Life Worth Living (14 page)

The English, I’m afraid to say, were of no interest to me. Whether they were princes or paupers, they brought out in me an
ennui
which was rooted in my childhood feelings about my Smedmore relations. Although I was happy to become friends with people I liked, my set was more cosmopolitan. And London, it emerged, was an ideal base, for it had a large international community: there were Americans, such as Peter and Brookie van Gerbig, Huntington Hartford and Kurt Newmann, and a plethora of Europeans and Middle Easterners. Moreover, one could live there very well on a modest allowance (England was much cheaper in those days). To repay hospitality and to occupy myself, I used to have drinks parties for twenty or so friends every week or two. On one occasion Stanley Vaughan asked if he could bring along the actor Terence Stamp, who had a set of chambers at Albany near Stanley’s. This was a difficult period for Terry. His career was in the doldrums, and he was virtually a recluse, so I was happy to say yes and contribute to Stanley’s attempts to cheer him up. When he arrived, however, he bolted straight into my bedroom, lodged himself between the chest of drawers and the wall, and refused to budge. Nothing Stanley could do would convince him to join the party, and in despair he came into the drawing room and asked me what he should do. I set my jaw and in we sailed to the bedroom, where Terry was cowering.

‘What’s wrong, Terry?’ I asked.

‘I can’t face your friends. No one wants to meet a has been.’

‘Nonsense,’ I said, marching over to him. ‘Everyone is very keen to meet you. They’ve all seen you in
Billy Budd
and God knows what else.’ I took his hand in mine. ‘Better to be a has-been than a never-was, Terry.’ I yanked him up with a smile. If you could have seen his face. He looked just like a little boy who had been given an ice cream. I linked arms with him, walked him through to the drawing room, introduced him to everyone, and of course he was a big hit.

Sarah Spencer-Churchill and the Onassises got to Greece around this time, but by now I was in no mood to leave London, because I was having a furiously intense romance with Serge Beddington-Behrens. Serge was the son of Princess Irina Obolensky and Sir Edward Beddington-Behrens, the famous banker who bailed out King George V when Daisy, Countess of Warwick blackmailed the royal family over her love affair with his father King Edward VII. He was well off and had a fabulous art collection featuring Augustus Johns and Picassos left to him by his father. He was tall, blond and slim, not really my physical type – I liked men to be hunky and burly – but the force of his ardour and personality was such that I quickly overcame that reservation. When he proposed marriage after our third date, I
was truly thrown off balance. Not only was I becoming increasingly keen on him, but it seemed he wanted what I wanted. Only too soon, however, it became apparent that Serge and I were hopelessly mismatched. He might have been a tiger in bed, but he had turned his back on the ‘smart’ way of life and lived almost like a hippy. I did not even own a pair of jeans, an oversight which he rectified promptly, but try as he might, he could not wean me off dressing up and going to smart places with my friends. Nor could he convert me to his vegetarian, macrobiotic diet. I loved meat and fish and all the things he deplored, and while I was prepared to accept him as he was without changing him, he was not prepared to do likewise. By the time we finally parted later that year, we could not be in the same room without shouting at each other – unless, of course, we were making love. That remained as passionate as it had been at the beginning, but my God, was I glad to have some peace and quiet, even if I lost out on the most fantastic lovemaking a girl could have.

But the break-up of my romance with Serge was so bitter that it jolted me to my core, and I really do not know what I would have done without the support of my little sister Margaret, who was at school in England, Mary Anne Innes-Ker and my dear friend Mary Michele Rutherfurd (whose step-grandmother, Lucy Mercer, was President Roosevelt’s great love and with him when he died). I decided that I really needed a break from men. Much as I loved them, they could be a thankless task and I wanted time and space to regroup. So what if I didn’t get married right now? I was only twenty-four. I could afford to wait. Why not try to have a career that interested me, and which could keep me, if not in the style to which I was accustomed (that I didn’t expect – it took too much money), then at least in reasonable grace? In one respect, Serge had done me a favour. He was as interested in the human condition as I was. While we had radically different ideas and approaches, he had inadvertently shown me that the psychiatrist from the Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York had been right: I had somehow picked up the secret of happiness.

Looking around, I saw practically everyone else floundering in a morass of uncertainty, needlessly making real hashes of their lives. I will write a book on philosophy, I decided, and plunged straight into it. All day, every day, my ideas poured out on to the page. In the evenings, I frequently went out with friends to dinner and parties or to Tramp, the discotheque part owned by Jackie Collins’ husband and Johnny Gold. The dancing was better there than at Annabel’s, and while I knew fewer of the members, I was most entertained when types like Bianca Jagger and Ryan O’Neal approached me with a view to getting to know me better.

That November, I broke my writing routine to go to a Thanksgiving luncheon, only because the host, Dulany Howland, another American aristocrat living in London at the time (and now married into the Hunt family), was a dear friend. But when you least expect to meet a man is when you trip over a prince among men. One of Dulany’s guests was a tall, blond, attractive American named David Koch, who was visiting England. I had no idea he was one of the richest men in the world, which was just as well. Had I known, I would probably
have hung back, for the one thing I cannot stand is people who suck up to the super-rich. As it was, we got along so well that he asked me out to dinner at Parkes, a chic restaurant on Beauchamp Place. So began a truly lovely swansong to the only period of my life that was truly carefree.

Within weeks, London was in the grip of the three day week. Every day there were power cuts, and, while I could live by candlelight, I was not prepared to freeze to death without central heating. So, early in December, I hopped on a plane to New York to stay with Sarah Spencer-Churchill at her East Seventy-Second Street townhouse prior to returning home for Christmas. While I was there, I got to know David better – a lot better. Although he was a considerate lover, I did not feel the passion for him that I had felt for Serge, but he was such a nice person, with such a sterling character, that I began to doubt the wisdom of my requirement for sexual fireworks. Without exactly categorising him as a marital prospect, I began wondering if I shouldn’t add him to my list.

In January David came to Jamaica to spend a weekend with me and edged even closer to the list because of the way he handled me and my brother. Mickey was my chaperone, David had asked Roger Samet and I had invited my childhood friend Judy Ann MacMillan, the celebrated artist, to complete the house party. Mickey, who, by his own admission, had a controlling spirit, obstructed me at every turn, doing everything in his power to become the centre of all activity. I became so furious that I rounded upon him during dinner on the Saturday evening.

‘Are you trying to ruin our weekend?’ was only one of the more delicate questions I shrieked at him.

David’s response endeared him to me as nothing else could have. ‘Brothers. I know all about them. I’ve got three.’ Years later, two of them, Billy (of Americas Cup fame) and Freddy (the owner of Sutton Place), ended up in very public litigation with David and his eldest brother, so I dare say he knew even more about fraternal strife than I realised.

But for now romance took a back seat to my book on philosophy, which I finished in February 1973. For once, Daddy was encouraging, and even paid for a secretary for the chore of professional presentation. Once it was all typed up, I prepared to leave for New York, where I intended to stay until I found a good agent and/or publisher. I was to be put up by Jeanie Campbell, second wife of Norman Mailer and the daughter of the 11
^th
Duke of Argyll. As I boarded the flight to New York, my glory days were about to end.

A
t the age of twenty-seven, Lord Colin Campbell was a textbook romantic figure. Tall, dark and handsome, he captured the spirit of the age with just the right mixture of adventurousness and nonconformity. Three-quarters American, and raised in upstate New York for much of his childhood, he had left school at fifteen, and gone to work as a jackeroo in Australia before becoming a deep sea diver in Fiji. In between, he had worked for a short while as an assistant to Jasper Johns in New York; tried living in London doing nothing but having a good time; and bummed around Australia and New Zealand doing a bit of manual work and having a lot of fun. So international was he that even his accent was firmly planted in the middle of the Atlantic, with the result that he sounded British to the Americans and American to the British. His manner and behaviour certainly owed more to his American than his British heritage, which gave him a robustness few lords shared.

Colin was Jeanie’s brother, the younger son of the 11th Duke of Argyll and his second wife, Louise Clews. He had the strongest personality of anyone I had ever met – he simply exuded strength, decisiveness and charm. Within minutes of crossing the threshold of Jeanie’s Park Avenue apartment en route to Paris to see his stepmother, he had the guests assembled for his ‘homecoming’ party in his thrall. Jeanie had warned me about him in motherly fashion before he arrived.

‘Colin is very good-looking and loves beautiful girls. I’m sure he’ll be smitten by you. Don’t make the mistake of going to bed with him. He’ll lose respect for you if you do. He doesn’t admire girls of easy virtue.’

‘I know the type only too well,’ I said. ‘My mother always says my father was like that when he was a younger man.’

In fact, upon meeting Colin, I was not at all moved in a personal sense. He certainly wasn’t my type. Although he was tall, he was thin as a stick with the aura of a lone and hungry wolf. He gave off none of the ‘vibes’ that sexual men do, but he had a captivating manner and was undoubtedly entertaining. By the time the other guests had left and he, Jeanie and I set off for P.J. Clarke’s to have a hamburger, I liked him enormously.

‘It’s time I went to bed,’ Jeanie declared at about 11.30. ‘You two stay and talk. You seem to be getting on so well.’

‘My body clock’s askew. You will stay up with me, won’t you?’ the charming Colin said pleadingly. Two hours later, he said, ‘I feel as if I’ve known you forever.’

‘I do too,’ I replied truthfully.

‘Why don’t you come to Paris with me? It would be great. Then I wouldn’t be lonely. You have no idea how lonely it gets always being on your own.’

Genuinely touched, I said, ‘I would if I could. But my father would freak out if he heard that I’d made off across the Atlantic with someone I’d just met.’

We adjourned to Jeanie’s sitting room, where we had a typically seventies young people’s conversation. Colin evinced great concern for living life on the ‘real’ instead of the ‘bullshit’ level, which led me to believe we had a great deal in common. My book, after all, was titled
The Substance and the Shadow
, and dealt with how false values destroyed people’s lives. By this time, I thought he was a great guy, so when he leaned over to kiss me, I let him. Within seconds he was getting all hot and heavy. Pushing him firmly away, I said, ‘Colin, the apartment’s full of people.’

‘No one will come in,’ he said.

‘They might.’

‘They won’t,’ he said, pressing me.

‘Colin, no. I really mean it.’

‘You’re not a virgin, are you?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I laughed. ‘But if it will keep you from exerting pressure, then I recommend that you view me as one.’

‘You’ve got principles, haven’t you?’

‘I hope so.’

‘Will you marry me?’

‘What did you say?’ I was not sure if I’d heard properly.

‘Will you marry me? You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. I feel as if I’ve known you all my life. Jeanie says you’re from a good family, and you’ve got character. You’re everything I want in a wife. And, before you answer, she can tell you I’ve always been a confirmed bachelor. I never thought I’d meet anyone I’d want to marry. This may sound spur-of-the-moment, but I’ve never been surer of anything in my life. You’re the girl for me. Please say you’ll marry me.’

Stunned. That’s what I was. Stunned. Serge Beddington-Behrens had proposed to me on our third date, but that was after three days of constant togetherness and serious nookie. Colin, however, didn’t know me at all. Should I respect or be watchful of such decisiveness? I barely knew him; on the other hand, I was captivated by him. I really did feel as if I’d known him all my life.

There seemed to be parallels between the way Colin was starting this relationship and the way Serge had started ours. Maybe this was my opportunity to rectify what had gone wrong with Serge. Perhaps if I had matched Serge’s initial commitment, instead of holding back until I was sure, our relationship would have turned out differently. Maybe Daddy
was right. Just before I’d left for New York, he had come into my bedroom after hearing Mickey ribbing me about David. ‘David’s so boring,’ my brother had said. ‘All he can talk about is his oil tankers. I give you another two months before you replace him with a stud.’

‘What’s wrong with you, my girl?’ Daddy had demanded. ‘You discard men other girls would give their eye teeth for. When are you going to face up to facts and settle down? All this talk about love is just romantic nonsense. It doesn’t last. It’s no basis for a marriage. What are you waiting for? The perfect man doesn’t exist, so there’s no point in being too critical. Just find a kind and decent man who can afford to give you the necessary luxuries of life, and get your head out of the clouds.’

Perhaps I was too picky. Maybe what I thought was sensible idealism was unrealistic romanticism. Whatever the uncertainties, I knew one thing. I was smitten by Colin, and I did not want to wreck this relationship with too much prevarication. I stalled for time gently.

‘Colin, we barely know each other.’

‘But you yourself just said that you also feel as if we’ve known each other for ever,’ he protested.

‘I know. But marriage is a very big step.’

‘You’re not saying no, are you?’ he asked, a look of absolute terror on his face.

‘No, of course not. I just think we should wait a bit before we come to a decision.’

‘I have an idea. Why don’t we ask Jeanie what she thinks?’

‘That’s a good idea,’ I said, grateful for the opportunity to postpone this discussion until the morning.

By this time, it was nearly four o’clock and I was dog-tired. But without more ado, Colin marched straight into Jeanie’s bedroom and woke her up. Within minutes, he was back in the living room, grabbing me by the hand and wheeling me in to see Jeanie.

‘She thinks it’s marvellous,’ he said, to my consternation.

Once more, I gently counselled waiting, but it was to no avail. ‘Whether any marriage works is the luck of the draw,’ Jeanie opined. ‘I’ve known people who got married a week after meeting who are still happily married years later, and people who knew each other beforehand for years, only to divorce within a few months.’

‘Ian proposed to Iona the first night they met, and they’ve been happily married for ten years,’ Colin said. Ian was his elder brother. Jeanie suggested we phoned him and shared the good news with him.

While the call to Scotland was being placed, I tried to think the whole thing through sensibly. What did I really want? Did I want to get married? The answer to that was a resounding yes. The only problem to date had been the husband. Well, here was a tall, dark, handsome twenty-seven-year-old with a bewitching personality and the same outlook on life as mine. Admittedly, I did not know him, but I did know Jeanie. Rather naïvely, I assumed that her brother would have ‘good’ values like her own, especially after the in-depth philosophising we had just indulged in on the sofa. Moreover, Jeanie was a robust individualist, rather like me, and Colin seemed to be the same. After men like Bill Madden, that was an attribute not to be underestimated. So, too, were the sparks of excitement that flew from him. He was certainly a far more exciting proposition than David Koch, good character and hundreds of millions of dollars aside. And last, but not least, though I was not yet in love with Colin, I knew myself well enough to know that that process had already started.

Jeanie and Colin made assent easy for me. I never did actually accept the proposal; I only had to allow myself to be swept up the aisle to reach the destination desired by most girls of my age in that era, myself included. After Colin and Jeanie had spoken to Ian, who seemed as thrilled about the news as his siblings, Colin and I went into the living room to talk some more. Now that he had my agreement, he was keen for me to appreciate one or two important details about him. The first was that he had a chronic stomach problem. That only triggered off a powerful resonance within me, for my father had had a similar condition throughout my early childhood. It therefore brought me closer to him than he could have realised.

It was also with relief that I heard Colin say, ‘I don’t want children. You can’t marry me if you want children. I never want children – they just ain’t my thing.’

I did not answer. I wanted children, but, unless medical science progressed astonishingly rapidly while I was still young enough, I would be more likely to win the lottery than to have a baby in the normal manner. This did not seem a suitable time to discuss adoption, however, so I remained silent. It did not occur to me then that Colin might have known something about my past, and might be deliberately pushing my buttons. Only after we were married did he let on that he knew Jamaica well, and that he had heard all about me and my family long before he met me. Jeanie had a house, Hopewell, outside Kingston in Irish Town. He had even stayed on the island for several months a few years before, on another property near Irish Town, Middleton. According to him, he planted a crop of ganja, for his own personal use of course, which the police got wind of. He recounted in true raconteur fashion how he got home from a hard day’s drinking to discover that the police had raided the property, forcing him to flee the island before he got into trouble. Whether he was merely entertaining me, or recounting something that really happened, I did not know then.

It was at this juncture that Colin gave the first indication that he was a tough operator. He said, ‘Will you sign a document waiving all claims on my trust fund if things don’t work out between us? I don’t mean to be mercenary, but the income it
generates is so small that it’s not even enough for me to live off.’

‘Sure,’ I agreed, missing the warning light.

Colin immediately went back into Jeanie’s bedroom, got a sheet of paper from a writing pad and wrote out a comprehensive renunciation of my rights to alimony. This I gladly signed.

Disillusionment, however, was still in the future that first night. By the time we reached our beds, it was nearly daylight. I half expected the idea to have gone off the boil by the next day. Colin and Jeanie had other ideas, however. She made a few telephone calls and ascertained that we could not be married in New York for eleven days, but that we could marry forty-eight hours after establishing residency in Elkton, Maryland.

‘I married Jackie, my second husband, in Elkton,’ Jeanie said. ‘It’s the Gretna Green of the eastern seaboard. We can hire a car and drive there. What fun.’

‘It might be more convenient for you if we did it here,’ I said, still stalling.

‘I couldn’t wait eleven days,’ Colin said almost recriminatingly. ‘Don’t you want us to be married as soon as possible?’

Melting in the heat of such ardour, I let brother and sister make their plans. Afterwards, Jeanie and Patricia Fleischmann, widow of the publisher of the
New Yorker
, took me for a girls’ lunch, during which Jeanie once more swept aside my misgivings at the speed of it all.

‘Colin really is a very sweet man,’ she reassured me. ‘And I’m so happy he’s finally getting the happiness he deserves. His mother was absolutely beastly to him when he was a little boy. She had him to preserve her marriage to my father, and when that didn’t work, and her lover, the Czar’s nephew, Prince Dmitri of Russia, refused to marry her, she took out all her spite on Colin. He was such a sweet little boy, too.’

My sympathy duly engaged, I decided to stop trying to put on the brakes and start enjoying the romance of the whole episode. After all, how many times in a girl’s life would she have the chance to elope with a handsome, dashing man? If I were going to throw caution to the winds and run off with a delectable stranger, I might as well enjoy it.

Romance aside, there were practicalities which had to be dealt with. My wedding dress was the first. Fortunately, I had a new evening dress all in white, which would save me traipsing around New York searching for a gown when I had no time to spare. And then there was the question of how to break the news to David that I was marrying someone else. I telephoned him and asked him if we could substitute our dinner date for that evening with a drink at seven, as I had something important to tell him. When he arrived, he found me accompanied by his good friend Roger Samet, whom I had asked to be there in case David needed comforting. I dropped my bombshell, they congratulated me and David and I remained friends.

Rather more onerous was the next task I had to face. If I were going to marry Colin, I had to tell him about my past difficulties. The next afternoon, while Colin was resting in his nieces’ bedroom, I joined him. He stirred as soon as I entered the room.

‘Hi,’ he said easily, as if we had been together for years.

‘Hi,’ I mirrored. ‘Listen, Colin, there’s something we must talk about. It’s rather awkward, I’m afraid.’

‘You’re not going to back out, are you?’ he said with that terrified look on his face again.

‘No, of course not,’ I smiled.

‘You told your parents and they’re against it.’

I laughed. ‘We agreed I wouldn’t tell them until afterwards. Daddy can’t prevent a fait accompli, but he can make a monumental fuss beforehand.’