Madness Under the Royal Palms (13 page)

Barbara kept to herself. She woke up late. She started to gain weight; not a few pounds, but a surge so dramatic that it was like watching a balloon blowing up. She had back problems and could not exercise easily, and that made holding her weight down more difficult. But in this compulsively svelte world, obesity was a curse.

Only David, Shannon, and sometimes Dan Ponton saw Barbara wearing her bathrobe all day long, wandering around disoriented. At times she was shockingly different from the elegant woman who stood in the doorway greeting her guests. Society was the great stage of Barbara’s life, where she played only leading roles. Everything else was a dressing room, where behind the closed door, it did not matter how you looked, acted, or dressed.

A few days after the dinner dance for Prince Edward, David asked Barbara, “Why aren’t we ever invited to stay overnight at any of the Windsor palaces in England?”

“Because we’re not married,” Barbara answered curtly.

A few days later, after a decade of living together, David asked Barbara to marry him. She was convinced it had nothing to do with his desire for overnight accommodations at Buckingham Palace. She thought it was because David was afraid he might lose her. She was going to be fifty. She felt the future shutting down around her, and David could see that she was becoming anxious. He always knew when it was time to cut a deal and make a settlement.

David began his marriage with a lie. He presented to his fiancée a prenuptial agreement in which he professed to be worth fifty million dollars, a fib of such magnitude that it invalidated the document before it began. It was common for men like David to hide their wealth, and Barbara had no idea that his estate was seven or eight times that.

Soon after David asked Barbara to marry him, the couple announced their engagement and flew off on their annual trip to London. On the day before their dinner at Buckingham Palace, she had lunch with Prince Philip’s secretary. “Prince Philip says, ‘Get married in New Zealand,’” the private secretary said. “You’ll avoid all the relatives, and he and Edward will stand up for you.” The couple was planning to be in New Zealand for the annual meeting of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award World Fellowship in November 1997, but Barbara had never thought of being married there.

“Is that a real offer?” Barbara asked, sensing immediately how extraordinary this gesture was.

“I’m relaying a real offer from His Royal Highness,” the official said with precision. David had given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Philip’s foundation, but so had several others, and this was a surprising proposal.

“I’ll take this offer,” Barbara replied definitively.

There would be room for only sixteen people at the retreat, including two private secretaries, two protection officers, and the two princes. It meant that Barbara’s own father and his wife could not be invited, but that was a piddling price to pay if it meant that David’s two sons would not be coming either.

Barbara was overwhelmed by the idea that Prince Philip and Prince Edward would be attending her wedding, and she fairly skipped around London. The city was full of Palm Beach people attending Ascot, and she had all kinds of people to tell.

At a reception at Buckingham Palace hosted by Prince Philip and Prince Edward, Marylou Whitney and John Hendrickson were among the sixty or so guests. Like her late husband, Marylou loved the bracing cold weather of the far north. In 1994, the widow flew up to Alaska, where she was the sponsor of a dogsled team. One evening she was invited to dinner with Governor and Mrs. Walter Hickel, and his twenty-nine-year-old aide John Hendrickson. Hendrickson had escorted older women before, and was a man of easy charm. He said afterward that he thought Marylou was fifty-two or fifty-three, when she was in fact sixty-eight, old enough to be his grandmother. But that did not stop either of them, and their romance began.

During the palace cocktail party, thirty-one-year-old John took seventy-year-old Marylou aside to one end of the great room and took a dime-sized thirteen-carat diamond ring framed in exquisite sapphires out of his pocket. “Yes, yes, yes,” Marylou answered when John popped the obvious question.

Barbara was excited to hear Marylou’s news and she congratulated the former owner of Elephant Walk and her fiancé, but she knew that for once she had something that Marylou did not have and could not have. She and David would marry in the presence of the Duke of Edinburgh and Prince Edward. It was something that none of those who spurned David in Palm Beach could have replicated or even contemplated. The world had turned upside down, or right side up as Barbara saw it, and now everything would be different for both Barbara and for her new husband. Or so Barbara thought.

A
fter a decade with a beau who did not intend to make her his wife, Barbara married David in a civil ceremony in November 1997. She could never let on to anyone all that she had gone through for this moment of triumph. In doing so, she believed that she had so solidified her and David’s position at the height of society that no one could dislodge them.

Barbara planned every moment of her wedding day, and as she was the most exacting of perfectionists it had gone faultlessly. She stood wearing an azure blue Alfred Fiandaca dress at the remote Huka Lodge in the jungles of New Zealand. Often when David upset her, she made him pay by buying her something exquisitely tasteful and exquisitely expensive. She wore her twenty-four-carat fancy yellow engagement ring plus three items that David had given her as acts of penance: a string of South Sea pearls, pearl and diamond ear clips, and a diamond brooch. She also wore an art deco diamond and platinum bracelet that had belonged to her great-grandmother. She held a bouquet of flowers in her hand, and smiled with the beneficent manner of a monarch who had traveled to the far ends of the empire to accept a token of gratitude from her loyal subjects.

The primary guests who had arrived at the remote retreat for the wedding ceremony were the Duke of Edinburgh and his son, Prince Edward. The debonair duke looked as if black tie dress had been created in his honor, and he was in what for him was an exuberant mood. Prince Edward was in a jovial mood too. He had flown in by helicopter so late that he was not even formally dressed, but wore a blue suit and blue tie. It was a perfect day, though at times the groom seemed almost superfluous, allowed only because of arcane custom.

When Barbara returned to Palm Beach later that year, her laugh was sharper, her wit edgier, and her disdain for the gauche wannabes who trundled along Worth Avenue proudly touting their bags more obvious. She was of a generation of wellborn women who did not consider living with a man a marital test-drive but a moral disgrace. And now that the title Mrs. was affixed to her name, she no longer had to suffer the catty whispers of ladies who considered her a kept mistress unworthy of the company of God-fearing married women, even if they were on their third or fourth husbands.

It was not just the fact that she was married, but the way it had happened that made it so precious, and Barbara took delight in telling her social intimates of the wedding. She was as deferential and as protocol-conscious in talking about the Windsors as she was in their presence, and this obsequiousness made her seem far more intimate with them than people who gossiped about them as their royal buddies.

Barbara had numerous opportunities to display her friendship with the Windsors. Practically every season, one royal snowbird arrived, accepted tributes to the Duke of Edinburgh Award from the assembled gentry, and flew out again, leaving them bowing on the tarmac. No Windsor was more in evidence than Prince Edward. In the
Mail on Sunday
’s investigation of the prince, the British paper dubbed him “Expenses Edward.” As an ambassador of the Duke of Edinburgh Award, the prince was ever ready to visit places such as Palm Beach, Jamaica, and Monaco, where the program was small but the golf was good, and avoid places like the Ivory Coast, Benin, and Uganda, where the program was large but the eighteen holes were in the road.

A prince cannot spend all his time raising money for charity when he heads a failing film production company, and in March 1999, Edward arrived in Palm Beach once again as part of a lecture series under the auspices of the Northern Trust Bank, his fee a reported two hundred thousand dollars. In America, even the humblest of proffered canapés has a price tag attached somewhere, and in signing the contract, Edward agreed to wear a kilt at some of the events and enter heralded by a brace of bagpipers. In the Palm Beach extravaganza before seven hundred at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, he spoke in front of a backdrop of the royal coat of arms. The dinner menu juxtaposed the royal coat of arms with the Northern Trust logo.

Just before his speech, Edward and his entourage stopped at Barbara’s house on Jungle Road for a visit with the Bergers and their guests. Yet another diamond in Barbara’s social tiara was the fact that Prince Philip had named the new Mrs. Berger the head of the North American program of the Duke of Edinburgh Award World Fellowship. Her closeness to the British royal family was in full evidence. In a town obsessed with royalty, Barbara had achieved even further social imprimatur.

Thanks in part to Barbara’s friendship with Shannon Donnelly, the society editor peppered the pages with photos of the newly married Bergers. The couple was not only regularly pictured, but celebrated. That impressed most readers of the small paper, few of whom had the traditional upper-class abhorrence of publicity.

Another way for Barbara to judge her and David’s elevated status was by noting their seating at the premier events of the season. The cognoscenti pored over the table settings the way Kremlinologists evaluated the placement of the Soviet leadership in Red Square during the May Day parade. It was better by far to stay home from the Red Cross Ball than to accept a table in the outer reaches.

The annual benefactors’ dinner for the Society of the Four Arts was another reliable gauge of social position. The Four Arts membership included most members of the WASP aristocracy, but there were a number of Jews to create the illusion of inclusivity, and even before David met Barbara, he had become a member of the premier cultural institution on the island.

The dinner was held at the B&T, the most exclusive and exclusionary club on the island, a private precinct where the members believe that they are among their peers in the American elite. There never seems to be anyone in the club who is socially awkward. There are no gauche guests in the dining room chowing down, no inebriated poseurs in the bar, no swaggering braggarts, and no women wearing tacky resort clothing.

To protect their sanctuary of entitlement, the B&T treats manners not as the physical manifestation of class but as a series of legislated maxims. There is a wary watchfulness within the club, as if some new member or guest might explode with behavior so foul that the stench would never go away.

It was almost unthinkable even to contemplate, but some of their daughters, granddaughters, nieces, and their déclassé friends had tattoos, pierced ears, rings on the navels, or other unseemly embellishments. The ever-observant staff keep a drawer full of Band-Aids at the front desk, ready to pounce on crude interlopers who are told in no uncertain terms that Club Rules state that “members and guests are required to cover tattoos” and “the display of ‘body piercing’ other than earrings in the ears, is not permitted.” On occasion a young guest enters the dining room so swathed in bandages that she looks as if she has just left intensive care.

The club rule book states the melancholy truth that “exercise can generate more than normal perspiration.” When a lady goes out on the clay tennis courts wearing her white or ivory tennis outfit with up to one inch of trim color, her white tennis shoes, her white hat or visor or natural straw hat, and plays with decorum, she might still end up sweating like her Latino gardener. The club implores a member to maintain her clothing accordingly and practice proper hygiene, but it is best to avoid the courts in the heat and to limit exercise to a few sedate minutes on the stationary bike in the fitness center, just enough to put a slight flush on one’s cheeks, but no unseemly signs of perspiration.

If a member brings a guest whose cell phone goes off in the dining room, she risks being denied club privileges for a month or two. On the beach, the board has deputized the staff “to remind inappropriately dressed swimmers and their guests” that “modest beach attire would be appreciated.” There must be not even a hint of sexuality among gentlemen and ladies, and a swimsuit that on a forty-year-old would have gone without notice, becomes wildly inappropriate on a buxom twenty-year-old. Maids and nannies are allowed to swim with their charges in the mornings, but at the stroke of noon, they must dress in servant’s garb so that they cannot possibly be mistaken for a member or guest.

Lunch is served cafeteria style in a setting reminiscent of junior high school. At the end of the line, an obsequious retainer takes one’s tray to a table either outside or to a large room with a vaguely nautical motif that reminds some guests of an Omaha seafood restaurant.

On Sunday afternoons when it is too cold for swimming or sunbathing, some of the older ladies of the club sit on the veranda wearing leather shoes as stylish as combat boots, long skirts, wool sweaters, and kerchiefs. They look as if they are about to head out for a hike in the Scottish highlands with Queen Elizabeth, and as they sit, they scan everyone and everything for improprieties that only they are capable of noting.

T
HERE ARE MANY MEMBERS
of the B&T who do not consider themselves prejudiced at all but they would not think of risking their status by objecting to club rules. Just as next door at Mar-a-Lago, where the tone is set by a vulgar, vociferous minority, so the rules at the B&T are enforced by a coterie who consider themselves model ladies and gentlemen, and the protectors of civilization itself.

One of the places B&T members might occasionally find themselves seated next to Jews is at a charity event. At one such dinner, a member of the B&T elite found himself seated next to Larry Gold. The WASP gentleman was an avid tennis player and so was Gold, and the two men had a spirited conversation about many aspects of the game. Gold was delighted that his beloved sport had brought him such commonality with this man that it had broken through all the ethnic stereotypes.

“Let me ask you a question, Larry,” the man said, well into the dinner. “Why do you Jews slice the ball so much?”

“It’s because of our delicatessen training,” Gold replied, without missing a beat, moving his right hand up and down as if cutting salami.

Few of the B&T members have achieved wealth on their own. Many of them consider that a mark of superiority to the glittery new arrivals who have ingots of gold, while they hold on to a few antique coins. They disdain the new money class, rationalizing that they are above grubbing for money. The ladies and gentlemen of the B&T wield wicked fish knives, dance foxtrots to die for, and mistake manners for culture. They are so inbred that they have not a glimmer of how insulated and isolated they have become.

In the salons of the gentile elite, there has been a long decline into intellectual and spiritual decadence. Dinner at the B&T is a scene not unlike that described by Stendhal in
The Red and the Black
in the splendorous mansion of the Marquis De La Mole just before the French Revolution: “In the marquis’s dining room, provided that you did not make jokes about God, or priests, or the king, or those holding government posts, or artists patronized by the court, or all the established ideas and institutions…and provided, above all, that you never discussed politics…you were free to talk about anything you liked…Any idea with a scrap of vitality seemed gross coarseness. Despite polished manners, complete courtesy, and a desire to please, boredom could be seen on every face.”

These WASPs are overwhelmingly Republican, almost as much a given as Christian faith. To many of them, politics is not a body of ideas based on certain premises about one’s feelings about human nature and how people should live in society. Politics is threadbare gauze over the imperative to hold on to one’s often diminishing wealth. They support candidates who vow never to raise taxes, and spend time with accountants who specialize in tax avoiding and elaborate estate planning. All of this is considered class patriotism, a way to protect what is theirs. They look across the Intracoastal Waterway at the seething ghettos and the Latino hordes, and thank their blessed God that they are living in their secure island sanctuary.

The B&T stands firmly behind its restrictive policy, considering it a mark not of prejudice but of liberty and good taste. As a token of its cosmopolitanism, the club has no objection to Jewish guests at private parties.

David had belonged to the Society of the Four Arts even before he met Barbara. She had pushed him to become a major donor, and that was why the couple was attending a Four Arts dinner at the B&T for the first time. Barbara was placed at the best table next to Fitz Eugene Dixon Jr., chairman of the Four Arts (and president of the B&T). Barbara considered this placement an extraordinary public acknowledgment of her status.

The chairman was the perfect example of the old Palm Beach gentleman. The heir to a Philadelphia streetcar fortune, he sometimes wore the emerald ring that his grandfather gave to his grandmother before he helped her onto a lifeboat and remained aboard the sinking
Titanic
. A Harvard graduate, Dixon had worked for a number of years as a teacher at Episcopal Academy in Philadelphia before going into business. Over the years, he had owned part of the 76ers, the Flyers, and the Eagles—every major sports team in Philadelphia except the Phillies. He was also a noted philanthropist, contributing to innumerable charities and institutions.

When Dixon was at Harvard in the early forties, Jews were not members of the elite clubs. If he saw them at all, it was only in class, where they were largely a studious lot, shooting their hands up to answer questions as if they thought they had won the lottery. In Philadelphia, he was willing to do business with them if the deal was right, but he was not about to invite the David Bergers of the city into his club, and God knows not into his house.

Barbara had a manner that announced she belonged nowhere but at head tables, and she was a witty, charming, if self-conscious, dinner companion. As Barbara sat chattering with Dixon, he surprised her by turning to a painfully difficult subject. His daughter had married a Jew. “He’s not going to be able to come to the B&T,” Dixon said with double authority, both as a father and as president of the club. “We just don’t allow Jews, and we aren’t starting now.”