Our relationship was delightful on every level, and I must have defined light relief because I never got heavy and asked where it was all going. Never. No doubt, it explained why he would say, “You’re just so charming, Natasha, you’re just so charming.” If seen rarely and in small doses! Seriously, it came down to being unspoiled and viewing my time spent with Mick as an adventure. He was firmly not of my world and I always knew that. So it was fine if I saw him and fine if I didn’t.
At the beginning of October, I met all the members of the Rolling Stones at the transmission of the Muhammad Ali–Larry Holmes fight, shown live by satellite at the Dominion Theatre, Tottenham Court Road. The place was packed and heady with the smell of cigarette smoke, beer, and sweat. A lot of money was running on the fight. According to Mick, most of the audience was cabdrivers. It was hard not to be hit by the rows and rows of male heads that faced the screen and were outlined by the light.
We had gathered in the forum before the fight. Mick had warned me about Stash Klossowski, the son of the painter Balthus. “Don’t take anything he offers you,” he said. It was protective though unnecessary, since hard drugs were never my deal. (True to form, Stash, who I thought was a bit of an “ooh, groovy baby” charmer, offered some “gold pills.”) Mick had also mentioned Keith Richards, describing him as “very shy but a sweet person.”
Mick had not, however, predicted Patti Hansen’s weeny outburst. Sleek in a red jacket and black jeans, she sidled over and said, “Mick, where’s Jerry?” He grinned and shot back with, “Jerry is doing the Paris fashion shows, Patti. It’s where you should be.” Yet another example of “Don’t mess with the Mick,” even if I admired Patti’s loyalty. I then had Shirley Watts kidnap me with her lecture on not talking to the newspapers. “It’s never a good idea, dear,” she advised. “And haunts you for life, dear.” Fortunately, I was saved by the appearance of Mick, who said, “Shirley, Natasha’s mother is quite well-known.” We laughed about that afterward.
By then, my family knew about the relationship. When giving me a book about Mexico, an elder sibling had written: Don’t mix Mex with Mick. He’d also stayed at my mother’s house. After coming out of my apartment in the basement, Mick bumped into the two workmen who were painting the house’s facade. “Her ladyship says, ‘Paint it purple,’” he advised. They quickly relayed the incident to my mother.
Harold and Mum were getting married on his fiftieth birthday, October 10. A double celebration had been organized, until his first wife put a wrench in the works by refusing to sign the divorce papers. Nevertheless, it ended up being an amazing party—London’s and New York’s great and good from the literary, theatrical, and film worlds—where I would wear an electric-blue shot-taffeta dress from PX, Steve Strange’s short-lived fashion brand. There had been talk of inviting Mick. “But he can’t smoke pot,” said my mother, who was strongly anti-drugs. Talk about an old-fashioned expression. Harold disagreed. “Mick can do what he wants,” he said. Having befriended Brian Jones, he’d known Mick since the 1960s. Still, the idea of inviting Mick to their party horrified me. First, he’d have run for the hills. Quickly followed by me.
The people I met rarely impressed Harold. However, when I danced into the room and informed that Mick had introduced me to Ian Botham, a British cricket player, he was quite taken aback. A love of cricket was something that Harold and Mick shared. It’s a passion that’s impossible to explain to anyone who isn’t male and isn’t fascinated by English tradition. But as the years passed, Harold would return from Lord’s Cricket Ground and say, “I just saw your friend Mick.” That Michael J was alone and thoroughly absorbed in the game struck a chord within Harold. He did the equivalent, as did many others, like his hero and mentor Samuel Beckett.
My brother Benjie had just returned from a year of living in Australia. When sharing the basement, we quickly became sibling partners in crime. The actor Rupert Everett, who’d known Benjie at boarding school, was in our lives, as were all his friends, like the producer Robert Fox; his casting director wife, Celestia Fox; and Min Hogg, then an out-of-work journalist. Rupert, a team leader, was the first of my friends to become famous. I always sensed that it would happen. There was the charisma—he enchanted on so many levels. There was the sense of entitlement—he used to give loud al fresco dinner parties on the street outside his parents’ house. There was the sharp practical sense—it ranged from knowing how to stuff lamb with garlic to surviving in any situation. Rupert was endlessly telling my brother and me off for not making Harold more accessible. “Come on, we could have lunch with him or something,” he’d coax. Benjie and I never discussed it, but I sensed that it was absolutely not in the cards. Harold was then at his professional zenith, both directing and writing for the theater and film worlds.
Like many of our friends, the wicked and incorrigible Rupert used Harold’s Radio Taxi account. He reasoned that it was the “Fraser family trust fund.” The astronomical Radio Taxi monthly expenditure drove Harold berserk. It was always the same scenario: Either he or Mum would tell us off, holding the monthly statement, a thick wad of paper, in hand. Benjie and I would look suitably shamefaced. The account code would change. A miserable week would pass without taxis and then either Benjie or I would eavesdrop on Mum, her secretary, or Harold, and suddenly we were off to the races, or rather off sitting in splendor in the back of a black cab.
Bella Freud and her sister, Esther, also partook in the “Fraser family trust fund.” They had appeared via Ned Durham. Their father was the celebrated painter Lucian Freud, and they seemed to lead a life of staying in Belgravia via the generosity of his patrons like Jane Willoughby. Meanwhile, their mother was living in what I then naively viewed as the deepest, darkest part of North London.
A Scottish cousin had had a wild affair with Lucian and, having been a ravishing beauty, had turned into a scrawny creature, hiding a pet rat in her hair. I thought of her when I first met Lucian. Our encounter was on Holland Park Avenue. In search of cigarettes, Benjie, Bella, and I were walking to the “offie”—the nearest off-license shop. “Daaad,” Bella abruptly said, and there was Lucian.
Dressed in a long coat, he had feral eyes set in a pale face and seemed to be craning and moving his neck as if searching for light. Benjie and I stood there for a good ten minutes and then I began to feel the heat of his stare. I dismissed it afterward. My orbit was pretty much filled with Michael J and a few other cuties. London pre-AIDS was sexually on fire. Many were footloose and up for it. If I had one rule, it was never sleeping with men who I didn’t find attractive. This, I discovered, rattled Lucian’s cage.
A few days after our meeting, Bella called and invited me to Annabel’s nightclub. Lucian was a member and liked to go at midnight and drink Bollinger champagne with a gaggle of his daughter’s friends. When I arrived, Lucian insisted that we dance. He’d been in his studio all day and it was his way to relax, or so he explained. Pressing himself against me, he said that he was enticed by the “ruthless determination” on my face. I really didn’t know what he was referring to. However, when I felt his vast hard-on, misery and helplessness set in. Someone with a higher self-esteem would have stormed off. But I started inwardly freaking out. Somewhat pathetically, I didn’t want to be rude. Still, I felt quite queasy as he perversely whispered his plans for me.
The nightmare, however, continued when Bella insisted that her father and I share a taxi home. “You’re neighbors,” she reasoned. On the ride home, Lucian became quite lighthearted and charming, until we reached my mother’s house. “Why don’t you come back to my home?” he said. “I have ultraviolet bean shoots and we can chew them like Chi Chi”—a famous panda at the London zoo. I thanked him but said, “I’ve got school tomorrow,” and shot out of the taxi, propeller-charged.
The next morning, when seeing my mother, I narrated a watered-down version of my Lucian experience. She put down her cup of coffee and said, “Whatever you do, you’re not having an aff
air with Lucian Freud.” Her general argument being that she refused to deal with the filth. Her lecture was unnecessary. I had no intention of going there.
Lucian, however, took it very badly. He went around London saying how ridiculous and superficial I was, and even tried to kick me at publisher Naim Attallah’s party for Tony Lambton’s book Snow and Other Stories. I was astounded by Lucian’s demented entitlement. Maybe he was a brilliant artist—one of the best from England—but maybe he was not my type. It took nine years for Lucian to thaw. And thanks to Bella’s fashion career, I saw him again. As an acquaintance, Lucian was erudite and informed.
One fateful day, a friend gave me a newspaper clipping from the Daily Express that showed a romantic photograph of Jerry in a Paris nightclub under the title “Jagger Walks out on Jerry for a Teenager.” It described her as talking openly about “her broken romance” and moaning at all the fashion shows about a certain Natasha Fraser. There was no mention of my mother, and I presumed that it would sink without a trace. Wrong.
Before the British national press seized hold of the story, I met Mick’s parents. It happened after the ninth-birthday party of his daughter Jade. Hosted by Bianca, it had a mix of famous parents, my brother Benjie, and me. An anxious-looking Joan Collins was there with her daughter Katy Kass, who had just come out of hospital after having been in a coma. I dimly remembered details about Katy being run over by a car, and in precise detail, Mick told how Joan had fought at her side for months, how admirable it was, and how he reckoned the little girl would be fine. Mick’s compassionate side was touching. I also liked the image of him as “a shy teenager” helping out at the local mental asylum. The experience with the patients had given him insight into human psychology.
To celebrate the revamped issue of Tatler in November 1980, Tina Brown gave an elaborate party at the Café Royal that was too tempting to miss. I went in one of my tight cotton sweaters and presumed that I might get photographed. Little did I know that the word was finally out. Suddenly I was attacked by an onslaught of cameras. Feeling like a deer caught in the headlights, I gave them all the British “Fuck off” sign—resembling the equivalent of a reversed peace sign—and ran off to the nearest Tube. The next day, the Daily Mirror, among quite a few others, printed a picture and said that I got my V signs muddled up. “Schoolgirl Natasha Fraser Scents Victory over Her Rival in Love, Jerry Hall.”
This was followed by journalists from News of the World and Sunday People—two popular rags—appearing on my doorstep and offering large sums for my story. Dream on. My grandfather was quoted as saying, “Mick Jagger’s a bit old, isn’t he?” It was more pleasant than Nigel Dempster, who wrote, “Any hopes that Natasha Fraser, the 17-year-old youngest and plainest daughter of Lady Antonia, may have had of prising Mick Jagger away from Jerry Hall were dispelled by the rock star, who informed: ‘We have been out once to the Stevie Wonder concert.’” Interesting, but I understood. He was living with Jerry. A few months later, I got my own back on Nigel Dempster when he tried chumminess at a movie premiere. Looking at him straight in the eye, I said, “I’m Natasha Fraser, as in the youngest and plainest of Lady Antonia’s daughters.” He tried to claim that he hadn’t written it. After that, the vile Nigel was never mean again.
Jerry, however, was furious. I’d warned my elder brother that if a woman with a Texas accent called, he was to say that I’d left England. One Friday evening just as I was preparing a noshette (my mother’s term for a well-greased snack), Benjie arrived and said that I had a call. His look was mischievous, but I was horrified to find Miss Hall on the other end of the phone. “Hi, it’s Jerry,” she began. “I thought you were ma friend, but I went to the modeling agency and they were all gigglin’ about you and Mick. And I thought you were ma friend.” This went on for several minutes. I was accused of stalking Mick, leaving earrings behind in his apartment (as if!), and making a nuisance of myself. So I reseized the horns and said, “Jerry, you’re so beautiful, why would Mick be remotely interested in me?” There was a pause. “Perhaps you’ve got a point,” she said, and then hung up.
Alas, I couldn’t resist telling people the story, and it was repeated all over London—neither kind nor wise. I also continued to see Mick. It suited both of us for many years. But dear Jerry had a surprise in store. The event was Gael and Francesco Boglione’s wedding. It was the best mix of London society, spiced up by Australian “it girls” like Nell Campbell and Lyndall Hobbs as well as Hollywood stars like Lauren Hutton.
I’d finally splashed out and bought a Tom Bell ball gown. Made out of magenta silk satin, it had a tight corset that continued to my hips and a large Scarlett O’Hara skirt, propped up by a mass of tulle. It felt fairly fabulous until I ran into Jerry wearing a sleek black velvet Saint Laurent dress that was buttoned on the side. We were in the outer tent that was empty of people but decorated with trees with sharp-looking branches. Doing her best catwalk stomp armed with swish of curtainlike hair, she railroaded me into a tree. Suddenly I fell and was left in a puddle of magenta silk satin. “So sorry,” she said, peering down.
However, when asked about my affair by the socialite Denise Thyssen, Jerry said, “I got the fur coat and Natasha got the diamond bracelet.” Actually, I didn’t. And I wonder if the woman who was given the bracelet deserved it in the same way that Jerry or I did. Though I understood her feelings, I always admired her. And when I congratulated Mick on their wedding and he quickly said, “Legally, it doesn’t mean anything,” I admonished him on the spot. His reaction being, “You’re always so nice about Jerry and she’s so awful about you.”
10 Discovering the Joys of a Monthly Paycheck
As everyone including me might have predicted, the results of my A-level exams were a crashing disaster. Although mildly embarrassed, I was relieved that I had finally terminated my academic life and was firmly on the same page as my parents, whose dictum had always been: “Those who don’t go to university have to work.” Far from being “bred to wed”—certain women of my generation were raised to hook the title and estate—I often heard my mother say, “We are middle-class and we earn our keep.” I wondered about the middle-class bit. She was the Lady Antonia, after all, and my father was born the Honorable. Still, I agreed with her approach.
With a career in mind, I was enrolled for four months at Pitman’s Secretarial College. Attending in my own fashion, I learned to type but now regret not having taken shorthand seriously. In fact, whenever I see fellow journalists going at breakneck speed with their shorthand, I’m reminded of my rebellious foolishness.
I did, however, want to earn my keep and not be financially reliant on a man. An affair with Roberto Shorto—a Brazilian-born playboy whose party trick was eating glass—had pushed me to this conclusion. His sister Denise was married to Heini Thyssen, the billionaire and major art collector. Staying at Daylesford, their house in Gloucestershire, meant sitting in a Jacuzzi surrounded by nubile Rodin statues and taking a bath below a Picasso. There were also Heini’s morning visits to be endured. He would appear in Roberto’s bedroom while I was naked, lying under the sheets. I think most people would have left under the circumstances, but Heini would just stand there with his dead eyes and odd, crocodile smile.
Heini possessed exceptional taste in paintings and had interesting pals all over Europe, as well as a terrific and dynamic daughter, Francesca, who became important in the hip New Romantics scene—but I simply couldn’t figure him out. At the dining room table, he would take center stage, and recount a story that was both interminable and pointless. Once he finished, all his guests would laugh. They were singing for their supper. But surely Heini realized, and wasn’t it a bit of a tiresome game? I attempted to say this to Shorto—that was how everyone referred to Roberto—who instantly climbed onto his crate of Coca-Cola bottles (his father owned the franchise in Brazil). “What do you know, you silly little girl?” he yelled. Well, quite a lot! My parents had rich friends, but they were stimulating,
often brilliant conversationalists. They also didn’t have Heini’s sense of entitlement or decadence. When one was invited to their homes, they made an effort to entertain and engage.
Nevertheless, and now to get off my soapbox, it was actually the whiff of money around Shorto that partially attracted me to him. When we were introduced by my cousin Andrew Fraser, he was wearing a Cartier Tank watch, and I knew, within seconds of spotting it, that I was going to own it. I quickly did, and my mother quickly christened it the “watch of shame.” This was followed by a glorious Antony Price dress with vast bustle-like bow at the back—quickly coined the “dress of shame.”
There was also the fact that my boyfriend had told Shorto, “You don’t stand a chance with Natasha because she’s madly in love with me.” Well, once I heard that, a lunch date with Shorto at the Ritz Hotel was swiftly arranged. All well and good if it hadn’t been for Miss Everett’s telephone calls interrupting. Rupert did this because Shorto had tried but miserably failed to have an affair with him. Roberto was many things but not homosexual. The first time the waiter appeared, he said, “A Mr. Jagger is on the line for you, Miss Fraser.” I went to the telephone and found Rupert. And it continued in this vein until Shorto and I toddled out, blind drunk on champagne, and bumped into Lucian Freud before hitting Albemarle Street, then known for its art galleries. Shorto wanted to buy me a picture. Being Heini’s brother-in-law helped. I was very keen on a Freud early self-portrait sketch. “It’s haunting,” I said grandly. Shorto liked the haunting word but chose a pornographic R. B. Kitaj pastel instead. It was two girls going down on each other. In spite of my inebriated state, I did wonder how I would explain this one to my mother.
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