• 16 •

Swiss Interlude

Switzerland was at present my Shangri-la. Gstaad attracted the rich, powerful, and famous. Yet, at heart, it remained a mountain village. Cowbells rang and echoed through the passes. Large tin containers on the milk wagon jangled as it bobbed along the cobbled mountain streets on its way from the Molkerei to the hotels and restaurants. Fresh summer breezes carried the evergreen scent of pine. The glaciers glistened in the sunlight like ornaments atop a circle of massive Christmas trees. Villagers were solid, hardworking folk amazingly tolerant of the multinational strangers who invaded their peaceful community. An enigma existed here as well. For although countrified, Gstaad was the host to some of the world’s most sophisticated people as well as being far ahead of London and other cities I knew in technical equipment and service.

Unlike Klosters, Gstaad had not attracted any of my expat friends, although it was a part-time home to a small group of film folk who were keen on winter sports and the absence of paparazzi. I found myself somewhat isolated, perhaps by my own making. The problem with my leg made me fearful of skiing and après-ski gatherings bored me. I am not at my best with small talk or gossip. I withdraw into myself at such get-togethers. Ever the writer, I become the observer. Dialogue lodges in my brain as if on a mental disk. I missed the most remembered refrains—or those to be placed on file. There was a hole that “we three” had occupied for so many years. My love was not diminished, but I had to accept the reality that both Catherine and Michael were now adults with lives independent of mine. However, loneliness did not overcome me—even with Leon’s long periods away. I had my writing, Jay was ever present, Catherine just a short distance by train. I rather quickly made a few new friends, and my house appeared to be on the stopover for numerous old American friends on European tours. If I had one wish, it would have been that Michael was not at such a distance. But he was currently speechwriting and campaigning for hopeful candidates in the coming state elections.

Jay, quite open in his sexual orientation now, had made a connection with a cultured group of gentlemen of his like who pivoted around Chalet Coward in Les Avants, about an hour’s drive from Gstaad. Noël Coward spent the spring and summer in this his beloved retreat, shared with his longtime lover, Graham Payn, who had first entered Coward’s life at the age of fourteen back in 1932 when he auditioned for a role in Coward’s Words and Music by singing “Nearer, My God, to Thee” while doing a tap dance (quite a “feet”!). Noël was so startled that he hired him on the spot. Payn was Coward’s protégé for the next decade and had cast him in numerous plays to sing, in his strong baritone voice, many of his romantic songs, in hopes that the young man would become a star. That was never to be, possibly because Payn, although talented and good looking, did not have the ambition, which had first been his mother’s and then Coward’s. With Payn in his early twenties, and two decades Coward’s junior, the two men began their lifetime partnership as a couple. Payn presided over their homes and was dearly loved by Coward, who called him “Little Lad.”

Born with the century, Coward was sixty-nine, Payn, a dapper man of fifty, still extremely youthful in appearance. He possessed a dry wit, clever enough to keep up with Coward and their close circle of adroit companions who, when winter approached Les Avants (no member being even mildly inclined toward snow sports), followed the sun with the couple from Chalet Coward to their second home, Firefly, in Jamaica. But some of their members remained in Les Avants, to Jay’s great joy. The town (a village much like Gstaad) overlooked the city of Montreux, with Chillon and an excellent library close by for me to do my research. Jay accompanied me there once or twice a week. Montreux was a jazz center with many jazz clubs and fine dining restaurants frequented by nearby residents of Les Avants and Vevey, which included Coward, Payn, and members of their entourage—Cole Lesley (Coward’s secretary, collaborator, confidant—and later—biographer), and whoever was his guest at the time. I had a somewhat tenuous connection to this traveling group of players through Jay, who met them within a month of arriving in Switzerland.

I never knew (nor inquired) how Jay, for a time, at least, became a fringe member of Coward’s household. I assumed he had become acquainted during evenings when I had decided to remain overnight in Montreux to return to Chillon early the next morning. I had bought him a silver Volkswagen Beetle that was easy to shepherd through the often narrow mountain passes. Before long he told me he would be going into Montreux for the weekend, adding—a bit later—that he had spent time at Chalet Coward and had become friends with Cole Lesley, a charming man, who did come to Gstaad upon occasion. After Jay’s new acquaintanceship began, his attire grew impressively more fashionable. He wore a blazer, with a cravat and matching pocket square, when we ventured into town to have dinner. For Christmas he received from a mysterious sender (not revealed to me) a smart, Asian-style lounging robe. Years later, at a party Elaine Dundy gave in London, which Cole Lesley and I both attended, he asked about Jay. I had to convey the sad news that he had died. Cole said, “I was truly sorry to have lost touch with him. We had some memorable times together. I was very fond of Jay.” I wanted to say, “and he of you,” but I just smiled.

The imminence of Coward’s seventieth birthday had become a national celebration in England. His old shows and reviews with his music were currently occupying London’s theaters. He was, however, in declining health and spent what time he could in Les Avants (and later at Firefly) painting (an avocation Payn shared with much talent) and to conserve his lagging energy. I had not met Noël Coward, but I was a great admirer of his special oeuvre. Among Judy’s letters in my inherited boxes was a warm, flattering, and gracious one he had written to her after her famous 1963 Carnegie Hall concert. With all the moving about, the near homelessness she had endured, the lengthy hospital stays, and hard times, she had kept few mementos. She obviously had treasured Coward’s letter, I was sure, as such praise from a man she so admired must have meant a great deal to her. I thought he might like to know that. I wrote him a short note explaining how I happened to have possession of his letter, adding that I thought he might be warmed by the knowledge that Judy had kept it with her until the end of her life.

Coward swiftly replied. Knowing that the letter had been held so dearly by Judy Garland—“one of the world’s greatest entertainers”—had “brought tears to an old man’s eyes.” We had a small exchange of letters after that. I wrote to congratulate him on his investiture as Knight Bachelor the following February, the honor long overdue—many thought because of his homosexuality. However, he was a great friend of the Queen Mother and of Princess Margaret, as well, and loved being in both their company. Whatever the reason for the delay, he now had “Sir” as a title and I was not sure how I should address him. I wrote:

Dear Sir (?)

Dear Sir Noël (?)

Dear Sir Noël Coward (?)

Dear Sir Coward (?)

Please excuse the ignorance of a girl from the Colonies, but I am not sure how to correctly address you.

He replied:

Dear Madam

Dear Ms. Anne Edwards

Dear Mrs. Anne Edwards-Becker

Dear me! Owing to my ignorance of proper American etiquette, I am not sure how to address YOU. [Then he continued:]

Dear, Dear Lady:

I accept your kind words with deep gratitude.

[He signed the short letter] Yours, Noël Coward.

A parade of good friends visited me in Gstaad throughout the summer months, among them the author-screenwriter Vera Caspary, who at seventy had more vitality than any of the young people Catherine brought home from college. Short and spunky, she hiked for miles accompanied by other guests (I was not much on walks over a mile!). Vera was marvelous company. She always had a good story to tell (the stories seeming to be amplified with each retelling). The Chicago doctor who had delivered her was a Doctor Frankenstein (a fact that stimulated her interest in my current work in progress). In her youth, Vera had been an editor of a dance magazine and the pseudonymous author of mail-order pamphlets on how to dance “by following the step patterns within” (her invention). She had also had a stint as a fortune teller in a Gypsy tearoom before writing her first novel, The White Girl, which was an instant success. Best known for having created Laura (as a play, then a novel, and finally as a film that would become a classic), her career as a screenwriter, mostly at 20th Century-Fox, had brought her a dozen fine credits including A Letter to Three Wives, Three Husbands, Give a Girl a Break, and Les Girls. She was known as a pitch artist—a writer who could go into a producer’s office and in fifteen minutes or less could sell a story she created on the spot. Her success, she claimed, was due to the fact that she always based her stories on the same framework—three women caught up in a predicament that was not solved until moments before the closing credits. Her trick was to place each story in a different setting, and give them a surprise twist. Three was the magic number, she insisted, never two or four. She claimed she sold the studio a story idea titled Three Coins in a Fountain in five minutes—just by placing three girls in Rome to find their true loves, who meet at Rome’s legendary Trevi Fountain where each makes a secret wish and throws a coin into its waters. Vera’s contribution to the film went uncredited.

A spirited woman with glacial blue eyes and a determined chin, Vera had a sharp mind and an inflexible will. She did not suffer prigs or pretenders easily and was quick to lash out at them in a voice containing a scratch, as though being stretched too far, and often in uninhibited language. An early fighter for women’s rights, she believed in free love but, after eight years, had married her longtime lover, Igee (Isador Goldsmith)—only recently deceased. At 20th she had rebelled against the lack of air-conditioning in the Writers Building by working at her trusty typewriter in the nude (and soon got an air conditioner as the male writers in the studio lost too much time seeing how she was getting along). I greatly admired Vera’s candidness and honesty. She was a good friend, loyal, understanding, and not reticent in contributing her true feelings and advice, always given with an attitude of “this is what I think—do with it what you wish.”

Although not blacklisted, Vera returned to the novel form, as her openly expressed left-wing views still made her unemployable in Hollywood. She loved my present story Haunted Summer (“the Dr. Frankenstein connection,” she laughed, “and all that young fucking!”) and accompanied Jay and me to Chillon several times. She and Jay bantered back and forth on our road trips. Of whether Jay and Cole Lesley were lovers, she said: “Of course, a skinny, unattractive man like Cole Lesley is attracted to Jay. He worked for and among some of the most famous of Hollywood’s philistines [referring to his previous associations with Garson Kanin, Ruth Gordon, Katharine Hepburn, Carmen Miranda, and Tallulah Bankhead] and he is fresh fruit to a gay Englishman like Lesley, especially since Jay falls to his knees as soon as he hears an English accent!”

No one could replace Salka’s dear friendship (and guidance) in Klosters, but Vera’s lively stays with me in Gstaad were much appreciated. Work on Welcome to the Club, Leon’s current film, kept him in Denmark for all of the summer and most of the fall. I had spent two weeks with him in Copenhagen and he took several weekend breaks in Switzerland. Once she was settled at Leysin, Catherine did not come home every weekend, but when she did she often brought friends. I was possessed by my work on Haunted Summer, driven by my need to deliver the completed manuscript to my publisher by the spring of the coming year. I had the company of Jay and some new, interesting friends. Yet, my life was absent of elements that remained important to me. I deeply missed being a part of my old group of expats and writing buddies who, when they traveled to Switzerland, chose Klosters over Gstaad as a place of respite. My reconciliation with Leon had been less successful than I had hoped it might be, chiefly because he was seldom there to share with me the experience of everyday life. I came to understand how army wives must feel. We were living separate lives and, in my case, there were no ties of family and home to bind us. Switzerland’s property laws allowed foreigners to buy property only for a one-year period between two seven-year, nonpurchasing periods. That time slot was approaching, as was the expiration of the six-month lease on my current rental. I suggested to Leon that we might do well to look for a suitable house, if we could buy it at a good price. He agreed, with seeming enthusiasm, that we should have a real home and that Gstaad was an excellent choice. With the help of a real estate agent, I started a search for properties in our price range. One, Chalet Fleur-de-Lis, strongly appealed to me. The next time Leon was in Gstaad, we toured it together and agreed that it was the right place.

As most structures in Gstaad, Chalet Fleur-de-Lis adhered to the Swiss village fashion dating back to the nineteenth century (and probably much earlier), in which the exterior of buildings had a sameness, a kind of ski-lodge look that was not exactly ugly, in fact, was rather charming (especially in the warm months when a profusion of bright-colored geraniums bloomed in window boxes), but allowed no building to stand out. The view, however, from the generous windows facing front, was spectacular with the village below like a Disney fantasy, in the distance the tall mountains and the ice-tipped glacier. When I first saw the chalet, the lower mountains were carpeted in brilliant shades of wildflowers. But one could imagine the transforming beauty when in winter Gstaad became a glistening white wonderland.

The interior had capacious rooms, with high ceilings and wood beams. There was a handsome, solid staircase of light wood. The sound factor in the living room (or salon, as it was called) was perfect for a piano. A long balcony overlooked the front and would be lovely for spring and summer lunches, especially when outfitted with pots of bright flowers. And there was a complete apartment on the lower level with a separate entrance, perfect for Jay. Best of all, the place was in excellent condition with an up-to-date kitchen and bathrooms. Except for some personal decorating touches, no great outlay of money had to be spent in renovations.

Directly below us on the mountain where Chalet Fleur-de-Lis stood was Yehudi Menuhin’s chalet compound with its private yoga building. I confess to imagining musical evenings held when he was in residence (which did not occur).

Chalet Fleur-de-Lis was close enough to walk down to the village. The return trip would be a steep climb, however, so I did not envision myself trooping back on foot or bicycle. The property was owned by an English family, meaning we could purchase it with pounds (my contribution coming from my British earnings) and not lose anything on a money exchange. Leon and I agreed that I would be responsible for the down payment (50 percent of the agreed sale price of forty-seven thousand pounds) while Leon would take care of the monthly mortgage payments on the loan for the remaining sum. The deal could not be closed until the following year, and our current lease expired at the end of October. The owner, a Mrs. Maitland, kindly allowed me to rent the chalet (which was not presently occupied) until the time when a sale could be put through and executed, the outlay to be deducted from the sale price. She was also happy to leave the piano and some of the furniture that, if we chose, we could buy at the time of final purchase. For Leon the chalet would provide a financial base, which demanded only a small amount of Swiss taxation and gave legitimacy to his tax situation in Great Britain. For me it would be a home.

With Jay’s help and additional assistance from local workers we moved into Chalet Fleur-de-Lis in mid-October. The first snows of the season had turned the outside world into a dazzle of brilliant white during the day, the sun still shining high in the azure sky. We had, I felt, bought ourselves a parcel of paradise. The next morning I awoke to the sound of a lashing wind whipping around the corners of the house. I could barely see through the broad windows of the room as my new world was veiled in a thick, gray mountain mist that brought Wuthering Heights to mind. Had I made a terrible mistake? I admit to having some thoughts that it was possible. Then, about noon, the sun finally emerged to renew and reinforce my enthusiasm.

Jay maintained his privacy, but we generally ate our meals together and he was always a part of any gathering I managed to put together. Cole Lesley joined us once and Jay, not usually so forthcoming, was wildly entertaining, doing an imitation of Carmen Miranda while holding with one hand a flowering plant on his head as he gyrated with great agility to a record of one of the Brazilian Bombshell’s famous songs, aping her inimitable accent. We were joined by a new friend, Dale Witt, a unique American woman, recently widowed and an architect of some note.

Dale and her husband had made a fortune by successfully combining their talents—he as a builder and she as the architect—to create huge tracts of medium-income houses in Florida at the end of the Korean War, increasing their success in the decades that followed. They had worked such long hours during those years that they were left with little time for vacations or just that special time together. Then he had died of a sudden heart attack. It was only then that Dale realized just how much money they had accumulated. So furious was she that it had cheated her of the years together in which they had planned to explore the world once their children were grown, she turned the business over to a management team, sold her house, bought a seaworthy yacht, took a month of navigational training, and with three of her children (the fourth and oldest, a son attending an American university, remained behind) and a staff of two—neither experienced sailors—took off from Fort Lauderdale traveling eastward to Johannesburg, South Africa. Dale’s prejourney nautical studies had not left her time for the matter of bringing a boat of that size into port. She crashed into the dock, left the boat there, and hired a safari crew (to see—not hunt—wildlife) to take her and her brood through the wilds of South Africa. After several months of travel, she realized her three younger children had to return to school. Thus her choice of Gstaad, Switzerland, with Le Rosey and several other fine schools nearby.

When the foreign right to purchase property law came into effect, Dale bought land on the very top of our mountain and designed a spectacular house with a 360-degree sash of nonreflecting window glass circling it. To reach the house, a funicular had to be constructed. One had to park one’s vehicle below to be carried upward to her unique private ski lodge in the sky. I don’t know how she was able to get the Swiss (normally a conservative people) to grant her permits for such an unusual house. But Dale was a most beautiful and determined woman (becoming a female architect in the States in the 1940s had not been an easy task either!).

I would have many adventures with Dale in Gstaad and beyond. Dale and Jay got on famously, Dale and Leon—not so.

Early one Sunday morning in January, Catherine and I were seated across from each other at the small kitchen table when Jay advanced, shouting up the stairs, “Give it to me! Biba! Give it to me!”

Our smallest poodle streaked into the kitchen with Jay in hot pursuit. She circled our table and then, as Jay went to grab her, scooted underneath it and out the other side into the connecting laundry room, Jay finally closing in on her.

“Give it to me!” he ordered as he swooped her up in his arms. I now could see that Biba had something grasped between her jaws.

“What is it?” I cried out, unable to clearly identify the object but guessing it was a bone of some sort.

Jay pulled Biba’s jaws apart, grabbed the item, dropped Biba to the floor, and held it up in the air.

“MY TEETH!” he bellowed, as Biba darted under the table again. Catherine and I stood up somewhat aghast. Jay was holding a well-gnawed set of false dentures.

“Oh my God!” he cried and then clasped his free hand over his mouth. By now Chrissy and Sandy had come on the run from another part of the house to see what all the noise was about, adding to the confusion with a foray of arrival barks.

In all the time Jay had been with me I had not been aware that the even, white, toothy smile he exhibited was dentist constructed. Nor, for that matter, had Catherine and I think most other people. We were to find out later that it had been crafted by the artistry of one of Beverly Hills’ most famous celebrity dentists (Clark Gable’s false teeth being his best kept secret—to the public, but not the cognoscenti).

Jay put them down on the table, Biba quivering beneath it. I lowered my gaze to study this dentilabial work of art, now resembling a jawbone of a prehistoric man found in some ancient digging.

“They are ruined! Ruined!” he cried in exasperation and collapsed into a chair. “And it’s Sunday!” He clasped both hands over his mouth this time.

I had to agree, the teeth were a mess.

“There is a dentist in Saanen,” I added, trying to be helpful. “This is an emergency. I’m sure a dentist would go into his office, even on a Sunday, for an emergency.”

Catherine had been silenced by her astonishment until now. “I don’t think a small town like Saanen would have a dental laboratory,” she said.

“Oh my God!” cried Jay again. “It could be days—a week! I can’t be seen like this! Toothless!” He exhibited an exaggerated, cadaver-like, pink-gum smile.

“How did it happen?” Catherine asked.

“When I was in the bathroom, she knocked over the glass on my bed table that I keep them in at night. When I came out—there she was—the little bitch—chewing on them as if they were a bone!”

“I’ll try to call that dentist in Saanen,” my daughter said sensibly and was instantly on the telephone with a directory assistant. In less than an hour we were in the dentist’s office. The teeth were beyond repair, but he took a full-mouth impression and promised to send it express to a laboratory in Bern. Jay refused to leave the house for the five days it took for the new set to be delivered to Saanen. Biba kept her distance from Jay during this time. But, once his new teeth were installed, she jumped up onto his lap, stretching her snout close to his face to sniff at them. Jay grabbed her and put her down on the floor with some force.

“They are not a bone, you thieving bitch!” he said in a tight voice.

Previous to this incident, Jay (who, by the way, loved dogs) had always favored Biba, and she had followed him everywhere and had slept on and at the foot of his bed. She must have yearned to get ahold of those teeth for a very long time before making her bold move. Jay’s bedroom door was now locked to her. She slept in the hallway just outside his room and still followed him around. However, Biba could be a charmer, and she was difficult to resist as she had such a winning way about her. Soon he relented and they were friends again. Nonetheless, his bedroom remained off-limits to her.

Shortly after the first of the year, Sidney arrived in Gstaad and stayed at the Palace. He was there ostensibly to talk to Elizabeth Taylor about starring in a film, Les Maison sous Les Arbes (The Deadly Trap in English). He was producing and cowriting the screenplay with René Clement, who would direct. The role he wanted her for was that of an emotionally fragile woman who becomes inadvertently involved with an industrial espionage scheme and is, with good reason, in fear for her life. Sidney had worked with Elizabeth on the beleaguered film Cleopatra, cowriting the adaptation with the book’s author. Filming had been interrupted, delayed, and then seemingly abandoned when Elizabeth became gravely ill. Sidney came back on the script when production restarted in Rome, Richard Burton now cast opposite Elizabeth’s Cleopatra as Marc Antony. The two entered into an adulterous affair, which became a worldwide scandal. The production suffered more lengthy delays and cost the nearly bankrupt 20th Century-Fox such severe financial problems that they had to shut down for a time. Eventually three more writers and Joseph Mankiewicz, the producer, reworked the screenplay, building up Burton’s role. Despite the acrimony between the studio, the writing staff, and the stars, Sidney had retained a friendship with Elizabeth.

Having personally experienced Sidney’s simpatico manner with women, I am certain that during those rough times, he must have been a buffer between the studio and Elizabeth. Since that fiasco Taylor and Burton had married, appearing together in a number of films, her role in one, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, winning her an Oscar for her performance. She had just completed shooting The Only Game in Town in Paris opposite Warren Beatty. The Burtons were well known to be having marital problems and were apparently in Gstaad to attempt a reconciliation. The fact that Sidney’s film had no role for Burton might or might not have dissuaded Elizabeth from taking the role in which Faye Dunaway was eventually cast. More likely it was the story, about industrial espionage, not a subject that held much interest for Elizabeth (nor did it to the general public when it was finally filmed and released).

Sidney was most generous with his time, and it was a joy to be with him. On the third night of his stay he asked me to join him at the Burtons’ for dinner. They had inquired if he was alone. He said he was but that he had a good friend in Gstaad. “Bring her along,” he claimed they had chimed. Of course I accepted, although I had no idea what to expect.

“Will it be a dinner party? I mean other guests?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. Their style, however, is relaxed and Liz said she would do the cooking.”

We were the only guests. Liz cooked while our host drank, getting drunker by the glass. I ventured into the kitchen to help my hostess who, in fact, seemed to have things under control. This was a weekend and she had no staff. There was, however, a prepared casserole ready to slide into the oven and a tossed salad chilling in the fridge. Her ebony hair was tied back into a ponytail and she wore only a touch of makeup. Her natural beauty and her astonishing violet eyes transfixed me. She wore a casual, deep purple, silk velvet lounge outfit and two diamond rings that commanded their own attention.

“Are you having an affair with Sidney?” she asked in that trilly voice of hers (not yet lowered from alcohol and cigarette abuse).

“Oh, no. Sidney’s a good friend.”

“They are the kind you have to watch out for,” she warned.

When the casserole was heated through, she removed it from the oven and then, dinner delayed for Richard to have another, and another drink, put it back an hour later. It was after eleven p.m. when we finally sat down to eat.

“Elizabeth made me what I am today,” Burton sneered sarcastically. His wife ignored the remark.

Our hostess drank very little and was sober throughout the entire evening. She was also warm, funny, and amazingly tolerant of her husband’s intoxication. There was little doubt of Burton’s ability to hold his liquor. He stood without wavering and spoke without slurring his words, even as his sharp tongue whipped them out in a marvel of educated language and unique composition. His tone, however, grew harsher and his attitude toward his wife was more than once—cutting—piercing, really.

Sidney joined me for Sunday brunch at Chalet Fleur-de-Lis and remained through dinner, both meals served on trays in front of the fireplace, which he helped to keep aflame by feeding it logs from the wood box while he told me of his newfound love for a Czechoslovakian woman, half his age, very lovely and intelligent, who was having a difficult time due to the political problems in her country, which remained since 1948 a Soviet-dominated state. To remarry at his age—and with her comparative youth—seemed wrong minded. Yet, if they wed, they could live comfortably in Cannes and she would be protected by his American citizenship.

I could offer him only the advice he had once given me: to follow one’s heart, not one’s head. I had not done so and had married Leon, which I now felt had been as hurtful a union to him, as it had been—and still was—to me.

“Are you planning to remain in Switzerland?” he asked.

“That had been the plan.”

“I’ve only been in Gstaad a few days,” he offered, “but I can only envision it as a stopping-off place for anyone other than its countrymen—and women. It would stifle me. There is no dialogue to be had. It is detached from the world and the people who make your life and mine vital. If you decide to stay in Europe, you should consider the South of France—even as a second home. It is a true international community. Think of the great art and artists.” He began telling me of the latest exhibits he had attended; a meeting he had with Picasso; a confrontation he endured (“very stimulating!”) with one of France’s young, new, modern artists. There was always an interesting film and crew shooting at the studios in Nice. And then, of course, many of our expat friends had moved from London to the South of France. English taxation was partially responsible. But the sun, the ocean. “It feels more like California to them. Thank heavens only as a habitat, not its habits. Creative people need solitude when we are at our craft, but we also need a city so we can exchange ideas, recharge, and be initiated back into the chaos of real life.”

I told him that I had finished work on Haunted Summer, except for some last-touch editing and would be sending off the manuscript to the publisher in a week or so.

“Have you been thinking about a new book?”

Until now, except for Jay, I had not discussed Post Mortem. I now revealed the theme and the major characters (leaving aside, I am ashamed to say, the one I planned to base on him). “No one has yet written about those of us who left home to continue our lives and are still adrift after all these years.”

“It’s time someone wrote that story,” he agreed. “I’m glad it is going to be you.”

The night sky was filled with a full galaxy of stars when he finally departed. There was the scent of new snow in the air. This was the season in Gstaad. Thousands of ski tracks would be crisscrossing the slopes and the town would be swarming with tourists. “Good for business,” old Madam Cardineau would say as she rang up one sale after another of foreign-language books, papers, and magazines on her cash register. It was, however, the time when I least liked Gstaad.

It had to end and I knew it. Each morning I awoke and told myself I would call and tell him that very day that our marriage had been a mistake. It disturbed me that it would have to be in the evening when Leon was home alone after a frazzled day in one of Shepperton’s editing studios. He seldom went out on a weeknight. He would have fixed some eggs or opened a can of sardines. Leon loved good food, but he never bothered to cook for himself. It was as though he thought he didn’t deserve a proper dinner unless someone was there to share it with him. I often joked that he had married me so that once in a while he got a real home-cooked dinner. When we spoke on the telephone when we were apart, I usually asked what he had done about dinner. “Oh, I scrambled some eggs.”

“That’s all?”

“Well, I had a big lunch with the crew,” he would reply.

Somehow, it made me feel guilty as all hell. Then—defensive. After all, he was as responsible as I was for the distance between us. Sidney had told me, “What Leon wants of you—and is afraid to ask as you would no doubt refuse—is for you to say, ‘I don’t care about your taxes—or my career. I want to be with you.’ And then for you to follow through, move back to London, into Lennox Gardens, and be free to accompany him to wherever his work takes him.”

Sidney was right. If Leon had demanded I play housewife and camp follower, I would have refused. He was also correct in saying that in my case, Gstaad—as a year-round residence—offered little stimulation. I decided that I did not want to go through with the purchase of Chalet Fleur-de-Lis and, more importantly, that I had to end my marriage. I considered it my failure as well as Leon’s, and was ready and willing to take the blame. Still, it took me weeks before I had the courage to confront him with my decision, doing so on the telephone when he told me he would be down the following weekend and be able to stay for several weeks as he was between assignments. I had thought so long on what I planned to say and believed I had phrased it as kindly as was possible under such circumstances.

I was shocked at his response, although I don’t know what else I could have expected. His voice was cold, steely. If I filed for divorce, he would contest it and file his own brief citing desertion on my part. That would mean a long delay—years, perhaps, and relieve him of any financial responsibility toward me. I countered with my intention of not asking for any financial aid whatsoever from him—no settlement, no alimony. He would be free and clear of any liability where I was concerned. “The problem is, you are not concerned,” he replied—and hung up the phone.

I notified Mrs. Maitland’s representative that I would not be activating our proposed bill of sale and that I would be moving from Chalet Fleur-de-Lis in thirty days and that she could have access to show it during that time, and of course, keep the deposit of 10 percent of the sale price that I had given in good faith. (Chalet Fleur-de-Lis was sold almost immediately upon my notice to quit, to Julie Andrews and Blake Edwards.)

I had decided that I would take Sidney’s advice and move (with Jay and our canine family) to the South of France. Where was a big unknown. Then Jules Dassin called. He was actually looking for Leon, and when I told him my current situation, he said he knew of a house that was for rent in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, as is. As is? It had been used as a location for a film and needed some cleaning up. The owner lived in Paris and rented it out for that purpose when she didn’t have an occupant.

“You’ll find a lot of the old group nearby,” he added. “There’s been a steady march of expats from London to these sunny climes this year.”

That cinched it for me.

The town of Beaulieu-sur-Mer was almost equidistant to Nice and Monte Carlo, beautifully set on the Mediterranean coast. I called the owner in Paris. If I would do the cleanup, she would lease the property—which had a “gracious main house, a cottage for staff, several hectares of land, an orange grove, and private access to the shore by an underground stairway.” It was completely furnished. Very grand, she added. Five bedrooms, three fireplaces, an elegant master suite, and a view all the way to Somerset Maugham’s villa at the tip of St. Paul de Vance and over the Mediterranean to the horizon.

Somerset Maugham?

Well, of course, he died sadly five years earlier. But the villa was quite a noted historic site. Oh yes, and I had to agree to retain the couple and their young son who lived in the cottage. The wife took care of the house, the husband the grounds. And she wanted to be paid in dollars.

The rent was . . . ?

Four hundred dollars a month on a year’s lease, as is—and an extra one hundred dollars for the services of the couple. She expressed a photograph of the exterior and grounds of the house—the Villa Roquefille. I could not believe my luck. It looked to be sheer heaven.