. Although devoted to the Pols, and spending much of his time with them in France, he was also seeing more of his father now, and got on well with him and with Victoria, just as he got on well with almost everyone. The two girls had remained in California (Ariadne would marry the actor Justin Williams in 1992). Paul was hoping to see both his daughters at Wormsley in the near future.

  But as far as the family’s future was concerned, the most important of his children was turning out to be his second son, Mark. Realizing how important the control and direction of the family finances would inevitably become, Mark had decided on a career in high finance. Because of this he had taken Domitilla to New York and had landed a job with the banking house of Kidder Peabody and Co. He admits that ‘the fact that they’d recently made $15 million out of the sale of Getty Oil might have helped’.

  In 1982 Mark and Domitilla had a son and, wanting a name that sounded equally good in English or Italian – and thinking there had possibly been sufficient Pauls in the family – they called him Alexander. But they disliked the idea of bringing up a family in New York, and, wanting to be nearer Italy, moved to London, where once again Mark didn’t find it difficult to get a job – this time with the influential merchant bank of Hambros.

  The only person who was none too pleased by this was his father, who wanted him to return to Oxford to finish his degree (something he had never done himself). ‘For someone who has been so unconventional himself, he was getting very conventional about it all,’ says Mark, who as a married man was not particularly keen to become an undergraduate again. Largely to please his father, he did return, took a degree in philosophy – and then returned to Hambros.

  But the more he learned of banking and finance, the more concerned he was becoming for the future of the family. It was clearly going to be of great importance how its resources were managed as the rest of his generation grew to manhood; and what particularly concerned him was the human problem of avoiding the misery and wastage he had witnessed in its past.

  Already he was becoming something of a bridge between the different sides and generations of the family. He had remained extremely close to his Uncle Gordon and his cousins in San Francisco, and also to Uncle Ronald’s eldest son, Christopher. He remained as devoted as ever to his mother. Two more sons were born – Joseph in 1986 and Julius two years later – and Mark was happiest when staying with his own small family at his childhood home in Orgia.

  After the bitterness and battles of the past, what he wanted most was peace among the Gettys so that his children could grow up unscarred and unaffected by the past – and free to make the most of what they would finally inherit.

  For him the Christmas of 1987 was a very special one. At Wormsley the covered pool had now been built beside New Gardens Cottage, so that everything was ready when his brother Paul and his nurses flew in from California to join the family for Christmas. Paul was still paralysed, and his speech and sight remained impaired, but he had now transformed himself from the hopeless, totally dependent invalid he had been in the aftermath of his coma. Mark had not seen him so optimistic or so full of life for many years.

  Paul had made up his mind to live as if his disabilities didn’t matter – and to an extraordinary degree he had succeeded. He had recently been to university level classes in English literature and history at Pepperdine University, the school he had flunked out of before his coma. Once a week he attended classes at the university, and one of his nurses made tapes of texts for him, and interpreted his answers for his tutor.

  He loved concerts and the cinema, and had made himself something of an expert on San Francisco restaurants. He had even started skiing once again – strapped to a metal frame on skis, with a ski instructor fore and aft. He dreamed of some day returning to Orgia.

  In the meantime, in preparation for the Wormsley Christmas, Gail had arrived, and was delighted to be with her sons and her grandson, Alexander. Remembering how hopeless her son Paul had seemed after the coma, there were still times when she found it hard to believe all that he’d accomplished. The recovery of her ex-husband, Paul Junior, was almost as miraculous in its way, and she was glad to see him happy and relaxed at last – and able to enjoy a traditional English Christmas in his own home. He was now fifty-five, and it seemed as if the family’s troubles could be over. But even then the past could not be so easily evaded.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Aileen

  Towards The End of 1985, Elizabeth Taylor, as President of the American Foundation for Aids Research, had gone to Paris on a short fund-raising trip. Earlier that year her daughter-in-law, Aileen, had finally given birth to a son called Andrew. Afterwards she had been seriously depressed and, thinking that a holiday in France would do her good, Elizabeth decided to take her along.

  But for Aileen the holiday became more of a nightmare than a treat. The constant discussion of Aids made her suddenly aware of risks that she had taken in the past. There were things that she would rat
her have forgotten – and after a sleepless night in her hotel, she told Elizabeth that she might well be HIV positive herself.

  As something of an expert on the dread disease, Elizabeth did her best to reassure her, but the blood tests Aileen took on returning to America proved positive. It was like a sick joke. Apparently the daughter-in-law of the President of the American Foundation for Aids Research was in danger of developing Aids herself.

  After the first shock of the discovery, Elizabeth was the only person able to comfort the terrified Aileen, who seemed to dread other people knowing as much as she dreaded dying. She clung to Elizabeth pathetically, and to help her start the painful process of adjusting to the situation, Elizabeth let her stay in the privacy of her Bel Air mansion. Aileen’s fears were worst at night, and the star would calm her terror by letting her share her bed.

  For Elizabeth the situation was complicated by the fact that Aileen was mother to her two grandchildren (Aileen and Christopher had already adopted a son called Caleb before Andrew was born), and that her problems didn’t end with being HIV positive. The illness was in fact the culmination of a series of dramas and disasters in her private life. For quite some time, Aileen had been as just as much at risk as her brother Paul before his coma.

  Aileen had become the last of the sacrificial children, the latest victim of the great fortune. She was extremely pretty – with her heart-shaped face, her nervous manner, and enormous dark brown eyes – but she was also flighty, and the combination gave the impression of a nervous animal about to bolt, like a faun on speed. For several years she had been increasingly desperate and depressed, and had seemed heading for disaster.

  Her fate still mystifies her brother Mark, for, as he says, ‘One could have expected my brother Paul to have broken up, but not Aileen, who always seemed the liveliest and best adjusted of the children. She seemed so full of life, and had so much going for her. Perhaps she just wanted everything too quickly and grew up much too fast as a result.’

  As usual in such situations, it is difficult to know exactly where her troubles started. Aileen has claimed that her insecurities began when her parents parted. She has also said that her rebelliousness started after her brother’s kidnap, when she learned to distrust the Getty family, fearing that it would destroy her and isolate her from reality.

  ‘I see money as a toxic element,’ she said. ‘I think it separates those with it from knowing what it’s like to be without it. This takes much that is important out of life.’ More to the point perhaps, she could see the trouble which the Getty money had brought to those she loved – the difficulties of her parents, the horror of her brother’s kidnap, and the suspicion and unease which she, like many of the children of the very rich, had learned to adopt against the world around them.

  Even in England, during her time at Hatchlands, she was already starting to reject what she saw as the obligations of ‘being a Getty’. But it was not until she returned to California that she became a full-time rebel. As a rebel, she could go with unsuitable companions if she felt like it, sleep with them, drink with them and take drugs with them. Above all she could assert the one thing Gettydom denied her – freedom.

  There was no shortage of drugs – or sex – in California in the mid to late seventies, and Aileen used them as weapons in her battle to be free. The drug she turned to was the favourite standby of the famous and the rich, which can become the most insidious of all – cocaine.

  She had clearly inherited a strongly addictive nature, sniffing cocaine in such quantities that by the time she was in her early twenties her nose required medical treatment. By then drugs were giving her what she called ‘emotional overload’ – principally horrendous panic attacks and sleeplessness. By the time she ‘eloped’ with Christopher, she had already had the first of several nervous breakdowns.

  Marriage to Christopher, far from sorting out her problems, helped to make them worse. Part of the trouble was her husband’s kindness. He was a gentle man who happened to be in love with her. Cocaine addicts can react cruelly to those who love them, and her mood swings made their existence a misery – and normal married life impossible.

  Overshadowed since childhood by a mother who was one of the most famous women in America, Christopher was hardly likely to stand up to a character as strong as Aileen. With nothing particular to do with their lives, they first tried gold-prospecting, then photography, neither of which succeeded.

  Aileen had several miscarriages, followed by further periods of deep depression, during one of which she vanished to New York for several weeks. On her return she had a full-scale nervous breakdown requiring electric shock therapy.

  Soon, as a friend remembers, ‘Christopher was getting sick of acting as a nurse to Aileen’ – as well as overlooking her absences and infidelities. It was in a last attempt to save the marriage that they adopted Caleb; and as often happens, no sooner had they done so than Aileen discovered she was having a baby of her own. Their son Andrew was born early in 1985. Eight months later Aileen was sobbing out her fears to Elizabeth Taylor in Paris.

  Aileen has a strong touch of drama in her make-up, and after the initial shock of discovering she was HIV positive, and knowing she could not remain with Elizabeth indefinitely, she fled once more to New York – where she tried to lose herself in drink and drugs on the Manhattan nightclub circuit. Dangerously self-destructive, she was taking what she calls ‘extreme measures to deal with an extreme situation’, and adds that ‘Funnily enough, I thought it would be more acceptable – this shows how unacceptable the virus was – if I died now of an overdose.’

  But Aileen didn’t die. Instead, she returned to Los Angeles where the two children were waiting for her. Christopher was talking of divorce. And there was, of course, one further problem. Her greatest fear was for her baby, Andrew, but thankfully blood tests showed that he was unaffected by the virus.

  For a time she tried confining the truth about her illness to Christopher, Elizabeth and herself, and said nothing about it to the rest of her family. They were finding it increasingly difficult to help her while she was on cocaine, and were hoping she would reach a crisis point from which she could finally be cured of her addiction.

  She underwent several cures – without success. And when her family were starting to despair of her, she broke the news to them that she might well be getting Aids as well.

  What particularly upset her was the contrast between Elizabeth Taylor’s instant warm reaction to her plight, and what she felt was cold indifference from those who should have loved her.

  ‘When I told Elizabeth, she had just cried and cried – and when she hugged me I could feel she was giving me something special.’

  But there were no hugs for Aileen from the family, and she bitterly complained that ‘No one in my family spared a tear for me.’

  She was exaggerating, as she often did. Gail was desperately worried about her – as was her sister, Ariadne. But the fact was that, after so many recent tragedies, most of the family were finding it hard to face another – particularly one involving Aileen. They had heard too much about her troubles in the past. As Martine said, ‘Aileen had a long history of drug abuse. So at first everybody thought she’d made it up – or just didn’t want to believe it.’

  Besides which, Aids was such a terrifying thing that, as Gail admits, she wanted to ‘shy away’ when Aileen first informed her that she was HIV positive. But the real problem was that at this stage almost everything to do with Aids was something of a mystery – particularly as it affected women, who still formed a small, virtually unresearched minority of its victims.

  Trying to find out what was really wrong with Aileen, Gail asked her doctors; but none would say, on the grounds of her right to privacy, and they refused to discuss anything to do with Aids in even the most general terms.

  ‘It can be a hideous thing trying to comfort somebody who thinks they’re dying, when you can’t even get the truth of what they’re suffering from,’ says Gail.
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br />   Elizabeth Taylor, on the other hand, as head of an Aids charity, and having recently seen her friend Rock Hudson die of it, knew exactly how to deal with the situation; also, as an actress, she was able to give Aileen the sort of emotional reaction she wanted. The Gettys couldn’t.

  Only when Gail found a sympathetic doctor who calmly and unemotionally explained the facts about her daughter’s illness could she and other members of the family start to come to terms with what had happened.

  The news was kept from Paul Junior for as long as possible, but finally he had to know. When he did, he became disconsolate, as those who knew him had predicted. All the old tragedies revived, together with the inevitable guilt and bitterness dating back to the divorce and even earlier. Would unhappiness never end?

  Feeling he needed to talk things over with his oldest friend, but really needing consolation and reassurance, he asked Bill Newsom to fly over to discuss Aileen with him.

  The worst thing was that there was little to be done – except to wait. In contrast with young Paul’s situation, with Aileen the Getty money could make little difference. And once again there was the uneasy feeling that in some strange way the disaster was connected with a primal flaw within the family, and the chain of continuing unhappiness which seemed to follow them.

  But one thing he could do was see Aileen again. He had to see her, and not long afterwards Bill brought her over. Thus illness and the threat of death had reunited yet another section of the family.

  It was hard to see that Aileen had a great deal left to live for after Christopher Wilding divorced her and remarried in 1987, taking the children with him. Elizabeth Taylor, whom she called ‘Mom’ (Gail was ‘Mummy’), continued to offer personal support, but wisely refused to be involved when Christopher gained custody of the children.

  The loss of the children hit Aileen badly. She was desperate, and it was hard to tell which would get her first – Aids or her drug addiction. She was always in and out of clinics, trying to be cured but not succeeding. Then, at the end of 1988, she suddenly informed her family that she had met the man she wished to marry.