A Story Lately Told (27 page)

The girls were fabulous, and we all got along really well. I can’t remember a single bad moment or catfight. On the contrary, we were always supportive of one another. I remember an amazing zaftig blond model of Helmut Newton’s, a cool German called Mercedes, who tucked me under her arm in Rome when I was lonely at the Grand Hotel; Tracy Weed and Wallis, who dried my tears when I broke down with self-loathing and fatigue at collection week in Paris; and Marie Helvin, who made ramen for her sister and me in her little flat in Knightsbridge.

•  •  •

When Bob and I moved back to New York, an apartment came up for rent in Gramercy Park. It was in a white building with yellow windows near the Arts Club, at 13 Gramercy Park South, across from the hotel. The apartment was a large studio overlooking the gardens, adjacent to where Susan Forristal, a beautiful Irish Texan whom Bob often paired with me in photographs, lived with her boyfriend, Allan. We were friends, and she was one of the very few people of whom Bob approved. He photographed us together quite often for Saks Fifth Avenue campaign ads. Susan and I had found some spectacular lace
curtains on an outing to an antique shop, and, true to my usual style, they were almost the only items of furnishing in the apartment.

Allegra and Nurse were spending some time with Grandpa and Nana on Long Island. Allegra was a beautiful six-year-old and looked like Alice in Wonderland. But she was solemn and I was concerned for her. I could see that even though Nurse had remained with her faithfully, she missed Mum deeply. There was talk of Allegra remaining with the Somas, though I had not heard from Dad what his intentions were for her in the fall. It was evident to me that our grandparents were a bit too far along to take care of her. Grandpa was in his eighties, and Nana had her hands full just looking after him. Grandpa had shingles, was getting progressively senile, and had become obsessed with the evils of gambling. Decisions needed to be made about the future of my little sister. In the interim, when she came to New York, I would take her for ice cream at Serendipity or shopping at Saks.

On alternate weekends, Norma would bring Terry down from Woodstock to stay with Bob and me. He was a year younger than Allegra, a cherubic child with olive skin and blond curls, quiet and thoughtful. I could tell that he liked me but took it hard that I had come between his parents. Even though I felt that Norma looked at me with contempt for stealing her husband, I could also feel her pity for me. On one occasion, she and I had a face-off after she dropped Terry at the apartment.

“You poor idiot child,” she said, lighting her cigarette, taking a deep drag, and throwing the match casually into a basket of firelighters and kindling by the side of the mantelpiece. “You understand nothing!” Norma had an Eskimo face with pale blue eyes and a cloud of fair hair; she looked like Little Orphan Annie.

I strode across the room and grabbed her hair in one hand and opened the front door with the other in a rather deft move. “Don’t come back till you apologize,” I said, and shut the door.

Surprisingly, after this incident, Norma and I became friends. Later that year, when her divorce from Bob came through, she met an English musician called Jackie Lomax. She changed her name to Annie when she married him.

•  •  •

Not long after our return to New York, my bookings began to fall off again, with no interest from advertising at all. I asked Eileen Ford why she thought I was not working, and she suggested I get a nose job. I went crying to Bob. “You’ve already worked with the best in the world,” he said. “Me and Avedon.” I soon left Ford, and when I transferred to Wilhelmina, I found out that Dick Avedon had a hand in preventing other photographers from working with me at
Vogue,
by insisting that I be exclusive to him.

Fortunately, everyone loved my French haircut, I was good on the runway, and I started to work for Halston. Halston’s shows were famous not only for the clothes but for the versatility of the girls. We called ourselves “the Halstonettes.” Pat Cleveland usually opened the show. A unique model, she looked like a sister to the late Josephine Baker and had legs as tall as the Empire State Building. There was Heidi Goldberg, a small, angelic blond; Karen Bjornson, Halston’s muse and house model; Elsa Peretti, who went on to be the top designer at Tiffany & Co.; Beverly Johnson, a ravishing black woman who helped break the mold; Naty Abascal, who looked like a flamenco dancer; Pilar Crespi, a beautiful society girl—each one fabulously different. As his signature, Halston would bring out Pat Ast, who weighed over three hundred pounds and had
frizzy henna-red hair, dancing down the catwalk in a printed caftan and waving a Japanese fan, and everyone would go mad. Joe Eula drew illustrations of us all, and the film director Joel Schumacher was a fixture backstage, as were Berry Berenson and Stephen Sprouse. I used to play around a bit and change up the pace when I was walking on the runway, catch someone’s eye, to have some fun with it and break up the monotony of just stalking up and down with a vacant look on my face. I guess that’s supposed to make you look at the clothes, but I always end up looking at the models. I loved the catwalk, and it provided a somewhat pleasant and safe respite from acting.

Halston was cool, chic, and slender in black cashmere, calmly sitting behind his desk in his mirrored beige office, but, as I was to discover, occasionally a little snippy when warming up for a show. On my first outing for him, I thought I’d done well, but he took me aside and said rather caustically, “The Halston woman doesn’t raise her arms above her head.” The next day there was an article about me in the
New York Post
by Eugenia Sheppard, very nice, with photographs and one large picture with my arms in the air. “I was mistaken—you can do what you like with your arms,” Halston said to me with a wink.

I had great respect for Halston, as did all his girls. He had a big hand in bringing chic to the American woman; his choices were always simple and totally luxurious, and working for him was a privilege. I stopped modeling before all the craziness of the late seventies and early eighties, when everyone was spending their nights clubbing at Studio 54. Even before the scourge of AIDS and the brilliant lives it destroyed, many people whom I loved and collaborated with died. They were playing loose and fast with drugs, altering their moods to match the whimsy of the time.

Nobody ate then, the models least of all. I would carry around a six-pack of Coca-Cola and store it in the refrigerator of any studio where I was working. I remember going to Gristedes and buying frozen meals, like chicken potpie or potatoes au gratin. It was another state and time from the dinners that I would help Mum prepare in London, chopping the parsley and peeling the garlic, or eating from the garden in faraway Ireland.

O
n one occasion in Paris, Bob had introduced me to Dr. Pierre Bensousan, the French doctor he credited with saving him from a serious addiction to speed in the early sixties. Dr. Bensousan had put Bob on a “sleeping cure” by administering sodium pentothal. Bob had been introduced to amphetamine in New York by a man he described as both a brilliant scientist and a
sociopath—a Dr. Max Jacobson, dubbed by his patients “Miracle Max” or “Dr. Feelgood,” who, under the pretext of helping Bob with his affliction, did the opposite by injecting him with a heady cocktail of speed and vitamins. Soon he became addicted. Dr. Jacobson’s most famous patient was rumored to have been John F. Kennedy.

In 1972 Bob received a call from the
New York Times.
The newspaper had decided to do an exposé in light of Dr. Jacobson’s nefarious practices and roster of star patients. It was an illustrious group consisting of many famous people, from Margot Fonteyn and her husband—Roberto Arias, Panama’s ambassador to the United Kingdom—to Prince Stanislaw “Stash” Radziwill, Anthony Quinn, Truman Capote, Alan J. Lerner, Eddie Fisher, Tennessee Williams, and the
Life
and Kennedy White House photographer Mark Shaw, who was found later with a needle in his arm, dead from chronic amphetamine poisoning. As a result of the inquest, Dr. Jacobson’s New York State medical license was revoked in 1975.

I guess someone must have given the article to Dad, who called in an understanding and benevolent mood to ask me to come see him at the St. Regis Hotel. He was passing through New York on his way from Ireland to Los Angeles. When I went up to the suite, Dad greeted me affectionately and casually dropped the news that he was getting married. He neither showed me a photograph nor described the woman, other than to mention that she lived in Los Angeles, her name was Celeste Shane, and she was called Cici. While this announcement came as a surprise, my first reaction was relief that the meeting was about his impending marriage and did not focus on me.

Before Dad left town for the coast the next day, he visited us at Gramercy Park. It was to be his first meeting with Bob. When
I nervously opened the door, Dad was standing in the hall in a gray tweed overcoat with a Sherlock Holmes cape lined in brown velvet, looking like he’d just blown in from Co. Mayo. He was bearded and wearing a cloth cap. He entered the living room and shook hands with Bob. The meeting was something of an anticlimax. I had half expected Dad to murder Bob on sight, but the atmosphere was mercifully devoid of drama.

There was little furniture, no chair to sit on, just a queen-size bed in front of a white marble fireplace, its mantel adorned with my usual large arrangement of lilies, gladioli, and snapdragons. Dad was upbeat, almost jovial. “Well, isn’t this nice,” he said, looking around. “You have to come out to L.A. to meet Cici, and then we’ll go on a fishing trip to Cabo San Lucas. There’s great fishing in the Sea of Cortez.” Bob and I agreed that this was a wonderful idea. I knew that Dad and Bob would never be friends. Not in a million years. Dad departed soon after. He didn’t stay for the pot roast I’d cooked for him; he left with a sweep of the cape, taking with him the energy he’d brought to the room. Together, Bob and I heaved a sigh of relief.

•  •  •

Work continued to fluctuate. Either we were shooting for the top magazines or not employed at all. Although we needed the money, my jobs with other photographers became increasingly difficult for Bob to accept. He would rip them apart, pointing out their every weakness. I fully understood at this point that in Bob’s view, there was “them” and there was “us,” and anything could tip the balance.

Most dreadful of Bob’s moods were the silences, when he would turn his face to the wall, staring vacantly. These episodes lasted up to three or four days. I would attempt to communicate with him, but he would refuse to speak. When he returned
from his absent state, it was usually to ask for food. Bob was often volatile around meals. On one occasion he demanded steak and when I served it to him he threw it across the room, claiming that it had taken too long to cook. He became furious if I didn’t shop for meat daily.

One night after a terrible scene, I ran away from the apartment and went to see a male model with whom I had worked on a number of occasions. I slept with him, but he talked about his ex-girlfriend, a model called Ali McGraw, for most of the night. When I went home to Bob in the morning and told him what had happened, he seemed strangely accepting of the events and acknowledged that he had driven me away. Instead of attempting to kill me, he reacted with equanimity. Just when you thought you had a handle on Bob, he would change colors. I could never anticipate his plunges into the emotional abyss or accept that I didn’t have the power to dispel his demons.

•  •  •

A month or so after Dad’s visit to New York, Bob and I flew to California for the fishing trip in La Paz. It was March. The West Coast was green and sunny and the air smelled sweet, like jasmine. After the grayness of New York, I thought it was blissful. We stayed the night in Cici’s Pacific Palisades house, which Dad now shared.

Cici was a tawny-haired beauty in her mid-thirties, outspoken and informal; she dressed in caftans and seemed relaxed and at ease. When she smiled, her mouth squared off at the corners and she spoke in an affable drawl. She introduced us to her son, Collin, whose father was the screenwriter Walon Green. Her home was a single-story ranch house with a simple floor plan—a lot of glass, and sea-grass matting on the floor, like Dad’s loft in Ireland. I wondered if this was his
influence. I also recognized some of the items from St. Clerans in the mix—the wood-and-plaster mermaids from the upstairs landing, a circlet of Etruscan gold as fragile as feathers that had lived in a glass cabinet in his vestibule, the card table with its inlaid rose, ring, and dagger from the Red Sitting Room. In Cici’s house, it all looked like pirate treasure plundered from the mother ship.

When Dad had taken Cici on her first visit to St. Clerans, she’d had a nasty confrontation with Betty, who had retreated to her parents’ home in Co. Kildare. Cici had inspected the housekeeping ledgers and made discoveries of improper payments and excessive salaries to the staff. St. Clerans was, as she described it to me later, “a useless heap.” It may have been Dad’s intention to sell St. Clerans in any case. The expense of the place and the cold, damp climate were weighing on him.