Empress Bianca

by Lady Colin Campbell

  Upstairs in the master bedroom, Bianca heard Dolores but did not respond. She was viewing the bed where Julio had slept, tears welling up in her eyes. ‘At least I will always have a part of him in Biancita,’ she thought, consoling herself. ‘And she’ll be brought up my way. To be one of us. Instead of being a peasant like her mother.’

  ‘Madame Mahfud, where are you?’ Dolores’ voice rang out again.

  ‘I’ll be right down,’ Bianca replied and went to look at Biancita’s nursery. ‘Decorated in typical middle-class fashion’ she thought disdainfully, a little shudder of distaste running through her delicate sensibilities. Now she was ready to return downstairs.

  Dolores, meanwhile, had started to ascend the stairs. Their eyes locked as she reached the landing.

  ‘Shall we go into the drawing-room?’ Bianca said, starting down.

  ‘Julio was so happy here,’ Dolores said, meeting her mother-in-law halfway. ‘I know this house may not seem like much to you, but to us it was our bit of heaven.’

  Dolores could have sworn Bianca gave her a funny look as she overtook her and once more led the way in a house that was not hers.

  They then reached the drawing-room, and Bianca headed for the chair she had earmarked for herself, indicating one beside it for Dolores to sit upon, as if this were her house and not her daughter-in-law’s.

  ‘Now, my dear,’ Bianca said acidly, reverting to the person Dolores had known before Julio’s accident, ‘why don’t you save your Pollyanna act for someone less gullible than I? I know all about your antics. Julio confided in me completely before the accident.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Madame,’ Dolores said, failing to understand her mother-in-law’s implication.

  ‘Of course you do. You really mustn’t take me for a fool, Dolores. It won’t work.’

  ‘I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said, starting to cry.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Bianca said lightly. ‘Tears. The oldest trick in the book. The last refuge of the guilty.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Dolores said through her sobbing. ‘What was there that you make sound so bad, for Julio to confide in anyone…?’

  ‘It makes me feel dirty just repeating what I’ve been told…’

  ‘Who has told you what?’ demanded Dolores, her tears turning to anger as she began to sense the direction in which the conversation was heading.

  ‘Come, come, you don’t expect me to reveal my sources, do you? Suffice it to say that you deceived me at first, but my eyes are open now, and I can see right through you.’

  ‘I really have no idea what you’re talking about, Dolores replied, giving Bianca her first glimpse of the brain she had beneath her loving exterior.

  ‘Are you going to deny that Julio was going to divorce you?’

  ‘Divorce me? This is crazy. Julio and I were closer than ever.’

  ‘According to my sources,’ Bianca said, ‘you were just as close to his brother and the man he caught you in bed with.’

  ‘Madame Mahfud, I don’t know who’s been feeding you these lies, but I can assure you, that’s all they are…lies. I mean this is just too ridiculous for words. Me sleeping with another man? With Pedro? For Christ’s sake, Pedro is Julio’s brother.’

  ‘Precisely,’ Bianca said. ‘Now listen here, my dear, I don’t expect you to confess. Your type never does. But my daughter Antonia and I now have your number, and we’re not allowing little Biancita to live here with you. You will either relinquish custody to me voluntarily, and I will hand her over to Antonia for her to bring up in a proper manner, or I will fight you in the courts. I don’t suppose you’re so deluded that you think you’ll stand a chance against me. Aside from the fact that I have far more money and influence than you, I will also hire private detectives to dig up every bit of dirt there is on you.’

  ‘I don’t have any dirt,’ Dolores said angrily.

  ‘You’re a bright girl. Bright enough to have ensnared a young man from a rich family after working with him as his secretary. Do you think your word, and the word of one or two of your common little friends and relatives, will carry more weight than mine, my family’s, various private detectives and functionaries? Come, come, Dolores. Think for a minute. Do you really want to put yourself through that?’

  ‘And if I agree?’

  ‘I’ll give you $200,000 outright. To do with as you please. On one condition.’

  ‘And what’s that?’ Dolores said bitterly, knowing what it was before Bianca even replied.

  ‘That you relinquish all rights to Biancita in perpetuity.’

  ‘You’re doing to me what you did to Manolito’s mother.’

  ‘No, dear girl, I’ve learned from that mistake. Which is why you have to relinquish all rights.’

  ‘And if I don’t?’

  ‘You won’t get a penny, and you’ll never see Biancita again. Ever. I’ll make sure of that.’

  ‘Why are you doing this to me? You know that I loved Julio and would never have cheated on him. You can’t seriously believe those lies?’

  ‘Oh, but I do believe them, dear girl. And if you oppose me on this, everyone in Mexico will know about your sexual antics by the time I’m through with you. Take my advice and make things easier for yourself. You’re beaten, so admit defeat. Take some spoils from the victor. Move on with your life. As the ex-wife of my son and with the nest egg I’m offering you, you’ll make yourself another good marriage in a year or two. The alternative is to fight me and see me destroy your reputation and any possibility of a resurrection from the ashes. Think about it while you go into the kitchen and get me another Coke then come back and give me the answer that will enhance all our lives.’

  Dolores rose from her seat, picked up Bianca’s glass and headed towards the kitchen. Bianca Barnett del Rio Calman Piedraplata Antonescu Mahfud had touched yet another life and taken from it what she wanted.

  Chapter Nineteen

  It would take years before the full effect of Julio’s living death became evident to those who had been closest to him, but even in the months following the tragedy, the changes were nevertheless already painfully apparent. Bernardo became seriously depressed, and gradually, over a period of two years, his business collapsed. To her credit, Bianca came to his rescue without once being prompted by Antonia, and he moved back to Mexico from Panama with his new wife, after Bianca bought their old marital home and gave him the use of it, rent-free.

  Dolores, stunned by the loss of Biancita and unable to marshal enough resources to fight the woman she believed to be invincible, also sank into a deep depression, seeking refuge in sleep; and when she could sleep no more, in the oblivion that drink afforded her.

  Pedro lay low, simmering with even greater hatred against his mother than before but careful not to give her any reason to have him committed again. He could often be found at Dolores’ house, the same house Julio had rented for her and Biancita, and to which she clung, as if by so doing, she were keeping herself in contact with the husband and daughter she had lost. Whenever Pedro was not there, he made a point of having her over to the Piedraplata family home, where he still lived, until it became like a second home to her. This Bianca knew because she telephoned Duarte once a week for him to keep her informed of her son and daughter-in-law’s comings and goings.

  The older woman haunted their lives, not only because of what she had done but also what they feared she could still do. Only Antonia seemed to have escaped relatively unscathed; and while it took her five years to get over Julio’s loss, she now had his daughter to console her.

  Also badly shaken by the loss of his eldest stepson, Philippe threw himself into his work, dissolving the business partnership with his brother and going his own separate way. Soon his New York banking concern attracted the interest of Continental Express, the credit company, which had made no secret of its desire to acquire Banco Imperiale New York.

  If Philippe’s pain was alleviated by his bus
iness activities, his wife’s response was less straightforward. Frequently, she would be with friends, laughing and talking as if she did not have a care in the world and had never even seen the face of loss. Once she was home, however, and in the privacy of her own environment - an environment that she controlled as carefully as ever - Bianca would cry and cry and cry, sometimes for an hour or more. The staff noted that she always did this when she was alone: when no one in the family, no friend, not even Mary van Gayrib, could see her. It was as if she wanted the release of tears without the comfort of family or friends. Meanwhile the servants and household staff acted as if they had seen and heard nothing.

  Yet Julio’s accident also had an energizing effect upon the already energetic Bianca. It was as if she had woken up to the fact that she too would one day cease to exist consciously: that her time on this earth was fleeting and limited.

  The fact of the matter was that Julio’s situation, together with the paradoxical way in which she approached it, showed that Bianca was storing up problems for herself. Her great wealth and the influence it brought in its wake had weakened rather than strengthened her character over the ensuing years. Furthermore, that wealth could not buy her the protection - against adversity, against conscience - she had hoped for.

  Feeling entitled to the gratification of her every desire and whim did not leave much room for the spiritual lessons that Bianca needed to learn. Her failure to confront her guilt would play a significant part in her failure to deal constructively and comfortably with the loss of her adored son.

  Instead Bianca’s grief became an internal running sore which could be neither cleansed nor healed, but which continued to eat away at her, year in, year out, while she focussed her energies with even greater ferocity than before upon her quest to become one of the world’s leading socialites.

  Even Manolito, who was only seventeen when Julio’s accident took place, would find himself marked for life by his elder stepbrother’s living death. The unexpectedness of it all had torn away the blanket belief in the benevolence of fate that is the natural effect of wealth upon anyone who has spent his years cocooned against the harsher realities of life, as this young man had. True, he had grown up hearing rumours about how Bianca had killed his father. True, he knew that his stepbrother Pedro hated her, and that she in turn despised her youngest son. True, his mother Amanda Piedraplata had nothing good to say about her - although she equally was careful not to say anything bad, limiting herself to the oftrepeated comment that ‘there’s only one Bianca, and we can all be thankful for that’. But as he grew older he was also mindful that the life he led as a member of the Mahfud family was so much more extraordinary and extravagant, so much more seductive and fascinating, than that which he lived with Amanda and Anna Clara. Sure, he loved his mother and little sister, but Bianca had also been a good mother figure to him. Bianca’s seductive powers had had him in their thrall since his earliest childhood. With that extraordinary woman, anything and everything had seemed possible, and he had liked the sensation of empowerment, of being a master of his own fate that came with being a member of Bianca Mahfud’s family. However, Julio’s accident broke the spell. Thereafter, Manolito would always see that great wealth and a powerful personality, for all the freedom and possibility they brought, only allowed you to shape your life in a limited manner. This was a chastening and maturing lesson for him to learn, and, coming at the impressionable age that it did, it sobered him up in a way that no amount of lectures from Amanda could ever have done.

  The first sign of Manolito’s newfound maturity came when he turned eighteen and came into his inheritance from Ferdie. He was now conservatively worth some $350,000,000. The immediate dilemma was what, if anything, he should do about this vast fortune. Should he continue having his trustees, Philippe and Raymond Mahfud, handle his money, or should he move it out of their hands and into the care of someone else?

  ‘I’d leave things as they are,’ Amanda said. ‘Investing the money of very rich people is Raymond and Philippe’s business. That’s what private investment bankers do. And since one is your guardian’s husband, and they were both your father’s partners…and have done well with your inheritance to date…I’d let sleeping dogs lie.’

  ‘I thought you might want me to move the money,’ Manolito said, looking relieved.

  ‘Darling, I have nothing against Raymond and Philippe and never did. I always liked them, and I learned a long time ago not to believe everything one hears.’

  ‘So you don’t believe Daddy killed himself?’

  ‘Darling,’ Amanda replied, ‘everyone except Bianca accepts that your father cannot have committed suicide.’

  ‘You know what Pedro says, don’t you?’

  ‘Let’s just say that I’ve heard what Pedro thinks, and it accords with what many other people have always suspected.’

  ‘But you don’t think she…?’

  ‘Darling, you really don’t want to burden your young head with these old thoughts. All I will say is that you should make sure you never give Bianca power of attorney over one penny of your money. And make sure you make a will that leaves not one penny of your money to her or to her children.’

  ‘So what should I do?’ Manolito asked.

  ‘The first and most important thing is that you make a will. Uncle Piers thinks you should go to Sir David Napley. He’s a top solicitor and has the distinction of being someone Bianca does not know.’

  ‘Gosh, Mummy, you sound pretty serious about this.’

  ‘Sex and money bring out the worst features of the human being, Manolito. There’s no use pretending otherwise. People, whom we all think are nice and kind and decent, can resort to the most debased forms of behaviour to get their hands on money or the sexual partner of their choice. As your mother, I wouldn’t be serving your interests if I pretended otherwise. All that money Ferdie left you makes you too vulnerable, and only the truth will offer you a measure of protection against the darker side of human nature. That, my darling son, is the price you will have to pay, all your life for the privilege of great wealth.’

  ‘Will you come with me to David Napley?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll leave everything to you and to Anna Clara.’

  ‘If you do that, you must leave her share in such a way that she cannot touch the capital until she is thirty-five.’

  ‘I’ll leave Uncle Philippe as the executor.’

  ‘No. You mustn’t. No one connected to Bianca must have anything to do with your estate.’

  ‘But I’ll need a competent executor.’

  ‘If you know in your heart of hearts that you can trust us, name Uncle Piers and me. He’s honourable and should you pre-decease him - which seems very unlikely as long as Bianca and her children can’t profit from your death - we’ll find someone else reputable and reliable who will protect Anna Clara’s interests when Uncle Piers passes away.’

  Three days later, Amanda and Manolito arrived at David Napley’s offices where they were received by the slight dapper solicitor. Having listened to their requirements, he said: ‘What you need is a simple, straightforward and ironclad will which can stand all interference from third parties. It shouldn’t take more than a few hours to draw it up. I can have something for your consideration by the end of next week.’

  Amanda, whose solicitor had taken three months to draw up her will and had charged her accordingly, was so impressed by his honesty that she suggested to Manolito, right in front of Sir David, that he make him an executor. ‘It’s not good policy to have a solicitor as an executor,’ he said. ‘We are obliged to see that no corners are cut, and this can hamstring a beneficiary, driving up the cost of probate.’

  David Napley then proceeded to draw up a will in the succeeding days that was a study in brilliant simplicity. Manolito left everything to his mother, Amanda, and his sister, Anna Clara, in equal shares. If one of them predeceased him, her share would go to the other, but if they both predeceased him, or died with
him, half his money was to be left to Clara d’Offolo and Magdalena, and the other half split between two charitable foundations, both named the Ferdinand and Manuel Piedraplata Foundations, which were to be set up and administered - one in Britain, the other in Mexico - for adoptive parents and children. Sir David was named the overall administrator.

  Traditionally, there was little overlap between Manolito’s two families. When he was with Bianca he never saw Amanda and Anna Clara. However, he did see his stepbrother Pedro and Julio’s widow, Dolores, when he was in Mexico, where he spent much of the Christmas and Easter holidays as well as a large part of the summer holidays with Amanda and Anna Clara. The year of his majority, he exercised his newfound freedom and financial power by opting to take them skiing in Gstaad over Easter instead. It was only when Manolito had booked them into the Palace Hotel through his mother’s travel agent that he discovered from Antonia that she, Moussey and Biancita were also planning to be there as guests of Bianca and Philippe, along with Dolphie and Stella Minckus and the Duke and Duchess of Oldenburg.

  This was a departure from the norm for Bianca, who preferred the richer air of St Moritz, but she had been propelled into a change of venue by Stella Minckus, whose personality was well on the way to fossilizing into imperious snobbishness. The former Miss Cyprus had affected not to hear what her friend had said when she had asked her to come to St Moritz for Easter. ‘What a marvellous invitation, Bianca darling! We’d so love to stay with you at the Palace Hotel in Gstaad. We just adore Gstaad with all its unpretentious Old Money people. So unlike that ghastly nouveaux St Mortiz, where you see half the people you spend all year avoiding in New York. Did you know, that awful Ruby Leighton practically lives there every winter, from November to the week after Easter? And the Manny Greenbaums and the Morty Bachmans are there every year for Chanukah and Passover, without fail. Dolphie and I went there the first year we were married, and they all stuck to us like glue. I couldn’t shake them off for the next two years, either in Switzerland or back home.’