Savage Grace - Natalie Robins Read Online Free Page A

to talk to you.” So these two marvelous policemen came, and we were staying at a wonderful hotel, not Claridge’s, the other good one, the really good one—the Connaught. And there was a bar there—you know, all stocked—and they said, “We don’t drink as a rule but, you know, all right,” so we gave them a couple of drinks and they were thrilled with us and we all sat around and I said, “I think you ought to know that she probably aggravated Tony. Can I give some money for cigarettes for him? I want to help him, you know. Can you get him a lawyer?” They wouldn’t let me see him. It was only the day after or two days after. They said they were doing everything.
    I asked if I could bury her, you know, because I felt that Brooks wouldn’t do anything about that. They said I couldn’t. Brooks did have her cremated later. I think her mother has the ashes.
    Barbara Curteis
    Jim Jones wrote a novel about the Baekelands, you know— The Merry Month of May. But he wrote it in 1970, before the denouement.
    Francine du Plessix Gray
    Ethel de Croisset telephoned us that Tony had killed Barbara, and I felt shock and horror.
    You know, Mr. Wuss was a present of ours to Barbara in 1963—one of five Siamese born that year to our own beloved cat, Astarte, whose son Fabrice, Wuss’s full brother, I buried only last year at the fine age of twenty-one. Couldn’t we all wish for such a peaceful and late age!
    Just a few days after hearing about Barbara, I bumped into Peter Matthiessen at the Styrons’ and he said to me—we said to each other—almost simultaneously we said—“Are you ever going to use it? Are you ever going to use it?” Use it in a book, you know. And we both said no. Peter said, “ I can’t do it, I don’t think you can do it. I’d keep away from it.” You know, there’s only one title for the Baekeland story and it’s already been used— An American Tragedy.
    Cleve and I met them at a party in New York in the middle fifties and we made this passionate kind of instant friendship with this very flamboyant girl with red hair and a huge smile and all those very prominent big teeth. I always remember the mouth—my mother, Tatiana Liberman, would say, “She’s very pretty but she has too much gum.” And here was this handsome millionaire that she was married to, Brooks Baekeland. And the first impression we got was that they were the ideal couple.
    In the summer of 1960 we shared a house with them in Italy. Tony was just about to turn fourteen, and he was ideally beautiful—you know, glistening and angelic and with beautiful manners and a sweet smile. When we were a newly married couple in New York trying to have children, Cleve and I used to say to each other, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our child looked like that!”
    Rose Styron
    We had a house in Ansedonia during the summer of 1960 and the Baekelands were neighbors. We had mutual friends, Gloria and Jim Jones, who had told us they were there, but they looked us up, I think. Well, they were very good-looking, very sociable, fairly snobbish—I would say Barbara particularly liked the grand Italian life.
    I liked Tony. I really liked him a lot. He was a very lonely but self-sufficient boy, and I liked his gentleness with animals. I remember going up to his room a couple of times and he had all sorts of snakes and animals. I liked the fact that he seemed to want to hide from whatever else was going on in the family and keep to himself. The two or three times we were over there I just found myself gravitating to him. I guess I probably knew him better than I knew Brooks or Barbara, who I didn’t have much connection with.
    I remember Gloria talking to me a lot about Barbara. She was always telling me what the latest chapter was in the Baekeland saga. And one detail after another was so fantastic.
    Gloria Jones
    After Barbara died, Muriel Murphy, this really great friend of all of ours, sent me one of Barbara’s Chanel dresses. Barbara