High life
Club ties
Taki
Palm Beach
This place is good news for senior citizens everywhere. It is the Mecca for the rich where even my old friend David Metcalfe is considered middle-aged. It is also one of the few resorts in America where religion counts a hell of a lot. In fact, this is what Palm Beach is all about. During the daytime, that is. Let me explain: the three main country clubs of PB are where it all happens during daylight. There is the Bath & Tennis Club, known as the B&T, the Everglades Club and the Palm Beach Country Club. The first two are Christian clubs, the last is Jewish. The trouble is that Palm Beach Country Club members are inordinately rich even for Palm Beach. Their private jets carpet the airport come wintertime, and air slots have to be found for the airlines, not the other way round. It costs a quarter of a million dollars to join the Jewish club, and, for certain members who don’t look too good, it has been known to go up to a million. The yearly dues are on a par with the UN budget.
So far so good. The B&T and the Everglades members are mostly Wasps, with a few token Catholics thrown in for good measure. When our very own Barbara Amiel joined the Everglades Club as Lady Black, our ex-benevolent proprietor had a couple of big shots put her up — such as ex-secretary of state Alexander Haig — and Babs got through with flying colours. ‘It was the most terrifying moment of my life,’ she told me when I congratulat ed her for breaking the J barrier. Ten years before that, my great friend CeeZee Guest had been suspended by the Everglades for bringing to lunch Estée Lauder, the queen of cream, but the reason for the penalty was not lunching with a Jew, but having registered Estée as Ms O’Hara, or a name to that effect.
Never mind. I have some very good memories of the Everglades. Back in the early Fifties, Sean Flynn, Errol’s boy, who died in Cambodia and whose body was never found, raced his Harley-Davidson against my brand-new Thunderbird on the club’s golf course, causing great damage. It was New Year’s Eve and we were 17. The club did not press charges, but told us not to bother coming back for a year or so. The B&T, needless to say, is as perfect a country club as one can ask for. Great tennis courts, wonderful salt-water swimming pool, and a family atmosphere straight out of a Fifties feelgood movie. Whereas members of the Palm Beach Country Club get around town in Rolls-Royces and Bentleys, and fly out of town in their Gulfstream Vs, the Waspy types use bicycles with wicker baskets attached to the front, and wooden tennis rackets protruding from their backpacks. They are not poor by any means, but they are financial Davids compared with the Goliaths at the PBCC. And this is where things become confusing. It seems there are many members of the Palm Beach Country Club who wouldn’t mind joining the B&T, but there is no vice versa. Hence the charges of anti-Semitism which regularly appear in the New York gutter press. (Palm Beach papers are the feelgood kind, and don’t deal with subjects where angels fear to tread.) At nighttime, however, PB is one big happy family. People open up their houses to all races, as long as they are white, and to all religions, although I haven’t seen many Muslims around the pools. Terry Allen Kramer insists on 50–50, where Christians and Jews are concerned. She has a house which makes anything Abramovich owns today look like the kind of shack Abramovich was born in. Terry’s hospitality is legendary, especially among brokendown upper-class Englishmen, who regularly drop in for free meals and the doggy bags which are always provided. My friend Lord Black’s house used to be the centre for intellectuals but during his current problems he has rented his palatial waterfront house to Anthony Bamford.
The reason the poor little Greek boy is down here among the rich and famous is that Sessa von Richthofen, of Red Baron fame, is marrying Richard Johnson, the numero uno gossip columnist of America, and worthy successor to the great Nigel Dempster. I have been asked to give a speech, which I hope to carry off with the panache the great Manfred von Richthofen showed while duelling in the sky with English publicschool types. Next week I will tell you all about it, if there is a next week, that is.
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