The Villa(11)
“What are you two doing, hiding away in here?”
Pierce comes into the kitchen, his shirt half unbuttoned, his hair sticking to his face with sweat, and he gathers Mari up to him, nuzzling her neck.
“We’re plotting adventures,” Lara tells him, reaching out to stroke his arm even as he pulls Mari closer.
She’s always doing that, Lara. Touching him.
Pierce is not faithful, Mari knows that, and she also knows she can’t reasonably expect him to be, given that he still has a wife. Sweet, noble Frances, out in some village in Surrey, pining away for him, hoping he’ll come to his senses and come back to her.
But he swears it was just one time with Lara, and it was after Billy had died, when Mari had felt lost in her grief, wondering how she was supposed to get out of bed when someone she loved so much was gone forever. Wondering if her baby dying was the universe’s way of settling the score, since Mari’s birth had killed her mother.
They were dark thoughts, awful thoughts. The chasm she’d fallen into where even Pierce couldn’t reach her.
Mari had left them alone in their pain, Pierce had tried to explain, him and Lara. They had only turned to each other because they were both hurting, because they missed her.
Mari has tried to believe it, forgive them, but still.
She wonders.
And as she listens to Lara tell Pierce about the trip, watches him scoop Lara up into his arms, spinning her in that tiny kitchen so that the heels of her boots hit the cabinets, scuffing the paint, Mari lets herself hope that this trip will be what they need. That in Italy, there might actually be space to breathe.
And maybe, she thinks, looking at her journal, there will be space for her own dreams.
Mari Godwick was born famous.
Her father was the noted writer and bohemian William Godwick, and her mother, Marianne Wolsely, had soared to even greater heights as a journalist during the Spanish Civil War. Her dispatches from Seville had captured the attention of a nation, and her one piece of fiction, a short story collection called Heart’s Blood and Other Tales, sold quite well, but it was her unconventional choices in love that had made her something of a scandal.
Her first notable lover was the painter Rosa Harris, and Marianne’s refusal to hide this liaison from the world was seen as bold and uncompromising. After that liaison ended, she was rumored to have had affairs with Hemingway, Prince George, Duke of Kent, and the wife of a prominent MP. Lately, more nuanced scholarship about her life has noted that many of these entanglements have been exaggerated if not invented completely, something that has also been suggested about her daughter Mari and her relationships with what became known as the “Soho Set.”
But the most notable connection between Marianne and her daughter was that the day Mari was born, her mother died.
Preeclampsia, a fairly misunderstood condition in 1955, the year of Mari’s birth, was the culprit, and later, Mari would say she felt as though they’d been two souls, intertwined for nearly a year in her mother’s body, only for one to pass out of being as the other forced her way in.
It was a guilt that Mari would carry all her life. When her only child, a son named William who was fathered by musician Pierce Sheldon, died of a chest infection in 1973, Mari told friends that it was what she had deserved. This was the kind of self-recrimination she tended toward, especially later in life, and, some say, the reason why she only published one book in her lifetime. Lilith Rising was a sensation, and it certainly made Mari comfortable for the rest of her days, but there was always a sense that her success was bittersweet, coming, as it did, on the heels of such a massive personal tragedy.
After she passed away in 1993, several manuscripts were found hidden in her apartment, all completed between 1979 and 1992, all of which would go on to be published posthumously.
Her longtime literary agent, Jeremy Thompson, was as puzzled as anyone else as to why she’d chosen to hide the manuscripts rather than submit them but, as he said to The Times, “She was an odd duck, Mari. I knew her for nearly twenty years, but I never felt I actually knew her. I’m not sure anyone did.”
—Shadow on the Stair: The Haunted Life and Loves of Mari Godwick, Caroline Leeman, 2015
THE ROVERS WILL NO MORE GO A’ROVING
On the heels of a sold-out tour of America, the rock group the Rovers shock the music industry and the world by announcing a “prolonged hiatus” while band members focus on “other personal projects.” While drummer Sam Collins has already appeared on albums from artists such as Cream and the Byrds, and bassist John Keating performed onstage with the Rolling Stones just last year, all eyes are naturally on front man Noel Gordon and what he might do next.
The youngest son of the Earl of Rochdale, Mr. Gordon has always cut a glamourous (some would say outrageous) figure, frequently compared to Jim Morrison of the Doors and Roger Daltrey of the Who. His velvety baritone and esoteric lyrics have made him a musical superstar, but it’s his matinee idol face and frequent high-profile romances that have made him a fixture in newspapers both here in the UK and also across the world.
Currently on his honeymoon on Mustique with the heiress Lady Arabella Wentworth, Mr. Gordon could not be reached for comment, but sources tell us that a solo album is definitely in the works, and one wonders just how much higher Noel Gordon’s star might rise.
—Pop Beats Magazine, June 1969