Empress Bianca

by Lady Colin Campbell

  ‘That was very clever and thoughtful of you, Philippe,’ Clara said. ‘It’s had the desired effect, even if it’s also had another, more unexpected outcome. Ferdie’s fallen in love with Bianca Calman and wants to marry her.’

  Although Philippe’s lack of surprise made Clara aware that her guard really had to be up, it was his response that truly astonished her. ‘I know. Bianca told me the day before I left Mexico.’

  At that moment, Clara realized that her brother’s junior partner and his future wife had most definitely once been lovers and most likely still were. After all, she reasoned, what married woman would confide in her future fiancé’s business partner that she had accepted his proposal before her divorce arrangements had even been concluded? Except, of course, if she were already having an affair with that same business partner. There could only be one explanation for such an intimate confidence. Bianca and Philippe had been, and undoubtedly still were, lovers. Clara could see that Philippe really had no other course of action open to him than to step aside and let Ferdie have the woman he had chosen. Her brother was not the sort of man to forgive someone for taking what he wanted or for besting him or indeed lying to him, thereby allowing him to make a fool of himself. Ferdie was too proud, too self-willed and emotional to cope with having Bianca in his life as his junior partner’s wife.

  Clara knew only too well that Philippe Mahfud’s professional success depended upon keeping her brother happy. Without the Piedraplata family money and Ferdie’s energy and contacts, there would be no Banco Imperiale. Without Banco Imperiale, there would be no Mahfud fortune. The Mahfud brothers would be reduced to what they had once been: a tiny insignificant bank in Beirut but with a reputation for having fallen out with one of the richest men in the world. Hardly an enviable position to be in.

  ‘She seems a lovely woman,’ Clara observed, deliberately veiling her true feelings behind the remark’s ambiguity.

  ‘Oh, she is,’ Philippe said, his face a beacon of adoration. ‘I don’t know what I’d have done in Mexico without her.’

  ‘Hopefully nothing will change between you when Ferdie marries her.’

  Philippe laughed shyly and blushed, his swarthy skin turning deep purple. ‘I don’t suppose anything much will change,’ he said, providing Clara with all the confirmation she needed of the danger she and her brother would be in if this marriage were to go ahead.

  ‘You can all be one big happy family,’ she said disingenuously.

  Philippe blushed again, nodded his head. ‘I suppose so,’ he said.

  ‘Life is so unpredictable, isn’t it?’ Clara said, placing her right hand on Philippe’s left arm. ‘Who would ever have believed nine months ago that Ferdie and Amanda would be divorced and we’d be sitting here speaking about him marrying Bianca Calman? I thought that if anyone were going to marry Bianca, it would be you. You both seemed so…well, how shall I put it?…sympathique. But there we have it. Handsome Bernardo couldn’t keep his zip up. Amanda, silly girl, went and alienated Ferdie’s affections. Now Bianca has captured Ferdie’s heart, and you, whom I thought would have been the one she would have turned to, have been a loyal friend to both her and my brother. It quite reaffirms one’s faith in humanity.’

  Chapter Ten

  For most of us, reality never exceeds our dreams, but there are a lucky few whose reality exceeds any dream they might ever have had.

  Bianca became one of those privileged rarities when Ferdie slipped a ring on her finger and turned her into more - much more - than the reigning queen of Mexican Society. For the first time in years she no longer suffered from the ennui her perfectly planned and predictable life had induced in her. She now had to fit herself in with the plans of a husband to whom a typical day was an alien concept. Indeed, the only predictable aspects in Ferdie’s way of life were the constant mobility, the complete unpredictability and the infinite luxury with which they went from one place to another.

  But what a way of life it was. The following Easter was spent in the Caribbean, cruising on Marjorie Merriweather Post’s ocean-going yacht, the Sea Cloud. The largest sailing ship ever built, it was chartered by Ferdie to celebrate, as he put it, a ‘quintet of happy events’. Julio had made the Dean’s List at Harvard University, where he was studying business administration. Pedro was accepted by Columbia University, where he would study history; Antonia had started at her English school, St Mary’s Ascot, and Manolito was turning three, while Ferdie and Bianca were marking their first six months of marriage.

  To assist them with the Sea Cloud celebrations, Ferdie and Bianca asked eighty friends and relations, including his mother, her parents, Raymond and Begonia Mahfud, Philippe of course, two exiled kings and their queens, four princely couples including the Serge Obolenskys, Bill and Babe Paley, Mainbocher and his life companion Douglas Pollard, the legendary Margaret Duchess of Argyll and three brace of movie stars to sail with them throughout the Caribbean, stopping at ports in Aruba, Trinidad, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Barbados, Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo, and Montego Bay, Jamaica.

  To Bianca, this was an occasion to relish. Playing hostess to the world’s leading socialites meant that she was not only Mexico’s première socialite, but she was now also one of the world’s elite. If, however, Bianca needed confirmation of her new position, she had to look no further than the latest activity planned by Ferdie. No sooner was the Sea Cloud cruise over and her feet on dry land than she was preparing to leave Mexico for the summer. Her new husband always based himself in London for that season, and, in deference to the change in wives, he was transferring his allegiance from the Ritz Hotel to the Dorchester, where he had booked the penthouse suite adjoining Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton’s.

  Inevitably, the two glamorous couples met one another and struck up a casual friendship. ‘What a pity we didn’t know you at Easter,’ Bianca said, the first time they had drinks in the Taylor-Burton suite. ‘We took over the Sea Cloud for a fortnight’s cruise of the Caribbean.’

  ‘I know Jamaica well,’ Elizabeth Taylor said. ‘I went there with my last husband. We were great friends of Ernie and Betty Smatt. Do you know the Smatts?’

  ‘I think we met them,’ Bianca said. ‘We stayed on for a few days afterwards as guests of Bill and Babe Paley at Round Hill.’

  ‘Jamaica’s so beautiful,’ Ferdie said, ‘but nothing like Mexico. You must come and visit us, if ever you’re in our neck of the woods. And in the meantime, come and stay on the boat we’ve chartered for the summer. It’s moored at Monte Carlo, and we plan to spend most of August there.’

  ‘Maybe we can link up with you down there on the Kalizma,’ Richard Burton said. ‘That’s our yacht. We combined the names of our daughters Kate, Liza and Maria to come up with it. Not bad, eh?’

  ‘It’s a lovely name,’ Bianca agreed. ‘God knows what we’d call ours if we were lucky enough to have one of our own.’

  ‘We never will,’ Ferdie says categorically. ‘I believe in chartering. We’ve taken the Auriole for the summer. It’s a two-hundred-and-forty footer, built between the wars for one of the Guinnesses and is both comfortable and good value for money. Maybe if I were in acting instead of business, it would make sense to have my own boat, but with the demands made upon my time, I can’t justify tying up so much capital.’

  ‘Moreover, Ferdie’s sister and mother would demand their pound of flesh,’ Bianca said, betraying the first hint of anything untoward in her relationship with her husband.

  ‘They’d only be using what was rightfully theirs,’ Ferdie said, reprimanding Bianca in a tone that conveyed that his mother and sister might be contentious subjects. ‘All our businesses are family concerns,’ he explained, looking at Richard Burton instead of at his wife.

  ‘We know all about family ventures,’ the actor boomed theatrically. ‘Don’t we, Elizabeth?’

  She smiled sweetly.

  ‘I hate to break up a good party,’ Ferdie said, standing up, ‘but we’re due to have dinner at nine o’
clock, and we don’t want to be late.’

  Bianca leaped to her feet and, ensuring that her neighbours wouldn’t confuse Ferdie and herself with just another nouveau riche couple with money to throw around, said in a charmingly conspiratorial tone: ‘We must be on time. You know how royalty hate it if you arrive after them. And if we don’t behave ourselves, the Queen might just lop off our heads.’

  Bianca could tell from the tinkling laughter of the world’s reigning movie queen that her comment had achieved its desired effect. The fabled Burtons would thereafter never be tempted to dismiss Ferdie Piedraplatas and his wife as just another obscenely rich couple. Not when the Queen of Hollywood and her consort knew that the Piedraplatas moved in royal circles.

  Although the actor and actress never did make it down to Monte Carlo, that did not detract from the fun Ferdie and Bianca had that first halcyon summer. There were a series of cruises: the shortest being a day, the longest, a week. Once, they took a group of friends out to sea for lunch, stopping off for dinner in St Tropez. Another time, they took the boat out for a few days, stopping off for lunch at the Hôtel du Cap in Cap d’Antibes, followed by dinner at an amusing little restaurant in Ramatuelle, with lunch the following day at a seaside bistro in St Tropez, before heading back to Monte Carlo. On a longer jaunt, they crossed the Mediterranean and stopped off in Tangier and Marrakech, where King Hassan of Morocco received them and their ten guests and the three elder children at the palace for dinner. After this regal meal, they set sail due east along the North African coast to Libya. There, the Crown Prince received them at his palace in Tripoli before they set off, with their guests, on a desert safari in a fleet of Land Rovers, laid on by the Libyan royals, to marvel at the ancient ruins of Leptis Magna and Carthage. Suitably edified, they returned to Tripoli, where the Crown Prince and his brother joined Ferdie, Bianca, their guests and children for dinner onboard the Auriole. It wasn’t long afterwards that Muammar Gaddafi overthrew King Idris and his sons were no longer in a position to entertain such international socialites. ‘It’s wonderful being married to a man who knows everyone,’ Bianca commented to her favourite child, Julio, while walking on deck one moonlit evening.

  That first summer of her entry into paradise, Bianca was discovering that the big boat crowd - Ferdie taught her never to say ‘yacht’: it was a dead giveaway of what he called being ‘nouveau’ - formed a clique all its own. Access required a combination of factors: name, fame and fortune.

  Whether it was Prince Johannes von Thurn und Taxis dropping in from his palace in Germany for a few days cruising or the movie producer Sam Spiegel, with his motley crew of aspiring actresses and rich backers, pulling alongside and sending over an invitation for dinner, there was always someone rich, famous and entertaining to entertain - and to be entertained by.

  Some of the big boat crowd also owned villas, and Bianca decided the most elegant way to lead one’s life was to have your own villa, where you slept and which you used as your base while making maritime forays. When you didn’t have to be at sea, she discovered, you should stay on dry land and reduce your chances of developing sea legs. One of the few downsides to the super-rich lifestyle, Bianca had already concluded, was that she could not abide the sensation of stepping ashore for lunch or dinner and feeling as if the earth were swaying in time to the rhythm of the seas. She therefore made a mental note to begin a subtle campaign of encouraging Ferdie to buy them a villa, possibly in Biarritz.

  It was at this point that Bianca fell in love. It was not with her husband, however, or indeed with another man, but with a house.

  L’Alexandrine has frequently been called the most beautiful villa in the South of France. Built in 1864 for the Grand Duke Alexander of Russia, it was Napoleon III at its best: spacious, gracious, elegant and tasteful. No expense had been spared by the Grand Duke. The villa was constructed of the finest coral-coloured stone, its floors and columns of the finest marble. The plasterwork alone took a team of masons nine months working round the clock to complete and was regarded as one of the finest examples of plasterwork in existence. The bathrooms, which were state-of-the-art for their time, were all en suite and were still as they had been when completed by the architect a hundred years beforehand.

  All twenty acres of the grounds had been sculpted as if by an artist, with flowerbeds, bushes, lawns, follies, and gazebos laid out to titillate and to entice. There was a pool house and a swimming pool reminiscent of a Roman bath from Herculaneum. The lawn tennis court required the services of a full-time gardener and was illuminated by specially constructed lights made of iron in the Art Nouveau style in 1906 to resemble trees, the electric light bulbs covered by glass which had been custom-made by Baccarat.

  L’Alexandrine was truly a house fit for royalty, and Bianca - who had taken to regal living with so little adjustment that a psychologist would have had a field day analysing her - resolved upon first sight of it that she would own it one day. It was, she felt, the perfect house. Having never felt that way about anything before, she knew - just knew - deep within herself that she would never be able to rest until L’Alexandrine was hers.

  Whatever the price, she would pay it.

  Bianca had discovered the object of her veneration by accident. She and Ferdie had been to lunch in the hills behind Biarritz with some friends. On the way back, two of their car tyres suffered punctures no more than ten feet away from the high wrought-iron gates of L’Alexandrine. The driver rang the bell, the mistress of the house, who turned out to be an avid gardener, had been watering plants nearby, so answered it herself and, seeing what she concluded were a lady and gentleman, graciously asked Ferdie and Bianca in while their driver attended to the tyres.

  Before she even saw the interior of the house, Bianca was already enchanted by the property. Then Mrs Kenward-Townsend led them into the morning room and, her fate sealed, Bianca said, without any attempt at flattery: ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more beautiful house.’

  ‘Would you like a tour?’ asked Hyacinth Kenward-Townsend.

  ‘I certainly would,’ Bianca said with even more enthusiasm than usual.

  The elderly widow then ordered coffee for her unexpected guests before showing them round her house, describing its points of historic interest as they walked from one exquisite room to another. At the end of the tour, Bianca said: ‘I’m in love with your house. If ever you think of selling, will you let me know? Not, I hasten to admit, that I’d ever do anything without my husband’s knowledge or approval’ she added quickly, looking directly at Ferdie, mindful of how Amanda had created in the first place the vacancy she was now filling.

  ‘Give me your details, and I give you my word that if ever I want to sell, I’ll give you first refusal. I know exactly how you feel. I’ve felt the same about L’Alexadrine…ever since I first saw it back in 1923 when I came to this neck of the woods on honeymoon with my late husband. You won’t believe it, but I’ve always believed I was fated to own this house. Bertie’s father had been attached to Grand Duke Alexander’s staff as ADC when the Grand Duke visited England for Queen Victoria’s Jubilee.

  ‘In those days, of course, honeymoons were more leisurely affairs than they are today. We had time on our hands and a plethora of letters of introduction, one of which was to the old Grand Duke. He asked us here for tea and, as soon as I’d set eyes on the place, I blurted out to him, in much the same way that you have, how taken I was with it. He said he was finding the upkeep a great burden and said that if ever we wanted to buy it, he’d sell it to us. Bertie wasn’t in favour at first…I suspect you’re most likely entertaining the very thoughts he did all those years ago, Mr Piedraplata…but then Bertie was diagnosed with TB a few months later, and suddenly it made sense to move to the South of France. I’ve never left…except during the war years, when I went back home to do my bit.’

  Three hours later the car was roadworthy again, and Ferdie and Bianca took their leave. As soon as they were in the car, Bianca, slightly afraid of Ferdie�
�s tendency to cut people out of his life when they displeased him, slipped her hand through his arm and snuggled up to him, saying: ‘I hope you didn’t mind me speaking the way I did about the house. But I knew that if I didn’t grasp the moment, it would never come again. I really wasn’t trying to go over your head.’

  ‘I have to hand it to you,’ Ferdie responded. ‘You manage to push the boundaries to their absolute limit but in such a way that I have no justification for being angry with you. You missed your calling. You should’ve been a diplomat or a negotiator.’

  ‘Are you complimenting me or insulting me?’

  ‘I’m definitely not insulting you, but it’s not altogether an unalloyed compliment. I have to say that the better I know you, the more I come to see how layered a personality you are. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who has such a visceral response to material possessions.’

  Ferdie did not say it in so many words, but Bianca had just been forewarned that he might be coming to the conclusion that she had married him for his money. She, however, did not pick up on the implication, marking it down to his moodiness.

  ‘Oh, darling,’ she said cheerily, ‘the last thing I want is to upset you. I couldn’t help it if I fell in love with the house. You must admit, it is the most amazing place you’ve ever seen.’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that,’ Ferdie said, now clearly irritated. ‘I’ve seen plenty more fantastic places. It is exquisite, but I have no intention of buying any house in the South of France. Not now, not ever. And if I don’t buy it for you, who will? I don’t see your father’s money extending to L’Alexandrine.’

  ‘Ferdie, why do you always take everything so much to heart? Has it not occurred to you that this may just be a pipedream?’