Furious Love (37 page)

Whatever the cause, the pot had boiled over. Before, their fights were more like foreplay, the making-up afterward being the best part of it. But this didn't feel like
The Taming of the Shrew
, this was starting to feel like
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
“We are fighting,” Richard wrote, “& have been fighting for a year now over everything and anything. I have always been a heavy drinker but during the last 15 months I've nearly killed myself with the stuff, and so has Elizabeth. Neither of us will give in and if one of us doesn't something is going to snap.” He started blaming Elizabeth's presence for making his hands shake, forgetting that it was she, that first day on the set of
Cleopatra
, who had brought the cup to his lips because his hands were shaking so badly. “At the moment I am in despair. If we cannot understand each other or, what is worst, not stand each other we'd go our separate ways pretty soon…”

Staircase
was released that August, to mixed reviews. The movie had been adapted by Charles Dyer from his well-received 1966 play, but some critics complained that the subject matter had been “cleaned up a little for popular consumption.”
Variety
, however, praised both Rex Harrison and Richard Burton for having “dared risky roles and…triumphed.” Burton had cared about
Staircase
and
Boom!
He thought they were good. Audiences didn't. The public apparently didn't want to see two masculine actors portraying gay men, and the movie disappointed at the box office.
Where Eagles Dare
was always going to be more popular with mainstream audiences. It had stormed the box office and had overtaken every other film that year, earning more than $20 million. Now Burton waited for the verdict on
Anne of the Thousand Days
, a film he had not enjoyed making, but one that had the potential to be a critical as well as financial success, like
The Taming of the Shrew.
Secretly, Burton hoped for a blockbuster, because he had “rings and farthingales and things” to pay for.

That September, the Burtons returned to Gstaad. Elizabeth completed the acquisition of a remarkable gift for Richard: the entire one thousand volumes of the Everyman Library. Richard had begun reading those books, one by one, at the age of twelve, leaving them behind in houses in Pontrhydyfen and Port Talbot, in London, in Céligny, in Oxford when he was an RAF officer during the war and used to steal them from Foyle's bookstore in Charing Cross Road. The thousand “numbered, gleaming” volumes, in Burton's description, were carted to Gstaad and lovingly unpacked and shelved. “I shall browse in that place for the rest of my life. They will take up one wall of the room…a fantastic reference library with the index in my head,” he later wrote. For a man who worshipped the written word, it was the perfect gift.

Later that month, the Burtons looked into possibly moving Ifor out of the clinic and into their Swiss chalet for a long visit. They consulted with Dr. Rossier, who ran the paraplegic ward of the local hospital, about what kind of bed and other special equipment Ifor would require. Unbeknownst to Richard and Elizabeth, Ifor had suf
fered a stroke in his sleep. Gwen Jenkins had kept this new setback a secret from the Burtons. When the orderlies had come to check up on him in the morning, they discovered that Ifor had lost the one thing he had had left: his beautiful Welsh voice.

Ifor's tragedy would haunt Richard for the rest of his life. “He'd have lived until he was 90 were it not for that trip in the dark at Céligny,” he wrote grimly in his notebook. Again, he took out his fury over Ifor's condition on Elizabeth, the person he was closest to, the one who was there and the only one who could possibly absorb the terrible blow of Ifor's paralysis, along with him.

After one of their visits to Dr. Rossier, the Burtons decided to dash into an Italian restaurant for an early dinner. Burton recalled the meal as one of “long silences and deadly insults,” with Elizabeth trying to break his mood. At one point, knowing that Richard was “in a state of nastiness,” she reached out to him across the table.

“Come on Richard, hold my hand.”

“I do not wish to touch your hands,” he answered cruelly. “They are large and ugly and red and masculine.” Elizabeth withdrew her bejeweled hand.

Richard himself was aghast, horrified by his own malignant remark. He wrote in his diary, as an act of contrition, “[W]hat the hell's the matter with me? I love milady more than my life…one of these days it's going to be too late.”

But Elizabeth, not one to wallow in her own or anyone else's bitterness, quickly turned Richard's nasty remark to her advantage, making her husband pay dearly for his thoughtless insult. She insisted that now he must really go after the diamond they had both been eyeing, the one owned by Mrs. Paul (Harriet) Ames, the sister of Walter Annenberg, the billionaire founder of
TV Guide
and former U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. James. The 69.42-karat, 1½"-long stone was considered the largest and most expensive diamond in the world. It was set in a platinum ring between two smaller side diamonds. “It will make my ugly, big hands look smaller and less ugly!” Elizabeth
teased. “That insult…” Burton would write in his diary the following day, “is going to cost me. Betcha!”

There was naturally a great deal of interest in the spectacular jewel. It was going to be auctioned on October 23, 1969 (identified as Lot 133), by the Parke-Bernet Galleries on New York's Madison Avenue. Elizabeth had learned that Aristotle Onassis, the man who had brought out Richard's competitive streak more than any other, had paid a visit to Parke-Bernet to view the diamond, igniting speculation that he intended to buy it for Jacqueline Kennedy. It was then that Richard and Elizabeth asked the jewel be sent to them in Gstaad for their inspection. As soon as she saw it, Elizabeth knew she had to have it. Richard gave Aaron Frosch, who would be bidding by phone from London, a ceiling price of $1 million.

But Cartier outbid Richard Burton, winning the jewel for $1,050,000, the highest amount ever paid for a diamond at that time.

Jim Benton, Richard's secretary, called to give Richard the bad news. Richard and Elizabeth had returned to The Bell Inn, where they had gone to visit Ifor, and where Richard was now standing by a pay telephone in the pub, not ready to admit defeat. He shouted at Benton to get Aaron Frosch on the line, immediately! Elizabeth tried to mollify Richard, telling him that she didn't really care if she had the diamond or not, that “there was much more to life than baubles,” adding that she was “completely capable of making do with what she had” (which included Mike Todd's diamond tiara and 29.7-carat diamond ring; La Peregrina; the Bulgari emerald-and-diamond suite; the Krupp diamond, etc.). But this made Richard even more determined.

“I was going to get that diamond,” he resolved, “if it cost me my life or $2 million, whichever was greater.” After railing at poor Mr. Frosch, he instructed the lawyer to buy the diamond directly from Cartier, and to do so regardless of the price. Like Henry VIII in his pursuit of Anne Boleyn, he would have the jewel.

It would take another agonizing twenty-four hours of living by the telephone in the Inn's small passageway. Richard kept reversing
phone charges, as the Inn was running out of coins. Some of the locals sipping their pints at the bar eyed the actor as he paced nervously in the doorway of the pub, waiting for a call back from New York. Would Richard be able to snatch the diamond from Cartier, winning it back for Elizabeth? Some enterprising bookie in the village began taking bets.

The next day, Frosch called. The diamond was theirs.

For $1.1 million, Richard had carried the day. “Liz Gets That Peachy Pear,” trumpeted the
New York Daily News
. It gave Richard even greater satisfaction when he learned that two of his rivals for the diamond had been the Sultan of Brunei and—more importantly—Ari Onassis. The Greek tycoon had “chickened at 700,000” dollars.

But it was really all about Elizabeth, as it had always been. “I wanted that diamond because it is incomparably lovely,” Burton wrote. “And it should be on the loveliest woman in the world. I would have had a fit if it went to Jackie Kennedy or Sophia Loren or Mrs. Huntingdon Misfit of Dallas, Texas.” From then on, the briefly named “Cartier diamond” would be known as the “Taylor-Burton diamond,” and it would be placed on exhibit in Cartier's main gallery in New York, and then brought to Chicago, where it was the star attraction at the opening of Cartier's new store. As many as ten thousand people a day came to view it. The jeweler ran a large display ad in the
New York Times
:

 

CARTIER

cordially invites you to view

THE CARTIER DIAMOND

on display

today through Saturday, November first

from nine thirty a.m. to five thirty p.m.

in our Gallery, Main Floor

at Cartier, Fifth Avenue & Fifty-Second Street

The Cartier Diamond has now been acquired by

Elizabeth Taylor Burton.

 

The jewel even appeared on
The Ed Sullivan Show
on CBS, as a “guest.”

When Elizabeth finally received her prize, she found it too heavy and awkward to wear as a ring, so she spent an additional $80,000 to have a diamond necklace made, from which the heavy, pear-shaped jewel could be hung. A jeweler flew in from New York to measure her neck so that the diamond would hang just right, covering what remained of Elizabeth's old tracheotomy scar.

It would take three couriers (two of them decoys) and three weeks for the diamond necklace to reach the Burtons, who were by then back on the
Kalizma
, anchored in Monaco. Three men carrying identical briefcases, only one of which contained the Taylor-Burton diamond, left New York by plane for Nice, escorted by an armed security guard. From Nice they crossed the frontier of Monaco, where the
Kalizma
was berthed in Monte Carlo Harbor. Once in Monte Carlo, another armed guard (complete with submachine gun) was hired to protect the jewel.

Once again, Elizabeth held her breath when the stunning, heavy-laden necklace was removed from its red leather case and placed around her neck for the first time. She then peeked into the briefcase that had brought the Taylor-Burton diamond to her, as if something was missing. She scooped a small package out of the case. Three 50-cent pairs of hose had been sent over from New York alongside the diamond, because they were stockings Elizabeth liked and couldn't get anywhere else. Like Robert Browning's Duchess Ferrara in “My Last Duchess,” Elizabeth's heart was “too soon made glad/…she liked whate'er/She looked on,” and she was as delighted to receive the inexpensive stockings as she was the most expensive diamond in the world.

The Burtons were in Monaco to celebrate Princess Grace's fortieth birthday at the Scorpio Ball, to be held at the Hermitage Hotel in Monte Carlo. It was a lavish affair by any standard. Elizabeth chose the party to debut the Taylor-Burton diamond, accidentally (or not)
upstaging the event. With the dazzling necklace, wearing a stunning, black velvet cape with two glittering scorpions brocaded across the front, and accompanied by Richard and a pair of security guards carrying machine guns (as stipulated by the $1 million insurance policy with Lloyd's of London), how could she not?

As a little joke between the Burtons, Elizabeth wore her largest diamonds—the Taylor-Burton and the Krupp—alongside one of her smallest, the “Ping-Pong” diamond, to the gala affair. She had won the Ping-Pong diamond—
¹
/8 of a carat costing a mere $14—from Richard after he bet her a perfect diamond if she beat him by ten points at Ping-Pong one day at their chalet in Gstaad. “Well, that's not the sort of thing a woman walks away from,” Elizabeth recalled. “He lost. I won. Time to go shopping!” At the Scorpio Ball, whenever anyone said, “Oh, my God, what a magnificent diamond!” Elizabeth would raise her right hand and wiggle her little finger with the tiny Ping-Pong diamond. “Isn't it beautiful! The setting is lovely and the diamond is absolutely perfect.” Only the Burtons could afford to joke about jewelry.

But along with its dazzling beauty, the Taylor-Burton diamond came with a heavy responsibility—it further restricted Elizabeth's freedom of movement. Lloyd's of London insisted that the diamond be kept in a vault, that it be worn in public for only thirty days in any given year, and that armed guards must be in attendance whenever Elizabeth appeared in public wearing it. “It was more of a millstone around her neck than an ornament,” one British writer observed. Eventually, Elizabeth had to have a replica made at a cost of $2,800, and was often suspected of wearing the fake jewel in public.

There was another negative effect of owning the jewel. The long lines outside Cartier had caught the attention of the
New York Times
, inspiring an editorial excoriating the Burtons for what the
Times
felt were their extravagant indulgences in an age of want. The editorial held up the Burtons as exemplars of “the Age of Vulgarity”:

As Brenda Maddox wittily remarked in her biography of Elizabeth Taylor, “How many women have been criticized by both the
Times
and the Vatican?”