The St Tropez Lonely Hearts Club

by Joan Collins

  THE SAINT-TROPEZ

  LONELY HEARTS CLUB

  Also by Joan Collins Memoirs

  Past Imperfect: An Autobiography (1978)

  Katy: A Fight for Life (1982)

  Second Act: An Autobiography (1996)

  Passion for Life (2013) Nonfiction

  The Joan Collins Beauty Book (1980)

  My Secrets (1994)

  Health, Youth and Happiness (1995)

  My Friends’ Secrets (1999)

  Joan’s Way: Looking Good, Feeling Great (2002)

  The Art of Living Well (2007)

  The World According to Joan (2012) Fiction

  Prime Time (1988)

  Love and Desire and Hate (1990)

  Too Damn Famous (1995)

  Star Quality (2002)

  Misfortune’s Daughters (2004)

  THE SAINT-TROPEZ

  LONELY HEARTS CLUB

  A Novel

  Joan Collins

  Published in collaboration with Renaissance Literary & Talent

  Los Angeles, California

  November, 2015

  Copyright © Joan Collins, 2015

  ISBN: 978-1-938402-54-8

  Also published in Great Britain in 2015 by Constable

  The right of Joan Collins to be identified as author of this work

  has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the UK Copyright

  Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All characters and events in this publication,

  other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious

  and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Contents

  Also by Joan Collins

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Epilogue

  For Jackie.

  I will never forget you.

  THE SAINT-TROPEZ

  LONELY HEARTS CLUB

  INTRODUCTION

  The French Riviera is a place of sublime contrasts. Running from San Remo, just past the principality of Monaco, and almost to Marseille at the west end of the coast, each village, town and beach has its individual charm. Most villages have looked the same for hundreds of years, yet some of the larger towns – stately Monaco, and the grand old city of Nice with its stunning boardwalk, elegant Promenade des Anglais and its splendid hotels and superb shops and restaurants – have combined the best of modern architecture with nineteenth-century grandeur.

  And then there is Saint-Tropez.

  That humble and holy name conjures up an idyllic paradise where hedonism reigns and wealth and beauty conquer all, supposedly. Some have called it a cultural bone-yard, for the seven deadly sins abound in this happy hunting ground.

  The myth of Saint-Tropez is known worldwide, but its reputation as the de rigueur party spot of the summer is comparatively recent. Although the sleepy little port village had existed for thousands of years, it wasn’t until the 1950s that it started hitting the headlines, thanks to sex kitten Brigitte Bardot, the most nubile of post-war stars. Brigitte and her husband Roger Vadim discovered the delights of the nearby beaches of Pampelonne – then almost inaccessible thanks to the thick brush of parasol pines and tangled seaweed – while on location for Brigitte’s first starring role, . . .And God Created Woman in 1955.

  On what would end up as the most famous of all Pampelonne beaches, a tiny hut, owned by the de Colmont family, cooked lunch every day for Vadim’s film unit. After the film crew left, the de Colmont family decided to keep cooking but to invite only those they knew and liked. Shortly thereafter, Bernard de Colmont created Le Club 55, named after the year of its birth, and it soon became the most sophisticated and exclusive beach club in the world. The elite of the world have done nothing to erase its unpretentious primitive charm, and it is a mecca for not only the denizens of Saint-Tropez, but for the summer season’s visitors.

  In the 1960s, the newly named ‘jet set’ finally discovered the delights of Saint-Tropez and its lush, gorgeous sandy beaches. Millionaires, playboys, film stars, heiresses, high-class hookers and low-rent boys descended on this elite paradise, and the party hasn’t stopped yet. Some twenty years later, fat-bellied tourists in their buses and trailers, backpacks eternally glued to their spines like bizarre camel people, also descended in droves, marring the beauty and tranquillity of the village and its surroundings.

  But Saint-Tropez has expanded significantly. In the past twenty years the environs of this charming village and the nearby villages of Ramatuelle, Gassin and La Croix-Valmer have spread like octopus tentacles via the new speedy roads and concrete apartment complexes, giant superstores and, saddest of all, McDonald’s eating establishments.

  Most people only think of Saint-Tropez beaches as filled with topless hookers, heavy hitters and illicit sex. That goes on in some of the more decadent beaches, such as the recently defunct Voile Rouge, where groups of rich playboys thought nothing of paying €10,000 for a jeroboam of champagne, which they liberally squirted over their squealing, scantily clad lady friends. Lunches at some of these beaches begin around three p.m. and rarely finish before eight or nine p.m., complete with floor shows and fashion parades of the flimsiest beachwear and wild, uninhibited dancing on the tables and bars to the heaviest of rap beats.

  In the hills above Saint-Tropez lie some magnificent and expensive villas, many owned by billionaires who only spend as little as one or two weeks a year in their houses. Between November and February, the village is home to only five thousand souls. As the sun shines brighter, the Parisians and foreigners arrive to un-shutter their villas until, by June and July, more than 35,000 people are squeezed into Saint-Tropez. Add to that the daily influx of some 50,000 tourists and the pace becomes frenetic as the beat goes on.

  This tale is about one sizzling summer season in this bacchanalian utopia, of sun, sin, sex and scandal, and the people who made it happen.

  PROLOGUE

  Lying face down in a pool, August 2015

  How has it come to this? Me, the stud of Saint-Tropez. Twenty-nine years old. Handsome. Devilishly amusing. Big dick. Every woman in Saint-Tropez gladly accepting my advances. Well, not every woman, but I am seldom turned down. Think of an Italian Brad Pitt crossed with the brooding Latin sex appeal of a Benicio del Toro and that’s me. The ultimate fuck machine, constantly horny, my body a factory of raging hormones. I
don’t like to boast . . . well, actually I do.

  And my singing. Certainly I am no Julio Iglesias, but by the light of any silvery moon, my guitar playing and mellow, sensuous sounds have charmed many ladies (and the occasional man) into the sack. Sure, there are plenty of husbands and lovers who are insanely jealous of me, but I haven’t lasted for nine years as a gigolo without knowing how to avoid them. After all, I am the stud of studs, the adored of the bored, the life and soul of every event, ‘the second coming of Sinatra’ . . . even I admit that was a bit over the top, but Maximus, my PR, my agent – well, my pimp – actually had a hangover that morning after the night I sang at Charlie Chalk’s black and white ball and had no regard for originality when he thus described my performance to Gala magazine. That was one of the last nights I performed, while that ancient bitch Sophie Silvestri shot daggers at me.

  I can hear people yelling and police sirens near me now, but I’m worried about the black silk Valentino shirt I’m wearing. My dear fidanzata bought me that as a making-up present last year for throwing my Etro bags off the back of her yacht. Now utterly ruined, soaking and blood spattered. I picture the wild-eyed Russian cow with her threats of ‘I will kill you, you stupid wop-bastard’, but she and I both know that her hands shake far too violently with the DTs caused by two bottles of Grey Goose a day to have done this.

  My thoughts drift to the husbands. I’d cuckolded several by July, but none of them seemed to care as they traipsed off to the golf courses with their pot-bellied pals. Except the American mega-mogul, whose gorgeous trophy wife I slept with twice.

  There have been hundreds, no thousands, of visitors in Saint-Tropez this hot summer, and I have rubbed shoulders with many of them. I have rubbed almost all other parts of my body with many of them too. We attend the same parties, lunches and dinners over and over again. Same people, same faces, same dialogue.

  So how has it come to this? Is this the end?

  CHAPTER ONE

  Cannes Film Festival, May 2015

  As I attempt to sweep up the red-carpeted steps to the Palais des Arts, the agonising pain in my hips makes me feel faint. I clench my teeth, as well as the hands of Frick and Adolpho, my two faithful style gurus who support me, one on each arm, whispering encouragement while I smile for the sea of lenses.

  ‘Courage, Sophie. Be brave, cara – you are still the most beautiful; don’t let them see your pain,’ Frick encourages.

  ‘And wipe the lipstick off your teeth,’ hisses Adolpho.

  And of course I won’t, can’t, let them see the effort it has taken me to strut up those velvet-sheathed stairs in six-inch Louboutins and a dress I haven’t worn since The Princess and the Playboy in ’68. Gina has let it out several inches in the waist and hips, but even with the steel corset it’s torture. ‘You must suffer to be beautiful.’ The words of my mentor, the great director Charlot Benedicto, ring in my ears as I recall his insistence on having me strapped in corsets to play the young Marie Antoinette. ‘She would have remained standing even after they chopped her head off,’ I joked behind his back. Always behind his back. The corset had taken my then twenty-three-inch waist down to eighteen inches, and I had worn it the whole ten-hour shooting day, unable to eat or go to the bathroom. I also cracked a rib but never complained. Not to his face, at least.

  I smile again at the cheering crowds of paparazzi, and fans pushing behind them, who line the staircase. How ugly most of them are. Where do they come from with their werewolf teeth, their hideous tattoos, their greasy hair and their pierced ears, noses, tongues, and nipples? And fat! So many are bursting out of their jeans, their white bellies exposed in all their cellulite ugliness, wearing nothing but T-shirts with stupid slogans that mean nothing. Not one elegant jacket, not one nice shirt – just shorts and jeans and crop tops and pale ugly skin spilling out of them, but with the occasional brilliantly dressed transgender fashionista, like a cherry on stale icing.

  At the top of the steps a civilised crowd awaits. Amongst the coiffed, gowned and black-tied, I glimpse Deneuve and Depardieu, and make a gigantic effort with the last few stairs. Both my hips are now torturing me. Why hadn’t I listened all those years ago when I was warned that the acrobatic exercise videos I was making, each one featuring my more and more excessive contortions, would eventually cripple me? ‘Your bones are like Swiss cheese,’ the blunt American doctor had pronounced. Did I detect a note of suppressed delight in his voice? Was I to be his retirement pension? ‘If we don’t give you two hip replacements within a year, you’ll be in a wheelchair for the rest of your life.’ He sounded slightly too pleased about that.

  The rest of my life? How long will that be? I’m seventy-four now but I feel 104, and by the time I get to 104, I’ll probably be long dead. But of course I don’t look my age. No way. Frick and Adolpho see to that. Naturally, when I’m slopping around with the dogs and cats in overalls covered in dog hair, I look like an ancient Jane Fonda in Barbarella. Only my faithful menagerie and Frick and Adolpho help keep me sane and vaguely interested in what passes for a life. They don’t care how I look and only insist I hide when the postman comes or the occasional fan or paparazzo manages to sneak into my remote property, concealing themselves behind the olive trees and trying to steal a snap.

  What vile creatures they are, knowing that a photo of one of the most famous sex goddesses of the 1960s, now gone to seed, would fetch a fortune with the tabloids. ‘Sophie Silvestri’s so faded, she’s almost invisible,’ one cruel reporter had written. How nasty these people can be. One managed to ooze his way in through the oleander bushes last week while I was deadheading my hydrangeas. He’d begged for a photo, even offering to pay me, so I haughtily gave him my best Bette Davis line: ‘I admit I’ve seen better days, but I’m still not to be had for the price of a cocktail or a salted peanut’ before throwing him out.

  That Davis woman, she sure had a way with words, and we’d had a few when I was playing the second lead in one of her movies. She accused me of stealing her boyfriend. Boyfriend! Fifty if he was a day, and I only flirted with him because he was the director of photography and giving me great lighting, so I occasionally gave him something else in my dressing room during lunch break, careful not to smudge my make-up.

  I was so gorgeous then, I had to fight ’em off. Why are people so horrible to the elderly? Being beautiful and getting old is like being rich and becoming poor. One day they’ll be old (if they’re lucky) so why should they be so unkind? There should be a law against ageism. There are laws against racism, homophobia, sexism and the mocking of midgets – sorry, vertically challenged. So why can’t we be polite to the over-sixties?

  But the fans still try to break in. Usually Frick and Adolpho and my dear dogs manage to get rid of them. Of course, there was the unfortunate incident a couple of years ago when my favourite Doberman Pinscher took a little snack out of some fat fan’s fanny. The idiot was bending over behind the bougainvillea bushes, camera posed, ass in the air – naturally dear Faustus couldn’t resist the temptation of that gelatinous white builder’s cleavage.

  The Saint-Tropez gendarmerie hushed up the potential scandal, of course. The man looked like a pervert anyway, and Captain Poulpe and his daughter Gabrielle used the persuasiveness of truncheon and their posse of grim-faced goons to banish him from our lovely village for ever. Dear Captain Poulpe. He has always been one of my biggest fans. I think he has a tiny crush on me too. Sadly he’s on the point of retirement, which is what I should probably have done years ago.

  I wince as I make the top step and air-kiss Deneuve on both cheeks. The bitch looks far too good and, as I kiss, I try to check behind her ears, but all that real blonde hair (double bitch) gets in the way. After all, we are almost contemporaries. The crowd cheers, the cameras click, the flashes flash insanely, recording the moment when two queens of the French cinema reunite, and I feel the instant rush of adrenalin that these events still give me. After all, I am still a star.

  CHAPTER TWO

  La Recole
ta Cemetery, Buenos Aires, February 2015

  Nicanor Di Ponti was lowered to the ground as his entire family and his beautiful wife Carlotta wept, the tears running down her oval face. The drizzle of the Argentine summer rain was as steady and copious as the tears of the mourners, but the tears, like the rain, did not all come from the same cloud. In Carlotta’s case, the tears were tears of freedom, tears of joy.

  Carlotta had met Nicanor when she was a sixteen-year-old virgin from a poor family and he was a twenty-nine-year-old sex addict from a rich one. They had married and had a baby girl and their marriage seemed storybook, although sadly – and despite herculean efforts by Nicanor – Carlotta was unable to give him the male heir he longed for. They lived in mansions around the world, paid for by the vast sugar-cane fortune that the Di Ponti family had established, but which Nicanor’s mother had made into a global brand. With its distinctive image of a gaucho riding free on the plains of the pampas, Di Ponti sugar was the staple in every supermarket, kitchen and restaurant in the world. How far from the truth that was, Carlotta often thought. What if they knew that the handsome man in the gaucho photograph, which Nicanor had posed for when he was twenty-two, was into kinky bondage and hardcore sex?

  I had never seen anything so beautiful as the villa that Nicanor took me to on our first date. I had been sitting by the fountain in the middle of our village square, thinking for a long time that my life had been ‘one step forward and two steps back’. Ever since I left school last year, I’d been working in the chocolate factory owned by the powerful Di Ponti family. They owned practically everything in the village and the surrounding towns and villages too.

  Nicanor was driving a very fancy car, red. The top was down and the wind was blowing his thick black hair into a pompadour. I recognised him immediately. ‘Gaucho’ – his photograph – was on every bag of sugar and on every wrapper of the delicious chocolate bars sold everywhere. However, they were not so delicious when I worked ten hours a day in the factory that made them.