Empress Bianca

by Lady Colin Campbell

  Any public appearance she made in Mexico was accompanied by a palpable ripple of speculation about what had really happened to Ferdie. Try as she might, Bianca had found it impossible to ignore. To someone for whom social approval was as essential as oxygen, this notoriety was an exquisite torment, especially when she contrasted it with the days when Ferdie was still alive and she was fêted everywhere as the socially eminent Mrs Piedraplata. If it were up to her, she would never have gone back to Mexico once the sneering had started, but being one of the richest women in that country with vast financial interests there, she had been obliged to maintain a public profile for the duration of the legal proceedings and act as if nothing was happening. All the same, she made sure that she visited only when she had to and stayed for the barest minimum length of time.

  ‘You don’t deserve being vilified the way that sister-in-law of yours has been pillorying you,’ Mary observed sympathetically.

  ‘I know,’ she agreed, Mary’s expression of faith mingling with the joy that suddenly welled up within her at the prospect of finally being able to enjoy her status as one of the richest women in the world without being crucified on the cross of public humiliation. All that delicious money she had inherited from Ferdie was now hers and hers alone. For the first time in her life she had the liberty and the means to satisfy her every urge and desire. It was a truly liberating sensation, and the headiness of it was positively intoxicating.

  ‘You know, Mary,’ Bianca said, ‘I’m grateful for your help in getting that woman off my back. To show you my appreciation, I’m going to get Asprey to make you a copy of that Verdura brooch of mine that you admired the other evening when we had dinner at the Caprice. And I’m going to donate another £100,000 to your Distressed Legal Gentlefolk Society. Truth be told, I’d like to give it to you outright as a present, but I wouldn’t want to do anything that would embarrass you or give people the wrong impression if they found out about it, and I’m pretty sure you would prefer it to go to the charity.’

  ‘You’re so kind and sensitive. If anyone deserves a smoother ride, it’s you, Bianca. Thank you so much for your expression of appreciation. I’d love a copy of the brooch. It will be a most welcome personal token.’

  At the start of dinner that evening, Bianca laid the first brick in the new courtyard of her life. ‘You know, Ion,’ she said, having discussed her plans previously with Philippe, ‘I’ve become increasingly aware over the last few months of how unfair I’ve been to you. I’ve presumed far too much on our friendship in having asked you to give up so much for me for so little in return. I’ve been thinking a lot about whether it would be fair to you to continue as we’ve been going, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the greatest favour I can do you…and the most sincere expression I can convey to you of the real affection I have for you…is to set you free. For that reason, I’d like us to get a divorce. I want you to know,’ she continued, reaching out and touching Ion’s hand, ‘that I appreciate what a devoted and wonderful companion you’ve been, and I hope that we’ll always remain the very best of friends.’

  Knowing that he had outlived his usefulness, Ion had been expecting this, but he was still astonished at the speed with which his wife had moved.

  ‘I’m happy to have been of service,’ he said and arched an eyebrow, his expression registering some of what he was now thinking.

  Bianca, hypersensitive as always to the reactions of others, took immediate steps to remove any sting from the situation, especially as she and Philippe were both of the opinion that it would be far too dangerous to fall out with him. ‘Oh, darling, I wouldn’t put it like that,’ she replied soothingly. ‘You’ve been the most devoted friend any girl could want, and I hope none of that will change. To show you how sincere I am, I want you to continue finding things for me in the same way as you did before our marriage. I also want to continue your allowance for the next ten years, and would love it if you’d consent to a lump-sum settlement as well. Would you do that and make me happy?’

  ‘What sort of a lump-sum settlement?’ Ion asked, mindful that Philippe’s hooded eyes were boring right through him.

  ‘I asked Juan Gilberto Macias what a generous settlement would be, and he said $250,000. But because I love you so much and I’m confident that we’ll always remain close, I want you to have the maximum I can afford: $500,000.’

  Once more Ion raised an eyebrow, this time in surprise at the amount she was offering him. Obviously, his role had been more crucial than he had realized. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ he said, intending to be gracious.

  Philippe assuming that Ion was trying to raise the stakes, jumped in protectively. ‘Bianca is being very generous, Ion,’ he said quietly ‘Half a million dollars for a short-lived marriage…many wives get far less from their multimillionaire husbands after twenty years…’

  Before Ion could reply, Bianca, compounded the comedy of errors by adding: ‘I love you, Ion. You’re one of my best friends and always will be, I hope. I don’t want you and Philippe to get into a wrangle over anything and certainly not over money. I know how exquisite your taste is, and what the price of things is nowadays. I want you to be in a position to leave this marriage with good memories, and to buy yourself a few mementos. If I scrabble around, I’m sure I can manage $600,000, and that’s the amount I’d really like you to have. Will you accept it together with all of my thanks, and will you promise me that we’ll always remain friends and that you’ll come for dinner at least once a fortnight?’

  ‘Of course I will,’ Ion said, raising Bianca’s hand to his lips and kissing the air between them.

  ‘That’s settled, then,’ Philippe said.

  ‘Shall I move out tomorrow?’ asked Ion, ever the gentleman.

  Immediately after the divorce, Philippe, who had been waiting years to make the woman of his dreams his wife, swung into action, arranging for a Reform rabbi to marry them at the Synagogue in St John’s Wood, London. ‘Let’s keep it small,’ Philippe suggested and made it plain to Bianca that the only guests he wanted were her three children and Manolito, together with his brother Raymond, sister-in-law Begonia and sisters Hepsibah and Rebecca.

  This marriage meant almost more to Philippe than the fortune he had acquired by fair means and foul. As a result, the ceremony was tremendously moving, and there was no doubt in the minds of any of the guests that this was a union to which both bride and groom were committed for the remainder of their lives. Everyone was struck by the passion emanating from Philippe. ‘He really loves her,’ even Hepsibah observed to her sister, having taken an instant dislike to Bianca the moment she first met her.

  After the ceremony, Philippe ensured that the romance of the occasion continued in true style by taking over the Brasserie at Claridge’s for the wedding breakfast. Aside from the family and Walter and Ruth Huron, who flew in from New York for the reception, their guests consisted exclusively of members of the legal profession. Mr Justice Landsworth popped in for forty-five minutes during the lunch recess of his trial. His wife Mary arrived and left with Lord and Lady Ralph Coningby, and Juan Gilberto Macias flew in from Mexico especially for the event. During a short speech, in which Philippe thanked everyone for coming, he raised his glass to Bianca and put into words what his every action had been conveying: ‘To the woman of my dreams.’ No one present doubted the sincerity of that statement, although Hepsibah could not resist remarking to Rebecca: ‘I can see what he sees in her, but what does she see in him? Their relationship just doesn’t make sense to me.’

  Of course, neither Mahfud sister knew anything about the ties binding the happy couple to each other. This was only the fourth occasion upon which Hepsibah had met her, although Rebecca did accompany Philippe on Bianca’s honeymoon with Ion, at which time she formed the opinion that she was a charming but trivial personality with, as she put it, ‘all the emotional depth of a powder compact.’

  Although Hepsibah and Rebecca succeeded in keeping their opinion of Bianca from Philippe, t
hey were less successful in keeping it from their new sister-in-law. ‘I don’t think your sisters like me,’ Bianca remarked to her new husband.

  ‘Of course they do. They even said how glamorous and elegant you are.’

  ‘Now that really convinces me they don’t like me,’ she shrewdly observed, looking at Philippe’s plain and dour sisters, neither of whom was wearing any makeup, one in a plain bottle green dress, the other in an equally style-less dark blue dress, each costume topped off with a well-cut wig whose uniformity of colour announced their commitment to their Orthodox faith.

  Thereafter, Bianca’s new sisters-in-law would never fail to make her skin crawl for they had committed the cardinal sin of failing to like her, to succumb to her charm and warmth and to reflect back to her the opinion she wished them to have of her. Although she was hereafter as careful as they were to keep her true feelings from their brother, Bianca marked them down as adversaries to be avoided, resolving there and then to do all she could to loosen Philippe’s ties with them.

  Such problems, however, were very much in the future in those early days of the marriage. From the start of the marriage, Philippe seemed to be calling the shots, while Bianca played the traditional Middle Eastern role of the obliging wife. Although she would have liked to continue basing herself at L’Alexandrine, her new husband had decreed otherwise. ‘The South of France is not a practical place for us to live. Ideally, we should live between New York and Mexico. L’Alexandrine we can use as our summer house.’

  Careful though Bianca was never to defy Philippe in public, in private it was another matter altogether. ‘Never,’ she declared in no uncertain terms as soon as the dreaded word ‘Mexico’ was uttered. ‘If you want to live there, you’ll have to do so on your own. I will never live there again.’

  ‘I don’t know what you have against Mexico. If I can move into Ferdie’s house in Mexico City and into Sintra and treat them as my own, why can’t you? I don’t like having to go there on my own.’

  ‘I will never live in Mexico again,’ she repeated with a decided and emphatic vehemence. ‘I hate the place and will only ever go when I absolutely have to.’

  ‘Come on, darling, it isn’t that bad. I like it. The children like it…’

  ‘Then they can live there if they want, and so can you.’

  ‘What’s the point of keeping two properties fully staffed for your use all year round if you hate the country they’re in so much?’

  ‘If I ever severed my ties with Mexico, Amanda would use that as an excuse to revise the custody arrangements with Manolito,’ Bianca replied. ‘I have to have an official residence there, at least until he achieves his majority. You know that only too well. If it weren’t for that, I can tell you, I’d never set foot in the place ever again.’

  ‘Julio and Pedro tell me they want to live there when they’ve finished college. To them, Mexico is home.’

  ‘It used to be for me too, but no longer. Home is now L’Alexandrine, though I suppose I’ll have to expand my horizons to include New York as well.’

  ‘Why don’t you fly there next week and find us an apartment?’ suggested Philippe, conceding defeat.

  ‘Living in New York is fine by me. I’ll speak to Ruth and see who she recommends as a realtor.’

  Of course, Philippe did not need to explain to Bianca why it was important that she use a top realtor. She now knew that in New York the only way to buy into a really good building was to do it through good connections. And good connections could always be obtained if you paid a high enough price. As Philippe and Bianca both needed a good address - he for professional reasons, she for social ones - the best way of achieving what they wanted was by using a top realtor.

  However, neither Philippe nor Bianca knew one, but Ruth Fargo Huron did. She unhesitatingly suggested Ruby Leighton, a well-known professional who had achieved the then almost unheard-of accomplishment of being listed in the Social Register, despite being Jewish. Through a combination of energetic effort and savvy, she had carved herself a niche in the New York property world and could now provide access to the best apartments in the best buildings in the best locations in Manhattan.

  Wisely, Ruth Fargo Huron had warned Ruby Leighton that Bianca had an atavistic approach to property. ‘She is as passionate about houses as most people are about their husbands and children. Bear that in mind when showing her around.’

  As luck would have it, Ruby did not have to heed her warning, for Bianca fell in love with the first apartment the realtor arranged for her to see. It was a twenty-four room duplex on Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park in the upper Seventies. It had the most incredible rosewood panelling in the drawing room and library; and intricately carved sandstone fireplaces in both drawing-room and dining-room. These had come from one of the Richelieu chateaux at the turn of the twentieth century, when Grace Vanderbilt was refurbishing her palatial New York residence. The apartment also had two separate servants’ bed-sitting rooms, with adjoining bathrooms, on a lower floor, so Bianca would be able to have live-in help without using up any of the seven bedrooms with en suite bathrooms in the main apartment.

  ‘I love it,’ she said at the end of the viewing, as decisive as ever when she saw what she wanted. ‘We’ll take it.’

  Ruby Leighton noticed she had not even bothered to ask the price.

  Bianca, however, was about to get her first lesson in the intricacies of purchasing property in New York and to discover that her cosmopolitanism was not quite at the peak she thought it was. ‘I wish it were that easy,’ said Ruby, ‘but this is New York, and no one can just buy an apartment in a co-op…especially a co-op in one of the most desirable buildings in Manhattan…without first being vetted and approved by the management committee.’

  ‘You mean to tell me that we have to be approved before we can buy it?’

  ‘Yes, and that will apply to any other apartment you might like.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of such a thing in my life,’ Bianca exclaimed, her South American pride offended by such a humiliating system. ‘What nerve.’

  Ruby, however, was amused. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘You’ll pass with flying colours. I’ll see to it. I know two members of the management committee. One is in the Social Register with me and the other would like to be, so he’s as obliging as can be. I think he thinks that by being nice, we’ll spread the word to the compilers of the Register that he ought to be invited to be listed.’

  Ruth Fargo Huron had mentioned that what made Ruby Leighton one of the finest realtors in town was a unique combination of savvy, charm and good connections. As she talked, Bianca could see what her friend had meant.

  ‘All you have to do,’ Ruby continued, ‘is turn up to the meeting of the management committee on time, bring your husband and to dress as sedately as if you’re being tried for murder.’ Bianca blanched. Wondering what she had said wrong, Ruth continued as if nothing were amiss. ‘Basic black dress. Nice string of pearls…not too big, not too small. Nice pearl stud earrings. Light makeup. Hair not too elaborately styled. And a darkblue or grey tailored suit for your husband, with a plain white shirt and the tie of a good club like the Union if he’s a member, otherwise something very conservative from Hermes. You want to give the impression that you’re people of means but not flashy. That will convey the message they want to hear, which is that you’ll fit in with the other residents and cause no trouble. Management committees are terrified of people who are famous or flashy. They think the former will attract the press, which is the last thing they want, and they’re convinced the latter will have loud, all-night parties that will give the other residents a hard time and the building a bad name. There are sound financial reasons for those concerns, I can assure you, because if a building gets a reputation for having a bad resident, no one wants to buy into it, and all the other resident’s find that their property values are adversely affected as a result.’

  Armed with that advice, Philippe flew up from Mexico especially for
the meeting with the management committee, during which he and Bianca did exactly as they were told. Ruby proved to be as good as her word, and by the time the apartment was theirs, she and Bianca had become fast friends.

  Ruby, in fact, would prove to be quite a catalyst in Bianca’s life. It was through her that Bianca became friendly with Valerian Rybar, the interior designer who had been married to Guinness heiress Oonagh, Lady Oranmore and Browne and whom Bianca had patronized in a limited way while married to Ferdie. Now she discovered that they had much in common, including an Ottoman heritage, a love of social life and tastes that inclined towards the exotic and the extravagant. As her ‘style’ would become one of the major features of her life, its importance was not to be denigrated, trivial though it might appear to be, to those with more substantial matters to which to dedicate their lives; and her relationship with Valerian Rybar became one of the most compelling in her life.

  It began as it would continue; within an hour of their meeting it was apparent that most - if not all - of Valerian’s more outlandish innovations appealed to Bianca. Encouraged to greater heights by her receptivity, he poured forth the most amazing ideas for the Fifth Avenue apartment.

  Within weeks she had not only commissioned him to ‘do up’ the place but they had also become so friendly that they were meeting for lunch and cocktails two or three times a week.

  Within six months, Valerian Rybar and Bianca turned a conventional pre-war apartment into a riotous meeting of East and West. The drawing room and the library became a blaze of overstuffed sofas, covered in the finest hand-woven antique Ottoman fabrics, which were then engulfed in masses of cushions, also of antique Ottoman fabric. The dining-room’s walls were covered in antique hand-woven fabric, this time from the days when Bulgaria was part of the Ottoman Empire, although the dining table and chairs were genuine Hepplewhite and therefore as traditionally English as it was possible to be. The European accents were furthered by a unique combination of Old Masters and more contemporary painters.