The Mansions Of Limbo Part 7

It was a family affair. The father, the mother, the three sons, the two daughters, the estranged wife of one of the sons, a grandchild, boyfriends and girlfriends of all the children. And there were the father's half-sister and the mother's sisters and almost all their husbands, and a good many of their children. And cousins, lots of cousins, city cousins and country cousins, including, in the host's own words, "ma.s.ses of Guinnesses." And friends, but only close friends, hardly a jet-setter in the whole bunch. This was, remember, a family affair.

But what a family and what an affair. Lord Glenconner, of England, Scotland, and the islands of Mustique and Saint Lucia in the British West Indies, who used to be called Colin Tennant before he inherited his father's t.i.tle, was celebrating his sixtieth birthday in very grand style. For openers, he had chartered a brand-new 440-foot four-masted sailing vessel called the Wind Star, possibly the prettiest s.h.i.+p afloat, with a crew of eighty-seven, and had installed 130 of his nearest and dearest in its seventy-five staterooms, complete with VCRs and mini-bars, for a week-long cruise from Saint Lucia to Martinique to Bequia to Mustique, with parties all along the way, every noon and every night, culminating in a costume ball called the Peac.o.c.k Ball at the Glenconners' place, which some people call a palace, on the beach in Mustique. And should there have been any question of the financial burden imposed by such an adventure, Lord Glenconner had taken care of that too, by paying the fares of all his guests from London to Saint Lucia, where he owns a second estate, called the Jalousie Plantation, which he plans, in time, to turn into a hotel and health spa. And should there have been any problem about rounding up a suitable costume for the lavish India-theme ball, Lord Glenconner had even antic.i.p.ated that. In his travels to India over the past year, while he was preparing for his birthday celebration, he had purchased a variety of kurtas and Aligarh trousers and turbans and ghagra/cholis and harem dresses in a whole range of sizes and styles and had had them transported to the Wind Star so that his guests could pick out what they liked. There were even two seamstresses on board to make any necessary alterations. The only thing you had to provide was your own jewelry. He drew the line at that. But he did have a hairdresser for the ladies, who doubled as a barber for the men, and a ma.s.seuse and a ma.s.seur. And 360 movies to choose from for the VCRs, including 58 p.o.r.nographic ones. And all taxi rides on the various islands were to be paid for by Lord Glenconner. And there was to be absolutely no tipping. Lord Glenconner had taken care of all that. It was, all the way around, a cla.s.s act.

I arrived in Saint Lucial the day before the planne from London arrived, and was met at Hewanorra airport by Lord Glenconner and his estate manager, Lyton Lamontagne, at whose house I spent the first night. Lyton Lamontagne, a native of Saint Lucia in his late twenties, and his wife, Eroline, went to school together in the town of Soufriere. He is handsome and she is beautiful. A trusted confidant of Lord Glenconner's, Lamontagne traveled to India with him last year and was instrumental in carrying out the far-sighted and sometimes seemingly impossible plans of the eccentric lord. Glenconner feels, as do others I saw in Saint Lucia, that in time Lyton Lamontagne could become the prime minister of the island. The Lamontagnes refer to Lord Glenconner as Papa, as do many of the natives on both Saint Lucia and Mustique, and there is a sense in their relations.h.i.+p of the nineteenth-century British Empire builder and his devoted overseer. In Soufriere, Glenconner lives in an old wooden house on the town square, so primitive that it has no electricity or running water, although it will have at some point in the future. He has to go to the nearby Texaco station to use the bathroom or wash, and this sort of inconvenience seems to appeal to him, although it is at variance with his elegance of manner, which is sometimes almost effete. He wears large straw hats, and for his birthday week he always dressed in white or black.

Lord Glenconner talked briefly about several last-minute drop-outs from the party. Mick Jagger could not take the time out to attend, although Jerry Hall would be joining the group when the boat docked in Mustique. David Bowie could not come. Lord Dufferin and Ava were ill. Carolina Herrera had to finalize a perfume deal in New York. Glenconner rolled his eyes in disappointment. He rolls his eyes a great deal, in exasperation, or wonder, or over lapses of taste. His own lapses, however, take on a sort of aristocratic whimsy, at least in his mind. He once allowed himself to be photographed defecating by the side of the road in India and sent the pictures to Vanity Fair.

We sailed in a small open boat to the Jalousie Plantation, where one of the main events of the week-long celebration was going to take place several days hence. His plantation lies between two peaks called the Pitons. The original house, on what was once a sugar plantation built by the French in the seventeenth or eighteenth century, is long gone, but stone walls from the original waterwheel are still standing. The princ.i.p.al house now is a small wooden bungalow, onto which had just been added a covered porch for the picnic party. The bungalow, which has gingerbread tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, was painted pink with yellow shutters, green floors, and blue interior walls, and looked like a set from the musical House of Flowers. Gamboling happily around the scene of preparations was a frisky young elephant called Bupa, which Glenconner had bought from the Dublin zoo and had sent out to his plantation. A native painter was finis.h.i.+ng a mural on one side of the house, and Lord Glenconner examined the lavender leaves and red and orange flowers closely. "No, no, no, I don't like that color red at all," he said to the painter. "There's far too much brown in that red. I want a red red." They found a red red.

Then we went for the first of two trips to the airport, to meet Lady Glenconner, known as Lady Anne, who was arriving from Mustique with the eldest of her three sons, Charles, as well as her daughter-in-law, Tessa Tennant, the wife of her second son, Henry, and Viscount Linley, the son of Princess Margaret by the Earl of Snowdon. The contingent from London, which included the Glenconners twin teenage daughters, Amy and May, was arriving on a second plane several hours later. Another son, Christopher, was arriving from Mexico. On the way to the airport Glenconner had the driver stop the car several times so that he could cut wild lilies growing by the side of the road to present to his wife. Lady Anne is a lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret. Such close friends are the Glenconners of the princess that they have been living at Kensington Palace as her houseguests for nearly a year while their new London house has been undergoing extensive renovations and decoration. "I sleep in what was Tony Snowdon's dressing room, just this far from Princess Margaret," Lord Glenconner told me. He said when they were moving out of their old house, Princess Margaret came to help them pack; she donned a working smock borrowed from a maid and wrapped china in newspapers.

"I thought surely you'd have had a steel band on the tarmac when the plane arrived," Lady Anne said to her husband, patting her hair beneath a straw hat and supervising the transfer of all the luggage to the van that would take us to the boat. She is blond and calm and attractive.

"I hadn't thought of it," replied Glenconner, and I felt that in his mind he was trying to figure out if he could do just that before the plane from London arrived a few hours later. Although they are married and live together, or at least live under the same roof when the separate schedules of their lives overlap, they speak to each other with the friendly distance of a divorced couple meeting at their child's wedding.

Their oldest son, Charles, called Charlie, thirty, looked pale and disheveled. His father told him to wash his face and get a haircut as soon as we got on the s.h.i.+p. Although Lord Glenconner has publicly disinherited his eldest son, who is a registered heroin addict, with an announcement in the London Daily Mail, there seems to be no lessening of affection for him, nor is there any sort of middle-cla.s.s covering up of a family embarra.s.sment. "My son Charlie is a heroin addict and has been ever since he was fifteen," said Glenconner openly, not only to me but to several other people encountering the situation for the first time. Charlie remains a part of the family, disinherited but not cast out, and loved by all. In time he will become Lord Glenconner, for t.i.tles must go to the eldest son, but the estates, fortune, and castle in Scotland will pa.s.s to his brother Henry, who is estranged from Tessa, by whom he has a son, Euan, three.

When we got to the pier where the Wind Star was docked, the fence was padlocked, and two armed guards stared at us as if we were usurpers, making no attempt to open the gates for the van to enter. "I am the lessee of the boat," called out Lord Glenconner from the backseat of the van. The guards did not react. "Just say Lord Glenconner," said Charles from the front seat to his father. "I am Lord Glenconner," called out Lord Glenconner. The gates were opened.

Standing on deck, we watched the London crowd arrive, hot and tired and bedraggled, and trudge up the gangplank. A Mrs. Wills had lost her keys, and there was a great to-do. "Where's Mark Palmer?" someone called out. "I can't find my suitcases," someone else wailed. John Stefanidis, the famed London interior decorator, who helped the Glenconners with the Great House in Mustique and who is currently doing up their new London house, remarked to his deck companions, Lord and Lady Neidpath, with whom he had flown over from Mustique, "Rather elite, having arrived early."

In typical English fas.h.i.+on, no one was introduced. Those who already knew one another stayed together and looked at the others. There were no pa.s.senger lists in the staterooms, so it was impossible to put names to faces. Even during lifeboat drill, when we were separated into small groups, they did not introduce themselves. After a few days, people began to come into focus as one-line descriptions were repeated over and over: "He's Princess Margaret's son." "She's Rachel Ward's mother." "He was recently fired by Mrs. Thatcher." "She's the Duke of Rutland's sister-in-law."

One pa.s.senger of interest was Barbara barnes, on holiday from Kensington Palace, where she is nanny to the royal princes, William and Henry. Nanny Barnes, a popular figure on the s.h.i.+p, used to be nanny to the children of Colin and Anne Glenconner, and the Princess of Wales had given her time off to attend the celebration and visit her former charges.

For a week we heard no news of the outside world. We were hermetically sealed in the elegant confines of the Wind Star when we were not ash.o.r.e being picnicked. There was swimming off the s.h.i.+p and in the pool, and gambling in the casino, and a gym to work out in, and bars to drink at, and a disco to dance in, and all those videos, including the fifty-eight p.o.r.nographic ones, with t.i.tles like For Your Thighs Only and l.u.s.t on the Orient Express, and even a library. John Nutting read the recent biography of Lord Esher. His wife read a biography of Francis Bacon. The Honorable Mrs. Marten read the new biography of Anthony Eden. Prince Rupert Lowenstein read the biography of Frank Sinatra by Kitty Kelley. Conversation, which never lagged, from breakfast to bedtime, was all about themselves. They never tired of discussing one another. One Englishman described the degree of friends.h.i.+p with another man on board as being not quite on farting terms.

"Tell me, how is young Lord Ivar Mountbatten, over there with the pretty Channon girl, related to d.i.c.kie?"

"He's through the Milford Haven branch."

"Claire tells me Tony Lambton's writing a biography of d.i.c.kie Mountbatten that's going to tell everything."

"Oh dear."

"The Guinnesses all stick together, have you noticed?"

"Lord Neidpath is very proud of his feet."

It is said that on all private boat trips the most unifying factor for harmony is a mutual dislike of one particular person aboard, and this trip was no exception. By the third day, all had agreed that they loathed the same certain person, and from that moment on, tales of that person's every move and statement were circulated.

"Don't believe any rumors unless you start them yourself," cautioned Lord Glenconner, in regard to all the rumors that were circulating about the trip. From pa.s.sing yachts we heard that Michael Jackson was on board the Wind Star, but the person the pa.s.sengers in the pa.s.sing yachts mistook for Michael Jackson was called Kelvin Omard, a London actor and great friend of Henry Tennant, Lord Glenconner's second son. "Did you see Water with Michael Caine?" asked Tessa Tennant, Henry's wife. "Kelvin played the waiter."

"How much do you suppose this is all costing?" I in quired tentatively one day at lunch on Martinique, fully expecting to be put in my place with imperious stares for daring to ask such a vulgar question. I meant the whole week of it: the plane fares, the Wind Star, the parties, parties, parties, and the ball that was to come.

"That's what we're all wondering" was the immediate and unexpected answer, from one of my lunch companions, not a Tennant, at a table of Tennants. "We figure about a half-million." I didn't know if she meant pounds or dollars, but since she was English, I a.s.sumed pounds. As the week progressed, revealing constant new considerations on the part of our host for his guests, the cost question was brought up again and again, not only by me, an almost lone American on a boatload of Brits, but by a number of Brits as well.

"Colin is not limitlessly rich," said another pa.s.senger a few days later at dinner on board the Wind Star, pursuant to the same question. When I wrote down the phrase "not limitlessly rich," his wife said, "My G.o.d, you're not going to quote my husband, are you?"

"All I know is he sold some items at Sotheby's in order to charter the Wind Star, and paid for the charter in installments," offered someone else.

"Where is Lord Glenconner's money from?" I asked over and over.

"Sugar in the West Indies, nineteenth century, I would think" was one reply.

"Imperial Chemical" was another.

Lord Glenconner's explanation seemed to answer the question. "My great-grandfather invented the Industrial Revolution."

Like a mysterious shadow, a second s.h.i.+p was known to be looming in the distance, the Maxim's des Mers, the floating sister of the famed Parisian restaurant, carrying "the American crowd." At some point we would be rendezvousing with them. In speculation preceding the ball week, it had been rumored that Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Michael Caine, and others too famous for words would be among its pa.s.sengers, supplying the magic mix of show biz with swells that guarantees fascination on both sides. At the helm of the Maxim's des Mers, at least as organizer of the famous, was Andre Weinfeld, the husband of Raquel Welch, and an invitation every bit as grand as the one to the Peac.o.c.k Ball sent by Lady Glenconner and the one to a beach picnic on the morning following the ball sent by H.R.H. the Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, had been dispatched by Miss Welch and Mr. Weinfeld bidding us, the pa.s.sengers on the Wind Star, and other guests who would be joining our party in Mustique, to a dinner on board the Maxim's des Mers on the evening preceding the ball. Already, even before our rendezvous, rumors of defections from their guest list had circulated. We knew that such stalwarts of the international social scene as Carolina and Reinaldo Herrera and Ahmet and Mica Ertegun had dropped out, not to mention Mick and David, as they were referred to, meaning Jagger and Bowie, who had long since changed their plans.

The Maxim's des Mers came side by side with the Wind Star in the cove in front of Lord Glenconner's Jalousie Plantation on Saint Lucia. The other boat was squat and inelegant next to our trim, patrician four-master; the battle lines were instantly drawn. No amount of interior Art Nouveau tarting up of the Maxim's des Mers could belie its minesweeper origins. The A group-B group distinction between the two parties could not be denied by even the most generous-hearted. It carried right down to the crew of the Wind Star, who snubbed the crew of the Maxim's des Mers. "Rather like being on the wrong side of the room at '21,' " remarked a Wind Star pa.s.senger about the Maxim's des Mers, which others were already referring to as the Mal de Mer. The celebrity guests that Mr. Weinfeld was able to produce arrived onsh.o.r.e for the barbecue at the plantation. Vastly fat native women were dressed up in Aunt Jemima gear, a fourteen-piece steel band played nonstop, the elephant frolicked with the guests, and at one point Lyton and Eroline Lamontagne, got up as Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler, drove down a mountain in a horse and buggy to be introduced by Lord Glenconner as his distinguished neighbors from the next plantation. Rum punch and more rum punch, and still more rum punch was consumed. And the sun beat down.

Heading Mr. Weinfeld's star list was the amply bosomed Dianne Brill, the New York underground cult figure often referred to in the gossip columns as the Queen of the Night. Although Miss Brill is a good sport, a good mixer, and a genuinely funny lady, even she could not bring about any real mixing between the pa.s.sengers of the two s.h.i.+ps. "Who do you suppose they are?" someone in our party asked about a trio of ladies. "In trade, I would think," said Prince Rupert Lowenstein playfully, "above a boutique and below a department store." Andre Weinfeld explained that because it was Thanksgiving, most of the people he had invited had backed out, and he had brought along a subst.i.tute crowd. Indeed, his wife, Raquel Welch, had not yet joined the company, but he a.s.sured us she would be along in time for her party on board the Maxim's des Mers.

In Mustique the inner circle widened to admit some new arrivals. Adding more than a dash of American glamour to the British festivities were two tall and sleek American beauties, Jean Harvey Vanderbilt, of New York, and Minnie Cus.h.i.+ng Coleman, of Newport and New Orleans. On Mustique the groups within the group of the Wind Star began to divide up into splinter groups. "We're going to Ingrid Channon's house for lunch," said Mrs. Vyner. "We've been asked for drinks at Princess Margaret's house," said Mrs. Nutting. "We're having a box lunch at Macaroni Beach," said the ones who weren't invited to any of the private houses.

"What happens if you don't call Princess Margaret ma'am?" asked one of the new American arrivals.

"You don't get asked back," came the reply.

On the morning of Raquel Welch's party aboard the Maxim's des Mers, a telex arrived for Lord Glenconner from the star, saying that a contract negotiation prevented her from attending her own party. Lord Glenconner rolled his eyes in disappointment, but any attentive observer could also detect an element of anger in the eye roll. His last star had fallen by the wayside. From that moment on, Raquel Welch, who had always been referred to as Raquel in antic.i.p.ation of her arrival, was referred to by one and all as Miss Welch.

"I think this is the rudest thing I have ever heard," fumed one of Lord Glenconner's guests, and then proceeded to fume against all Americans for Miss Welch's rudeness, especially since a member of the royal family had consented to attend her party.

"But Miss Welch is not American, Julian. She's English," said his wife.

"Oh dear," said her husband, calmly accepting the correction, although he had been right to begin with.

"If she can't be bothered to attend her own party, I can't be bothered to attend it either," said another guest.

"Disgraceful!"

"Movie stars always back out at the last minute."

"They're insecure in social situations."

"You don't suppose they're getting a divorce, do you, Mr. Weinfeld and Miss Welch?"

On the night of the ball, after a whole week of partying, guests ran up and down the pa.s.sageways of the Wind Star borrowing feathers, remarking on one another's costumes, pinning and sewing up each other-all with the excitement of boarding-school students preparing for the annual spring dance. John Stefanidis had gone to Paris to borrow jewelry to wear with his Indian costume from Loulou de la Falaise, who works for Yves Saint Laurent, and indeed his pounds of pearls, rhinestone necklaces, and long drop earrings were the most elaborate jewelry at the ball-after the host's, that is.

All during the evening, Lord Glenconner's eyes shone with the excitement of an accomplished creation-a symphony composed, an epic written, a masterpiece painted. Wearing a gold crown and ropes of pearls, he was dressed in white magnificence, his high collar and robes heavily encrusted with gold embroidery. The Glenconner house, called simply the Great House, is a Taj Mahal-like palace designed by the ultimate stage and ballet designer-fantacist, the late Oliver Messel, uncle of Lord Snowdon, former husband of Princess Margaret. Magical even in broad daylight, by night, for the ball, it was bathed in pink and turquoise fluorescent light, which gave the illusion of a Broadway-musical version of India. Handsome, almost nude black males from Saint Lucia and Mustique, their private parts encased in coconut sh.e.l.ls painted gold, with strips of gold tinsel hanging from their shoulders to the ground, lined the pink-carpeted walkway to the house. Inside the double doors, more natives, in pink and blue Lurex fantasies of Indian dress inspired more by The King and I than by The Jewel in the Crown, stood cooling the air with giant peac.o.c.k feather fans on poles.

Standing under a pink marquee, with the palm-tree-lined beach in the background and the Wind Star, fully lit, on the sea beyond, Lord and Lady Glenconner, with their son Charlie by their side, received their elaborately dressed guests while their son Henry called out the names as they arrived.

"Mrs. Michael Brand," called out Henry Tennant.

"I am the Honorable Mrs. Brand, not Mrs. Michael Brand," corrected Mrs. Brand.

The natives on the island of Mustique call Princess Margaret simply Princess, with neither an article preceding nor a name following. Well, Princess was late, and the procession that was to open the ball could not take place until Princess arrived, because Princess was the princ.i.p.al partic.i.p.ant. The fact was, Princess had arrived at the Great House, but she was still sitting in Lady Anne's bedroom, which boasts a silver bed with silver peac.o.c.ks on the head- and footboards. One story had it that Raquel Welch had also finally arrived on the island, and that Princess, not wis.h.i.+ng to be outdone by her, as she had been the previous evening, when Miss Welch had not shown up at her own party, where Princess was an honored guest, was delaying the procession until after Miss Welch's arrival. If such was the case, Princess lost another round.

Finally, despairing of Miss Welch's ever arriving, the royal procession started. The sisters of Lady Anne, Lady Carey Ba.s.set, with one of her three sons, and Lady Sarah Walter, with her husband, Prince and Princess Rupert Lowenstein, and the Americans, Miss Jerry Hall and Mr. and Mrs. James Coleman, Jr., moved slowly from the house to the receiving tent. They were followed by Viscount Linley, in a white peac.o.c.k headdress, which he never removed for the whole night, and his beautiful girlfriend, Susannah Constantine. Then came Princess Margaret, the great friend of the Glenconners. On her head, complementing her dress, which was a gift from Lord Glenconner, she wore a black velvet headband tiara-style, onto which her maid, that afternoon, had sewn ma.s.sive diamond clips. Her resplendence had been worth the wait.

"Her Royal Highness, Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon," called out Henry Tennant. All the Indian-clad ladies dropped in curtsies as she pa.s.sed, and all the men bowed their heads. Under the tent, Lady Anne kissed her on both cheeks before doing a deep, curtsy. Then Lord Glenconner removed his crown, as did his son Charlie, and they bowed to Princess.

When Princess Margaret first saw the Indian sari that Lord Glenconner had had made for her in India, she exclaimed, "I've been dreaming of having a dress like this since I was six." During dinner a maid spilled a tray of potatoes on the dress, but Princess's dinner partners, Sir John Plumb, the eighteenth-century historian, and John Nutting, an English barrister of note, were able to right the wrong with a minimum of fuss and very little stain.

Miss Welch, the lone dissenter from Indian costume, finally arrived during dinner, dressed in a gray metallic s.h.i.+rred evening gown and shoulder-length methallic s.h.i.+rred evening gloves, which she kept on while she ate. She was seated between Prince Rupert Lowenstein, a noted wit and conversationalist, and Mr. Roddy Llewellyn, the extremely affable suitor, before his marriage, of Princess Margaret, at whose Mustique house he and his wife, Tania, were houseguests, but conversation with the film star was pretty much uphill.

"Have you read the Sinatra biography?" Prince Rupert asked her.

"No," she said, "but I made a picture with Frank. If Frank likes you, he's behind you all the way. He wrote me a letter when my father died." Then she ma.s.saged her neck with her hand and said, "My neck's out. I've been wearing a neck brace, but I couldn't wear a neck brace with this dress to Colin's party. It's stress. I've been under a lot of stress. Would you get my husband, please? I need my pills for my neck. Andre, would you get my pills for my neck. Two of the yellow ones."

"They're back on the boat," joked Prince Rupert. "In the Dufy suite."

"No, I'm not staying on the boat," she said. "I'm at the Cotton House."

At the far end of Lord Glenconner's enormous swimming pool stands a maharajah's pleasure palace, discovered in India, purchased in India, and then brought to Mustique, along with two Indian stonemasons to put it together again. Constructed entirely of white marble, it has lattice marble screens on all four sides, which gives the interior constant dappled light by day. By night, for the ball, its interior was illuminated by gold fluorescent light, and smoke from smoke pots drifted through the lattice screens. A plan to have Raquel Welch emerge from the pleasure palace as part of the entertainment portion of the evening had been scratched, and an alternative plan had been subst.i.tuted: another princess.

Princess was not the only princess at Lord Glenconner's ball. Princess Josephine Lowenstein was there, as well as her daughter, Princess Dora Lowensteih. And then there was Princess Tina-just Tina, no last name. Princess Tina provided the cabaret entertainment, appearing late in the evening in front of the pleasure palace, doing gymnastic gyrations while she balanced full gla.s.ses of something on her head and pelvic area. The crowd surged out to watch her-blacks and swells vying for the good positions from which to view the tantalizing spectacle. One heavily wined English lady sat in the reflecting pool in front of the pleasure palace and pulled up her skirts to the refres.h.i.+ng waters. "My G.o.d, look at her-she's showing her bus.h.!.+" another lady cried out.

Thrice Miss Welch upstaged Princess Margaret. She didn't show up at her own party on the Maxim's des Mers, at which Princess Margaret was a guest. She arrived later than Princess Margaret at the Peac.o.c.k Ball. And on the day following the ball, at Princess Margaret's party, a picnic luncheon on Macaroni Beach, under the same pink marquee from the ball of the night before, transported after dawn from the Great House, Miss Welch, accompanied by Mr. Weinfeld, made another late entrance, as the princess and her guests were finis.h.i.+ng dessert. Miss Welch was all smiles as she greeted her hostess. Princess inhaled deeply on her cigarette through a long holder protruding from the corner of her mouth, exhaled, pointedly looked at her watch, wordlessly established the time, and then returned the greeting with a stiff smile. One-upmans.h.i.+p was back in the royal corner.

That night, Lord Glenconner's party drew to a close with a farewell dinner aboard the Wind Star. New friends were exchanging addresses. Bags were being packed. Princess arrived on board and was seated at the right of Lord Glenconner. People said over and over again that they would never forget the week-long celebration. John Wells, who writes the "Dear Bill" column in Private Eye, rose and in mock-Shakespearean rhetoric recited a long poem to our host which ended with these lines addressed to Princess Margaret: Your Royal Highness, may I crave

Leave not only to ask G.o.d to Save

The Queen, your Sister, but to bless

The Author of our Happiness-

This Prospero, Magician King

Who makes Enchanted Islands sing;

King Colin, at whose mildest Bate

King Kong himself might emigrate!

So charge your Gla.s.ses, Friends, to honour

Our reckless Host, dear Lord Glenconner.

Amid cheers and tears, Lord Glenconner rose. Dressed all in black, his energies spent now, his production over, he thanked the people who had helped him in his yearlong preparations: Lyton Lamontagne, Nicholas Courtney, and others. He thanked his son Charlie "for getting a little better," he thanked his son Henry and Henry's friend Kelvin for working out the treasure hunt on the island of Bequia. He thanked his daughter-in-law Tessa for her constant a.s.sistance. He did not thank Lady Anne, who seemed not to notice not being thanked. "You all say you'll never forget," he said wistfully. "But you do, you know. You do forget. I can't even remember own wedding day."

March 1987

GRANDIOSITY.