DIARY
irst I must say that I am estopped, as the lawyers put it, from writing about that other Wyatt diary. This is because the Sun- day Times has decided to continue the seri- alisation for another week. After Sunday, however, my silence will be broken. Mean- while, anyone not interested in New York may cease reading here.
New York in autumn is like Venice Without the water. Mists drift in from the river, wrapping the East Side in gossamer, While the silvery honk of the taxi horns shivers the glass on the brownstone houses. It is the season not only of mists, but of trysts — there is barely a day at this time of the year when New Yorkers are not recon- sidering their sexual arrangements. Maybe it is the falling leaves that remind residents that foliage isn't the only thing that doesn't stay up for ever.
When California catches a cold, New York sneezes. Most soi-disant smart habits come over from the West Coast film com- munity, including the sexual ones. One dis- covery I made was that the traditional menage a trois is demode. It has been replaced by the ménage a foi — `foi' because it takes a great deal of faith to believe in the efficacy of this new arrangement. My first experience of one came at a New York din- ner party given by the former head of a record company. The man I sat next to at dinner was a business magnifico of conser- vative inclinations — or so it seemed. After a few minutes he pointed across the table at a . beautiful younger woman. 'That's my Wife,' he told me. So far, so good — for him, that was. But then he pointed at someone else, a young man dressed in the ruffled chic of an aspiring thespian. 'And that's my boyfriend.' Eh? Assuming I had misheard, I Corrected him: 'You mean your wife's boyfriend? He shook his head. 'No, mine.' Once my petit-bourgeois sensibilities had recovered from this announcement I enquired if his wife minded the arrange- ment. 'Not at all,' he replied. 'You see, it saves her a lot of money. She is a very rich Woman. If he was her boyfriend, she would always be having to buy him stuff. This way the pressure is on me.' He added, 'And she gets to go with him sometimes, too. That's What I call a bargain.'
Although New Yorkers abstain from tobacco — state law now prohibits smoking M any public place — they compensate by obeisance to the great god stomach. It is a Myth that Americans are as lean as the reeds along the Hudson. Nearly two thirds of the PETRONELLA WYATT population are officially obese. Much of New York life is centred around the restau- rant table. Thus these establishments have become microcosms of the American class system — which is so assiduously connived in by most here as to make Britain look like a kibbutz. The modish restaurant of the moment is Café Boulud, off 76th Street, which opened two weeks ago. Now that the fabled Mr Mortimer of Mortimer's is no longer with them, the Upper East Side rich have, to their relief, a new location to which to retire for catty corner-table chatter. Cafe Boulud has a small entrance area and a bar to the left; through an archway is a deep and airy dining-room. There sit the queens of Manhattan — of both sexes — in all their de la Renta finery. The etiquette in New York restaurants is precisely the opposite to that in their London counterparts. The discreet back of the room of any establishment here forms an Outer Hebrides, an Elba to which are exiled second-class patrons. Preferred clients, selected by the manager with unerring snobbery, are placed near the entrance at tables which, though often draughty and cramped, are a sought-after endorsement of one's social status. This is a practice pursued in every established New York restaurant of chic, including the 21 Club and the COte Basque, the one-time haunt of Truman Capote.
Last week there was a memorial service for a great society figure and patroness of the arts, known to all as Sisi. Sisi, who was revered for the large donations she made to the Metropolitan Museum, was a relentless hostess of charity balls. The entrance policy at these events was stringent. If a guest failed to present his or her invitation at the door, they were refused admittance no matter what was pleaded in extenuation. Even the obviously smartly turned out were turned out smartish. During one of these evenings, as the pale winter New York sun slid beneath the Hudson, the indomitable Sisi was confronted by an overexcited door- man. He explained that a lady with impec- cable maquillage had arrived — but with- out her invitation. When Sisi insisted she be dealt with like the others, the doorman said that her tale was perhaps worth listen- ing to. The lady was so sorry, she explained, but she and her husband had received invi- tations. Sadly, however, her husband had been taken ill a few weeks previously and had died. The family had decided to bury him in his favourite tuxedo. It turned out that the invitations had been in the jacket pocket and were therefore six feet under. Even Sisi shied away from demanding an exhumation.
There was a party here for Harold Evans's new book, The American Century. It did not proceed as smoothly as Mr Evans and his glorious (or is it vainglorious?) wife Tina Brown had hoped. Arriving at the venue, one writer friend was surprised to find that Mr Evans and Ms Brown had cho- sen the New York Institute of Hasidic Jews. 'There were all these men looking very severe in long, black ringlets,' he told me. Things became more confusing. When my friend asked for Mr Evans, none of the Hasidic Jews had heard of him, let alone Ms Brown. After a while he retired, discour- aged, and caught a cab home. The next morning it transpired that many guests had made the same mistake, since the chic and secular address on the invitation was easily confused with the unsecular and therefore unchic Institute of Hasidic Jews.
This city never seems to know what moral plane it is on. At least, as soon as a moral plane reaches its cruising altitude the passengers want to disembark. A large number of New Yorkers have begun to fear the sociological implications of Viagra, for instance — a concern reinforced by suspi- cions that the drug is not holding up, literal- ly. But the trend for adult drugs is being replaced by a more worrying demand for children's narcotics. New York schools are often too lazy to deal in the traditional way with 'difficult' children (in New York argot, those with any spark of character). This is particularly true of boys. A friend has one aged ten at a Manhattan private school and was horrified recently when the head sug- gested that his son, a normal, healthy child, be put on a drug called Ritalin, an intellec- tual stimulant which has a calming effect, thus increasing concentration and suppos- edly performance. It is also a derivative of speed. The head protested that many of the other parents had taken his advice and indeed, in order to keep the children at the same level, he would be suggesting that everyone else did too. I suppose the advo- cates of this drug would say it is only a mod- ern variation of Victorian mothers' milk.
Previous page
