Chapter 1

THE IDES OF MARCH 1934

15 CHEYNE WALK, CHELSEA

One thing I should have learned about my mother was that I could not count on her. After all, she bolted from the family home, abandoning my father and me when I was two, and by the time she resurfaced again in my life she had worked her way through a global list of men. These included an Argentinian polo player, a French race-car driver and an English mountaineer. The latter wanted to marry her and to adopt me. I adored him, but Mummy tired of playing second fiddle to mountains. As an actress, Mummy never played second on any bill.

She was in many ways like a cat, only showing interest in people when she wanted something from them, on which occasions she could be devastatingly charming. She definitely saw the universe with herself at the center and lesser beings orbiting around her, waiting for her to turn the full glow of her sunshine on them when they were needed. So I should have realized when she told me that she was taking a house in London, intended to write her memoirs and wanted me to be her secretary that it was too good to last for long. We had started off well enough in a delightful little house in Chelsea overlooking the Thames. Mummy was full of enthusiasm. She bought me a sturdy Underwood typewriter, and I had made some progress at mastering it, reaching a typing speed of several words per minute without getting my fingers trapped in the keys. I won’t say it was easy, even then. Mummy would start on some story while I tried to keep up with her, taking frantic notes, only to find that she’d stop with a look of amused horror on that perfect face. “Oh, no. Scratch that, Georgie. I can’t possibly let anyone know about what happened that night,” she’d say. “It would bring down the government (or create a new world war or even the pope would be furious),” leaving me dying of curiosity.

I was coming to the conclusion that there wasn’t much about her life that could be told to the general public, unless the book were to come out with a plain-brown cover, like Lady Chatterley’s Lover, when the blow fell. We’d been at work for over a month, interrupted only by impulsive visits to her milliner for a new hat or her masseuse for a knot in her shoulder, when she breezed into the breakfast room one morning, waving a letter.

“It’s from Max, darling.” She sounded breathy, excited. Max von Strohheim, German industrialist, ridiculously wealthy, was her current beau.

“He’s still pining for you?”

“More than that, darling. He can’t live without me a moment longer.” I wasn’t quite sure how she knew this, since she spoke no German and Max’s English was limited to monosyllables, but she went on, waving the letter at me. “He says he knows that March in Germany is too gloomy for words so he’s bought us an adorable little villa on Lake Lugano. He knows that I adore Switzerland—so safe and tidy, and the Swiss are so good at hiding one’s money, aren’t they?”