— 7 —

“It’s in the nature of stars to glow warmer as they grow older.” —Philosopher/scientist James Lovelock, ninety-nine years old, speaking of the sun, on BBC Radio Four, January 1, 2019

CARINTHIA WEST (FRIEND) AND DAVID BOWIE

“Hey, Rinthy, I’m over here.” David waves from a corner table laid for two, on the patio of a small trattoria in Portofino, right at the end of the quay. He is sitting alone, waiting for me. He looks much as I’d imagined him, in black slacks, a white shirt, with a pale blue sweater slung insouciantly over his shoulders. His face seems older, thinner, and more elegant somehow, but not as ancient as the Methuselah character he once played in The Hunger, a film with Catherine Deneuve. I had visited him on the London set when he played the first of several practical jokes on me, by pretending to be his own father. “David asked me to look after you,” wheezed the virtually bald old man. His makeup was so unbelievably convincing that I shook his gnarled hand until I realized that the rest of the cast and crew were cracking up with laughter. I’d been privileged to be one of a handful of female friends acquired, not through work, show business, or romance but because of my friendship with his longtime personal assistant and closest friend, Corinne (aka Coco). Coco and I had shared some hilarious travel adventures together as well as an apartment in LA, and a friend of Coco’s was almost always automatically a friend of David’s and trusted by his inner circle. “Rinthy” was David’s pet nickname for me. He liked to personalize his friendships by a name no one else would know but him. I always figured it was part of the private uniqueness that was David. Not the public Man Who Fell to Earth David, or the Ziggy Stardust David, or the Thin White Duke David; just David.

I would never dare to call him Dave, though, so when a mysterious postcard summoned me here, to this tiny part of Portofino’s harbor, all it said, in David’s spidery hand, was “Rinthy—see you at the Italian café for unfinished business. Dave,” with a fast-approaching date and time, I was nonplussed but thrilled at the thought of seeing him again. Previously, always respectful of his privacy unless summoned to a concert, film set, or holiday, this time I thought, “I will go to him.” The front of the postcard was a faded pastel of a boat, drawn by hand and surrounded by sea. David had owned a beautiful yacht, the Deneb Star. Once, it was around 1981, I was one of several friends he invited to spend a week cruising down the Amalfi Coast, taking in small seaside towns and secluded beaches, with a dozen crew to attend to our every need. We moored at bustling Italian ports like Portofino, sampling the small tourist shops and designer boutiques that lined the quay, or simply sunned and swam, but like myself, David always got antsy just sitting on his yacht, and he would find every excuse to go on shore—a packet of Marlboros, a Herald Tribune, or to make a phone call from the local post office—for we were sailing in a time long before mobile telephones and WiFi and emails and satellites, still sending postcards from each port we visited.

The “Italian café” for today’s lunch was shorthand for the restaurant we all liked best, as none of us ever remembered its real name. I knew exactly where to go. How like David to have chosen a place where he had once felt so carefree. The café itself was a bright splash of white, brilliant light, exotic potted plants, colorful tiles on the floor that sometimes turned intimate conversations into virtual shouting matches, so loud was the hubbub of background noise. But the crisp white tablecloths were an instant giveaway: this café had a distinctly chic air that set it high above the other cafés along the quay.

Patting the seat beside him, David thanks me for coming. I have given up cigarettes, so I am nervous about seeing him after all this time, but I notice that he is now smoking an e-cigarette. He seems calm, occasionally pushing away a strand of reddish hair peeping through gray with his free hand. Slowly, I become adjusted to this new version of David. Zoning in between time frames and trips, highs and lows, triumphs and disasters, loves and hates, he free dives into memories and friends we share, what he calls the “unfinished business” we never had time for on the boat. He wants to know what I have been working on and about certain friends (a polite curiosity always was a great part of David’s charm).

There is a waiter whom I vaguely remember, who brings us each a menu and a glass of Orvieto, gesticulating that the wine is “on the house,” and curiously, he does not speak or seem surprised to be serving us. We order mountainous plates of Caprese salads to toy with, with mozzarella that would melt in our mouths. A buzz of muted conversation has gone up from the ghostly presence of the passeggeri crowd I perceive to be just outside the restaurant, and I can tell they are aware that “Boweee” is inside, but with a nonchalance long born of iconic stardom, he appears not to notice. His blue eye is turned to me intensely while the brown one seems to dance in dreamlike delight. They change color all the time, the result of a punch from his best friend in a teenage brawl over a girl. He’d been told he was going to lose his sight, but with true David aplomb, he always credited his friend, now long forgiven, as giving him a kind of “mystique.” Sometimes one eye looks to be an azure blue, the other a dark green or brown demonic dot, and I notice that when we are talking in spiritual terms, the green/blue iris takes on a shimmering light, and when we are being practical, like ordering from the menu, then the darker eye becomes predominant. There is no doubt that this David still has chameleon eyes.

Right now, he is in an expansive mood. Just to be here—in the sun, by the sea, with one friend to talk to—seems to be enough for him. “Remember that trip to Cornwall?” he questions. “You had that weird boyfriend, what was his name? Earl somebody or other? He had a Rembrandt on the wall in his dining room, but he wouldn’t pay for that pub lunch, and he wanted me to play some festival he was organizing, but when I found out he had a bull’s head buried in the middle of his maze, I backed out? Too weird, even for me!”

“Yes,” I say, reminding him of the name. “My mother wanted me to marry him, not for snobbish reasons, but because she had once dated his father! That was a lucky escape!” “You’ve had a few,” says David, in an avuncular manner, affectionately patting me on the arm, “God, the English upper classes, they are so eccentric! I could have told you he wasn’t a safe bet for any girl—and that’s me talking!” We laugh a lot at this as we joyfully hack away at our salads, naturally segueing into a discussion about another mutual friend, a performer whom David was very close to. He has a theory about their friendship. “He sees everything through the eyes of physicality, dance, movement, sensuality, and that’s what makes him such a brilliant entertainer, but I think my style is a more cerebral one, perhaps because I studied mime. I love women, as you know, and men, too, sometimes, more as brothers in arms. But I never had the desire to own and conquer, and I believe it made me a better friend and companion to women.” I can’t dispute this theory, as David was only ever the most sensitive of friends to me. He was, by nature, a generous, thoughtful soul. We go on to discuss a mutual female friend as our waiter refills our glasses. She is involved in an abusive relationship, and we both agree it isn’t likely to end well. “The problem I see so often with women,” David observes, “is that they never believe a man when he tells them who he is. If you listen closely, men will always tell you their true natures. The problem lies with women never believing them. They think they can change the man they’re deeply in love with. It’s always a delusion.”

I store away this nugget of gold for future use, and sensing that at any moment David might vanish as swiftly as he came, I change the subject and remind him of the Hunger incident. David laughs. “Yeah, I used to love to play jokes like that,” he says. “You could really catch people unawares. I loved dressing up as a waiter or a chauffeur and watching how rude people could be to someone they perceived as just there to serve them. Then when they found out it was me, they became all smiles and ingratiation. Sad, really.”

We discuss how precious were the times on Deneb Star and traveling on it. In between tours and making albums or recording, like other stars of the time, it was the only real relaxation—even in those days of no social media . . . yet here we are reflecting in our dream world—no bodyguards or anxious personal assistants. “Did you like my postcard?” David says jauntily. “I drew it of Deneb from this very spot just outside. I thought you’d enjoy that. Or at least puzzle out who sent it from the beyond. One of my little jokes.”

We move on to the subject of art and the precious place that owning and collecting paintings once took in his life: David Bomberg, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Frank Auerbach, German Expressionists, to name a few. I reminded him of a visit the two of us once took with Coco to the studio of Francesco Clemente in New York, and of the day he came with his art dealer to meet the painter Richard Kidd at my family home in Warwickshire. Being an excellent painter himself, it was apparent from both visits how trained and exceptional David’s eye was by the way he looked at other artists. “Yes, that day was a lot of fun, but I am glad that I asked my estate to sell most of my collection at Sotheby’s and let go. Everything about life is in the letting go eventually.” I was surprised by this thought. David never seemed the faintest bit mortal, but then neither did many of us from the sixties and seventies. Our lives had been so haphazard, so idealistic, compared to the “sensible” generations that followed. As if reading my mind, he says, “It’s always been easy for me to make money. I think it’s because I never pursued it. It’s in the pursuing that people make mistakes—that desperate need to consume and collect . . . better to let go. . . . But letting go of everything is not so easy. I still miss my family very much.”

As if on cue, David leans forward and softly sings a few lines in my ear: “Look up here, I’m in heaven, I’ve got scars that can’t be seen, I’ve got drama that can’t be stolen. Everybody knows me now.” And as I hear the sound of his chair scraping back, I feel so grateful to have had these minutes of private time to hear his lyrics straight from his lips, his insights, and, above all, to have his trust. “By the way, I meant to tell you earlier, this place we called the Italian café is called La Dolce Vita.” He grins broadly and winks at me with his left eye, the one that never quite closes, and puts a finger to his lips. As I watch him gradually fade, until nothing more is left of him, I reflect that, sadly, no one will ever again call me “Rinthy.”

But his secrets are safe with me.

Carinthia West is an English photographer and journalist whose writing credits include Marie Claire, Harper’s and Queen, Harper’s Bazaar, Tatler, the LA Weekly, the Independent, the Telegraph, and Saga and US magazines, covering travel, lifestyle, humor, and (her least favorite subject!) the celebrity interview. As a photographer, she has grown up in the presence of, and been friends with, some of the twentieth century’s greatest names from music, film, and society. Anjelica Huston, Mick Jagger, George Harrison, Ronnie Wood, Robin Williams, Paul Getty Jr., Neil Young, Helen Mirren, David Bowie, Paul Simon, Carly Simon, James Taylor, and King Hussein and Queen Noor of Jordan are just a few of those she photographed at casual, private, intimate, and poignant moments in their lives.