Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [47]
Frank arrived just as the cocktail party was starting. When he walked into the Ittlesons’ drawing room, he brought with him his usual palpable air of excitement. He kissed all the women on both cheeks, Continental-style, and introduced us to his companions, who included Fritz Loewe, the composer who cowrote the scores for My Fair Lady, Gigi, and Paint Your Wagon. Then, whiskey in hand, Frank regaled us with the tale of how he’d defied the strike once he made it as far as Orly airport. Warned that there would be a further four-hour delay, he ordered his pilot to take off anyway. His G2 Gulfstream must have been about the only aircraft in the clouds all the way across France. “I didn’t want to miss a minute more of this,” he told the crowd, but his eyes were fixed firmly on me.
Rainier arrived, and he and Frank greeted each other like the old friends they were. Someone asked Rainier where they’d first met. The ruler of Monaco told us that, when he was courting Grace during the filming of High Society, he’d visited the film set. Everyone was terribly polite in the presence of European royalty and offered him endless cups of tea. Sensing his disappointment, Frank finally told him, “Come to my trailer for a Jack Daniel’s.”
“Oh, brother!” cried the prince. “Where have you been all this time?” They’d been pals ever since. The two of them launched into fond recollections of the woman Frank called Gracie (referred to as Her Serene Highness everywhere else in Monaco). Frank said he was most indignant when Grace was presented with a platinum record for a song before he received one. “It was for ‘True Love,’ of all things,” he added.
“Worse still, she sang it with Crosby!” Rainier teased.
Just before dinner, Frank managed to get me on my own in a corner. “You look beautiful tonight, Barbara,” he told me. “I’ve been thinking about you.”
My face felt warm, and it wasn’t just the champagne. “It’s the same with me,” was all I managed to say before Nancy arrived to announce that dinner was served. We ate ham and beans, mashed potatoes, and coleslaw on Sevres porcelain. It was delicious, but I could barely eat and pushed the food around my plate. As the evening came to a close, Frank drew me to one side and said quietly, “I’m going to take you to dinner tomorrow night with Nancy, Henry, and a few of the others. Let’s see each other afterwards.” Reddening, I nodded.
The following day I borrowed Henry’s red Mercedes and drove to Nice to meet Bobby at the station. When my six-foot-four-inch son stepped off the train with his wavy chestnut hair and square-jawed grin, he looked the spitting image of the man who’d fallen for the Queen of Belmont Shore all those years earlier. He was equally lovelorn. “I’m really going to miss Sylvia,” Bobby complained with a sigh as I drove him back to the Ittlesons’ villa.
“She’ll wait,” I told him gently. Nothing could burst my bubble.
Le Beach Club of the Hôtel de Paris in Monte Carlo had several tiers of striped canvas cabanas or small beach huts that faced the sea. The Ittlesons had taken one in the second tier, and Frank had three in the tier below ours, positioned to avoid the prying lenses of the paparazzi. Fritz was in his group, along with Jilly, an older American couple, and two attractive women in swimsuits. Frank assured me that these last were beards so that the press wouldn’t suspect who he was really with.
I introduced my son to Frank that afternoon with some trepidation. Even though Bobby was an adult, he’d been hurt or rejected by every man I’d brought into his life, and being overprotective, I was worried how Frank would react to my son. With three children from his first marriage, Frank had left their mother when they were very small. I needn’t have been worried as far as Bobby was concerned, though. When I strolled down with him to meet everyone, Frank jumped up and gave him a welcoming hug. The two of them hit it off immediately