Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [101]
We finally arrived at the villa with its steps leading to an enormous veranda. As we pulled in the gravel driveway, we could see everyone waiting for us in the setting sun. Musicians were playing, and the alfresco dinner was prepared. Frank stepped out of our car, took one look at those strangers on the terrace, and said to Jilly, “We’re going back.” I’m sure there were a lot of complicated reasons—chiefly that he didn’t want to be the center of attention yet again, especially surrounded by people he didn’t know and might not like. It wasn’t logical for him to complain about being in the car and then choose to sit in it for another forty-five minutes, but there was little logical about Frank.
As everyone stood waiting eagerly to catch their first sight of him, he sat back in the car. I tried to persuade him to stay, but he wouldn’t budge. I knew how far to push it, so I finally leaned in and asked him, “Are you sure this is what you want to do?”
“Yes,” he replied. “You go have fun.” And off he went, back to the Hôtel de Paris bar. Taking a deep breath and fixing a smile on my face, I turned to explain why the guest of honor wouldn’t be attending the dinner thrown for him. Mary came hurrying down the steps as I began walking up them. “Where’s Frank going?” she asked, with something akin to panic in her eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” I replied, “but he had a terrible migraine and he simply had to go to bed.”
A few feet away I heard Don Rickles tell Mary’s husband, “Frank has an earache. He had to go back and see a doctor.” Bobby claimed Frank had twisted his ankle. My darling husband hadn’t given us enough time to get our stories straight. We could almost hear the buzz sweep across the party as our absurdly conflicting alibis were repeated and contradicted. Our little gang, regrouping later by the bar, could only shrug off the confusion we’d caused. Mary laughed it off and was extremely gracious about it. It was pretty obvious that Frank was going to do exactly what he wanted to do, and that was that. I didn’t care; I had a great time, dancing the night away in that most fabulous of settings.
When I finally got back to our hotel, I knew Frank would be waiting in the little lobby bar we loved. He was sitting grinning like the cat with the cream at our corner table. “Was that worth spending half a lifetime on the road for?” he asked, proffering me a drink.
“It was a beautiful party, darling,” I told him, “and I slept like a baby all the way home.”
Having always had such happy days and nights in Monaco and the South of France, we had every reason to believe our delightful annual routine would continue for years to come. One terrible summer, however, more than a decade into our glorious ritual, that all changed.
After our usual month in the company of Grace and Rainier, we were due to fly to New York for Frank to keep a ten-day engagement with Buddy Rich at Carnegie Hall. On our last day, Grace invited us to Roc Agel for tennis and a picnic in the verdant hills surrounding the family farm. We had a perfect day, and then we prepared to leave. I hugged Grace good-bye and thanked her once again. “See you next year, if not before!” I cried as she waved us off. The road back down the hill to Monte Carlo was steep, full of twists and turns overlooking a sheer cliff. I had traveled down it with Grace before, when she drove me to the hospital in her old Rover to say good-bye to Henry Ittleson before he died. Grace was a fast driver but a good one. She knew the road well, and I felt completely safe. On this occasion, though, we had Frank’s driver Bruno take us. When we got to our hotel, we packed, and then we flew to New York as planned.
The next day we received a telephone call from Rainier. “There’s been a terrible accident,” he told us, his voice breaking. “Grace and Stephanie were driving down from Roc Agel, and they went off the road. They’re in the hospital. Stephanie will be all right, thank God, but they’re not sure about Grace.” We were badly shaken, and Frank offered to cancel his concerts and fly straight