The St Tropez Lonely Hearts Club

by Joan Collins

  Maximus excused himself, leaving Carlotta in the thrall of Fabrizio, and lumbered to the table plan at the door to find out where he was sitting. He managed to quickly exchange his place card so that he would be next to Carlotta then, returning to her side and taking her arm, he escorted her to one of the long white tables that, with their gleaming silverware and centrepieces of roses, lilies and hydrangeas, looked like an ad in Architectural Digest.

  ‘Ah, what a coincidence!’ Max smiled roguishly. ‘We are lunch partners. I’m so happy.’

  ‘So am I,’ smiled Carlotta beatifically.

  Lunch conversation was punctuated by explosive noises from the engines of the cars zooming around the track, but by the end of it, Carlotta felt she had found a new friend in Maximus Gobbi.

  And Maximus Gobbi felt he had found a new patron.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Buenos Aires, May 2015

  After the death of her father, Flora had been begging her mother to send her to tennis camp in Connecticut in the summer and Carlotta had agreed. With the prospect of being unencumbered for two months, she decided to contact Maximus and tell him of her potential plans. ‘I was thinking of coming to Monaco again,’ she said tentatively. ‘It’s so beautiful and serene.’

  ‘Serene? Yes, cara, serene like a graveyard,’ Maximus cooed. ‘It’s really terribly boring for young people. You know what they say about it?’

  ‘No, what?’

  ‘A sunny place for shady people. No, no, my dear. Not Monaco for the summer season. It’s far too dull and far too many old people. You must come to Saint-Tropez. You will adore it. If you will allow, I shall find you a suitable house to rent, and maybe even a suitable replacement for Nicanor?’ He laughed a great rumbling bellow.

  ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed. ‘I hadn’t really thought of that. It’s . . . it’s much too soon – I haven’t thought much about anything other than my Flora since her father died, but I would like to have some fun,’ she added wistfully.

  ‘Well, it is always a long, wonderful summer,’ purred Maximus. ‘And full of fun. Anything can happen in Saint-Tropez, and it usually does.’

  ‘Perhaps that is exactly the kind of summer that I need after this . . . this terrible time. I’ll think about it.’

  ‘Yes, of course, my dear, but don’t think too long. The best houses to rent are snapped up très vite. But do please come. I know you will love it. There is so much to do. Apart from a divine social life there are great beaches and restaurants, there is water skiing, paragliding and wonderful shopping.’

  ‘Oh, I love shopping.’

  ‘As far as shopping goes, the market every Tuesday and Saturday at the Place des Lices is a fabulous bustling bazaar. You can find everything there from antiques to artichokes and cheese to cheesecloths.’ He bellowed with laughter at his own wit.

  ‘That sounds amazing.’

  ‘Oh, it is – it is indescribable. In the morning you can spend time browsing at the market, then have a slow, delicious lunch at one of the glamorous beaches.’

  Carlotta sighed, ‘That sounds wonderful.’

  ‘Then, my dear, we now have every top brand shop – Dolce, Chanel, Vuitton, Gucci, Dior – not to mention dozens of tiny little boutiques selling one-of-a-kind outfits. It is a ladies’ delight. I shall take you there, my dear. You will become addicted to Saint-Tropez, most people do.’

  ‘It sounds too good to be true.’

  ‘Oh, it is – it certainly is. My dear, it is unlike anywhere else in the world, so what do you think?’

  ‘I will certainly try to come. I’ll let you know as soon as possible.’

  ‘Good, good. Don’t wait too long or all the best houses will be gone,’ he repeated.

  ‘I’ll let you know next week. My daughter wants to go to tennis camp for the summer so I will be free.’

  ‘Wonderful, so I will make all the arrangements. I shall give a fabulous party for you to welcome you. I know everyone who matters in Saint-Tropez, and the rest of the Côte d’Azur too, for that matter.’

  Indeed it was true. Maximus Gobbi knew everyone and everyone knew him. No matter that many would cross the road rather than acknowledge him, he was a party organiser par excellence, a mover and a shaker (in spite of his bulk), and he knew where many skeletons hid in the closets of the rich and famous.

  After she hung up, Carlotta laughed for the first time in a month. Her hopes for a wonderful summer in Saint-Tropez and the possibility of finding true love, if such a thing actually existed, seemed to be coming true.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  30 Boulevard Suchet, Paris, May 2015

  Maximus Gobbi had always been used to thinking on his feet. The youngest of a brood of eight hunky boys, he had been forced to wheedle, manipulate and even fight to get what he felt he deserved. Whether that was a small bowl of soup or the last crust of bread he would have to grab from his brothers, life had never been easy for young Maximus.

  His elder brothers teased him mercilessly as he was a change-of-life baby born to a woman already worn out by motherhood and the slavery of running a home for nine males. She gave short shrift to little Maximus, who early on learned to live by his wits.

  The family lived outside Naples in a tiny crumbling tenement apartment, which still bore the scars of the war that had ended the year Maximus entered the world. His brothers all worked in the dockyards with his increasingly ailing father, hauling enormous crates from the ships that crammed the flourishing post-war harbours. The ships and what they contained were supposed to bring prosperity to Naples and to Italy, but if they did bring it they brought it only to the wealthy, and the Gobbi family saw little of it. The men made enough to feed, clothe and pay the overpriced apartment rent, but there was none left over for the most minimum of necessities.

  Since Maximus was fourteen years younger than his nearest brother, his hand-me-downs were always ludicrously too big, so to dress him half-decently his mother had to rely on the kindness of neighbours. A quiet and furtive boy, Max kept his head down and his thoughts to himself. He knew no one in his family would be remotely interested in anything he had to say in any case.

  The one thing he had in his favour, however, was stunning good looks. Penetrating deep blue eyes fringed with thick black lashes, a mass of curly jet-black hair and a slim elegant physique were the attributes that attracted Federico Braganza, the celebrated movie director, one fine spring day in 1961. He was in Naples, on location in a café on the waterfront. He noticed the young Maximus, who had wangled a job as an extra in the background.

  After a short, probing conversation, Federico discovered that sixteen-year-old Max was a) a virgin, having never been with either boy or girl, and b) bored – bored stiff by his life; he hated his family and he had no idea what to do with himself.

  Federico soon sorted out both these problems. With the minimum of fuss, Maximus bade goodbye to his brothers, who couldn’t have cared less about him, and to his parents, who were on their last legs in any case, and accompanied Braganza in his beautiful new Maserati to Rome – to the eternal city.

  In 1962 La Dolce Vita was in full swing. The sidewalks and cafés of the Via Veneto thronged with the international new jet setters and movie stars from the 1940s and 1950s, who were trying to revive waning careers. Masses of gorgeous young men and women, many on the make or on the lookout for a producer who might cast them in one of the many epics being filmed, also spent the afternoons drinking in the cafés and hitting the glamorous clubs at night.

  Max was in heaven. Federico moved him into his luxurious apartment on the Via Condotti above the chic bustling shopping street, gave him a generous allowance and instructed him thoroughly in the art of homosexual Kama Sutra. Max was a fast learner, and with Federico busy at Cinecittà Studios all day, he started to practise his new-found amatory skills on a variety of handsome young bucks, not to mention older gentlemen, who often paid for the privilege.

  After a few years, when Federico predictably tired of him, Maximus had managed t
o save enough lira to buy a tiny apartment in the chic Trastevere district of Rome. There he started to really enjoy the good life and live it to the hilt. He realised he had a knack of putting people together – particularly older, richer people who wanted to connect with famous people, and particularly young and good-looking ones. With his entrée into the show-business life, Maximus’s address book was full of contacts – important, rich and influential people, dozens of hungry, handsome boys and gorgeous girls, and the occasional transexual for specialty tastes.

  He soon saw the opportunity to have his business branch out across Europe, and took a small pied-à-terre in Paris, which doubled as an office. It suited his penchant for luxury to act like a jet setter.

  Never having had enough to eat as a child, Maximus soon started to grow in girth at an alarming rate. His love of pasta, wine and rich desserts knew no bounds, and by the time he was forty, he tipped the scales at north of three hundred pounds.

  Food and wine soon took the place of sex, and since his beauteous looks had long gone, he turned his talents to procuring young men for other men and women who would pay for the privilege. He collected a stable of hungry studs to suit every taste. But it was a perilous profession with no security and no state pension.

  By the time he was pushing seventy, Max had become extremely worried about his financial future. Many of his young studs had found ways to circumvent him and go direct to the consumer; money was therefore extremely tight.

  Maximus glared at his bank statement in a fury. ‘Merde! No-no-no-nooooo! Non è posso! Marie Christine!! Viene qui!’ he yelled for his secretary, hoping she would come up with something – anything – to get him out of yet another ghastly financial situation. It seemed as soon as he solved one money problem, another one popped up.

  ‘She’s out to lunch.’ Fabrizio Bricconni strolled in the door, shirt open to his navel, cigarette drooping à la Bogart from Cupid-bow lips. ‘Ciao, caro, che è successo? Why are you in such a state?’

  Shit, thought Maximus, why is he here now? No matter, every encounter presents a possible solution.

  ‘My dear boy,’ he said unctuously, ‘such a pleasure!’ Maximus rearranged his features in order to beam at his prize protégé – definitely the most lucrative of his stable but a slippery piece of work. ‘Fabrizio, caro, so good to see you. What are you doing in Paris?’

  ‘I’m here meeting some producers from Kazakhstan. They’re making an X Factor there and they’re considering using me,’ Fabrizio announced proudly.

  ‘Really?’ Maximus lowered his glasses and focused fully on Fabrizio, rapidly making calculations of possible financial outcomes. ‘But, my dear boy, whoever told you you could sing?’

  ‘I can sing, bitch,’ Fabrizio replied sulkily. ‘I’ve been taking lessons here in Paris . . . with Lara’s blessing,’ he added.

  ‘Ahhh, so how is Madame Lara?’ Max asked with bonhomie, then sharply spat, ‘Did you make the deal yet?’

  Maximus had been conspiring to make Fabrizio marry Lara Meyer since last summer. They both knew she had formed an inordinate obsession with Fabrizio (which even she admitted started and ended below the waist). But there was no denying her possessive adoration and Maximus mercilessly exploited that weakness. Maximus’s objective was financial: Fabrizio’s marriage to Lara Meyer would mean an increased monthly stipend, of which he would collect 20 per cent, plus an additional 20 per cent ownership of all of Lara’s assets, which Fabrizio would share as soon as Lara convinced her controlling ex-husband to drop the intricate pre-nup his New York lawyers insisted on which stopped her from getting anything if she remarried.

  But Fabrizio was becoming a real pain in the ass now. Content to draw on the already generous monthly allowance he was receiving from Lara, he was in no hurry to be pressured into wedlock. There were still too many female fish in the sea to sample – and what did he have to gain?

  ‘All right, all right, all right,’ Fabrizio drawled, à la Matthew McConaughey.

  Maximus winced. He had tried to make Fabrizio stop attempting to emulate the American actor, but Fabrizio’s harem thought it cute.

  ‘Why are you still on about “the deal”? Everythin’s okay.’ Fabrizio continued, ramming home the caricature impression, which he knew irritated Maximus.

  ‘Look, Fabrizio,’ Maximus wheezed menacingly, ‘you may be “okay”, but Lara is not “okay” and I am sicuramente not “okay”. I expect this deal to be made by the end of the summer or you will start not feeling “okay”, okay?’

  Fabrizio put on his ‘little boy lost’ bewildered look, which had served to diffuse many a difficult situation, but it had been overused on Maximus. ‘Chill. Everything’s cool. Kazakhstan X Factor definitely will go for me. I mean, I’ve seen some of the talentless nobodies – I’m a lock, bitch.’

  ‘Don’t call me bitch and don’t give me your “everything’s cool” shit! Kazakhstan is bullshit! It will never happen. Close the deal now before Lara finds out about CRAP!’

  Fabrizio shuddered. CRAP – Carina, Raimunda, Alberto, Pietro – Fabrizio’s two ex-lovers and their two children, was an acronym used between Maximus and Fabrizio. He was only able to maintain them through Lara’s generosity. Maximus only mentioned CRAP when things became dire. Things must be very dire, thought Fabrizio, for it to be aired.

  ‘If I can only get the bitch to sober up,’ Fabrizio muttered. ‘She’s drunk morning, noon and night. Do you realise how hard it is for me to get . . . hard?’

  ‘Think of someone else,’ Max said dismissingly. ‘It always worked for me – or get the blue pill.’

  ‘Yeah, but you haven’t had to get it up since the last century,’ Fabrizio chortled, as Maximus’s phone started ringing. Fabrizio, sensing advantage, sauntered to the door. ‘See ya in Saint Trop, bitch. Ciao for now.’

  ‘Merde,’ snapped Maximus, picking up the phone. ‘Ciao, Maximus Gobbi.’ He smiled as he heard the girlish voice.

  ‘Oh, ciao, Maximus, it’s Contessa Carlotta Di Ponti here. I’ve been thinking about your suggestion and I think it’s a wonderful idea. I’d love to come to Saint-Tropez. It sounds divine for the summer. Do you think you could find me a house?’

  ‘Of course, Contessa – ne vous inquiétez de rien – I’ll take care of everything.’ Maximus covered the receiver and hissed to Fabrizio, who had stopped in his tracks when he heard a young female voice and was lurking, ears hawk-like, ‘Make the fucking Lara deal, now piss off!’

  Maximus resumed his conversation after Fabrizio had strolled off. ‘Sì, sì, Contessa, what a pleasure to speak to you.’ He used his most honeyed tones. ‘When do you hope to come?’

  ‘Maybe early June would be good.’

  As Max listened to Carlotta’s hopes for a fun-filled life in Saint-Tropez, his mind started churning. If Fabrizio couldn’t get Lara to commit to marry him, maybe he would look more enthusiastically towards the far younger and far more attractive Carlotta. He cast his mind back, visualising the petite raven-haired girl with the gypsy curls and innocent eyes. It would be a perfect match and one that Fabrizio surely couldn’t resist. Besides, her net worth had to be larger than Lara’s, and she had no pesky ex-husband to contend with.

  Max chose his words carefully – he didn’t want to scare off the prey. ‘Now, there is just a tiny matter of my, eh, consideration?’

  ‘Of course I understand.’ Carlotta hadn’t been around the Buenos Aires business world without wising up to their cunning ways. Besides, she had more money than she could ever use, and if a little extra would buy her some fun – why not? ‘I will tell my secretary Amelia and she will take care of all your needs.’

  ‘It’s a pleasure, Contessa – an enormous pleasure. I promise I shall make your dreams come true. I am always at your service, and I shall take care of everything – absolutely everything!’

  ‘Amelia! Please give Monsieur Gobbi your email,’ Maximus heard her call. ‘Goodbye, Monsieur Gobbi – see you in Saint-Tropez. I shall send you my arrival dates.’


  ‘I shall meet you at Nice Airport,’ he said with a great big smile on his great big face. Maximus leaned back and smiled. This could be what his American friends called a ‘slam dunk’, and it had come not a moment too soon.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Sénéquier Café and Bar, Saint-Tropez, May 2015

  ‘Maximus, Maximus!’ Lara Meyer blubbered down her cell phone. At eleven a.m. she was already on her third vodka-on-the-rocks with a slice of orange, telling anyone who asked that it was just water.

  ‘Lara, cara, calm down. I spoke to Fabrizio. He is in Paris for the next few days, taking singing lessons . . . ’

  ‘Singing lessons? Singing lessons?’ she shrieked into the receiver, making more than one head at the charming café turn. ‘Who is she?’

  ‘He told you he was in Paris, with me.’

  ‘Oh, yes . . . ’ A faint memory emerged from her alcoholic mist.

  ‘Go home now, Lara, get some rest. You need it.’

  ‘I just got up, idiot.’ Lara’s voice was suddenly cold as ice. ‘I’m not talking about his singing lessons, you moron. He’s with another girl, I can sense it – I can feel it. The slut is kissing him, I can feel it,’ she slurred, her fury subsiding as quickly as it rose. ‘Besides, he doesn’t want me, he only wants my money. I’m too . . . too . . .’ The word ‘old’ stuck in her throat, so she gulped another slug of Grey Goose and slid further down in her chair, revealing a beautifully manicured lady garden, thanks to the fact that she wore no underwear.

  Lara was perched under the shaded part of the terrace of the Sénéquier Café and Bar on the front of the bustling port of Saint-Tropez. It was a perfect early summer day; the big white yachts were still being hosed down by the good-looking young deck hands to prepare for their voyages, and sloppily dressed tourists wandered by drinking in all the glamour and hoping some of it would rub off on them. A few glanced at the red-headed woman, wearing a short, unsuitable floral play-dress and comedy earrings, sprawled in a chair. Black shades could not hide the classic Slavic cheekbones of a world-famous celebrity and the notorious ex-wife of the infamous tycoon Jonathan Meyer.