October 1962
Bella was six weeks old and I was back at work. I’d found a nanny for her, after much searching of agencies and soul. I’d been house-hunting as well, and agreed a price of £6,500 on a three-bedroom late-Victorian cottage off Parson’s Green – Fulham, but it felt like Chelsea – with a pocket-handkerchief garden and plenty of turn-of-century charm. It was short on floorspace and the front door opened onto the pavement, but it was freehold; and thanks to my saviour at United Friendly, my mortgage was going through.
I had a three-week trip to New York coming up. The flight was booked and I hoped to sign the contract on the house before leaving, the completion taking place on my return, all being well. I should have been high on a sense of achievement, but instead felt wobbly and insecure, like stepping on bracken over a bog. It was a filthy night, rain slap-slapping against the windowpanes of our Kensington flat. I’d had a long day, working for Woman magazine, and the thought of leaving Bella for three weeks was a painful wrench and covering me in guilt.
It was time for bed. Joe couldn’t still be on the film set, surely, at eleven at night? There was no point in waiting up for him. I felt so out of tune with Joe. As with a violin, so much depended on the hand holding the bow, and we seemed doomed not to make music. I tried to understand. It was a bad time for him, after all. He was in a bitter sulk – about the move, my bid for a little bit of independence, and also deeply frustrated by his first venture into filming, which was over-running and threatening to cut into his time in New York.
But not into mine. I tried not to allow my sense of freedom and release to take flight. To have the city to myself for ten days, staying with the Ferrones, of whom I’d grown really fond, seeing Gil . . . I shivered internally, fighting an attack of nerves. Gil was a huge heavy decision waiting to be taken; somehow I had to find the will and guts to end the relationship. It seemed impossible, knowing in my heart that determination only took me so far. I had to sort out my life, though – and do it soon, before events, exposure or some other cruel comeuppance took over.
I carried my coffee cup through to the kitchen, hoping Frankie’s squawks wouldn’t wake Bella, feeling multiple agonies, even worrying whether Gil would still book me. That was an irrelevant, petty thought, I reproached myself. I had a marriage to mend – or end. Or did I go on muddling through?
I sighed and turned off lights, leaving one on in the hall for Joe, and called good night softly to Nanny Hadley. She was shuffling about in the little back room that she shared with Bella. We were slowly finding our feet, but I wasn’t allowed much of a look-in with my baby daughter. When Bella toddled up a stage, I decided, it might be time to think again. Miss Hadley, as she wanted to be called, was fearsomely prim and snobbish. Matronly with tightly permed hair of an indeterminate colour, trained in the old school, set in her ways, yet she loved Bella like her own already and I felt safely able to leave her in charge.
She resented me slightly – all her mothers, probably; we were an encumbrance, amateurs in the baby business while she, Miss Hadley, was the professional. I was also too middle-class. She’d have felt her standards were slipping but for Joe. He was the apple of her eye. He’d picked up the speech and mannerisms of his upper-crust friends and fitted her image of a proper gent perfectly. She couldn’t resist the thickly spread butter of his charm. Joe must have been about the only man ever to make Miss Hadley blush.
I sensed her disapproval of my trip – ‘gadding off ’, she’d call it – but the counterbalance was having Bella to herself for three weeks and, as I’d reminded her, Joe would be on hand for part of the time. He was hopeless at looking after himself, I said with practical guile. If she could just see her way to mollycoddling him a little . . . Miss Hadley had inclined her head with a sort of arms-akimbo look of satisfaction.
By morning, the drumming rain had magically given way to a clear bright day, calm and mild. I dressed in a suede-fabric top and charcoal skirt feeling more cheered, grabbed a fast bit of toast and gave Bella her bottle with Miss Hadley keeping a critical eye.
I was working for another weekly, Woman’s Realm, and had to run, but I looked in on Joe just to see all was well. He’d been in a leaden sleep earlier, when I slipped out of bed, his stillness and pallor causing a moment’s panic, but it was only from an excess of booze, I felt sure.
He was sitting on the side of the bed, trying to come to. ‘Heavy night?’ I smiled.
‘Don’t ask.’ Joe sounded friendlier at least, in a better place. He yawned. ‘I was at a party with a few film wallahs and they were all on about the Bond film, Dr No. It’s being premièred at the Palladium on Friday. I really want to see it over the weekend. No one wanted to make it, apparently, and I can’t think why; bet it breaks records and proves the doom-merchants wrong.’ He was hooked on James Bond – the books were up there, along with Sinatra – yet I suspected something more than Dr No was lifting Joe’s spirits.
‘Great idea, be a thrill to see it.’ I was keen to sound positive and hang onto the mood, I lived in hope of turning corners. ‘If we can get in, that is.’
Joe never considered such practicalities and didn’t now. He chatted on about Bond. ‘Ian Fleming was at the first-night party for Old Love, remember, with his wife, Ann, and he was just like I imagine Bond to be. Handsome in a hard-edged kind of way, refined, big on the languid chat – but I’m not sure about this Sean Connery, playing the part. He’s a Scot.’
‘Hardly a disqualification, surely.’ I looked at my watch; I’d be late.
‘Sylvia Ormsby-Gore has been in touch,’ Joe said neutrally, getting to the nub of it. ‘She’s firmed up on the Washington invite, third weekend of October.’
‘But you’re filming till the twentieth. Couldn’t it be the one after?’
‘That’s the only weekend on offer, which is a stinky bugger. I’ll move hell to get out of the last day’s filming, but may have to fly direct to Washington.’
‘So I’d go alone from New York?’
‘You don’t have to come,’ Joe said, too quickly. ‘It’s not really your thing, old wifey, diplomats and stuffy dinners, all the political chat.’
He wanted to play it solo and he was putting me down. I fumed inside. ‘Of course it’s my thing, I really got on with them – and with JFK.’ I glared at Joe. ‘I can easily book out Friday afternoon and get the shuttle.’ I looked at my watch again and back at Joe, struck by a thought. ‘Shouldn’t you be at the studios, love, like about two hours ago?’
‘I’m going to phone – go in later. I’m sick as a dog, my tongue feels like an old Brillo pad. I’m sick of this whole farting film business too, all the boring hanging loose. I can sort the tickets for Dr No,’ he added. ‘I’ll go in person and try for Saturday night.’
‘I’m sure you’ll have the ticket girl eating out of your palm,’ I said, wishing it didn’t take an invitation to the British Embassy Residence in Washington for Joe even to talk to me.
I left for New York the following Tuesday, missing Bella painfully before I’d even arrived. Was it madness to be going? I had bookings to honour, though, bills to pay; it wasn’t only for need of Gil and a breather from Joe. He’d certainly perked up. The Dr No film had really hit the spot. Joe had drooled over Ursula Andress rising out of the sea like a Botticelli Venus, and he was full of The Beatles, too, whose first disc, ‘Love Me Do’, was selling fast and causing a stir.
‘I heard them live, wifey, remember? A year ago at the Blue Gardenia in Soho. I told you about that guy in the music business, who’d said they were hot. He knew his stuff.’
‘You sound like you think they could be up there with Sinatra.’
Joe snorted. ‘That’s so typically asinine of you. They’re a group; Sinatra’s a voice, incomparable, irreplaceable. The way he finds the peak of a song like it’s a woman he loves . . . Nelson Riddle said when I interviewed him that music was sex, finding the rhythm of the heartbeat, and he’d done his finest work, arranging for Frank; they knew what they were doing with a song. The Beatles are very sexy, new and now, but four talents, way different. They’ve got the tempo though, the rhythm of the heartbeat.’
Joe on a high the last few days had been infectious in his enthusiasm. Could Alicia be a little less central to his life? Or was it just Washington, lifting his mood, the lure of the velvet coat-tails of power? I thought of the missing weeks when I was pregnant, my suspicion that he’d been in a house party with Jackie Kennedy. I didn’t really imagine an involvement, but sensed they’d found a rapport. Still, we were staying at the Embassy, not the White House, and I could hardly see the President and First Lady popping in for tea.
The Ferrones were as welcoming as ever. ‘Gee, aren’t you blooming on motherhood!’ Joan gave me a big fond hug. ‘I hope you’ve brought a bunch of photographs. How was the flight? Are you done in?’
‘Let the poor girl get a word in edgeways, dear,’ Walter said, coming forward to give me a kiss on both cheeks.
I said how terrific it was to see them, how incredibly kind they were, but Joan was off again. ‘We’ve a couple of friends calling by, but you crash on out just whenever. You must be whacked. And I guess Eileen has you working right off, first thing?’
‘She’s given me a real lie-in, an eleven o’clock start!’
I changed and unpacked my very small thank-you gifts – Bendicks mints, Gentleman’s Relish, Fortnum’s teas, a couple of handcrafted pewter tankards and a paisley silk shirt that I thought might suit Joan.
I gave them to her in the wide hall and she was in raptures over the shirt when the doorbell rang. The maid, Mary-Lou, hurried out, but Joan rested the gifts on a chair and sprang to answer it. I’d expected fur-clad elderly friends of the Ferrones, not the two interesting-looking men at the door. ‘Pierre!’ Joan exclaimed. ‘Come in, come have a drink – how are you? Mad busy, holding the line as usual? And it’s Matt, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, Mrs Ferrone, Matt Seeley.’
‘I’ll go find Walter,’ Joan said busily, as the maid took their briefcases and the coats over their arms, ‘but first you must meet my dear sweet English friend, Susannah Forbes, who’s just off a plane from London, though you’d never think it. She has assignments with Eileen Ford, is in hot demand. This is Pierre Salinger, Susannah, the President’s Press Secretary. There’s nobody more important than Pierre. He keeps all the balls in the air.’
‘Quite the opposite,’ Pierre grinned. He had an attractively masculine, hands-on sort of look, and a stocky, sturdy build. His face was stocky too, with a broad forehead and forthright jaw, and he had thick eyebrows, black hair slicked straight and neatly parted.
‘And I’m Matt Seeley, Pierre’s assistant,’ the younger man said, stepping forward to shake my hand, which he hung onto for quite a while.
Walter came out into the hall, remonstrating with us for standing there. ‘I’ve made martinis, nicely shaken,’ he said. ‘But there’s anything, just name your choice.’
We followed him into the sitting room with its glorious Impressionist paintings, and it was martinis all round, except that I asked for Campari and soda. We stood chatting. Matt asked me how long I was over for. His eyes were whisky-coloured and seemed to catch the light.
‘Sit, sit!’ Joan implored us all, as though we were her puppies.
‘So, Pierre,’ Walter said, easing his ample body into a chair facing his guest, ‘Jackie has a new task for me, I gather?’
‘Yes.’ He looked a little sheepish. ‘I believe you’ve seen another still life by William Chase, one to pair with his vegetable painting in the White House family dining room. Jackie’s very excited to acquire it and wondered if you’d be able to find a donor – the Annenbergs or Henry Ford possibly, who’ve donated before, or that lady from Chicago.’
‘People prefer their donated items to hang in the State Rooms, but I’m sure we can sort something out.’ Walter beamed. ‘As long as it’s still available.’
Pierre turned to me. ‘No English donors around, I suppose?’ he enquired wryly.
‘Sorry, they’re in short supply and badly needed for our crumbling old stately homes.’
‘Oh, those beautiful buildings of yours,’ Joan sighed. ‘Now I know you boys said no to food, but it’s all ready. Don’t hurry away, stay for a quick bite.’
‘We have to meet a couple of journalists, I’m afraid.’ Pierre looked politely rueful.
‘But not till ten,’ Matt countered, ‘and in a bar. It would be very welcome . . .’
‘I can see I’m being overruled.’ Pierre smiled, conceding the fact, yet slipping his junior a covertly raised-eyebrow look as if to say, ‘I’ll indulge you this once.’
Over a supper of shrimps and salmon, while Pierre and Walter discussed Jackie’s keenness to acquire more paintings and Joan hung on their words, I talked to Matt.
He was a Bostonian, I discovered, and as well as his passion for politics had a love of the South of France. He urged me to visit Washington. ‘I’m there in ten days,’ I said, ‘staying with the Ormsby-Gores.’ They’d insisted I still come, despite Joe, to his fury, being unable to arrive till Sunday afternoon. He’d told me in triumph as I left, though, that Sylvia Ormsby-Gore had pressed him to stay on a couple of days, since there was a dance at the White House on Tuesday for the Maharajah and Maharanee of Jaipur. I felt very cheesed off, but with bookings all week I had to be back in New York.
‘That’s terrific news!’ Matt exclaimed, ‘I’ll have to talk to the Embassy and try to wangle an invitation. What shuttle are you looking to get? You need to be in good time to avoid being shoved onto the next one, as it’s murder on a Friday evening. It’s a mixed blessing, the no booking policy.’
‘Thanks, that’s timely advice. I was hoping to get the five o’clock.’
‘I’m in and out of New York. I might even be on that flight myself.’
Mary-Lou brought the dessert, sliced strawberries in Cointreau, while Pierre cast a glance at his watch. ‘Time’s up, Matt, we should push on.’ He sounded brisk and businesslike while Matt seemed to take that as first bell. He carried on talking, extolling the medieval charms of Saint Paul de Vence and its views, before stopping mid-flow, distracted, listening keenly to a question Walter was asking Pierre.
‘That report in today’s Times, about the Texan far right exploiting fears over Cold War setbacks and especially, hard as it is to believe, a Communist military build-up in Cuba. Is that really happening?’
‘Rumour and speculation. We’re playing it down.’ Pierre held Walter’s eye.
‘Understood,’ he said, but I sensed an undercurrent, something serious going on.
Pierre was on his feet now, anxious to make a move. Matt promised to do his best to make Friday’s five o’clock shuttle and travel together. He fastened his gaze. ‘I very much hope we can meet up in Washington.’
‘Be nice,’ I said neutrally, going with him into the hall while they said goodbye. He was tall, well built, with fine straight hair, sandy to mouse, and a scattering of freckles. I’d liked him, and the Washington trip, exciting enough, had gained a little extra frisson. He couldn’t be under any illusions. I’d mentioned Joe more than once.
I had a quiet first weekend. Janet, my American model girlfriend, came round. I saw Eileen and Jerry Ford on Sunday and spoke to Miss Hadley that morning, as well as Joe. Bella was doing fine, skipping the 2 a.m. feed. I’d had four days in the city and had yet to see Gil. I was working with him on Monday, at two o’clock. Would I stay on afterwards? Should I? Could I really cut myself adrift as I was determined to do?
Gil was my immoral compass, setting me on a dubious course in his own unconventional way. He propped me up. I could battle on, navigate Joe, and I knew more about how the world worked now, which was badly, from Jack Kennedy to John Profumo – if you believed the rumours about him sharing a girl called Christine Keeler with a Russian defence attaché and risking national security. I could manage life’s knocks, huddled under Gil’s wing, but chicks had to learn to fly.
Monday morning was taken up with a stressful shoot for Glamour magazine. It was on location, outside Tiffany’s on Fifth Avenue, and a crowd had gathered. I was shivering with cold, hyper-tense, and the booking overran, which left only time for a snatched bite or being early at Gil’s studio. I couldn’t think of food and was at the studio by twenty to two.
He was still photographing, his morning session running late as well. I crept to the dressing room anxious not to distract him, stupidly hurt when he didn’t see me. I gradually understood why. The girl in front of the camera, a model called Lynn, was perched on a stool, legs crossed, one loosely dangling; Gil was arranging the dress. He whispered something, leaning in against her thigh. The intimacy was clear, though only to me. I knew his style of flirting in front of clients, ad executives, his way of relaxing models, yet this was different. He and Lynn were on a private wavelength, the way she was touching him with her swinging calf. Her eyes on him were hard to bear.
I turned from the dressing-room door with an aching wound where my guts used to be. What had I expected? Gil was only doing what he said he did. I’d known he wasn’t languishing for months at a time, keeping himself pure. He’d been honest and open about that.
‘You’re looking sad.’ I started and looked up. ‘Come here, lover, give us a kiss.’ Gil was at the dressing-room door; he was staring, compelling me to meet his eyes. Lynn pushed past him into the dressing room, saying with a playful nudge that he’d made her late. She eyed me briefly with mild hatred – the sort that was merely instinctive feline suspicion – threw on her clothes, a tight red sweater and navy skirt, and flung the dress she’d been wearing at Dee, Gil’s secretary, who’d come in after her. Lynn pushed past Gil again then with a lot of body contact while Dee hung up the dress and hurried on out – to see to Lynn’s release form, I assumed.
Gil hadn’t moved from the doorway. ‘I meant it about the kiss.’ His eyes were on me, liquid, loving, caring, ‘It does for me, seeing you,’ he said, coming close and touching lips. ‘Hits hard.’
Dee was soon back with clothes for me and the session was underway.
‘Seven o’clock at the Kettle of Fish,’ Gil said, as we worked. ‘Where we went before?’
‘I’ll meet you there.’
We had to see each other. The connection was so strong. I had to explain. It wasn’t Lynn and others before her or to come, though her leering eyes haunted me. I felt cold and alone, a ring of ice forming round my heart; it wasn’t Lynn, it was my resolve, the wrench of a final parting. Gil was a secret loving sex-master, protection, survival, but a block on rational thought.
The Kettle of Fish, smoky and fuggy, wafting with weed, felt a good place to meet, a comfort-blanket cocoon and neutral ground. Gil was there ahead of me, up at the bar alongside a few layabouts with stringy beards. I slid onto the stool next to his. He was smoking a fat cigar. He put it in my mouth, told me to puff and I spluttered.
‘Hello,’ he said, in a way that hacked through the ice. I felt wobbly, glad to be sitting down, especially when he brushed lips. ‘You’re going to tell me we’re in another place?’
‘Yes, kind of.’
‘You’re mad at me? Sore about Lynn?’
‘Jealous!’
‘Don’t be. She’s pretty, pert, but hasn’t got your delicacy – she’s two-dimensional.’
‘I need to be in the sort of place where I don’t lean on you so much,’ I said, pausing as he ordered me a Coke, realizing how hard it was to explain. ‘I cling, Gil, I can’t help it, and that’s no good, in reality, for you or for me. I was going to say it anyway,’ I added miserably. ‘It’s not to do with Lynn.’
He studied me. He held my jaw in his big hand, his thumb rubbing my lower lip, peeling it down, feeling the wetness inside. Oh God, don’t make it so hard. I watched his watching eyes. Struggling.
‘I have a solution,’ Gil said, reaching for my hand. ‘I’ll tell it to you in a last lesson.’
‘Subject? Area?’ My insides were alive with butterflies.
‘Casual sex.’
‘That sounds vile – and the opposite of a solution.’
‘It’s not, it’s the least worst way. Hear me out? Open mind? We have no painful bust-up, but no regular calls either, no clinging. We just hook up once in a while, see? Like, suppose I come to London – because I have needs too, as it happens – and say you hadn’t found the man of your life, The One, we just get it together casually. Happy memories. Refresher course. Same if you were here. I’d book you anyway, for sure.’
‘But that’s not much different, no solution. It doesn’t square with my resolve.’
‘It squares fine, if you’re being fair-minded. Think of it from my side: you’re not leaning on me, I’m leaning on you.’
‘Got an answer for everything, haven’t you?’
We went back to the studio and made love feverishly. I felt sustained, whole again, and awash with an unbelievable sense of release. We’d have no more comings together this time, I knew that. It was a non-farewell, a tapering off – an un-final goodbye. ‘One last coda to this lesson,’ Gil said, as I dressed to go, heavy-hearted. ‘I want you to make it with other men. It’ll help me fit into your life. And don’t worry, you’ll know when you find the one you want to stick with. Just don’t find the creep too soon! It’ll give me a kinda backhanded high too, thinking how well you’d learned at my knee.’
‘What kind of teaching is that? There’ll be no blow-by-blow reports, I can assure you.’
Joan was immensely excited about my weekend in Washington. She monitored my clothes, insisted on loaning me accessories. ‘There’s a dinner on Saturday night,’ I said, ‘twenty-two on the guest list. Another lot coming for Sunday lunch . . .’
‘You need a glamorous cocktail gown for the dinner, a “smart day” outfit for Sunday, and two other pretty outfits. You never know in Washington – things crop up.’
Joe was due to arrive around five on Sunday. He was staying on, though, of course. He’d had his way, after all – solo in Washington, hobnobbing with the Kennedys.
At La Guardia airport I paid off the yellow cab, marvelling at the driver’s multitude of gold-filled teeth, and humped my bag to join the shuttle check-in queue. Progress was slow and I rested my suitcase between shuffles forward.
Bending to pick it up again, I felt a hand on mine. ‘I have it,’ Matt said, coming up beside me, panting. He caught his breath and grinned. ‘Whew, I’d have hated to miss this flight! I’d even told your Embassy that I’d drop you off, save them sending a car.’
‘Goodness, that’s surely beyond the call of duty? You must want to get home.’
‘It’ll be a real pleasure and I’ll sit with you too, if that’s all right?’ He turned then, to make a winsome apology to the middle-aged businessman behind me. ‘Really sorry, nipping in like this. I hope you can understand why!’
‘Sure, be my guest, buddy,’ the man said, giving me an appraising look and a wink.
‘Pity it’s only an hour’s flight,’ Matt muttered, as we slowly edged up the queue.
On the plane I learned about his Harvard credentials and a spell on the Washington Post. ‘But politics,’ he said, ‘is the red corpuscles for me, working for Pierre, being right at the hub.’ He laid his hand on my arm. ‘I did wangle an invitation to the Residence by the way, for Sunday lunch. Perhaps I can take you to a gallery afterwards? I’d really love to get to know you better,’ he added more honestly.
Matt whipped me through the airport faff with practised speed; I’d have floundered on my own. ‘Wait here, don’t go away,’ he said, ‘I’ll just bring up the car.’
It was a silver-blue, two-seater coupé, tapering at the rear and as low to the ground as a racing car. It was a wow. He looked enormously proud when I said so. ‘It’s a Chevrolet Corvette, the new Stingray – next year’s model, but available now if you’re in the know – and exactly one week old! Come for a spin?’ I climbed in, feeling flighty and having fun.
He revved up, whizzing me round the sights of Washington in a speeding silver-blue flash. The Monument, Lincoln Memorial, the Capitol in the distance across the National Mall . . . ‘The British Residence is on Massachusetts Avenue, which we call Embassy Row,’ he said. ‘It’s an Edwin Lutyens building – the only one in the States, I believe.’
I loved the symmetry when we arrived, its redbrick Britishness and distinctively Lutyens tall chimneys. Matt rumbled in through a square arch, into a courtyard and up to the main steps. ‘Masses of thanks,’ I said genuinely, ‘for that exhilarating spin, seeing the sights, all the looking after. I hardly know where to begin.’
‘By not minding if I give you a parting kiss?’ He leaned over the steering shaft and turned my face. ‘It’s hard not to, you’re very beautiful.’
‘I’m far from that – and a married woman,’ I laughed, accepting a light press of his lips all the same, drawing back smartly as one of the staff came out for my luggage.
Matt escorted me into the main hall where Sylvia came to greet us with a vague smile. ‘Here’s Susannah, safely delivered,’ Matt said, ‘and thanks again, Lady Ormbsy-Gore. I greatly look forward to Sunday’s lunch.’
The two eldest Ormsby-Gore children were in England; I now met the younger pair, Alice and Francis, who were in jeans with hair overflowing their hanging-out shirts. They had thin fine features and complete disinterest in a naff unknown visitor. Sylvia personally took me up to my room, which was comparatively small but charming, light with yellow and white fabrics, a bowl of roses and a dish of fruit. ‘I like this room,’ she said. ‘The main guest rooms are so dull. I put Hugh Gaitskell in here recently and he called it his favourite room of all the Residences he’d stayed in.’
Friday night and Saturday were free of formalities, although Embassy people and local diplomats joined us for meals. Debo, the Duchess of Devonshire, who was a close family friend of the Ormsby-Gores, was also staying and she drew me into conversations, making me feel completely at home. She told me about the grimy paintings she’d discovered in the basement at Chatsworth whose real worth had passed the death-duty assessors by. They’d served to save that great house from ruin.
Sylvia seemed to live within herself, dreamily, unconnectedly, yet she was an impeccable hostess and lover of the arts, understandably drawn to a seductive talent like Joe’s. David Ormsby-Gore was naturally outgoing as well as appropriately diplomatic and ambassadorial. He was extremely sweet to me, walking me through the splendid halls with their slim, honey-grey marble pillars, gilded chandeliers and the statutory photograph of the Queen on a marble-top table. I felt able to be myself with him, enjoyably, while sensing at the same time that he was under pressure. I imagined some burdensome top-secret duties and thought of Walter’s question to Pierre Salinger.
David excused himself early from lunch and was nowhere to be seen till the dinner party. I’d taken myself off to the National Gallery of Art in the afternoon, fired up by Walter, and had stood for a long time in front of two paintings, a Leonardo da Vinci portrait, Ginevra de’ Benci, and Vermeer’s Woman Holding a Balance. They’d made me feel suspended, remote from the chaos of modern life, encased in their enduring beauty.
Twenty-two to dinner, we sat at a long table laid with gold-embossed plates and four sparkling glasses at each place setting. The flowers were softly arranged. I’d worn a fitted emerald-lace cocktail dress that Joan said suited my fair hair and I was aglow with adrenaline, pinching myself. David had told me over drinks that we were having supper at the White House the next night. Very informal, he said, just the Kennedys and us.
I was seated at dinner between an elderly Senator and the Secretary of the Interior, Stewart Udall, who was a delight. He had dark, tight-cropped hair, and an elongated face. Fervent about conservation, he was writing a book about the overuse of natural resources and the dangers of pollution, and he spoke as well, with great enthusiasm, about his home state of Arizona. He also told me, rivetingly, about having just been on a tour of the Soviet Union and summoned unexpectedly to a meeting with Khrushchev. ‘It was an eye-opener,’ Secretary Udall said. ‘Khrushchev was hardly God’s gift to good manners. He seemed only to want to tell me of their intention to “swat our ass”. I’d like to see them try!’
The Senator on my left was more uphill company, a crumbly old codger, slow of speech. He began most sentences with ‘When I was a boy . . .’ and revealed some unpleasantly prejudiced views on civil rights. I was reminded of Ella Fitzgerald’s neighbours in Beverly Hills.
Lunch next day was for twenty, much less formal, in a bright panelled room overlooking the garden. It was a balmy sunny day, very warm; I’d worn an apricot halter-neck dress, glad of Joan’s weathervane advice, and loved the feel of bare arms. Matt was next to me, a shy Embassy diplomat on my other side whom I talked to during a first course of minty chilled cucumber soup. The audible chink of spoons on fine china was slightly embarrassing till the conversation got going.
Joe’s plane wasn’t due in till five, and I realised Matt must have known this, since he’d wanted to take me out in the afternoon. I felt childishly resentful about Joe arriving just in time to make the White House supper when he had Tuesday’s glamorous formal dance to go to as well. And the thought, as I turned from the polite diplomat to talk to Matt, made me smile more warmly than was possibly wise.
For a Bostonian, Matt had an oddly Southern lilt to his voice and I asked about it.
‘My mother was originally from Hot Springs, Arkansas – Al Capone territory. It’s where he and his like used to hole up in Prohibition days. It was a very open place.’
‘What does that mean?’ I asked, conscious of his eyes on my bare arms.
He transferred his gaze. ‘They could buy off anyone. They made it what it is, though – the park, all the amenities, with their ill-gotten gains. You look very lovely,’ he said. I batted that away and steered the conversation back to American history.
After an amazing hot chocolate soufflé, liquid in the middle, perfect – I couldn’t resist a small helping – we had coffee outside on a terrace that presided over a fragrant rose-garden. I mingled a bit, but Matt sought me out. ‘I told Lady Ormsby-Gore I was going to ask if you’d like to go to a gallery and she thought it a very good idea. You will come out for a bit?’
‘It’s terrifically kind, but I think I’d better not. I went to the National Gallery yesterday actually, and I’m sure you’re busy, Pierre keeping you at it all hours.’
‘He sure does, but it’s Sunday! Come for another quick spin – Georgetown perhaps? You’ll love it.’ He was hard to refuse with his freckles and naughty-boyish grin.
His car was really quite something. And I loved seeing Georgetown’s buzzy Main Street and the residential quarter as well, whose small gracious squares and tree-lined streets were home to the political elite.
‘Kennedy left for his inauguration from his Georgetown townhouse,’ Matt said. ‘He lived here both as congressman and senator, and Jackie gave parties for everyone who mattered.’ I decided not to mention supper at the White House that night; it felt private, somehow. ‘Come for a cup of English tea,’ Matt smiled. ‘My apartment’s not far, it’s a condo on Thirty-first, just round the corner.’
‘I’d love to go to one of those fun cafés on Main Street.’
He looked openly dashed. ‘Can’t I entertain you at home? I promise to be good.’
‘Then you won’t mind if it’s a café instead.’ He had the grace to smile.
We went to a coffee shop and ice-cream parlour with white wrought-iron tables and potted palms. Matt ordered coffee and a black tea for me. ‘It’s what we call English tea here.’ He grinned; his foot touched mine. ‘Tell me about the photographers you work for. Don’t they all try to get you to bed? You’re out here on your own, after all.’
‘No more than anyone else. I’m married and they’re hardworking professionals.’
‘But you’re not with your husband much – you weren’t in the summer either.’
‘Where? What do you mean?’ I stared at Matt, feeling knocked off-course. Trembling.
‘In August – you weren’t with him: you didn’t go, too. Sorry, it’s just that I’d seen the guest list, felt things must be a bit rocky. I’ve no business interfering. Forgive me.’
‘Go where, though? What guest list?’ I was sure Joe had been in Italy, having seen the television footage, but I still needed it spelled out and the salt rubbed in.
Matt looked quite shocked. ‘Italy, the villa – Jackie’s holiday. Didn’t you know?’
‘Not exactly. I was having a baby. I’d rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind.’
‘Sure. Will you, though, even just think about letting me take you out in New York?’
I hardly heard him. My mind felt bruised. Gil was in it, Joe making it hurt sorely. Thinking back to all the heartache, not knowing where Joe was, the suspicions and now the confirmation – it had all been about dallying with Jackie.
Matt, fun, attractive, in the know, was offering solace – sex on a plate – and Gil wanted me to get over him with other men. But casual sex? Not Gil’s best idea, not a good idea at all. I said to Matt, ‘I’ll think about it – and thanks, I’ve had a lovely time.’
‘That’s progress,’ he said, ‘of a sort.’ He paid and slid his arm through mine as we left for his car. When we reached it he kissed me, leaning me back against the passenger door.
Joe’s plane was late and he was in a flying panic; speed shaving, firing questions about the weekend he’d just missed, throwing on a clean shirt, rushing me. I’d changed into a black linen dress with a scooped white collar, ‘smart day’ to Joan, but not to me. I longed for Bella news but Joe was too mad keen to get on, splashing himself with some classy smell – Hermès, that he’d never have bought for himself. No good thinking like that, I hadn’t got a moral leg to stand on. I’d kissed two men in a week.
We drove to the White House in the Ambassadorial car, David and Joe on the jump seats. The Ambassador’s car helped smooth the security checks and we were soon in the building, via a side entrance. Jackie came to meet us, wearing a cyclamen-pink dress with cap sleeves, very neat and slim-looking. ‘I don’t suppose,’ Joe said, easy and relaxed with her, ‘you can whizz us wide-eyed Brits on a whistle-stop tour of the staterooms, just a very quick peek?’ She smiled, looking pleased and proud.
We saw the East Room first, huge and formal. It had a vast grand piano whose eagle supports Franklin Roosevelt had designed himself. ‘The portrait of George Washington is by Gilbert Stuart,’ Jackie said, ‘who called Washington a very apathetic sitter, but captured him most famously.’ She showed us the Red Room, lined in red silk and with a powerfully atmospheric Civil War painting, followed by the Blue and Green Rooms. She pointed out the President Monroe candelabra – pairs of them in every room, he’d certainly been keen on candlelight – and a French Empire consul table, presented to the White House by Napoleon’s brother Joseph, that had led to a whole Empire theme.
We went up to the second floor, the Kennedys’ private living space, and had drinks in a softly lit sitting room with a comfy family feel. Debo Devonshire arrived, she’d been elsewhere that day; we were on a second drink, though, by the time Jack appeared. ‘How’s the “heavy cold”?’ Debo asked dryly. David whispered to me that Jack had used the excuse of a cold to cut short a Midwest campaigning trip: he’d had to get back rather urgently. That sounded pretty important and Walter’s question to Pierre Salinger clicked in again. I looked at Jack in a sombre dark suit, shuffling his hands; he had bags under his eyes that only added to his charismatic force.
I sat next to him at dinner. Debo was on his right, David on my left; Joe was between Jackie and Sylvia. The lighting was again subdued, only from candles on the table. A waiter served us with shrimps in a dark tomato-red sauce, deliciously sharp and peppery-hot. ‘It’s fresh horseradish that gives it that special tang,’ David said.
Jack turned from Debo as the first course was being cleared and gave me his concentrated attention. ‘Good to have you here, great. How’s the modelling going? Eileen Ford knows what she’s doing, getting you over, with those Nordic looks of yours.’ He grinned, full on, full focus, and gave me no time to reply. I hoped I wasn’t being as open-mouthed as a goldfish, but he knew how to turn it on. ‘I’m interested in the techniques of fashion photography,’ Jack said, ‘British photographers are way ahead. I saw a spread on Celia Hammond, think it was in Queen, or it could have been Vogue, and it really pushed the boundaries.’ A faint buzz sounded near the window, a transferred telephone-call tone. Jack was instantly on his feet. ‘She a friend of yours, Celia Hammond?’ he said, still talking as he went to take the call. ‘She should come over, too.’
I’d turned and saw him make for a small curved telephone on a corner table. He spoke into the mouthpiece, very abrupt and staccato. ‘Yes? Yep. Yep. Okay.’ He kept listening, looking intently at the floor. Then he took the telephone behind the curtain where I presumed there was a window seat or place to stand.
‘Eileen’s a strict headmistress, I hear,’ he said, returning after a couple of minutes and pulling in his chair. ‘Keeps you under the rod. Early to bed – she doesn’t like parties.’
‘She tires us out by day,’ I said with a grin. ‘But American photographers are just as creative, I think. Penn especially. And Avedon certainly pushes boundaries.’
A dark-suited man slipped into the room and spoke to the President. David beside me stiffened, keenly interested; as Ambassador and friend he’d know what was going on.
The telephone buzzed again and Jack rose swiftly. I half-turned, couldn’t help being inquisitive, and heard him say before disappearing behind the curtain, ‘How big is it?’ I felt a pinprick, a spine-tingle of fear as well as curiosity.
At the table we got on with our fried chicken. Joe was being amusing about his schoolmaster bit-part role in the film and Jack soon returned, picking up our conversation again with flirty eyes. ‘Aren’t you petrified of Diana Vreeland? I met her once and she scared the pants off me, with that mile-long cigarette-holder, blood-red lips and nails.’ He was an avalanche of power-fuelled magnetism. I couldn’t have escaped its path.
The telephone kept buzzing. Did this always go on at every meal? He was up and down, hardly managing a mouthful between calls, yet seemed able to switch from work to play like a flipped penny. I was in stupefied awe. ‘They say Joe’s mesmeric on stage,’ Jack said, ‘you must be very proud. Hey, Joe,’ he called over. ‘You know Beyond the Fringe opens on Broadway this week? It’ll hit big. People lap up that sort of satire. It’s like caricatures, they love the debunking of authority, especially politicians.’
‘They’re a class act,’ Joe said, ‘a bit slapstick, even surrealistic humour at times, but Peter Cook taking off the Prime Minister, that slurring voice, it’s genius!’
Another telephone call, another interruption. Slices of squidgy chocolate cake were served. Back beside me once more, Jack stared down at the table. I tried to catch Joe’s eye, but he was talking animatedly to Jackie, waving his fork, making her smile.
She’d just taken a mouthful of cake when Jack stood up abruptly and made for the door. A waiter hurriedly opened it for him. It seemed slightly odd and rude, though I recalled reading that Heads of State always leave a room first – perhaps it was simply that. The conversation was rather desultory in his absence; we picked at the gooey cake, Jackie’s remained untouched. She soon rose and led the way to the sitting room.
Jack was there, on the telephone – giving orders about appointments the next day. He sat back afterwards, lighting a long cigar, baring his teeth on the first puff, almost as though disliking the taste or the pungent tobacco smell. I thought of Gil, drawing on his cigar and sticking it, still wet from his mouth, into mine. I hurt inside. Would he really come to London to see me?
‘Let’s have some Sellers,’ Jack said, his distinctive voice cutting into the low drone of murmured conversation. ‘The Songs for Swingin’ Sellers album. The “Lord Badminton’s Memoirs” track is a gas – and the My Fair Lady in Indian skit cracks me up.’
Jackie went to the turntable, put on the LP and we were soon in stitches. Was I really in the White House, watching JFK lounging about, hooting with laughter? He started recounting a Sellers’ take-off of ‘Uncle Harold’ at a White House dinner, on the Prime Minister’s last visit. ‘I’m not so sure he found it funny,’ Jack chuckled. Then he stood up, said, ‘Good night, good night,’ with a hand partly raised and strode out of the room.
At Washington National airport next morning, waiting to board the shuttle for New York, hordes of people were arriving or leaving, beginning the working week. Whether coming or going, they crowded round the news-stand. Every newspaper’s front page bore the word CRISIS, big and bold in the headline. I bought the New York Times.
There was an atmosphere of crisis in Washington last night as President Kennedy and top Administration Officials were in almost constant conference. In the Caribbean, the Navy and Marine Corps were staging a powerful show of force not far from Cuba . . .
I read on. There was a mention of a missile. I thought of Jack saying, ‘How big is it?’ A Pentagon spokesman was quoted as denying that Cuba was the cause of the crisis. I couldn’t take it all in. On the plane the constant rustle of newspapers sounded like a rattlesnake’s warning. I sensed people all around me feeling disturbed and threatened.
In Manhattan, walking a few blocks to a studio, the air of tension was unmistakable. And returning to the Ferrones’ apartment in the evening I found Walter as grim-faced as I’d ever seen him.
‘Pierre Salinger made an announcement at noon today,’ he said. ‘The President’s speaking on television shortly, addressing the nation on “A subject of the highest national urgency”. It’s scheduled for seven o’clock, half an hour’s time.’
We didn’t speculate. We three, Joan looking older than her years, sat rigid in our seats, waiting and watching the clock. Seven o’clock came. Jack was in his office, the furled Stars and Stripes flag behind him. His voice was calm; he looked out to camera as he found the rhythm and was into his speaking stride. ‘. . . The closest surveillance of the Soviet military build-up on the island of Cuba . . . Evidence of offensive missile sites . . . a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere . . .’ He spoke of enforcing a blockade and said that aggressive conduct allowed to go unchallenged, ultimately led to war. Their goal was not the victory of might, but the vindication of right.
It was a shocking bombshell. I’d only very briefly mentioned last night’s dinner at the White House to Walter and Joan, and told them a little more, about sitting next to Jack and all the calls. I marvelled disbelievingly at his ability to be there at all, to have carried on with a casual supper with friends while taking monumental decisions; surely it would have gone by the board?
‘Well, the poor man has to eat,’ Joan said, which, on that frightening evening, on the brink of a possible nuclear war, had we three breaking out in laughter.