High life
Hard to get
Taki
Barbados In hot if futile pursuit of what I perceived to be a 19-year-old but who turned out to be a disappointing 22, I find myself in the Sandy Lane Hotel, Barbados, as fine a set- In the good old days we were too poor to be mugged.'
ting as one can hope to land in after two harrowing all-nighters back in the Big Bagel. In the spirit of things, the place is full of bounders: Charles Benson, Bunga- low Bill Wiggins, Archie Stirling, the Smur- fit boys and so on.
The exceptions are Tony O'Reilly and Robert Sangster. Sangster is a hell of a fel- low. He surrounds himself with his good friends and — more important — with his numerous children, their wives, children, girl-friends etc. He is a very generous man with a wonderful house right next to the hotel. Tony O'Reilly I just met. He needs no introduction, being an ex-great Irish rugby international, chairman of Heinz and a recent bridegroom to Chrissy Goulandris, probably the nicest Greek girl since Pene- lope, of Ithaca fame.
And speaking of odysseys, mine began with a dinner party chez moi for Norman Mailer and John O'Sullivan. Mailer is so persuasive he had me in no time at all agreeing that capitalism in general and Reaganism in particular were worse than leprosy. That is when the editor of the National Review went to work and got me back on track. Mind you, Norman took advantage of the dago red that I had con- sumed, while John worked on me while I was on my fourth triple vodka. The result was that the mother of my children offered to drive me to the airport, a generous offer I had to refuse in view of the fact that the supposed 19-year-old was waiting for me in a hallway downtown.
And of course things went from bad to worse. The defrocked 19-year-old asked me to be patient, once ensconced in our hon- eymoon suite. I said that I am Job but that I was, after all, running out of time. The result has been a stand-off of the Mexican kind. I brood, she suns herself, Benson is having a cheap laugh, and everyone in Bar- bados seems to be talking about the dirty old man who flew two thousand miles and spent thousands of dollars in order to play brother and sister.
Given the fact that the sun does funny things to people, I'm still confident. There is always the William Kennedy Smith solu- tion, although Benson tells me the penalty for even being accused of rape in Barbados is having to spend a month with Germaine Greer in nearby Trinidad. Oh well, I'll probably wake up with solution in hand, as the Chinese say, which at my age is a victo- ry of sorts.
Needless to say, Barbados is a hell of a place. The Sandy Lane is a Forte hotel and thanks to Sangster and Benson the longest stretch'limo in the western hemisphere was waiting for me upon arrival. The hotel is a mixture of local neo-classicism, built during the Fifties by Lords Astor and Ashcomb and a Tree or two, no pun intended. The locals are polite, and there hasn't been a single murder since the arrival of the biggest fool this side of Piraeus. If you hear nothing from me next week, not to worry. I shall be in Trinidad with Andrea Dworkin.
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