The Mansions of Limbo

by Dominick Dunne

  “I thought surely you’d have had a steel band on the tarmac when the plane arrived,” Lady Anne said to her husband, patting her hair beneath a straw hat and supervising the transfer of all the luggage to the van that would take us to the boat. She is blond and calm and attractive.

  “I hadn’t thought of it,” replied Glenconner, and I felt that in his mind he was trying to figure out if he could do just that before the plane from London arrived a few hours later. Although they are married and live together, or at least live under the same roof when the separate schedules of their lives overlap, they speak to each other with the friendly distance of a divorced couple meeting at their child’s wedding.

  Their oldest son, Charles, called Charlie, thirty, looked pale and disheveled. His father told him to wash his face and get a haircut as soon as we got on the ship. Although Lord Glenconner has publicly disinherited his eldest son, who is a registered heroin addict, with an announcement in the London Daily Mail, there seems to be no lessening of affection for him, nor is there any sort of middle-class covering up of a family embarrassment. “My son Charlie is a heroin addict and has been ever since he was fifteen,” said Glenconner openly, not only to me but to several other people encountering the situation for the first time. Charlie remains a part of the family, disinherited but not cast out, and loved by all. In time he will become Lord Glenconner, for titles must go to the eldest son, but the estates, fortune, and castle in Scotland will pass to his brother Henry, who is estranged from Tessa, by whom he has a son, Euan, three.

  When we got to the pier where the Wind Star was docked, the fence was padlocked, and two armed guards stared at us as if we were usurpers, making no attempt to open the gates for the van to enter. “I am the lessee of the boat,” called out Lord Glenconner from the backseat of the van. The guards did not react. “Just say Lord Glenconner,” said Charles from the front seat to his father. “I am Lord Glenconner,” called out Lord Glenconner. The gates were opened.

  Standing on deck, we watched the London crowd arrive, hot and tired and bedraggled, and trudge up the gangplank. A Mrs. Wills had lost her keys, and there was a great to-do. “Where’s Mark Palmer?” someone called out. “I can’t find my suitcases,” someone else wailed. John Stefanidis, the famed London interior decorator, who helped the Glenconners with the Great House in Mustique and who is currently doing up their new London house, remarked to his deck companions, Lord and Lady Neidpath, with whom he had flown over from Mustique, “Rather elite, having arrived early.”

  In typical English fashion, no one was introduced. Those who already knew one another stayed together and looked at the others. There were no passenger lists in the staterooms, so it was impossible to put names to faces. Even during lifeboat drill, when we were separated into small groups, they did not introduce themselves. After a few days, people began to come into focus as one-line descriptions were repeated over and over: “He’s Princess Margaret’s son.” “She’s Rachel Ward’s mother.” “He was recently fired by Mrs. Thatcher.” “She’s the Duke of Rutland’s sister-in-law.”

  One passenger of interest was Barbara barnes, on holiday from Kensington Palace, where she is nanny to the royal princes, William and Henry. Nanny Barnes, a popular figure on the ship, used to be nanny to the children of Colin and Anne Glenconner, and the Princess of Wales had given her time off to attend the celebration and visit her former charges.

  For a week we heard no news of the outside world. We were hermetically sealed in the elegant confines of the Wind Star when we were not ashore being picnicked. There was swimming off the ship and in the pool, and gambling in the casino, and a gym to work out in, and bars to drink at, and a disco to dance in, and all those videos, including the fifty-eight pornographic ones, with titles like For Your Thighs Only and Lust on the Orient Express, and even a library. John Nutting read the recent biography of Lord Esher. His wife read a biography of Francis Bacon. The Honorable Mrs. Marten read the new biography of Anthony Eden. Prince Rupert Lowenstein read the biography of Frank Sinatra by Kitty Kelley. Conversation, which never lagged, from breakfast to bedtime, was all about themselves. They never tired of discussing one another. One Englishman described the degree of friendship with another man on board as being not quite on farting terms.

  “Tell me, how is young Lord Ivar Mountbatten, over there with the pretty Channon girl, related to Dickie?”

  “He’s through the Milford Haven branch.”

  “Claire tells me Tony Lambton’s writing a biography of Dickie Mountbatten that’s going to tell everything.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “The Guinnesses all stick together, have you noticed?”

  “Lord Neidpath is very proud of his feet.”

  It is said that on all private boat trips the most unifying factor for harmony is a mutual dislike of one particular person aboard, and this trip was no exception. By the third day, all had agreed that they loathed the same certain person, and from that moment on, tales of that person’s every move and statement were circulated.

  “Don’t believe any rumors unless you start them yourself,” cautioned Lord Glenconner, in regard to all the rumors that were circulating about the trip. From passing yachts we heard that Michael Jackson was on board the Wind Star, but the person the passengers in the passing yachts mistook for Michael Jackson was called Kelvin Omard, a London actor and great friend of Henry Tennant, Lord Glenconner’s second son. “Did you see Water with Michael Caine?” asked Tessa Tennant, Henry’s wife. “Kelvin played the waiter.”

  “How much do you suppose this is all costing?” I in quired tentatively one day at lunch on Martinique, fully expecting to be put in my place with imperious stares for daring to ask such a vulgar question. I meant the whole week of it: the plane fares, the Wind Star, the parties, parties, parties, and the ball that was to come.

  “That’s what we’re all wondering” was the immediate and unexpected answer, from one of my lunch companions, not a Tennant, at a table of Tennants. “We figure about a half-million.” I didn’t know if she meant pounds or dollars, but since she was English, I assumed pounds. As the week progressed, revealing constant new considerations on the part of our host for his guests, the cost question was brought up again and again, not only by me, an almost lone American on a boatload of Brits, but by a number of Brits as well.

  “Colin is not limitlessly rich,” said another passenger a few days later at dinner on board the Wind Star, pursuant to the same question. When I wrote down the phrase “not limitlessly rich,” his wife said, “My God, you’re not going to quote my husband, are you?”

  “All I know is he sold some items at Sotheby’s in order to charter the Wind Star, and paid for the charter in installments,” offered someone else.

  “Where is Lord Glenconner’s money from?” I asked over and over.

  “Sugar in the West Indies, nineteenth century, I would think” was one reply.

  “Imperial Chemical” was another.

  Lord Glenconner’s explanation seemed to answer the question. “My great-grandfather invented the Industrial Revolution.”

  Like a mysterious shadow, a second ship was known to be looming in the distance, the Maxim’s des Mers, the floating sister of the famed Parisian restaurant, carrying “the American crowd.” At some point we would be rendezvousing with them. In speculation preceding the ball week, it had been rumored that Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Michael Caine, and others too famous for words would be among its passengers, supplying the magic mix of show biz with swells that guarantees fascination on both sides. At the helm of the Maxim’s des Mers, at least as organizer of the famous, was Andre Weinfeld, the husband of Raquel Welch, and an invitation every bit as grand as the one to the Peacock Ball sent by Lady Glenconner and the one to a beach picnic on the morning following the ball sent by H.R.H. the Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, had been dispatched by Miss Welch and Mr. Weinfeld bidding us, the passengers on the Wind Star, and other guests who would be joining our party in Mustique, to
a dinner on board the Maxim’s des Mers on the evening preceding the ball. Already, even before our rendezvous, rumors of defections from their guest list had circulated. We knew that such stalwarts of the international social scene as Carolina and Reinaldo Herrera and Ahmet and Mica Ertegun had dropped out, not to mention Mick and David, as they were referred to, meaning Jagger and Bowie, who had long since changed their plans.

  The Maxim’s des Mers came side by side with the Wind Star in the cove in front of Lord Glenconner’s Jalousie Plantation on Saint Lucia. The other boat was squat and inelegant next to our trim, patrician four-master; the battle lines were instantly drawn. No amount of interior Art Nouveau tarting up of the Maxim’s des Mers could belie its minesweeper origins. The A group—B group distinction between the two parties could not be denied by even the most generous-hearted. It carried right down to the crew of the Wind Star, who snubbed the crew of the Maxim’s des Mers. “Rather like being on the wrong side of the room at ‘21,’ ” remarked a Wind Star passenger about the Maxim’s des Mers, which others were already referring to as the Mal de Mer. The celebrity guests that Mr. Weinfeld was able to produce arrived onshore for the barbecue at the plantation. Vastly fat native women were dressed up in Aunt Jemima gear, a fourteen-piece steel band played nonstop, the elephant frolicked with the guests, and at one point Lyton and Eroline Lamontagne, got up as Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler, drove down a mountain in a horse and buggy to be introduced by Lord Glenconner as his distinguished neighbors from the next plantation. Rum punch and more rum punch, and still more rum punch was consumed. And the sun beat down.

  Heading Mr. Weinfeld’s star list was the amply bosomed Dianne Brill, the New York underground cult figure often referred to in the gossip columns as the Queen of the Night. Although Miss Brill is a good sport, a good mixer, and a genuinely funny lady, even she could not bring about any real mixing between the passengers of the two ships. “Who do you suppose they are?” someone in our party asked about a trio of ladies. “In trade, I would think,” said Prince Rupert Lowenstein playfully, “above a boutique and below a department store.” Andre Weinfeld explained that because it was Thanksgiving, most of the people he had invited had backed out, and he had brought along a substitute crowd. Indeed, his wife, Raquel Welch, had not yet joined the company, but he assured us she would be along in time for her party on board the Maxim’s des Mers.

  In Mustique the inner circle widened to admit some new arrivals. Adding more than a dash of American glamour to the British festivities were two tall and sleek American beauties, Jean Harvey Vanderbilt, of New York, and Minnie Cushing Coleman, of Newport and New Orleans. On Mustique the groups within the group of the Wind Star began to divide up into splinter groups. “We’re going to Ingrid Channon’s house for lunch,” said Mrs. Vyner. “We’ve been asked for drinks at Princess Margaret’s house,” said Mrs. Nutting. “We’re having a box lunch at Macaroni Beach,” said the ones who weren’t invited to any of the private houses.

  “What happens if you don’t call Princess Margaret ma’am?” asked one of the new American arrivals.

  “You don’t get asked back,” came the reply.

  On the morning of Raquel Welch’s party aboard the Maxim’s des Mers, a telex arrived for Lord Glenconner from the star, saying that a contract negotiation prevented her from attending her own party. Lord Glenconner rolled his eyes in disappointment, but any attentive observer could also detect an element of anger in the eye roll. His last star had fallen by the wayside. From that moment on, Raquel Welch, who had always been referred to as Raquel in anticipation of her arrival, was referred to by one and all as Miss Welch.

  “I think this is the rudest thing I have ever heard,” fumed one of Lord Glenconner’s guests, and then proceeded to fume against all Americans for Miss Welch’s rudeness, especially since a member of the royal family had consented to attend her party.

  “But Miss Welch is not American, Julian. She’s English,” said his wife.

  “Oh dear,” said her husband, calmly accepting the correction, although he had been right to begin with.

  “If she can’t be bothered to attend her own party, I can’t be bothered to attend it either,” said another guest.

  “Disgraceful!”

  “Movie stars always back out at the last minute.”

  “They’re insecure in social situations.”

  “You don’t suppose they’re getting a divorce, do you, Mr. Weinfeld and Miss Welch?”

  On the night of the ball, after a whole week of partying, guests ran up and down the passageways of the Wind Star borrowing feathers, remarking on one another’s costumes, pinning and sewing up each other—all with the excitement of boarding-school students preparing for the annual spring dance. John Stefanidis had gone to Paris to borrow jewelry to wear with his Indian costume from Loulou de la Falaise, who works for Yves Saint Laurent, and indeed his pounds of pearls, rhinestone necklaces, and long drop earrings were the most elaborate jewelry at the ball—after the host’s, that is.

  All during the evening, Lord Glenconner’s eyes shone with the excitement of an accomplished creation—a symphony composed, an epic written, a masterpiece painted. Wearing a gold crown and ropes of pearls, he was dressed in white magnificence, his high collar and robes heavily encrusted with gold embroidery. The Glenconner house, called simply the Great House, is a Taj Mahal-like palace designed by the ultimate stage and ballet designer-fantacist, the late Oliver Messel, uncle of Lord Snowdon, former husband of Princess Margaret. Magical even in broad daylight, by night, for the ball, it was bathed in pink and turquoise fluorescent light, which gave the illusion of a Broadway-musical version of India. Handsome, almost nude black males from Saint Lucia and Mustique, their private parts encased in coconut shells painted gold, with strips of gold tinsel hanging from their shoulders to the ground, lined the pink-carpeted walkway to the house. Inside the double doors, more natives, in pink and blue Lurex fantasies of Indian dress inspired more by The King and I than by The Jewel in the Crown, stood cooling the air with giant peacock feather fans on poles.

  Standing under a pink marquee, with the palm-tree-lined beach in the background and the Wind Star, fully lit, on the sea beyond, Lord and Lady Glenconner, with their son Charlie by their side, received their elaborately dressed guests while their son Henry called out the names as they arrived.

  “Mrs. Michael Brand,” called out Henry Tennant.

  “I am the Honorable Mrs. Brand, not Mrs. Michael Brand,” corrected Mrs. Brand.

  The natives on the island of Mustique call Princess Margaret simply Princess, with neither an article preceding nor a name following. Well, Princess was late, and the procession that was to open the ball could not take place until Princess arrived, because Princess was the principal participant. The fact was, Princess had arrived at the Great House, but she was still sitting in Lady Anne’s bedroom, which boasts a silver bed with silver peacocks on the head- and footboards. One story had it that Raquel Welch had also finally arrived on the island, and that Princess, not wishing to be outdone by her, as she had been the previous evening, when Miss Welch had not shown up at her own party, where Princess was an honored guest, was delaying the procession until after Miss Welch’s arrival. If such was the case, Princess lost another round.

  Finally, despairing of Miss Welch’s ever arriving, the royal procession started. The sisters of Lady Anne, Lady Carey Basset, with one of her three sons, and Lady Sarah Walter, with her husband, Prince and Princess Rupert Lowenstein, and the Americans, Miss Jerry Hall and Mr. and Mrs. James Coleman, Jr., moved slowly from the house to the receiving tent. They were followed by Viscount Linley, in a white peacock headdress, which he never removed for the whole night, and his beautiful girlfriend, Susannah Constantine. Then came Princess Margaret, the great friend of the Glenconners. On her head, complementing her dress, which was a gift from Lord Glenconner, she wore a black velvet headband tiara-style, onto which her maid, that afternoon, had sewn massive diamond clips. Her resplendenc
e had been worth the wait.

  “Her Royal Highness, Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon,” called out Henry Tennant. All the Indian-clad ladies dropped in curtsies as she passed, and all the men bowed their heads. Under the tent, Lady Anne kissed her on both cheeks before doing a deep, curtsy. Then Lord Glenconner removed his crown, as did his son Charlie, and they bowed to Princess.

  When Princess Margaret first saw the Indian sari that Lord Glenconner had had made for her in India, she exclaimed, “I’ve been dreaming of having a dress like this since I was six.” During dinner a maid spilled a tray of potatoes on the dress, but Princess’s dinner partners, Sir John Plumb, the eighteenth-century historian, and John Nutting, an English barrister of note, were able to right the wrong with a minimum of fuss and very little stain.

  Miss Welch, the lone dissenter from Indian costume, finally arrived during dinner, dressed in a gray metallic shirred evening gown and shoulder-length methallic shirred evening gloves, which she kept on while she ate. She was seated between Prince Rupert Lowenstein, a noted wit and conversationalist, and Mr. Roddy Llewellyn, the extremely affable suitor, before his marriage, of Princess Margaret, at whose Mustique house he and his wife, Tania, were houseguests, but conversation with the film star was pretty much uphill.

  “Have you read the Sinatra biography?” Prince Rupert asked her.

  “No,” she said, “but I made a picture with Frank. If Frank likes you, he’s behind you all the way. He wrote me a letter when my father died.” Then she massaged her neck with her hand and said, “My neck’s out. I’ve been wearing a neck brace, but I couldn’t wear a neck brace with this dress to Colin’s party. It’s stress. I’ve been under a lot of stress. Would you get my husband, please? I need my pills for my neck. Andre, would you get my pills for my neck. Two of the yellow ones.”