by Charles Fox
Talitha was pregnant with little Tara when I came down from Tangier to Marrakesh for the interview. They paid my fare.
Talitha came wafting down the grand main ancient marble staircase, very pregnant in an exotic kaftan. She was dark. We were downstairs having drinks with Bill, the builder, when she said, “Come upstairs.” So, we girls went up to the boudoir, out came the lines of coke, and that was that. We all just hit it off. She was absolutely enchanting. She was absolutely fascinating, Talitha, really beautiful. It doesn’t come out in pictures because she was sort of small and compact, but she was very alive. A most beautiful body apart from a pretty face. She had these funny little hands and funny little feet. I think she must have been Dutch-Japanese or something. She was in a concentration camp, which upset her dreadfully as a child. Then, she went to live with a very strict aunt in Holland. You know what the Dutch are like. In the villages they think that having a television is a sin. Then she was sent to one of those Reichian schools, Steiner, where they do all sorts of strange things. She was a Libra. Truly fascinating.
When we went downstairs, Paul and I haggled over my pay, and he asked me when I would start and I said, “Three months from now.” I went back to Tangier, tied up my place, then moved down.
The house was nowhere near complete. Nothing’s really that old in Morocco. Everything crumbles after a generation and they rebuild or they build next door. It was madness, really. Electricians and plasterers, little men with baskets of mud and cement tramping through the house day and night. Bill kept finding new things to do. Paul would be freaking out, saying, “Stop that man.” And Bill would say, “Look, Paul, we simply have to finish off this end of this courtyard,” and, “There’s more work required there.” Paul was like a patron.
I don’t know what Paul paid for the place. It was sold to a false countess from Casablanca who immediately started painting all these sort of things pink, red, blue, and yellow.
There was the kitchen-courtyard with pepper trees and elephant-ear plants with huge leaves growing ’round a fountain. I had a little suite of rooms up behind the trees. You went up a little tiny staircase, and I put up a little tiny notice which said ENTRÉE INTERDITE AUX ÉTRANGERS, and it was as if it led to the powerhouse or something. So I could look out on what was going on and nobody ever knew where I disappeared to. I had my own roof, bedroom, and loo and washbasin, and I had a staircase that went up to Paul and Talitha’s bedroom. A tiny little twisted staircase led into my suite and back into their suite, so we could commute while the guests were running in circles wondering where we all were. I had a wonderful view of the mountains, which are almost as high as the Swiss Alps. They go straight up off the desert floor with snow all through the winter and spring.
There was a bathroom and an alcove with banquettes and things, a few big bedrooms. The guest courtyard had a tiny star-shaped fountain in the middle we used to sit in. There’s a harem, another suite of guestrooms. The harem was huge. There was an enormous mirror in the harem bathroom. There was another room on top—the minza, which I suppose means sun house. It had a huge fireplace with banquettes all around. It was used for lunch and things. The main salon went off. It had a huge fireplace at each end. It was a very long room. The entrance hall was enormous. The very front doors were like enormous sixteen-foot gates you could drive a lorry through, and they were held shut by a great big bolt. You had to bang on the door and shout. The guardian was about eighty. He was called Si Mohammed. He had been a guardian there before for the previous owner, a mad Frenchman. The doors looked down the main courtyard. There was a very big fountain.
Bill tiled all the garden in emerald-green tiles. The jacaranda blossom used to fall, purple flowers on the green tiles. It was ravishing. Of course, when the house was full, the blossoms had to be swept up. Every day the tiles were hosed down. And peacocks. I was given three peacocks. Paul and Talitha didn’t really like them because they thought they made nasty fat chickenlike messes on their green tiles. When I was there on my own I let the blossoms fall and the birds and the cat creep back again. A beautiful place to live. I loved it when I was alone there.
The palace was just around the corner from the Mamounia Hotel. The Mamounia is a famous hotel where Churchill and everyone had stayed. It was five stars and run by a Frenchman and it was an absolutely fantastic hotel till independence, when the king took it over. It’s still very beautiful.
Marlon Brando rented the house one time. Talitha met him in Hollywood and he said, “I’m filming in Marrakesh,” and so Talitha said, “Oh, you must stay at our house.” So we had Marlon Brando and his American-Chinese secretary. He was there about three weeks.
He arrived in a pair of stretch jeans and a jersey at the gate with his gray hair tied up in a little elastic band, out of a limousine which was so long it had to drive into the hospital grounds at the other end of the compound to turn around. It couldn’t even get into the courtyard. It was hysterical. And nothing else. Just the secretary, who immediately set about buying a toothbrush and toothpaste, a loose robe, and some slippers. He had nothing at all. Then he wanted a map of Morocco, drawing pens, and a magnifying glass, and he strolled around the garden in his white cottons and a shirt to his ankles, playing one of those African things with the metal teeth.
They were filming at night, so he slept most of the day. He was on a diet and so he only wanted filet steaks. It was in the middle of the summer and the steaks all went green in the fridge because fridges never work in hot weather. He said, “Don’t leave fruit about. I can’t eat fruit.”
He bought postcards, which I posted to hundreds of children all over the place: “Daddy wishes you were here to take a look at the mountains with him.” About six children.
One night all the lights fused in the main salon, so he said, “Does anyone have a pair of scissors and a little screwdriver?” I produced them and he spent the afternoon happily fixing the lights. He really liked that, cutting off bits of wire. But he’s a man that asks continuous questions and doesn’t always wait for the answers. It covers up big gaps in knowledge.
The only surprising thing about Brando is that he would pat my behind and say, “You’ve got a very firm ass.” When he left, he gave me a big bottle of Mitsouko and a little card that I have somewhere saying, “For God’s sake, carry on painting. Love, Marlon,” which was terribly sweet. He was terribly proper. He’s an interesting man. I thought he was nice and charming.
Finally, the great day arrived when the house was relatively complete and Paul and Talitha came for the summer with thirty or forty friends. Victoria was one of the first guests. Marianne Faithfull and Mick Jagger came sometimes. He wanted somewhere to write his music. Marianne was really out of it in those days. Paul and Talitha used to come down with the nanny and the baby when it was born, and various houseguests—people from Rome. People would look them up or appear. Two or three times a year, Christmas, Easter, later summer … we’d have households with thirty for lunch and thirty for dinner day in and day out. In the evenings I’d do a wee bit of acid, just to keep me going, and then I’d organize everything. Dinner would have to be out on the top roof under the stars, so the boy and the chef had to drag all the carpets and the cushions and tables and the poofs and everything all up there, and heavy brass trays for five or six courses up the stairs and down again. I don’t know how they managed it. Of course, I used to let them just sleep for a few months when the house was quiet. They certainly worked hard when the house was full.
Everybody had their breakfast at different times. Everyone wanted fresh orange juice. People, when they are staying with wealthy people, think they can ask for the moon. I used to have to go ’round and say, “Look here, I’m not running a hotel. This is a quiet retreat. Where do you think you are?” Christopher Gibbs wanted his newspapers ironed and the small change in his pocket washed. I said, “Well, you can get someone in England to wash your coins.”
Then the Krupps all came down to stay with Paul and Talitha. Arndt Krupp, the
armament family. Arndt is the inheritor of it all. He was married to a woman called Princess Hetti or something. She had been a penniless aristocrat looning around the Marbella Club and America and all over the place for years. I met her years ago. Big blond girl. She was one of the entourage of someone called the Marmalade Queen, Robertson’s Jam, who had a Syrian-American lover. She had big blue eyes. And Hetti and the Marmalade Queen and Bobby [the Marmalade Queen’s Syrian-American lover]. Arndt proposed to her. He was in such a state because some boyfriend he’d had a rendezvous with didn’t show up or something, and he said to this girl, “Do you want to get married?” or something. Arndt is fascinating. He’s charming and quite mad. He lives in Munich. He always had this joke that it should be Hetti Getty and Talitha and Arndt. Arndt or his father had been presented with some crummy old palace outside the walls of Marrakesh years before, and Arndt decided to look it up and do it up. So they all moved down with his mad Austrian and German friends. So it was the Gettys, the Krupps … the St. Laurents were the French contingent. It was really lunacy. Terribly funny. And everyone was smoking, if nothing else. The Krupps gave terribly funny parties. Arndt used to like sniffing poppers—amyl nitrate. There was a lot of good hash down there and a lot of alcohol, too. A lot of cocaine.
Big Paul was very shy and he used to get fed up with the house being full. All these freeloaders. Talitha was really gregarious. She liked lots of people around. So in the end Paul appeared less and less. He’d come down in the evenings and face the salon full of loons wanting to rave and he’d have a drink and put his head in the record cupboard and go for dinner and drift away again. He got into opium on one of their trips to the East, so he brought his opium back with him. He kept it in his bedroom in a jar, in water, with a cloth over it. When they were away it was my job to keep it moist. I suppose it was too dangerous or difficult or something to take to Rome. In the end nobody ever saw Paul … in ’67, ’68, and ’69 people were so into acid, opium, alcohol, coke, anything. It was rave time, and of course after all that raving it was going to lead to tears in the end.
Like that song, “Marrakesh Express.” Suddenly all these people appeared, people who had traveled halfway ’round the world to live out some songwriter’s concept. It was terribly funny. After San Francisco, it was Marrakesh.
We had to do this whole Moroccan thing. We used to have to go off to these endless Moroccan dos. They would come ’round, too. General [Mohamed] Oufkir, King Hassan’s right-hand man, before he was shot. Hassan, who was like a little Frank Sinatra, picked up and spent his whole time making golf courses. Morocco has more golf courses than anywhere in the world. So Oufkir was a professional soldier. He was the Minister of the Interior, the power behind the throne. He kept the whole place going for years. They gave him this Gendarmerie Royale to escort him, and it’s very smart. Super-royal policemen on their super motorbikes with grays and reds; they used to flash by.
They used to come over and take over the house. In the winter, the royal entourage was always on the doorstep. They used to take the Mamounia Hotel, which was part of the complex of the quarter we lived in. Paul and Talitha couldn’t do much about it. We’d get a message that Oufkir and King Hassan’s brother, Prince Moulay Abdellah, were in town and they think it would be very nice to come over for the evening. So we’d have to get dinner together and whiskey. They wanted to come and dance to Elvis Presley and drink whiskey because they couldn’t do it in public. King Hassan’s brother was very handsome. They were very grand.
The first coup and attempt on the king’s life took place at the king’s birthday party in 1970. The Belgian ambassador was shot. It was chaos. There were three coups.
After the third coup, the king decided General Oufkir was responsible. I don’t think it was him. Why after all these years should he decide he wanted the king out of the way? He had outlived his usefulness, and the king had to find a scapegoat for the public. The king is supposed to have had him shot in the antechamber. Oufkir was invited to see the king. The king retired and Oufkir was left alone in the room with two people and he was supposed to have been shot then and there.
Little Paul came once. He was twelve or so at the time. He was sent to bed and not allowed to stay up but he would sneak down the stairs and feel that all kinds of terrific stuff was going on that he wasn’t allowed to see. Big Paul used to take a lot of pictures of Talitha, Maurice, Victoria, and Paul and Christopher and all the people on opium. Talitha and Victoria were having scenes with Paul and the whole thing was getting very complicated. They’d been through so many weird scenes with Dado Ruspoli. They liked to have the grand finale at every one of these raves. I remember once they got an American film star to screw his sister. It was scandalous. Everyone screwing everyone.
Paul and Talitha had a suite at the top with a bathroom tiled like mosaic. Huge. Their double bed was made like a tent. Woven white wool lined with colored embroideries. Mosaic bath and floor. It was absolutely astounding. It had an old-fashioned French jet hose. You could hose someone down in this tiled room and they’d all get stoned and loon off up there.
You know, people lose their minds in other countries. Anything is possible. They live out their fantasies. It was the tenor of the time and it was all totally ridiculous. It was disastrous. You can’t play these games.…
After you have the beautiful dreams, they become the nightmares.
In the spring of 1968, when Paul was eleven, his father wrote to Gail suggesting that Paul come for Easter. He assured her that Talitha’s stepparents would be there, and his secretary, and he said, “It’s all going to be fine.”
Paul vividly remembered his visit to Marrakesh. It was brief, but its long-term repercussions would profoundly influence the rest of his life.
Paul:
My father took me to Marrakesh, which was just great. It was incredible. And we started a very, very good friendship. We were hand in hand and we were together with Talitha. We flew down to Casablanca, and then we drove from Casablanca to Marrakesh. On the way, the wheel burst and I fixed the wheel for him. He had the most beautiful house in Marrakesh, when Marrakesh was first starting to be discovered. It had been built by a prince, but it was ruins when he got it. It was very big, had walls around it, almost in the souk. It had three courtyards. Each had its own garden. One had the servants’ quarters and the kitchen. They cooked in the courtyard. It was also where Nicolette lived, the caretaker, who is now the cashier at the Casserole, believe it or not.
Then there was the living room and the guest bedrooms around one big—very big—courtyard with palms. And then there was the dining area, beautiful dining room, and then there was the harem, which was incredible, where I slept, with a fountain inside it and all glass. And then on top they had built their area—a bedroom. So it was absolutely immense. It covered several acres. There weren’t that many rooms, but they were so immense. Still, it wasn’t done like a prince’s place. It was nice, servants running around, music and little kids. It had a big gate, parking lot, and a little hut where the guy who opened the gate was, and I became very good friends with him. He’s an old, old man and he’s still alive. I don’t remember his name, Ali something. He always read the Koran and he tried to teach me about it. He lived in a little room for around twenty years with just a mat and a Koran and he sat for the whole day and all he did was open the door when the bell rang.
Really good people were in Marrakesh. Yves St. Laurent was there and the Stones were always there. We had great fun. We used to go around the souk on our bicycles and scream out in French. Everybody spoke French.
There were parties, but it wasn’t just parties. People got together, there was a certain community in Marrakesh. Yves St. Laurent, the Saint [Roger Moore], the Stones, the Lovin’ Spoonful, Jane Fonda and her brother, Peter.
We went once to a great party, all of us, Yves St. Laurent and the rest. We had these Berbers, from the Berber tribes, organize the party for us in this big house in the mountains. There’s Marrakesh, then this des
ert, and just beyond the desert the Atlas Mountains. The mountains are incredible. They’re so steep, all goats and monkeys. An incredible party. There was this big room and all these singers, girls dancing, and incredible mountains of food. Total luxury.
The whole thing was starting to fall into decadence. I remember this episode about a chicken. My father was a vegetarian and had convinced Talitha to become a vegetarian too. I saw her pick up a piece of chicken. I said, “What are you doing, you’re a vegetarian?” and she said, “Fuck off,” or something like that. It hurt me so much. I think I was always in love with her, you know.
But I remember vividly this party, it was incredible. I had my own area of the house and they let me decorate it. For the first time I was really on my own, like a man, and would run servants and fire gardeners and hire the whole show, and see that everybody was happy, and see that good people got in the house and not bad. The whole show, and I thought that was great. I was there a couple of months. I was going to go to school there, to a French school. I really wanted to stay there and live in Marrakesh, but then it got a little bit dangerous. My father used to be friends with Hassan, the king, and all these other important men in the government. And I remember once we had a big Christmas lunch with the Minister of War, I don’t remember his name. It was very nice, he thanked us and said, “See you tomorrow,” and the next thing he was on television in front of the firing squad. So things got too heavy and I had to go back to my mother.
I was crying, I wanted to stay there, I didn’t want to go to school and tried to convince Talitha to convince my father, but there was no way. And then all of a sudden I had to go back.
