Empress Bianca

by Lady Colin Campbell

  It was less than a fifteen-minute drive from the Barnett house to the Imperial Hotel downtown, where Bernardo’s father had reserved the Bridal Suite for the night as an additional present to his son and daughter-in-law. The following afternoon they would board the SS Duque de Medinacelli for a cruise, stopping in Trinidad, Cartagena, Panama and Miami.

  Bianca eagerly surrendered her virginity to Bernardo before the bottle of champagne they had ordered could be delivered to their suite. In retrospect, it seemed to her that one second they were entering the suite fully dressed, and the next they were urgently stripping amidst a flurry of sensual kisses. Thereafter, events were almost staccato in their pace.

  Bernardo’s naked body, pulsating with desire. Her hand moving down to touch the instrument of desire which she had never dared touch before, even though she had often sensed it through her clothing and been sorely tempted to have just one little feel. Bernardo groaning with pleasure and moving her towards the bedroom. The imperial-sized bed and the feel of the silk counterpane as Bernardo eased her down upon the mattress. The heat between her legs and the yearning to be occupied by this man whom she loved and desired. The pain as Bernardo edged his way in - gently, lovingly - all the while telling her how much he loved her and how much he wanted her. After he entered fully, the sensation of pain intermingled with desire: the harbinger of pleasures to come once her body had become used to having a man inside her. The embarrassment afterwards, when they were finished and she saw the blood upon the counterpane. Bernardo manfully taking control: ‘They’ll be used to this. Honeymooners use this suite all the time. You go and have a relaxing bath while I ring for room service and have them send it to the laundry.’

  Up until their wedding, Bianca and Bernardo had been so compatible that it seemed as if they could not possibly improve upon that state of affairs. This, however, turned out to be untrue. They quickly became obsessed with each other sexually, which only enhanced the pleasure they derived from one another’s company when out of bed. By the time they returned from honeymoon, ready to implement their plans for a happy home life by trying for the first of the four children they wanted, their unity of purpose was evident for all to see.

  As Bianca and Bernardo settled down to married life, this unity did not diminish. It was almost as if they were the living embodiment of a complementary couple. Both of them liked socializing with their friends and their families, dining out most evenings or having friends or family in to dinner. Both of them went every Saturday and Sunday to the Jewish Club to swim and to play tennis.

  Ten months to the day after their marriage, Bianca, who had learnt three months beforehand that she was expecting twins, gave birth to identical sons. The delivery was relatively easy at first, and she had opted, like most of her peers, to be anaesthetized. When she came around, she also behaved in keeping with the mores of her time and waited until she had freshened up - which included combing her hair and putting on lipstick and powder - before seeing anyone but the nursing staff, whose conduct she found decidedly odd. The explanation was not long in coming. Bernardo, his parents and hers had all seen the babies and knew of the tragedy, which was that the firstborn Emilio had been strangled on the umbilical cord and only the younger son Julio had survived.

  Bianca experienced a strange, almost panicky feeling as she held out her arms to receive her son. Anticipation mingled with fear. ‘Suppose I don’t like him?’ The thought flashed across her mind: one she had never had before. She took the sleeping baby and cradled him in her arms. He had the dark hair and eyes of his father but the features of his mother. ‘He’s so beautiful,’ the new mother said, unwrapping the muslin in which he was swaddled and looking with awe at the being she had helped to create. Somewhere between the moment when she started to unwrap his swaddling and when she had to return him to the nurse, Bianca fell irrevocably in love with him. Thereafter, her heart and soul belonged to three men: her father, her husband and her son, although in a matter of weeks Julio supplanted Bernardo and Harold as the love of her life.

  Two years after Julio’s birth, Bianca produced another son, followed by a daughter, Antonia, in 1953. These were halcyon days for the young Calmans as well as for Mexico, which was experiencing an era of unprecedented economic expansion that made it the fastest growing Latin American economy. Everyone in Bianca and Bernardo’s peer group was prosperous. Everyone was young. Everyone was healthy. The future seemed to be as unclouded as the Mexican skies, with one bright sunny day following another in the Federal District of Mexico City.

  At first, Bianca was happy and fulfilled both personally and socially. Life was everything she had ever hoped for or imagined. She had a handsome husband whom she loved and who adored her. They made love at least twice a day and sometimes, at weekends, three and four times. Although she did not always climax, she was a born sensualist and found the whole process of lovemaking gratifying as long as Bernardo made her feel desired - which he had never failed to do. She had three lovely children, all of whom she loved, although she was also the first to admit that she regarded Pedro as rather awkward and thought Antonia dull. Bianca had an active social life, one which emulated her own mother’s and followed the established pattern of her class: coffee mornings, lunches, tea parties, dinners en famille or with friends, dinner parties, cocktail parties, dances, tennis parties, swimming parties and the occasional – very occasional - cultural evening at the opera, the ballet or a concert. Life, in fact, was one constant round of pleasure and gratification, and by the time Antonia was four years old, Bianca was growing dissatisfied with so much contentment. It was as if she needed a challenge, something to stretch her, some grit in her life to provide a bulwark against boredom. Could this, she sometimes asked herself, really be all there was to life? Was her existence always to be one long round of pleasurable events, unrelieved by anything unexpected? So much pleasure had become a chore.

  However, to find work with which to occupy herself would have been unthinkable for Bianca. A working wife would have dishonoured her husband, declaring to the world that he could not support his family. It was an expression of failure. Instead, Bianca’s discontent festered. By 1957 it was only a matter of time before it burst apart the apparently blissful existence she was leading.

  Ferdie was by now well on his way to being one of the richest men in Mexico, although he still did not own the family business outright. His father remained his partner, something that might have bothered many fathers and sons but did not perturb either Manny or Ferdie. There had never been any doubt that Manny would leave his share of the family business equally to Ferdie, Clara and their mother; and for his part, Ferdie saw nothing amiss about his mother and his sister deriving benefits from his talents and hard work. To him, as to most other people in their world, the family was what counted first and foremost, and the idea that Ferdie would ever hive off, having used his family business as the springboard, and increase his own fortune without increasing theirs was unthinkable.

  The family name and the name of the company, Calorblanco, with its emblem of a white flame, were by now known in every household in Mexico, Ferdie having diversified into everything from food shops and electrical stores to clothing stores and garages which sold both new and used motor cars.

  Aside from Ferdie’s tremendous energy, Calorblanco owed its extraordinary rate of growth to another of those chance encounters that would shape all of Ferdie’s life. On a visit to Antwerp in 1949 to buy jewelry for the shows that the company now owned in Mexico City, Cuernevaca, Acapulco and five other Mexican cities, Ferdie had stopped off in London. He had never been to England before and, although the capital was in the grips of the British Labour Government’s austerity programme and the overall impression was one of greyness, a chance encounter in an electrical shop changed the way he looked at funding, thereby paving the way for the massive expansion of the family business which followed.

  Ferdie had arrived in London with an American electrical razor. He disliked shaving with razor b
lades. To him, there was something morbid about a man shaving himself with a sharp implement. It was difficult to say whether this distaste was his unconscious seeking to preserve him against temptation or whether it was simply his innate fastidiousness and sensitivity: Ferdie disliked pain and mess in equal measure and would go to great lengths to avoid both. Whatever the reason, his predilection for Remington razors was the reason why he walked into McCarthy’s electrical shop on Piccadilly and made a great discovery when the shop assistant asked: ‘Cash, cheque, account or hire purchase, sir?’

  ‘What’s hire purchase?’ Ferdie asked, aware that his English was hardly fluent but also curious, as always, about what he did not know.

  ‘That’s when you buy something and pay for it in instalments, sir.’

  ‘That’s not the same as “on account”, is it?’

  ‘No, sir, “on account” means you take the item, and we invoice you for it. “Hire purchase” means you pay a portion of the selling price upon purchase and the remainder in instalments, say, over six, twelve or eighteen months.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Ferdie said, immediately spotting the possibilities of applying the same principle to purchases made in Mexico.

  Ferdie walked out of McCarthy’s realizing that he had been handed the means to expand the family business. No longer would he have to exercise patience, the way he had been doing, opening one electrical shop here, another there, a jewellery shop elsewhere, all the while making sure their financial base was covered so that any losses could be absorbed without affecting the overall performance of the business. The percentage the purchasers paid upfront in a hire purchase arrangement meant that there was an increased cash flow, which could be used to provide other goods for other purchasers. The sky was the limit if the system worked, as it seemed to be doing in England.

  By applying the principle of hire purchase, no longer would a businessman have to aim his market at the moneyed classes. The poor also had needs and were a vast untapped market, if only the limits of their purchasing power could be enlarged. Hire purchase seemed to be the way to do it. With hire purchase, he could sell a labourer an item he might want - or, indeed, need - without either the labourer or the business having to fully finance the purchase at the time it took place. In effect, expansion could be financed in part by the customers instead of the banks, thereby keeping bank loans to a minimum.

  Ferdie returned to Mexico Citys eager to try out this new idea. ‘It seems sound,’ Manny said. ‘Like all good ideas, it is simplicity itself. I wonder why we didn’t think of it before.’

  On the principle that everyone needs to eat, and that food degenerates in a warm climate, Ferdie, who had already successfully opened electrical shops near two of the poor districts in Mexico City, decided to open twenty small refrigerator shops all over Mexico. For all his adventurousness, Ferdie was an innately cautious person who never took an unnecessary risk and always sought to create safety nets in case of unforeseen eventualities. This quality was one that he brought to bear not only in his business life but in his personal life too. It was also what propelled him to open up the refrigerator shops in working-class districts, shrewdly realizing that the poor needed credit and would not want to shop in affluent areas, where they would be led to feel that their presence was at best tolerated and at worst an intrusion.

  It was this careful quality that had also led Ferdie to call off his engagement with Fernanda. With hindsight, he could see that he had treated her unfairly, but breaking up with her had seemed the only sensible thing to do at the time. This was at the time of his third bout of depression, eighteen months after the first and nine after the second. After the first one, he had ascribed his condition to overtiredness and had actually been so touched by the way Fernanda reacted that he had proposed marriage, even though he did not feel ready to settle down; but after the second bout, he began to question whether his personal life might not be having a hidden effect on his frame of mind. He therefore resolved to sever relations with Fernanda if he had a third bout, which he did two months before their wedding. This cancellation caused a furore in the smart Mexican social circles in which they moved. Fernanda was perceived as being blameless. Fiancés did not break off engagements with nice girls from nice families on a whim, after all. They only did so if the girl was found to be lacking, which Fernanda was patently not. The reaction of both his friends and his parents’ friends so jolted Ferdie that he shied away from forming an attachment with another girl from a good family. In truth, it was just as well that he did, because most parents of such girls would not have allowed their daughters out with Ferdie Piedraplata after what he did to Fernanda.

  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.