Another Life_ A Memoir of Other People - Michael Korda [87]
I shook my head. George hadn’t mentioned that detail at all, but there it was in cold print—or, to be more accurate, in raised italic engraving: “Costume de rigueur.” My first thought was one of relief—we didn’t have costumes, so we couldn’t go—but I could tell from the expression on Casey’s face that she was determined to go. After a day of unrelenting improvisation, aided by a quick visit to Berman’s, the famous theatrical costumer near Covent Garden, we were able to turn up for George’s party as Gypsies, Casey in a revealing dress with many necklaces around her throat, and myself with a sash, the kind of shirt a Gypsy violinist might wear in a Central European restaurant, and a bandanna tied around my head, à la Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., in The Private Life of Don Juan.
The whole world seemed to have congregated in George’s house. It was rumored that Princess Margaret was coming later on—it was not true, but it made everybody even happier to be there. It was obvious at once that most people had gone to a lot more trouble than we had. I was mildly startled to see Victor Weybright, the publisher of New American Library, a man with a heroic paunch, appear as a red-stained Native American in a brief loincloth, deerskin moccasins, and a feathered headdress. There were the usual Pierrots, Mephistopheleses, and Napoleons, several slave girls and Cleopatras, even a few visiting American publishers, including Jim Silberman of Random House, who had ignored the instruction and turned up in business suits. To my surprise, Cornelius Ryan was there, dressed in a domino, presumably as a Venetian nobleman, holding a mask close to his face as he talked earnestly to a man dressed as a New Orleans riverboat gambler, complete with a waxed mustache and a velvet waistcoat. I went over to say hello. “Thank God,” Connie said. “Someone who looks as out of place as I am.” He introduced me to the riverboat gambler, who turned out to be a distinguished historian. Connie’s wife, Kathy, was there somewhere, he said, dressed as a Greek goddess. Which one? I asked. Connie grabbed a drink from a passing waiter and tossed it down. “Jesus Christ, boyo,” he said, “how the hell would I know? You’re the one with the education in classics.” I began to move away—Connie could be edgy and aggressive when he’d had a few drinks, and I didn’t want to be around if things got ugly—but before I could put any distance between us, an apparition bore down on us that silenced even Connie.
It was our host, dressed in Middle Eastern regalia, either as the vizier of some exotic Arabian court or possibly Ali Baba. He wore a black-and-gold floor-length robe, a high gold turban with a big fake diamond and an ostrich-feather plume, gold sandals with curled, pointed toes, and a sash, in which he carried a great curved sword. With his dark, predatory eyes, his curved nose, his plump, beringed hands, and his knowing smile, George looked as if he would have been right at home in the streets of old Baghdad. At any moment, he seemed likely to produce a flying carpet for sale.
Connie lit a cigarette—no easy task in a mask—and leaned close to George. “There’s something I’ve always wanted to ask you, George,” he said, his soft Irish voice blurred only slightly by drink.
George waved his cigar like a magic wand, as if granting permission.
“Tell me,” Connie went on, “how it is that a man like you is always surrounded by beautiful women?” Connie gave George a good look, from turbaned head to slippered foot. “I mean, let’s be frank, boyo, you’re fat, you’re bald, you don’t exactly have a handsome puss. What is it they see in you?”
This was a question that many people had asked themselves over the years. George had even managed to actually marry several very wealthy women, without whom it is doubtful that neither Weidenfeld and Nicolson, with its otherwise slim resources, nor George’s own lifestyle, which was princely, could have been kept afloat.
Charm, of course, was one answer. Attention was another. With George, listening