A Chimpanzee in the Wine Cellar E-Book

Patricia Cavendish O'Neil

• Herausgeber: Jonathan Ball
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Seitenzahl: 399

Beschreibung

From the international best-selling author of A Lion in the Bedroom, Pat Cavendish O'Neill, comes another glimpse into her extravagant and adventurous life ... In 1968, Pat Cavendish O'Neill reluctantly left her magical years in Kenya behind to join her mother in Somerset West, South Africa. She left behind her wonderful friends, a life she loved and, even more heart-breaking, her beloved lioness Tana. However, arriving at her new home on Broadlands Farm, Pat soon found a different channel for her extraordinary gift with animals when she revealed a sharp eye for identifying winning race horses, turning Broadlands into a renowned stud farm. As always, the women attracted a colourful international audience into their extremely lavish lifestyle - champagne and caviar were the order of the day - and Pat and her mother would regularly fly to Australia to bid on some of the world's finest fillies and colts. Pat's fierce of love of animals has resulted in her opening heart and home to a variety of creatures, from monkeys to baboons, birds, sheep, pigs and horses, to a pack of seventeen dogs and a goat all living underfoot. But a rescued chimp named Kalu found his way deepest into her heart. For over 40 years Pat and Kalu have lived at Broadlands together and the one without the other is a picture incomplete. Today, at the age of 87, Pat leads a very different life from the enormous privilege and wealth into which she was born, yet she still remains true to her first love of animals.

Leseprobe

Description

In Kenya, my life was saved twice by my lioness Tana and in South Africa once again my life was saved by wild animals, this time by my baboons. I will live in eternal gratitude for these animals and the love they have shown me.

The extraordinary life of heiress Pat Cavendish O’Neill took a turn for the unexpected when she moved from Kenya to settle on a Cape farm in 1968. Here Pat found a new channel for her remarkable gift with animals: she became one of South Africa’s first woman racehorse trainers. As always, Pat and her famous mother attracted a colourful international audience into their extremely lavish lifestyle and the two woman would regularly fly to Australia to bid on some of the world’s finest fillies and colts. Broadlands Stud went from glory to glory in racing circles.

Pat’s first book, A Lion in the Bedroom, described how, after a life of flitting around the world from bases in the South of France and the Bahamas, she found her place in the world in Kenya when she was given a lion cub to raise. In the Rift Valley a pet gazelle accompanied her lioness on glamorous safaris, and in South Africa the pampered racehorses of Broadlands shared their space with a menagerie of equally beloved baboons, vervet monkeys, various farm animals saved from their fate, cats, parrots and – at one point – 35 dogs. But queen of the farm, a rescued chimpanzee named Kalu has found her way deepest into Pat’s heart.

A Chimpanzee in the Wine Cellar is rich in anecdotes that will make you laugh and cry. Now in her late eighties, Pat leads a very different life from the enormous wealth into which she was born, yet she still remains true to her first love of animals.

Title Page

A Chimpanzee in the Wine Cellar

Pat Cavendish O’Neill

JONATHAN BALL PUBLISHERS

JOHANNESBURG & CAPE TOWN

Dedication

I would like to dedicate this book to some very special friends without whose wonderful help and generosity I would not be living at Broadlands today surrounded by my beloved animals. To the memory of Graham Beck and to that wonderful young man Antony Beck and his mother Rhona; to Chris Mauerberger, Sheila Southey and John Kalmanson, you are in my prayers every night. To my wonderful staff, with their loving support, and last but not least to Checkers Somerset West, whose past-sell-by-date food keeps my dogs, monkeys, goats, pigs and cattle well fed!

EARLY DAYS

EARLY DAYS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER

1

I have had the most incredible life, thanks to the most wonderful mother in the world, two incredible brothers and a glorious lioness called Tana who came to me as a newborn cub with her eyes still closed. Her mother had been shot down in the Tana River District and as I was well known as a compulsive rescuer of lost and injured animals I was presented with this tiny orphaned cub the moment I touched down in Nairobi to visit my younger brother Caryll. I was living in France at this time, but Tana changed all that very quickly and Kenya became my home.

My beloved and most understanding mother then bought me a farm, called Ol Orion. It was a beautiful old colonial rambling bungalow with a magnificent garden and incredible views, and it was here that I felt I had found my place in the world. The farm bordered onto the Ngong Hills and nature reserve overlooking the Rift Valley. The area was called Karen after Karen Blixen, who wrote the book Out Of Africa. This period of my life will forever remain the most treasured one and the memory of my lioness Tana the most valued.

Tana was brought up on my bed, with her bottles, amidst all my dogs. I house-trained her the same way as the dogs, with her nose being rubbed into whatever mess she made inside, followed by a firm smack. She became totally house trained and over the next seven years slept on my bed alongside all the dogs and Joseph my beloved chimp, her head on the pillow beside mine, breathing short lion puffs into my ear. Tana was on my bed so often that my first book ended up being called A Lion in the Bedroom. The book was a bestseller in three countries and movie rights were optioned by a German company who came out to the farm one day for lunch and told me they were going to go ahead with the film. They gave me a contract to sign, which I did – stupidly, as this handed over lifetime rights to the film, and to this day they have never made it, despite the fact that the renowned British actor Dominic West was originally standing by to play the role of my lover, Stan Lawrence Brown. The book ends when I left Kenya to live in South Africa, which is where this book more or less begins.

My life in South Africa has been very different. Apart from the many tragedies, there have also been so many magical moments. In Kenya, my life was saved twice by my lioness Tana and in South Africa once again my life was saved by wild animals, this time by my baboons. I will always live in eternal gratitude for these animals and the love they have shown me.

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER

2

I was born in England, in 1925. My father was General Frederick Cavendish and at the time he was Commanding General at Aldershot in Hampshire and a highly decorated cavalry officer. He was also a 10-goal polo player and he lived his life upon a horse. I quickly followed in his footsteps and could ride before I could walk. I rode my first steeplechase at the age of six, on one of his hunters. My legs were too short and my feet too small for stirrups, so he used to slip my feet into the leather straps above the stirrups and send me on my way.

His elder brother, Harry Cavendish, inherited the family title of Lord Waterpark, one of the Devonshire titles. As Uncle Harry had no children of his own, the title has now passed on to my brother Caryll. Our uncle was a famous explorer; he went across America with Buffalo Bill and later came through Africa. Cavendish Square, the shopping mall in Cape Town, was named after him.

My mother Enid was Australian, from the famous Lindeman Wine family. Her grandfather had come from England and bought part of the Hunter Valley, where he planted the first vineyards in Australia. My mother at one time was the sole owner of Lindeman Wines.

My mother’s first husband was an American called Roderick Cameron, whose family originally came from Scotland and settled in the United States. They had clipper ships that traded with Australia and it was on one of these visits that Roderick Cameron met and fell in love with the beautiful Lindeman daughter and wanted to marry her. He was in his late thirties at the time and my grandmother, disapproving of the age difference as my mother was only 19, made him wait till she was 21.

They married in Australia in 1913 and after this Roderick took his bride to New York. They owned the Cameron Building at 185 Madison Avenue. My mother soon became a famous beauty and people used to queue to watch her arrivals and departures. In November of that same year she had a son whom she named Roderick William Cameron, known to us all as Rory, and who was later to become world famous for his infinity swimming pool design amongst other things.

Roderick Cameron died of cancer at the age of 43, leaving his young widow Enid and nine-month-old son. By this time World War I had broken out and my mother, who was never one to shy away from danger, went to France. There she bought and equipped an ambulance, which she drove herself in the frontlines.

During this time she and Rory stayed at the British Embassy in Paris. Lord Derby was the Ambassador and one of his aides threatened to commit suicide if my mother did not marry him. Lord Derby, trying to prevent the havoc my beautiful mother was creating, decided to introduce her to a famous young cavalry officer who was a colonel at the time – this was Frederick Cavendish. Soon after meeting they were married and when the war ended in 1918 he was sent to Egypt as commander of his regiment. Here my mother’s beauty once again caused an uproar amongst the officers. In the 1920s and 1930s she was considered one of the six most beautiful women in the world.

After Egypt, followed by a spell in Aldershot, my father was sent to Paris as a liaison officer, as he spoke French fluently. Unlike my mother, my father was not wealthy and so it was my mother who bought the flat in Paris and the house at Le Touquet on the coast in northern France. The house was called The Berries, and there was a lovely garden and surrounding forests in which I regularly went riding. Our next-door neighbour was the famous PG Wodehouse! In addition to her great beauty, Mummy rode beautifully, played golf, drove a car, which in those days was unusual for a woman, and she was also a very good artist and musician. She was quite simply the most incredible and loving mother one could wish for!

We were with my mother holidaying at Biarritz in southwest France when she got news of my father’s death. His valet had found him dead of a cerebral haemorrhage on the floor of their Paris apartment. I was six years old at the time.

My mother’s next husband was Viscount Furness, owner of a shipping empire and one of the world’s richest men. He fell instantly in love when he saw her enter the casino at Le Touquet. He vowed to his friends at the time that this was the lady he was going to marry as he had never seen such perfection before. He then pursued her relentlessly. My mother had a flat in Chester Square in London and so he bought the whole building and gave her the deeds made out in her name.

Furness refused to use public transport. He also refused to let my mother travel anywhere on public transport. He had his own private plane and pilot standing by, as well as a private train with his own station and two ocean-going liners, the Emerald and the Sapphire, with a crew of 40 per vessel. His dogged determination to win my mother over eventually succeeded.

After their wedding in 1933, they went to live in his huge Victorian mansion, Burrough Court, in Leicestershire. Furness had a staff of over 100 people which included four cooks, a butler, six footmen in full livery, a boot boy just to clean shoes and a host of groundsmen, grooms and cleaning staff. My brother Caryll and I had one whole wing of the building, with our own staff and a chauffeur. I never went to school and arithmetic was not on my schedule – I could hardly add and subtract, thank goodness now for calculators, not known in my day – but I had a tutor, two governesses and my beloved nanny, who remained with me until I was 18, as I was never allowed out by myself. It was only after I turned 18 and Nanny Peabody retired that I was allowed to go out unaccompanied, much to my eventual delight! Despite this rigid chaperoning, from an early age I spent my days on a horse and driving cars around the estate. My younger brother was flying and landing my stepfather’s aeroplanes at the age of 11. My mother never knew the meaning of fear, so this was how Caryll and I were brought up.

My mother kept all my father’s retainers. Frederick’s cavalry sergeant-major gave me military training and every morning in the large covered arena I would be drilled over the jumps with arms crossed and the reins knotted on the horse’s neck. ‘Go with the horse!’ he would shout as he waved his riding crop in the air. We used to go hunting with the Cottesmore and the Quorn Hunts twice a week and on the other days we would ride all over my stepfather’s vast estate.

Furness had magnificent stables for all his riding horses and hunters. He was fanatical about cleanliness so the stables had to be spotless. The entrance to each stable was white-chalked and the straw plaited by the doors. The tack room had an enormous number of silver cups and plates on display in glass cabinets. Each saddle and blanket for over 80 horses had its own rack with a bridle polished to perfection hanging overhead. There were two boys employed full-time just to clean the tack every day and iron the saddle-cloths. Furness also owned two famous stud farms, Gilltown in Ireland, which upon his death was bought by Aga Khan III, and Sandley House in Dorset, which became the first National Stud in England. Many famous racehorses, including Nearco, were bred there. Mummy and Furness were great racing enthusiasts, so I got to know all these wonderful studs and horses.

My mother had kept my father’s army blacksmith, who now took over the stable forge at Burrough Court. He and his assistant did all the shoeing. I used to spend a lot of my free time helping him whenever he let me. I would listen quietly while he told me tales of my father’s bravery and proudly showed me a very battered book written about my father. I never worried about the fact that I had no other children to play with. My brother Caryll had gone off to Hawtreys and then on to Eton and only came back for holidays. My older brother Rory now lived in London in a flat Mummy had bought for him.

We were not allowed into the front of the house, except in the mornings, when we used to go to our mother’s room, where she would be surrounded by her dogs and two tame silver foxes. It was the highlight of my day, the two hours I spent with our mother each morning as well as when she used to visit me every night. Furness hated children; even his own did not meet with his approval. His daughter Averill, who was from his first marriage, married Andrew Rattray, who was a white hunter – this in Furness’s mind was an inferior occupation so he promptly disinherited her. Andrew was the uncle of South Africa’s famous Mike Rattray, owner of game reserves, racehorses and a magnificent stud.

I adored Averill’s younger brother, Christopher, who was known to us as Dick Furness. He was my hero. He did not come to Burrough Court that often, though he kept some of his steeplechasers there and trusted me enough to let me school them for him. Furness wanted to disinherit him as well because he gave a drunken party at Burrough Court at which he and his friends fished all the exotic collection of fish out of the massive tropical fish tank that made up one of the walls of the billiard room. My mother also loved Dick and threatened to leave Furness if he did disinherit him. Furness relented but Dick was never allowed back to Burrough Court. In 1940, during World War II, he was killed at the battle of Dunkirk. He made a famous cavalry charge in his tank to draw the enemy fire away from his troops and was awarded England’s highest military honour, the Victoria Cross.

Furness refused to recognise his other son by his second wife, Thelma. He always claimed that this son, William, was the bastard son of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII, with whom Thelma had been having an affair. Thelma introduced the Prince to her great friend Wallis Simpson, for whom he then deserted Thelma and later gave up the throne of England.

After having been humiliated by his second wife, Furness was obsessed with discouraging any would-be future husbands from getting near his lovely wife – my mother. He bought her a famous house called La Fiorentina in the South of France, on the point of St Jean Cap Ferrat. Because he was so jealous of his beautiful wife, he gradually bought up all the other houses on the point, which overlooked the Bay of Beaulieu and Monte Carlo. This was to ensure that no lovers could move in nearby.

In France my mother’s famous looks continued to bring things to a standstill. Once, when accompanied by Furness on a first visit to the casino at Monte Carlo, the news got around that they had arrived and as my mother entered, gambling came to a stop. Tables were deserted as my mother appeared in a Molyneux gown, wearing the famous Furness diamonds and tiara. King Farouk of Egypt said to her, ‘Enid, darling, next time please come with a yashmak and burka, as your beautiful presence has ruined my game!’

When they had been married seven years, Furness fell very ill and had to have two night nurses and two day nurses. It was 1940 and the last refugee ship was waiting to take the English out of France before the Germans arrived. Somerset Maugham, who was a neighbour, came to see Mummy and tried to persuade her that despite Furness’s ill-health we would have to risk the journey. Anyone left behind would certainly end up in a concentration camp, he said. When my mother finally got Furness to Cannes where the ship was moored, he took one look at the vessel, referred to it as a fucking tramp steamer and refused to go on board! He said to Mummy, ‘You can take your fucking daughter, but I am not going.’

We spent that night at the Carlton Hotel in Cannes. Mummy told me to go to my room, then came later to tell me that she had arranged for me to leave with Willie Maugham, as Furness was too ill and she could not leave him. Naturally I flatly refused to go, so we all returned to La Fiorentina. My stepfather died soon after this. Mummy and I were in the basement, where the huge kitchen was, melting down candles to make soap, when the nurse came to call her. She left me in charge of all the huge pots, telling me not to let them boil over. In those days there were no televisions so one used to read books. I had a vivid imagination and in the dimly lit kitchen I imagined all these devils peering out at me from behind the boiling cauldrons. It was a nightmare which even to this day I remember so clearly.

The South of France became part of Vichy France and there was a big prisoner of war camp at Aize. After Furness’s death, Mummy started rescuing English prisoners; she even rescued a famous American, Whitney Straight, who had joined the Royal Air Force. On one occasion, she dressed them up as maids and had them on their knees polishing the floors by the time the Germans arrived. There was, I believe, an escape route somewhere in Nice that she used to send them to.

On another occasion, my mother got me to ride on a bicycle with her lady’s maid, Mlle Jeanne, and an English prisoner whom she dressed as one of the gardeners, complete with beret, to get him safely from Cap Ferrat to Nice. She thought that we would just look like a poor family group and therefore not raise any suspicions. At that age, not having been taught the meaning of fear, passing the Germans on motorbikes meant nothing to me. So we delivered him safely.

Despite my mother’s best efforts, things got gradually worse and worse and we were soon forced to leave. The Germans were getting very suspicious and how we got across the frontier on the escape route I do not know. My mother had rolled up my long hair to make curls on top of my head into which she pinned bank notes, but I don’t remember another thing until we were on a terrible train going across Spain and the toilette was full of old women sitting on the floor with their trussed chickens. I remember the agony of not being able to go to the loo; I was much too shy to go in front of anybody. We finally arrived at the British Embassy in Portugal. There, my mother used her influence to get us on the regular flying-boat service to England. I remember the trip clearly, as in order to avoid anti-aircraft guns, we had to fly just above sea level and the beautiful moon was shining on the water.

We arrived back in London just in time for the Battle of Britain. Furness’s London home, Lees Place, was just off Grosvenor Square and was a very lovely eighteenth-century building, set back in a semi-courtyard with its own stables and a little lane to the right leading towards Hyde Park. The stables now functioned as garages for the Rolls-Royces, the only cars Furness would have.

So that we would not worry about all the bombing, Mummy would take us up to the top balcony as soon as the sirens rang and would give pocket money to whoever could count the most bombs coming out of the bays. As a result Caryll and I could not wait for the sirens to go off and we would race each other up to the balcony to see who could get there first. Once, as we stood on the balcony, a huge bomb came sailing right past us: I ducked as it flew by and landed in one of our garages. It never went off and the whole of Grosvenor Square was evacuated as the bomb had to be disassembled. My mother refused to go, saying, ‘Our boys are risking their lives for us, we will not desert them.’ So we stayed and I watched the whole process. One soldier actually mounted the huge bomb and it was so large that even his legs did not touch the floor.

Shortly after this Caryll was sent to Sandhurst where he became a military cadet and won the belt of honour – and I was sent to a secretarial school to learn shorthand and typing. As Rory had been born in the United States he held American citizenship and so during the war he was a sergeant in the American intelligence. He had been educated in America, Switzerland and Germany, so he was fluent in German and French. He was later sent to London, on loan to British intelligence, where he worked with Hugh Trevor-Roper and helped with the research on his famous book, The Last Days of Hitler. In fact, according to Rory, he actually wrote most of it as well.

Mummy was a great friend of General Eisenhower and the American Ambassador at the time, so I ended up working at the American Embassy. I was luckily allowed to take my dogs to work with me. It was an easy morning walk across the square, with all its grass and lovely trees. There was hardly any traffic, as there was almost no petrol available, and during the tea breaks or if the sirens went off, instead of going down to the bomb shelter I would go and sit in the park with the dogs.

Mummy and I used to go to Battersea Lost Dogs Home on rescue missions and then the dogs would be driven down to our house in Wales for Lane, one of Mummy’s lady’s maids, to look after. By this time Lane must have had 40 or 50 dogs in her keeping. So many of them had been rescued from bombed-out buildings in which their owners had been killed. It was a tradition my mother started of saving dogs – in fact she could never resist rushing to the assistance and rescue of any animal in pain – which to this day I have continued.

Because I could do shorthand in both French and Spanish, I rose in a fairly short time from lowly filing clerk to having an office of my own. I think I was the youngest member of staff to be in that position. After the war I was asked if I would go to Paris and work for the Americans at Orly. Here I ended up having to work on some of the court martials. I used to feel so sorry for the culprits. I stayed in Paris with my Aunt Mimi, who had been married to my uncle, Harry Waterpark. Talk about sexual harassment, from generals to GIs. I had to have a special corset made like a chastity belt!

During the war Mummy had met up with one of her ex-admirers. I adored him; he was Viscount Castlerosse, Earl of Kenmare, better known as Valentine Castlerosse. He wrote a column for the Beaverbrook Press and had also written a life of Tolstoy and The Young Mr Pitt, which a very famous film was made of. I was so pleased when they married as he was a bon viveur in every sense. After marrying him Mummy took the title of Countess of Kenmare.

Valentine was tall but very portly as he kept stuffing himself with food and drink. On top of this he was a heavy gambler and had gone through most of his inheritance by the time Mummy came along. He had a bad heart and had been told to cut down on his eating and drinking habits and take some exercise. He paid no attention to Mummy’s strictures, even though food was in very short supply! But she did get him to accompany me to the park each day to walk the dogs when I got back from the Embassy. He was so fascinating and with my love of history he kept me enthralled for hours.

Despite the fact that it was war time, we managed to go on some wonderful holidays to Ireland. Valentine’s vast estate was there, right on the Killarney lakes, and with my mother’s money a beautiful golf course around the lakes was designed by Henry Cotton. Both my mother and Valentine were keen golfers, which was how they had met at Le Touquet years before. Today I believe Kenmare House is a hotel.

Mummy, I and Rory were at Lees Place when the terrible news of Valentine’s death in Ireland came through. He had died of a heart attack. Mummy left the next day for Ireland. Although she had so many suitors, including Prince Pierre de Polignac, the father of Prince Rainier of Monaco, Mummy said that marrying her seemed to be unlucky, and she was never going to marry again. From then on, my beloved brother Rory took over. Although my adored mother was multi-talented, she had always depended on the man in her life. When we came to South Africa many years later, I took over and she used to laugh and complain that it was like living with a governess.

Following my stint at Orly Airport, I went to the United States, as my aunt – or rather Rory’s aunt, the formidable Mrs Cameron Tiffany – wanted me to spend a year with her. She had hated me as a 14-year-old child when we had driven across America with her. But by now things had changed. Her son, George Tiffany, had been a colonel in the American Air Force and was a bomber pilot. When he came to London, he always came to visit and used to ask me to go out with him to dinners and the theatre. I was immensely shy at the time, as I had never been allowed out on the streets by myself until I was 18. In fact, my first encounter as an 18-year-old with a ‘would-be’ boyfriend was with a GI in Hyde Park. He used to meet me there when I was walking the dogs. One day we were sitting on a bench together and he kissed me, my first kiss, but then he put his tongue in my mouth and I promptly fainted. An alarming occurrence for him, but one that was quite normal for me, as I was always fainting in my youth, passing out with a loud moan, much to everyone’s embarrassment.

Rumours used to circulate in London that I was retarded and this was entirely due to my shyness. Once when some friends, the Sitwells, came to visit, I was in the entrance hall when the butler let them in, and had no chance to escape. I was wearing a red dress at the time and they saw my backside disappearing under the tapestry cover that was decorating the hall table. When they asked the butler who I was, he said ‘That’s Miss Pat, her Ladyship’s daughter, but she is very shy.’ I think they thought he was finding a polite way of saying I was retarded.

Another of my dreadfully embarrassing fainting fits came in Paris. I loved skating and there was a charity gala event at which the Prince of Wales was guest of honour. It was all very grand and the rink was packed with socialites. Our friend, Princess Elizabeth Chavchavadze, was taking the part of Catherine the Great of Russia and being pulled along in her carriage by skaters dressed up as horses, and then we came at the rear, myself and a friend, Jimmy Douglas, a very good-looking young American whose father was a VIP in the American government. While we had practised all the waltzes, the outfits designed by Dior had only arrived the morning of the gala; mine was a huge velvet skirt, with a tight hussar-like top. After the waltz and the end of our act, we all turned and the men bowed and the ladies curtseyed to the Prince of Wales in the royal box. As I sank in my curtsey and tried to get up, the serrated edge of my skates caught in my skirt, pulling me down again, and in the struggle I broke my thumb. There I was, flopping about on the ice like a plucked chicken. Jimmy pulled me up by grabbing my hand with the broken thumb; I just made it to the exit, where once again I passed out. I was told that when they took my glove off, the thumb fell back against my wrist. When I went up to Mummy’s box, she was practically in tears: ‘I am told you were drunk and passed out on the ice,’ she wailed. I don’t think she entirely believed me about the broken thumb, until I had to go the following morning to get X-rays and a plaster cast.

Needless to say, after my very first fainting episode with the GI in the park, it was the last I saw of him. I remember going home to Lees Place and looking at myself in the mirror and wondering if I was pregnant. I then asked my mother’s lovely lady’s maid, Maureen, who very kindly took the trouble to explain the facts of life.

So one night after dinner, when George Tiffany, Aunt Cameron Tiffany’s son, asked me back to Claridges, a luxurious hotel in Mayfair where he was staying, I unsuspectingly accompanied him. There was a bottle of champagne on ice, but Mummy did not approve of women drinking, so I just had a couple of sips, before he started kissing me. I had been very strictly brought up to never be anything but respectful to your elders. He seemed like an old man at the time; when you are 18 anyone in their late thirties appears old. I was desperately trying to fend him off without being rude, when next thing he was on top of me, trying to get my pants off, so once again I passed out. I think he got the fright of his life; he had kept telling me how in love he was with me and how he wanted to marry me. He did take me out a few times after that and I was terrified that Mummy would agree to his proposal of marriage. Sadly for his mother, he was killed on one of his bombing missions, but in his last letter home he had told her that he loved me and wanted to marry me and what a wonderful girl I was. This was why she now wanted me to go and spend a year with her in the United States.

I must say, as formidable as she was, Aunt Nanny was wonderful to me. She had a lovely house in Charleston, South Carolina, right on the sea, another beautiful house in Boston, and her flat in New York took up the entire top floor of the Cameron Building. I loved America; she took me everywhere and the Americans were so friendly and warm-hearted to me. This was in such contrast to France where I was used to being so much younger than our guests that often days could go by without any of them speaking to me. Also, I do not think they thought I was at all comme il faut.

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER

3

My trip with Aunt Nanny ended at Mummy’s house on Cable Beach in the Bahamas, where she knew everyone, so we were continually entertaining or being entertained. Being with Aunt Nanny, the formalities had to be observed and she insisted we write our names down at Government House. While I stood musing over the love of the Duke of Windsor – the previous Governor – for Wallis Simpson, and picturing them in the room where we now stood, I looked up and saw the most beautiful, elegant young man walking by, his arms full of papers. He was very tall and had all the dark brooding beauty of a Byronic character. He was so perfect for this exotic setting that for a moment I thought he was part of my imagination.

The new hero of my dreams was Richard Murphy, the son of the Governor. Within weeks we were engaged to be married. There was a very grand engagement party and when everyone stood up to give the royal toast, I suddenly felt my fainting fit about to appear. I panicked, made some excuse and fled towards the nearest ladies’ room. One had to go through the entrance hall, where there were a lot of columns. I started to pass out before getting there and the last thing I remember before everything went black was grabbing one of the columns as I sank to the floor and a lady’s voice in the distance, saying, ‘She is obviously drunk.’

As the wedding drew near, I got in a panic and wrote a letter calling it off. My mother was not at all pleased with her headstrong daughter and decided it was time to visit her beloved family in Australia. Every year either they came to France or she and I would visit them. It was on this voyage that I met the next love of my life, my beloved husband Frank, who I married and divorced – and married again, much later, which gives me an excuse to tell his story in a later chapter.

* * *

Single once again, I joined my mother and Rory in Paris. Rory’s new girlfriend, Princess Elizabeth Chavchavadze, lived on the Rue Hamelin and Mummy had rented the top floor, which Rory had turned into a large apartment.

One night as we came down for dinner, the first person I saw as we entered the sitting room was the tall, beautifully elegant figure of Guy de Lesseps, standing by the fireplace talking to one of the guests. I was 16 the last time I had seen him, in a theatre in Cannes during the war, and he was the first man I had ever fallen in love with. He had the head and body of a classical Greek statue, with his close-cropped dark blond curly hair, aquiline nose, beautiful sexy mouth and slumberous amber eyes – I was utterly smitten! Then, as if he knew I had entered the room, he looked up. I could feel my heart dive and accelerate, as leaving the very chic woman he had been talking to he came across the room to me. He was very tall and as he bent over my hand to kiss it, he looked at me with amused eyes, ‘Ma belle Patricia, pourquoi tu m’as fait attendre si longtemps?’

I could feel myself blushing; knowing women so well he was amused at my reaction to him. He spent the rest of the evening with me, flirting outrageously and enjoying my acute embarrassment at his excessive compliments. Afterwards he told me that it was such a refreshing change from women who expected flattery as their due. I was of course a lot younger than the women he was used to. He was 39 at the time and I was now 26. He had been living with the artist Nora Auric since he was 23 and she was 20 years older than him. In today’s world he would have been known as a ‘toy boy’, but that nomenclature was unknown in those days. He was famous just for being the beautiful young lover of Nora Auric, wife of the famous French composer, Georges Auric!

The fact that Comte Guy de Lesseps was the grandson of the famous Ferdinand de Lesseps, who built the Suez Canal, seemed of no importance to French society. But I found this hugely significant and had wonderful, romantic memories of the Suez Canal and his grandfather’s life-size statue decorating the banks of this incredible waterway – the gateway to Africa. Since the age of 10, memories of the Canal, the romance of Africa, the mystery, the beauty of this wonderful continent have entranced me. It was as if I had been brought so deep into its embrace that it was never to let me go.

This of course made Guy even more attractive and alluring. His voice was so beautiful, he was fluent in both English and French, and here he was telling me that I was une beauté and that he had never forgotten me since that memorable evening on the staircase. I could not believe, with all the beautiful, intelligent and sophisticated women he had met, that a young girl of 16 climbing the steps to the theatre during wartime could have remained in his memory.

At one stage Nora came over and said, ‘I see Guy is embarrassing you with all his attention, don’t worry, he is passionate about women and you are a nouveauté.’ Before I left he asked me to meet him at a bistro on the Champs Elysées. I went home on cloud nine and all I could think of was that I would be meeting Guy again and that he must find me attractive, or he would not bother to make a date. From then on, week after week I used to meet him every day, sometimes for two or three hours, or sometimes for 15 minutes between his engagements. I knew he loved being with me, but in all that time he never tried to carry our relationship beyond his outrageous flirting.

One strange thing was that Nora, as long as he was with me, did not seem to mind. I did not know what Guy had told her, but she realised we had a lot in common and since cars and horses bored her and I was not at all sophisticated and was often with my family as chaperones, she probably judged that not too much could take place.

Guy was a very good rally driver and loved cars and so did I. He also loved riding and horses, and we both loved dancing. I think he had persuaded Nora that I was much too young and was only interested in the same sports as him.

It was on one of these nights while we sat chatting in a bistro in Les Halles, when Nora was at a concert, that I looked up and saw two magnificent Percherons passing by. They had to stop near the red light just outside where we were sitting. Because of Furness and his famous Percheron stud, I was thrilled to see these beautiful horses, so I rushed out to talk to them and to their owner. To my horror I learned that they were on their way to the abattoir. There and then I paid the owner double what the butcher would have paid, leaving Guy to bargain with the owner who was refusing at this point to take them back to the stable. I stood in the Parisian traffic holding these two huge horses for what seemed like hours while Guy plied their owner with wine and more money to get him to agree to take them home for the night. Mummy had a lovely house with a garden at 37 Rue de l’Université but there was not enough room for two huge carthorses.

I did not know anyone in France with a farm nearby who would take two carthorses, so Guy spent the rest of the night calling up friends, and eventually he found some with a farm not far from Paris. They must have been amazed to be awoken in the early hours of the morning to have two Percherons thrust upon them.

The story soon got around; Nora was highly amused, and was now convinced I was a total screwball who would hold no real interest for the very sophisticated Guy de Lesseps. Her one stricture was: ‘If you are going out in the evening with him do not let him drink too much, he is far too fond of his wine.’ She never said anything about rescuing horses!

We then left for the South of France. A few weeks later Guy and Nora went to their house at Porquerolles. As Georges Auric, Nora’s husband, was not there, Guy spent most of his time with Nora. They quite often came over for lunch and whenever he had free time, he would call up and I would drive over with my dogs and meet him on the beach. Even in those days, without much traffic, it was a fairly long drive over narrow winding roads. Often he would only have time for a quick swim and few minutes of conversation sitting under the beach umbrella that I used to carry in the boot of the car. I was so besotted with him that just these few minutes were precious and the long drive home was passed in euphoric memories of his passionate looks and the feel of his beautiful tanned body as he lay beside me on the beach.

Guy and Nora then went off to Spain and I was in despair as weeks went by without my seeing him, but finally we were all meeting up in Venice. We were once again staying with Princess Chavchavadze in her palazzo on the Grand Canal and they were going to stay in a hotel. We were all meeting in the Piazza del Marco.

The sight of him walking towards us was unforgettable. As he bent over to kiss my hand, I felt almost faint with emotion. He looked up and in a whisper said those magic words: ‘Ma belle Patricia, que je t’aime.’ He then drew up a chair and sat down beside me; in the general conversation no more was said. He almost ignored me but under the table his leg touched mine. I tried to give him space, but he wouldn’t have it.

When, finally, we did make love it was in his flat in Montmartre. The experience was so incredible that, unsurprisingly, on the way to the bathroom I passed out.

I had been raised on my mother’s precepts: ‘Never be afraid, never be ill – and if you are don’t talk about it – and above all, never be jealous.’ For Guy, however, my attitude was incomprehensible. From then on his jealousy became obsessive. The fact that I was not worried about his having lady friends and never questioned him about his love life convinced him that there was someone else in my life. He was never abusive, but it was the continual questioning and suspicion of my every movement that finally drove me to disappear back to London.

Since Mummy hated winter we followed the sun back to the Bahamas. There I met my next husband, Aymon de Roussy de Sales, more of whom in the second part of the book.

* * *

After the war Rory’s restoration had made La Fiorentina one of the most famous houses in the world. He designed the first swimming pool of the type that is now known as an infinity pool. He also designed a wonderful garden and beautiful walks between the various houses. Another first for Rory was at a restaurant in Eze when he seized a doormat and much to my horror took it to the manager to find out where it had come from. The result was the first sisal carpets.

Rory also taught me photography. Years later, when Architectural Review was doing an article on La Fiorentina, they used all my photographs. I have framed so many of them and to this day, I look back with nostalgia at my photographs of Mummy and Rory and the beautiful villas that Mummy owned in the South of France.

I just could not live without Mummy and Rory. Even my long-suffering husbands had to come and live with my family. Around this time we also spent two wonderful years in India. I had my thirtieth birthday on my mother’s houseboat, on the beautiful Dhal Lake in Kashmir. I loved the Indians and their magnificent country; they were so wonderfully hospitable to us. We stayed in fabulous palaces with famous Maharajas, where I could go riding every day, as well as in tiny bungalows with buckets for toilets – this was because Rory wanted to experience all aspects of India. The hospitality and the incredible sense of colour were unforgettable.

After his death Rory was given a Creative Capital Award for all he had done for art and architecture, which Caryll and I flew over to Washington to receive. There is now also a room at the museum in Nice in France which is dedicated to him for all he did for garden design and botany. Being so multi-talented, he was a brilliant photographer as well and his photographs of our time in India were given an exhibition in London. Mrs Gandhi attended the opening.

Seeing the world through Rory’s eyes was a life of continual enchantment. Looking back, I realise how incredibly privileged I was to spend so many years travelling in his wake as he and Mummy, following the sun, did the grand tours of Italy, Greece, Egypt, Ceylon and India. We always travelled by ship to accommodate the mountain of luggage and the unbelievable collection of objets d’art they amassed between them.

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER

4