Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [45]
“I stay at the Hôtel de Paris. I’ll call you when I get into town.” Frank smiled and walked away, moving to another guest and another conversation as if nothing at all had just happened.
I’d first met Henry Ittleson and his wife, Nancy, at the Hillcrest Club in L.A. Henry, who was one of Zeppo’s favorite gin rummy partners, had founded the Credit and Investment Company in New York in the 1930s and used his and Nancy’s considerable wealth to set up the Ittleson Family Foundation. Nancy, a caramel blonde addicted to tennis, had the best houses, the finest china, and the most expensive crystal, but she liked to surprise her guests by serving home-cooked American fare like fried chicken and ham. She was a hoot.
Eager to get away from the increasingly stifling atmosphere at home, I’d jumped at the chance to stay with the Ittlesons after my planned visit to Bobby in Neuchâtel. I hoped to persuade my hippie son to accompany me to Monte Carlo for what I knew would be the trip of a lifetime. Whether he would agree to or not was anybody’s guess. By the time I boarded my plane for Europe, the butterflies in my tummy were doing somersaults. Quite apart from what might happen in Monaco, I could only guess what Zeppo would get up to while I was away. While my second marriage disintegrated around me, Bobby was talking about marrying a girl I’d never even met. I’d told him he was far too young and needed to finish his education, but that only seemed to make him more determined to defy me.
And then there was Frank, who was in London as I left but had promised to fly down and meet me, far from prying ears and eyes. Even within the relatively safe company of the irreproachable Ittlesons and with Bobby as a chaperone, I knew I was crossing a line. What was I letting myself in for? Was I about to be seduced by one of the world’s greatest romantics? Would it be something to fold away in my memory, a story to lift out and tell my grandchildren one day? Could I, Barbara Blakeley, live with that?
Not only was my entire future at stake personally and financially, but I was in danger of losing my only son to a world far away from mine, in Switzerland. Was I also at risk of losing my heart to the one man some might say was the worst possible choice a woman could make? Only time would tell.
I am rarely superstitious and have never believed in omens that are supposed to foretell an event in the future, good or bad, which is just as well, because my journey to the South of France was beset with misfortune.
A strike by French air traffic controllers meant that after leaving Bobby I had to travel to the South of France by train from Geneva. It was twilight as I boarded the overnight Swiss Rail train alone and was shown to my four-berth second-class cabin, which, fortunately, I had to myself. Bobby wasn’t with me or even really speaking to me after I’d not only forbidden him to marry Sylvia but told him that he couldn’t bring her with him to the Ittlesons’ as he’d asked. “Henry is absolute death on houseguests,” I explained. “Besides, they run a straight house, and Nancy tells me they have only two guest cottages, so I’m sure they wouldn’t be thrilled to have you in one of them with some girl. As it is, they’re going to have a rough time accepting your bohemian style!”
Bobby’s face fell. My visit to him in Neuchâtel hadn’t been the success he’d hoped it would be. After meeting Sylvia with the big blue eyes at her parents’ vineyard home, I told him, “This is not the girl or the family for you.” Although I hated to dampen my son’s youthful passion, I was convinced that his marrying Sylvia would be a mistake. I knew what I was talking about. I’d married impetuously young, and although doing so had given me the gift of a son, the failure of that first marriage had scarred me for life.
“Well, Mom,” he told me calmly, “without Sylvia, I’m not coming to Monaco.”
So I was alone in my carriage that night as the train climbed a mountain pass in the shadow of Mont Blanc. The doubts that had been worming their way into my brain since