Have a Cigar! by Bryan Morrison

Author:Bryan Morrison [Bryan Morrison]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781846893179
Publisher: Quiller
Published: 2019-09-29T16:00:00+00:00

ART FOR ART’S SAKE

By 1970, in spite of my apparent disdain for money, I seemed to be enjoying its fruits, with a beautiful Grade II-listed, sixteenth-century manor house in Oxted, Surrey, and a pied-à-terre in London with all the various accoutrements. The only thing that I needed to complete the picture was a wife and family.

I suppose in the end it happens to all bachelors. The ever-constant regime of a new woman, a new bed, and waking up in the middle of the night in an icy state, not knowing whether you’re on planet Earth or Venus. I remember once reading: ‘A man’s mind and body are not purged until he has woken up at least once with a woman by his side, whose name he doesn’t know.’

By the time I was twenty-eight years old, I had experienced this once too often and I was now ready to change course.

I saw her in an advertisement in a magazine one day. This vision of beauty – a woman of such sexual poise, with sensual lips and a wonderful face, haloed by golden hair the colour of wheat. The advertisement was for Smirnoff vodka and she was astride a horse on a long beach. I became immediately besotted. Through friends in the advertising industry, I soon discovered who this paragon of beauty was.

Her name was Greta van Rantwyk and after about three months of manoeuvring we had dinner in a restaurant in Beauchamp Place. Everything was set for the birth of one of those great eternal love stories – the candles, the food, the wine. Everything was perfect, or was it?

There was one small detail that I hadn’t counted on – it seemed she wasn’t too keen on me. Later, I was to discover that she felt I was too flash. My black leather clothing, zip-up jacket and tight-fitting trousers, plus the black Aston Martin DB7 sitting by the front door, were simply too much. She was probably right; I was a bit flash.

I was not to see her again for quite some time. It was almost two years later when I was invited by some mutual friends to dinner in Bayswater and, as luck would have it, Greta turned out to be one of the dinner guests. This second meeting turned out to be far more successful than the first. By evening’s end it was love, if not at first sight, then at second.

I was due to go to Rome for a wedding the next day, but was able to persuade her to join me there in four or five days’ time. I intended driving to Rome in my brand-new Rolls-Royce, which I had bought as my dream gift for my thirtieth birthday.

OK, she was right. I was flash.

I set off next day on the Grand Tour, via the RN 7, stopping at the Hotel de la Poste, where Napoleon had stopped many years previously on the way to his various conquests.

Once in Rome, it didn’t take long to get into the customs of this wonderful Italian city.

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