Empress Bianca (21 page)

At first, Ferdie took Bianca’s complaints at face value. ‘Don’t feel like that, my beloved. Half of everything I own will go to you if anything should happen to me so, in a manner of speaking, the jewels are already yours. I certainly don’t intend to let you out of my clutches,’ he joked, ‘as long as I have breath.’

Bianca was nothing if not persistent, and when she did not breach his defences on that first occasion she returned to the task a week later. Then two weeks after that. Although Ferdie did not react adversely, neither did he oblige her with victory, so she returned to the assault a fourth time.

This was on board the Criterion, chartered from Loel and Gloria Guinness, while Ferdie and Bianca were dressing for a dinner they were hosting for Bill and Babe Paley. ‘What is this, woman?’ he suddenly exploded ‘How dare you complain about not having your own jewels when your wedding present is worth ten times the entire value of the jewellery most rich men give their wives’? You are an ingrate and a nag,’ he screamed at her from across the stateroom, not caring whether they were overheard or not, ‘and I will not permit you to wear me down into doing something I have never done for any other woman and certainly don’t intend to do for you. Did you enter this marriage with the value you now possess? You act as if you were born and bred to this standard of living, but I don’t recollect your father or Bernardo Calman providing you with any decent jewels. Look at that emerald necklace you used to wear! Do you call that important? An item of quality? It’s a piece of junk! And what about that dinky little house you and Bernardo used to call home? It may be a pauper’s idea of a mansion, but it certainly isn’t a rich man’s castle, that’s for sure. How many times can you fit it into my Lomas house? Five times? Maybe ten? And where was your country house before you came swanning into my life and started calling Sintra your country house?
Did you have one at all? Spare me the nagging, woman, before I really lose my temper and you make me do something you’ll regret.’

With that, Ferdie pulled up his trousers and stormed out of the stateroom, slamming the door behind him. Bianca was mortified, not only because other people onboard might had overheard but also because until that outburst it had never once entered her mind that Ferdie might consider that he had elevated her, even though she herself accepted that he had.

Ferdie returned fifteen minutes later, an aloof expression on his face.

‘Darling, I’m so sorry I upset you,’ said Bianca, who was combing her hair while looking a lot less worried than she actually felt.

‘Well, you did,’ Ferdie said, changing his shirt to a fashionably pale green cotton one.

Intent upon mending fences, Bianca rose, walked behind him, slipped her arms around his waist and started to stroke his stomach seductively while kissing his back and pressing herself into him. He grunted then surrendered to her touch, pulling her in front of him as the tears started to spill out of her eyes. ‘Just don’t nag me ever again,’ he said. ‘It’s the one thing I can’t abide.’

‘I really didn’t intend to,’ she said, lifting her face towards him as she plaintively wiped away her tears with the back of her left hand. ‘You forgive me, don’t you?’

‘This time, yes,’ he said, kissing her gently on the lips but nevertheless issuing a warning which registered with her.

The following day, Ferdie’s sister Clara, brother-in-law Marchese Rodolfo d’Offolo and niece Magdalena joined the Criterion in Cap Ferrat. Although Clara was suspicious of Bianca’s motives for marrying her brother, and her husband was of the same opinion, Magdalena was a firm admirer of her new aunt, having fallen for Bianca’s charms when she went to Mexico for her marriage to Ferdie. In turn, Bianca gravitated towards the one member of the family who, she sensed, genuinely liked her. ‘Come, let me show you your cabin,’ she said to Magdalena, linking arms with her as if they were sorority sisters. ‘I hope you’ll like it. It’s starboard.’

A stranger looking at the two women as they headed down the deck might well have taken them to be sisters, Magdalena having developed into a real beauty just like Bianca with long blonde hair, green eyes, classical features and a slender figure.

‘So,’ Bianca began conspiratorially, as if she were speaking to a contemporary, ‘how’s the big romance going?’

‘He’s sooooo gorgeous. I just wish he’d pop the question.’

Bianca, intent on solidifying her position within the family by all available means, was resolved to turn Magdalena into a friend and ally.

‘We’ll have to knock heads together and see if we can’t devise a strategy to get you what you want,’ she said. ‘My own experience of men is that you can always get them to do what you want. Just cover them in lots of sweetness and light and let them know how wonderful and powerful and strong you think they are. Appeal to their better nature. Let them think you view them the way they secretly want to be viewed.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘There’s always a way,’ Bianca replied, her laughter tinkling. ‘Believe me, any woman can get anything she wants out of any man, as long as he lusts after her.’ Even so, after last night’s little scene, Bianca wondered if Ferdie might not be the exception to the rule.

They had now reached Magdalena’s cabin. Bianca opened the door and stepped aside to let the younger woman in first. ‘Hydrangeas!’

Magdalena exclaimed. ‘I don’t believe it. My favourite flowers.’

‘I know,’ Bianca said, quietly capturing her prize. ‘You let that slip at the wedding…remember? When we were discussing my bouquet?’

Magdalena moved towards her new aunt and hugged her. ‘Words can’t convey how touched I am,’ she said, already well on the way to falling completely under Biacna’s spell.

‘It’s my pleasure,’ Bianca said. ‘I like nothing better than seeing my loved ones happy.’

‘Then life must be an uphill struggle for you when Uncle Ferdie gets in one of his moods.’

In the family, Ferdie’s depressive periods were always euphemistically referred to as ‘moods’.

‘You can say that again,’ Bianca replied demurely. ‘And your grandmother doesn’t help. In fact, she makes things much, much worse.’

‘Grandma’s very possessive of Uncle Ferdie. She’s never really wanted to share him with anyone. Mummy would go further and say that she’s never wanted to share herself with anyone but Uncle Ferdie…and Grandpa, of course, when he was alive.’

‘I know what your mother means. I don’t want you to take this the
wrong way, but I actually sympathize with your poor mother. I’ve seen your grandmother in action. It’s always Ferdie who’s wonderful, while Clara can’t do anything right, even though your mother is far more reliable than your uncle. To a newcomer like me, it just doesn’t make sense. It’s as if she doesn’t see either of her children as they really are. Ferdie is seen as possessing every virtue, Clara possessing none…though, I have to tell you, I’ve seen your grandmother change tack when she wants something out of your mother.’

‘It’s been very difficult for Mummy having a mother like Grandma, but she’s come to terms with it and, it doesn’t bother her anymore.’

‘I must ask her the secret, for I have to tell you: your grandmother makes my blood boil. She’s always putting me down to your father. She’s a real troublemaker. I can tell she’d like nothing better than to break us up.’

‘I wouldn’t go that far. She’d much rather have you there so that she can snipe at you. It’s all part of her game.’

‘Horrid old bat…spreading poison every time she flaps her wings. No wonder your uncle has his moods. In fact, it’s a wonder he doesn’t have more of them, with a mother like that.’

The steward arrived with Magdalena’s luggage. ‘You may unpack, thank you very much,’ Bianca said, once more taking Magdalena by the arm and steering her towards the deck where lunch was about to be served.

As they walked, Bianca brushed her hand gently over Magdalena’s cheek. ‘I’m so glad we can be friends,’ she said. ‘Sometimes it’s a bit daunting entering a family like this, especially after having come from such a united family as my own and having had such a serene family life with my first husband.’

Magdalena’s heart went out to Bianca. She put herself in the older woman’s shoes and could easily imagine how vulnerable she must be at times. She decided she must put in a word on Bianca’s behalf with her mother and Uncle Ferdie. This was, of course, precisely what Bianca wanted her to do, although it has to be said in fairness to Bianca that she would have behaved exactly the same way towards Magdalena had she lacked an ulterior motive, for she genuinely liked her.

Magdalena’s opportunity to speak out on behalf of her ally came the following day. Bianca had just slipped down to her stateroom to change
into a new swimsuit after her morning swim, and she seized her chance.

‘I have to tell you, Uncle Ferdie,’ she said, ‘the more I know Bianca, the more I like her. She really is one of the kindest, most considerate people I have ever met in the whole of my life.’

‘Your life hasn’t been long enough for you to have much basis for comparison,’ Clara replied sharply. ‘Calculation often presents itself as thoughtfulness. I’d say the jury should remain out on dear Bianca until we have definitive proof of what her motives are.’

Ferdie looked from his sister to his niece. They could almost see the wheels of his mind turning. He seemed to be thinking that both women were speaking the truth, but only one could be right. Then he turned to his brother-in-law, shrugged his shoulders and said: ‘What can a man do when he’s caught between two stools, Rodolfo?’

‘Seems to me it’s more like being caught between three stools, Ferdie,’ quipped Rodolfo.

‘Or four, if you include Mama,’ Clara added.

‘Quite enough to send a man stark staring mad,’ Ferdie replied jokingly. Five days later the family left the Cote d’Azure, Ferdie and Bianca dropping off Clara, Rodolfo and Magdalena in Geneva before flying back to London on their private jet.

For Bianca, the first real awareness of her change in lifestyle had come when she was asked which was her favourite airline. ‘I don’t fly commercial anymore,’ she had replied. Her new husband owned a Lear jet fully equipped as if it were a flying apartment, with a sitting area with sofas, a bed and a bathroom with shower, elevating Bianca beyond first class. The Lear was actually less of an indulgence than it appeared to be.

With his boundless energy and the needs of his business empire, Ferdie and Bianca were constantly on the go. As the jet hurtled through the skies, Ferdie rested while Bianca took stock of her life.

Superficially relations between man and wife had returned to normal, and each was ostensibly leading the other to believe that satisfaction reigned. Bianca, however, was now dangerously disaffected. Ferdie’s outburst had put her on her guard in a way she would never forget, and as far as she could see, his capriciousness and tempestuousness made an intolerable level of circumspection an imperative for survival as his wife.

She was now painfully aware of how badly she had miscalculated her ability to ‘encourage’ Ferdie into giving her jewels when he did not want
to. Bianca suspected that she had come perilously close to stepping over the line just as Amanda had done. Clearly the waters she had to navigate to keep her marital vessel safely afloat were treacherous. For the first time she understood how Amanda - whom she had secretly dismissed as a silly woman - came to misread the signs and miscalculated the outcome, thereby unwittingly destroying her marriage. Ferdie, Bianca decided, was too inclined to blow small things out of all proportion. He was also too intolerant. He found it impossible to accept anything he did not wish to, and that made living with him difficult.

For the first time since she had married Ferdie, Bianca felt regret. Even worse, she felt insecure and expendable: sensations that were new to her. She asked herself if this marriage was really worth the price she had paid in giving up a husband whose love was firm, constant and reciprocal for a husband whose love was predicated upon a wife’s willingness to obey.

One part of Bianca wished she could turn the clock back, but she also knew that whatever Ferdie’s faults might be, the marriage had been worth it. If she was honest with herself - and she was - her ideal would be to fuse Bernardo and Ferdie into one man. To have the lifestyle and stature that being Ferdie’s wife brought her, but to sleep with Bernardo and have Bernardo’s companionship. Or, to put it another way: to have the public face of Ferdie and the private side of Bernardo.

‘But,’ Bianca asked herself, surrendering to her reverie, ‘even if I could return to Bernardo, would I really want to do so?’ The answer, she knew, was a resounding yet painful ‘no’. Not after having been married to someone as dynamic and cosmopolitan as Ferdie. Comforting and comfortable though Bernardo was, the Piedraplata way of life was something entirely different, and one moreover which had infinitely greater appeal.

Bianca sipped her glass of champagne as she looked at her sleeping husband, sprawled across a sofa in the Lear, which was now high over France heading towards London. She took another sip and let her eyes take in every aspect of this private aircraft: this rich man’s toy, this affirmation of her status. It was, as the saying goes, ‘beautifully appointed’: all pale blues, beiges and shades of taupe. The two stewards hovering in the galley behind a drawn curtain, waiting to spring into action at the touch of a button, were the best that money could buy.

Bianca could not deny that this was more than just the way to travel:
it was also the way to live. This was truly being on top of the world, and she would not give it up voluntarily. ‘Even if I put the capricious and volatile aspects of Ferdie’s nature to one side, the prospect of leading the rest of my life with someone who is as personally unfulfilling as Ferdie Piedraplata is anything but tempting. Not when you’ve spent your whole adult life being loved and indulged, as I have, first by Bernardo, then by Philippe. I am being called upon to pay too heavy a price if I continue living this emotionally barren life.’

As she looked into the future, Bianca could see the strain of being on tenterhooks lest she say or do something which would precipitate Ferdie’s fury and cause him to cast her out increasing with the passage of time. Unless she could find some way of relieving the pressure, her life would become progressively intolerable. Already, the emotional cost of living with Ferdie had been so high that her feeling of well-being had diminished to a previously unknown low. If this degeneration continued, it would only destroy her capacity for happiness: something she had entered into this marriage to increase, not decrease. Moreover, she was sure Ferdie was not the sort of man who would want an unhappy wife around him, so she would lose everything unless she found a way to remain happy.