The Most Beautiful Woman in the World (37 page)

Elizabeth swore off liquor altogether on November 1, 1971. One week later, she was thinner, less indolent, more high-spirited, less uptight, more beautiful, and even her double chin seemed to shrink. On November 10, Richard’s forty-sixth birthday, both of them got drunk. “The rot set in when I made a large martini each about 1 o’clock,” he recalled. They went on a binge, and Elizabeth later discovered a cyst on her nose. The growth had to be removed surgically in Paris. They dried out at their chalet in Gstaad, but Elizabeth fell ill at the end of November and wanted a drink. On the 29th she pulled herself together and cooked a steak au poivre for lunch, then tried to pressure Richard into having a martini because she didn’t like to drink alone. He called her “the devil over my shoulder.” Taking even a single drink with her, he tried to explain, meant “slowly reverting to being a drunkard again, and I simply will not tolerate a return to that.” She kept at him, insisting that he make a martini for her. He began toying with the notion of a slip.
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In December 1971, the Rothschilds threw “the ball of the century,” as it came to be known, and the Burtons were not only invited, but were asked to stay over at Ferrières. Van Cleef representatives showed up in plenty of time for Elizabeth to select her jewels, as Richard sarcastically wrote on December 1. The value of the gems she wore to the ball was estimated at $3 million. On their way to the party, they picked up Princess Grace at 32 Avenue Foch, where Prince Rainier escorted her to the gate. Her Serene Highness traveled light, carrying only two small suitcases, but, unlike Elizabeth, who traveled with enough clothes to stock a boutique, the Princess was not staying overnight at Ferrières. At the Champs Élysées, they hit heavy rush-hour traffic, due to Elizabeth’s habitual tardiness, and they were two hours getting from Paris to Ferrières. The Rothschilds, who had employed Pompidou before he became prime minister, stationed Paris gendarmes, motorcycle cops, and police vans every one-half mile along the way in case their guests had car trouble or needed directions. Elizabeth and Grace chatted amicably in the back of the Caddy while Richard, up front with the driver, noted “the initial awkwardness . . . with people like Grace who are in a somewhat false position and know it.” After they relaxed, Grace gave them a blow-by-blow account of the Shah of Iran’s recent party, which she defended against the press’s charges of vulgarity, pointing out that the Shah had brought together people of different races, politics, and religions. Richard didn’t buy that, and said it would have been better to provide jobs for his impoverished subjects by having a World’s Fair or an Expo 72 in Iran. As a loyal member of the ruling class, Grace let the subject drop.

There was a crush at the main entrance of Ferrières, but the Burtons, as special weekend guests, were permitted to use a side door that led directly to their rooms, and they took Grace upstairs with them. The Princess had been assigned a room, the Chambre Balcon, for only a few hours, so that she could have her hair styled in privacy and change into her ball gown. The Burtons were given the Chambre Rose, which was less grand but adjoined Sir Laurence Olivier’s room. Though the Chambre Rose was pretty, with pink decor and Wedg-wood, they had to walk across the hall to the bathroom, and Richard resented having to wear more than his shorts to the loo. The walls of the château were surprisingly flimsy, and the Burtons could hear everything being said on either side of them, so they gossiped in whispers. After complaining to their hosts, they were assigned to the Chambre Balcon as soon as the Princess departed.

In the careful protocol of the ball, they were given instructions to go downstairs with Princess Grace and the Duchess of Windsor, and to appear promptly at 9:10 and sit down to dinner at 9:30. Alexandre was doing both Marie-Hélène’s hair and Elizabeth’s, and he was late. The famous hairdresser of the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré was indebted to the Duchess of Windsor for his réclame, for she had been his first important client. When he finally arrived at Ferrières that evening, naturally he had to attend to Marie-Hélène first, and only later Elizabeth. Grace was ready before the other two women and joined Richard in the Chambre Rose for a cocktail. He suggested she didn’t need the choker necklace she was wearing, which looked too tight. It had been borrowed, she replied, and it was awfully hard to get off, so she decided to keep it on. Finally, at 10:30, they all descended together to the great hall, but no one sat down to dinner until 11 p.m. The Burtons were at separate tables, and Elizabeth’s was the more illustrious, including Princess Grace, the Duchess of Windsor, Guy de Rothschild, Maurice Hertzog, and Jean-Paul Binet. “The lucky bastards,” Richard observed from his position in Siberia, table number eleven, where his companions included Andy Warhol (“atrociously wigged”); the former, pre-Candace Bergen Mrs. Louis Malle (a “giant of a woman,” who drank a dozen glasses of wine); and Madame de Montesquieu, who explained to a yawning Richard that she was a descendant of Charles Louis Secondat, Baron de Brede et Montesquieu, author of
L’Esprit des Lois
. “Where’s my Elizabeth?” Warhol asked. “Eating at the corresponding table to this . . . but at the other end,” Richard rasped. “I wish she was here,” Warhol whined. “So, as a matter of fact, do I,” Richard replied. The pop artist’s face reminded him of “funny putty [full of] odd lumps,” fashioned by “an inept child.” Had Richard known that Warhol sprang from a coal-mining town, Pittsburgh, they might have had more to talk about.

At Elizabeth’s table, as at all the others in the crowded hall, waiters could reach only one of the guests, and each table selected someone to take the food from the waiter. Princess Grace became a “hander-over,” passing dishes around to Elizabeth and the others. Wines included the legendary Lafite Rothschild, Château D’Yquem, and champagne. Elizabeth and Grace thought the doddering Duchess of Windsor hilarious in her elaborate feather headdress, which got stuck in Guy’s glued-on mustache. The Duchess was so animated that her long feather also ended up in the soup and the ice cream, and it struck Guy in the mouth and eyes. Elizabeth got the impression that the Duke of Windsor was about to die, because the Duchess was insistent that the Burtons come to see him before their departure for Gstaad. Elizabeth said they’d dine with the Windsors on Monday night, and then the Duchess shrieked, “Do you like my feather?” Jean-Paul Binet flirted outrageously with Elizabeth, but Richard, peering from his table, raised no objection since Jean-Paul courted women in “the best French manner.” Just as he’d wanted her to have an affair with Sinatra, he now practically gave her to Binet, as if someone else were needed to relieve the pressure he was under as her husband.

He did his best that night not to fall off the wagon. In view of the provenance of the wine, he was “sorely tempted” but resisted it, with the result that he felt great the next day. He adored Madame de Montesquieu from the moment she said she owned and often listened to his recording of “The Ancient Mariner.” At Elizabeth’s table, Guy asked her if she would come to the bathroom with him, explaining that his fake mustache was uncomfortable and he needed help removing it. While a servant stood outside the lavatory, she went in and removed the mustache and was wiping Guy’s mouth with a towel, their posture suggesting that they were necking, when the model Bettina opened the door. She said she was delighted by the sight of Elizabeth wiping around Guy’s mouth, and Elizabeth told Bettina she could come up to the Chambre Rose if she needed to repair her makeup after dinner.

Following the banquet, a horde of “B” list guests arrived and each was announced by a butler with a booming voice as he pounded a huge staff on the floor. Richard escorted Madame Malle and Elsa Martinelli to the Chambre Rose and found Elizabeth and Bettina chatting. As the women attended to their maquillage, Richard smoked nervously and tried to relax. Returning to the party, the Burtons sat with Princess Grace in a corner as hundreds of curious guests filed past for a quick gander. In search of more stimulating company, Richard left them and soon fell into a conversation with Jacqueline de Ribes, Pierre Salinger, Sam Spiegel, and “Broken-nose,” Marie-Hélène’s likable older brother. With Salinger, Richard reminisced about the night in Los Angeles when he and Bobby Kennedy had gotten into a good-natured insulting match about their respective races, “bloody Irish v. bloody Welsh.” Mingling again, Richard saw that Elizabeth had left her corner and begun to circulate. Everywhere she went, people gazed at her covertly but admiringly. Even at forty, and in a roomful of titled swells, she was the belle of the ball of the century.

At 1:30, Princess Grace asked Richard to come upstairs and help extricate her from the choker. Tugging at the difficult necklace, Richard almost strangled the Princess before they managed to twist it around so that she could see the clasp in a mirror and unlock it herself. She asked Richard to escort her to her car, and as they went downstairs, Sam Spiegel, the Polish-born producer of
Suddenly Last Summer
, said, “Where are you going, you two?” “For God’s sake,” said Grace, “don’t, Sam, say a word to Elizabeth. She’s at the ball, she’s dancing, she’s happy, let us go. Richard will let Elizabeth know. It’s going to be a shock but . . . these things happen.” Due to Grace’s Oscar-caliber acting and Richard’s guilt-ridden face, Spiegel gaped at them for a full half-minute before she and Richard left him, without explaining they were kidding. After waiting with Grace in the sharp cold air outside, Richard found her car and waved her off.

Back inside, Sir Cecil Beaton photographed Elizabeth and Richard, and also got shots of them with Marie-Hélène’s sister-in-law Gabby Van Svillen, who insisted she was the Tsarina of All the Russias. Richard told her that at best she might have “Mike Romanoff blood,” and turned to discuss poetry with Paul Valery’s son. Though the party went on until 7 a.m., the Burtons went upstairs and moved into Chambre Balcon at 4:30. Elizabeth removed her jewels and placed the large ones in the “house coffre.” They had tea at 5 a.m. and sat gossiping about the ball. Audrey Hepburn’s Italian psychiatrist husband Dr. Dotti, they decided, was “not very nice.” Richard reported that David Rothschild had been surprised to see Princess Grace acting “so gay [because] she had always . . . been a bit of a dead weight.” Richard had told David that Grace always needed a little drawing out. The Burtons could still hear the orchestra playing downstairs, but promptly at seven it fell silent, and the diehards left to join the early morning traffic into Paris. Though the Burtons only got four hours’ sleep, Richard felt strong and healthy because of his abstinence.

On December 7, 1971, the Burtons dined with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and, according to Richard, “half a dozen of the most consummate bores in Paris.” A frequent guest of the Windsors, Sir Cecil Beaton, once wrote, “The cafe society the Duchess took up with in Paris was downright
trashy
.” Another guest, Cyrus Sulzberger, found the Windsor set to be “a weird collection of social derelicts.” The Duke’s most prestigious friends had dropped him after the abdication, fearing palace reprisals, and they’d been replaced by people like the Alexander Farkases of New York’s Alexander’s discount stores, who lent the Windsors their villa, La Roseraie, at Cap Ferrat. Oddly, despite thirty years’ residence in France, mostly in Paris, the Windsors had few French friends apart from the Rothschilds. Though the French government extended every hospitality, giving them their house for a token rent of $50 a month, charging them no income tax, and providing security guards around the clock, the Duchess still referred to the “
filthy
French,” and the Duke said the only fault with the lovely Gallic countryside was that it was “populated with Frenchmen.” The Burtons noticed that the Duke’s left eye was permanently closed, and he limped as he walked with a cane; he “must die very soon,” Richard commented, “but it is she who is now nearly completely ga-ga.” Though Noel Coward once complained that the Duchess talked of nothing but plastic surgery, with the Burtons the Windsors talked of nothing but how he had once been the King of England. “And Emperor,” Richard put in. “And Emperor,” the Duchess repeated, nodding and smiling appreciatively, “and Emperor, we always forget that. And Emperor.” The Duchess’s memory came and went, sometimes returning in vivid detail. She viciously gossiped about Grace Kelly, calling her “a boring snob.” Richard leaped to Grace’s defense, but finally gave up when he realized the Duchess had fallen into a senile blackout. Though the Burtons found the evening “sad and painful,” they wouldn’t have missed it for the world, both of them being incorrigible snobs. They came out of this period with no real friends, and as his fourth wife Sally would later observe, Elizabeth and Richard were surrounded by attendants. Former friends like Stanley Baker dropped away. “It seemed strange that he didn’t seem to have real pals. And he was such a pally chap in one way. But it does not seem to happen to the big stars.”
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Elizabeth was ill in late December 1971, “her back . . . kicking up again like fury,” Richard recalled. They had returned to Gstaad, and the altitude was aggravating her condition. “She sparkled in Dubrovnik, she was radiant in Rome, she was a young girl in Paris, but here she seems listless and slightly bored all the time, not just with me, but with everybody and everything,” Richard wrote. Though the life they led was the envy of most, its price was the isolation that comes with self-absorption and selfishness. As Elizabeth would not discover until she sobered up and started helping others fifteen years later, boredom is not an affliction that besets those who dedicate themselves to the sick, the hungry, and the helpless. In 1971 she was still a young woman looking outside herself for approval, pleasure, and meaning, still a victim of expectations that would never be fulfilled. A deluded public thought the Burtons the luckiest couple in the world. “Theirs is obviously not only a good marriage,” wrote the usually more astute
Life
, “but a great one.”