The Social Diary Read online

  ‘How interesting,’ Julia said.

  Before Julia had the chance to enquire further about whether they might have some friends in common, Lahar had turned his attention back to his date, whose bouffant hair was only outshone by her enormous breasts.

  ‘This is my partner, Candy,’ Lahar said, urging the young woman forward to take Julia’s hand. ‘She is my inspiration’ (which was a bit rich since this was only their second date).

  ‘Lovely to meet you both,’ said Julia.

  Lahar opened a small, gem-encrusted case and from it produced his gold and black business card. ‘Please do call into my store when you are in the city,’ he said, handing it to Julia. ‘I would love to find you something beautiful.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Julia accepted the card and put it straight into her evening bag.

  Queen Bea had carefully watched the exchange from the other side of the room. She didn’t care how vulgar Lahar was or even that he had brought a hairdresser into her home. She was relying on him to sponsor her forthcoming ball, the Madrid Fling, or at least to donate an expensive piece of jewellery which would be auctioned on the night.

  The butler started to usher the guests into the dining room (ballroom), and I was just beginning to wish that I had never accepted the invitation to dinner—I had nothing in common with anyone there—when Oliver Orlan arrived. The photographer was hard to miss. He was wearing a blue velvet jacket, a blue ribbon tied around the collar of his white lacy shirt, blue jeans and velvet slippers. Everyone loved Oliver because he was so avant-garde and several people in the room positively beamed when he made his entrance with his cameras slung over his shoulder. Tonight, thanks to a gentle prompt from the hostess, his first photograph was of Queen Bea with Lahar and Candy.

  ‘Watch out for him, he’s a piece of work,’ Oliver hissed in my ear as soon as he had taken the shot. ‘He pretends to be related to an Indian maharajah but his family used to have a jewellery stand in the markets in Suva, selling fake strings of pearls to tourists. He reinvented himself at the back end of an Air Pacific flight from Nadi to Sydney.’

  ‘Really?’

  Oliver nodded, regarding Lahar with disdain as the jeweller now continued to work the room. ‘Sydney is full of people trying to be something that they’re not and because of your position on the paper, and as someone so fresh on the scene, you’re going to hear plenty of stories.’

  ‘Thanks for the heads-up,’ I said, although after only a few weeks on the social rounds, I was beginning to work that out.

  ‘Anyway, I’m just going to take a couple more shots; I have another three parties to go to tonight.’ Oliver swanned off across the room to where Queen Bea was talking to Julia and Raoul.

  It wasn’t only Lahar that Beatrice needed to impress that night; she was desperate to secure the presence of the Spanish Consul-General and his wife at the Madrid Fling and, more importantly, she needed them to persuade the Spanish Ambassador, His Excellency Amancio Riguerez, to attend.

  Beatrice’s other guests at the A table included Bridget Lewis, the eccentric editor of Pulse, an artsy fashion magazine (Bridget always stood out thanks to her eye-popping red hair), and her partner Rupert Swan, the incredibly dry and serious British-born portrait painter who had been a finalist in last year’s Archibald Prize. He’d painted an extremely provocative portrait of Bridget nude in front of her magazine galleys. Everyone thought that the only reason that the editor was in a relationship with the gruff, grizzled-looking painter was for her street credibility, but I wasn’t so sure. Who knew what went on behind closed doors?

  Seated on the other side of Bridget and directly opposite Queen Bea was Sean Munro, one of the lead actors in the Australian surf and sand soapie, Coastline. Sean’s long blond hair and bright blue eyes made him look almost angelic. But what was he doing here tonight? Sean was supposed to be involved with Christa Lions, another of the actors on Coastline, but there was no sign of her tonight.

  ‘He’s just trying to get as much publicity as he can,’ Oliver hissed at me. ‘You wait—he’ll have heard that you’re the new diarist in town and he’ll flirt with you shamelessly. Don’t waste your time, though; word is that he’s gay.’

  ‘No way!’ Sean had already given me a couple of meaningful glances shortly after he’d arrived and I’d felt an instant quiver of excitement. My gaydar was usually perfectly tuned, yet it hadn’t registered a single beep.

  ‘Okay then, you tell me what he was doing at the Ruby Room dancing with another man until the early hours of Sunday morning.’

  ‘Maybe he was researching a character for a new role?’ I suggested hopefully.

  Oliver just snorted as he went up to Sean. ‘Come on, sweetie,’ he said, a little sarcastically, ‘I need your photo for the social pages.’

  As I watched Sean instantly ham it up by planting a kiss on Bridget’s cheek for the photograph, I thought that maybe Oliver was right. Nevertheless, the high-brow magazine editor looked very pleased at the attention.

  However it was Queen Bea who Sean seemed most interested in flirting with at the dinner. Later on, from over in Siberia, I had watched as he leaned in to her to catch what she was saying and how she’d patted her hair coquettishly, looking as giddy as his fans who were always trying to track him down. Sean even ate his meal with relish, which was quite a feat given that it was largely inedible.

  I had toyed with mine while I was cross-examined about my personal life by the man next to me. Leon Green, short, almost bald and wearing a tired, black dinner jacket, had his own clothing company and was a neighbour of Queen Bea’s. His main topic of conversation was whom I should marry while I kept trying to prise gossip out of him about the fashion industry.

  ‘You know,’ he said, leaning over just close enough for me to get a whiff of his garlic-infused breath—which I suspected was actually the remnant of a meal other than the one we were currently pushing around our plates in a lacklustre fashion—‘I could set you up with my friend, David . . . but I think I would rather have an affair with you myself.’

  I glanced at him for a couple of seconds and wondered whether it was necessary to point out that this would never happen. Best just to ignore the comment completely, I decided.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said brightly as I rose from my seat and shot what I hoped was a winning smile across the room at Sean Munro, noticing that Queen Bea had also deserted him. ‘I’ll be right back.’

  Leon tried to pat me on the bottom as I rose but I saw it coming and quickly jerked my body out of his grasp. It wasn’t a dignified move—but there wasn’t much elegance to be had on the B table; even the wild roses had started to look depressed.

  When I returned from the loo, Queen Bea was still standing at the open door staring out. I silently cursed the bladders of the other guests who seemed to have remained splendidly ignorant of the drama now taking place upstairs.

  ‘Mrs Bonney, are you all right?’ I said once again.

  Queen Bea didn’t even flinch at another intrusion. She continued to stare fixedly into the night, her full caramel bouffant, which had been subdued by several blasts of VO5 hairspray, just lifting meekly in the balmy breeze. Without bothering to turn around, she let me know in no uncertain terms that, as far as she was concerned, the dinner party was over.

  ‘Please leave and take the rest of the guests with you,’ she said firmly.

  Once again, she did not seem to be in the mood to elaborate. I was shocked. No etiquette book could ever prepare you for the correct method of approach for situations like this. But then none had probably been written with Beatrice Bonney or her bizarre entertaining style in mind.

  Carefully backing away from Beatrice, I returned to the dining room to try to get Harry Bonney to come and sort out his wife. I had noticed him earlier on nodding off at the dinner table, much to the embarrassment of the vice-president of Entre Nous.

  ‘Excuse me, Harry,’ I said, gently tapping him on the arm, ‘something has happened to Beatrice. She’s upstairs wi
th the front door open. I think she wants everyone to leave.’

  Harry opened his eyes wide and stared at me as if I had gone crazy. ‘What? I don’t need to leave,’ he spluttered. ‘I live here.’ What kind of madhouse had I wandered into? ‘Not you,’ I said patiently. ‘The guests. Beatrice seems to want all of your guests to leave.’

  ‘What time is it?’ He seemed confused as he squinted at his Rolex. ‘It’s only ten o’clock—bit early for that, isn’t it? Or is it ten in the morning?’

  Thankfully, Susie, who had been listening intently, stepped in. ‘I’ll just go and see what the problem is,’ she said quietly. ‘And, Savannah, if you would keep this just between us, it would be much appreciated by the committee.’

  I looked at her and blinked because I had already been composing the opening paragraph of my account of the evening in my head:

  A-list guests including the Spanish Consul-General Raoul Hernandez and his wife Julia, along with leading actor Sean Munro, were thrown out of charity queen Beatrice Bonney’s Point Piper home in the middle of a dinner party.

  It was far too juicy a turn of events to ignore. I was about to follow Susie up the stairs to see what happened next when she said kindly but firmly, ‘Why don’t you go back and finish your meal, Savannah? You have already been so helpful.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Leon, when I squeezed past him to my seat. ‘I didn’t think you were coming back.’

  ‘It’s Beatrice—she wants everyone to leave now.’

  ‘Is she drunk?’ he asked.

  ‘Probably, I don’t know, but she seemed fairly committed to the idea that everyone should depart.’

  Glancing across the room, I saw that Sean Munro was trying to catch my eye. He beckoned me over.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asked when I slid into the place opposite him that had until recently been occupied by Queen Bea. (Yes, I was living the dream!) Bridget Lewis leaned forward to listen. Clearly the sudden disappearance of the party’s hostess had finally piqued everyone’s interest.

  ‘Well, Queen Bea is upstairs with the front door wide open and keeps saying that everyone should go home,’ I said, secretly pleased to be the bearer of such titillating news and no longer having to take responsibility for it. ‘Do you think she might be having a nervous breakdown?’

  ‘It sounds like it,’ said Bridget.

  ‘I don’t think that’s it at all,’ said Sean, looking smug. ‘I think you’ll find Beatrice does not cope well with rejection. She’s been rubbing one of her feet up and down my leg all night under the table. I had to move out of her range and almost landed in Bridget’s lap, but she was undeterred. The next thing I knew she was whispering seductively in my ear that she would like to have a private chat with me upstairs in her bedroom.’

  ‘No way!’ I couldn’t help myself. I was gobsmacked. Did people really behave like that in Sydney’s silvertail suburbs?

  ‘Yes way. And when I declined, she swept imperiously from the room, almost knocking over her chair. I thought everyone had seen that.’

  ‘What should we do now?’ I noticed that the other guests had got wind that something was happening and were starting to drift away from the tables.

  ‘Well, there’s nothing else for it,’ he said, linking his arm in mine. ‘If Queen Bea really wants us to vamoose, the very least we can do is to oblige her.’

  Two

  Poor Susie Carruthers (despite her double-barrel name, most people still referred to her as ‘Susie Carruthers’ because that’s the way she had been written up in the society pages since she was a little girl) had already left six messages for me on my answer phone by the time I made it into the newspaper office the next morning. Each one was basically the same, pleading for me to ring her so that she could explain why Queen Bea’s abrupt insistence that all her guests leave before dessert had been nothing but a misunderstanding.

  ‘You’re not going to write anything, are you?’ she had pleaded on the recording, sounding increasingly desperate. ‘Because you know that it’s really not a story at all.’

  Unfortunately it was too late for that but I was happy to incorporate the line that it had all been a misunderstanding in the front-page splash with the headline: QUEEN BEA TELLS GUESTS TO BUZZ OFF and a photo by-line.

  Guests at the lavish Point Piper mansion of Entre Nous charity queen Beatrice Bonney and her industrialist husband Harry were shocked when they were asked to leave her dinner party halfway through the meal.

  The exclusive crowd, which included the Spanish Consul-General Raoul Hernandez and his wife Julia, magazine editor Bridget Lewis and TV heart-throb Sean Munro, were all firmly shown the door by the charity head.

  Neighbours in the silvertail suburb which is the city’s foremost millionaire enclave reported a commotion in the street afterwards as guests frantically tried to summon their drivers.

  ‘It was all just a silly misunderstanding,’ said Beatrice Bonney’s trusty lieutenant on the Entre Nous committee, Susie Carruthers-Kard.

  And on the story went, detailing the menu and the noticeable division between the A and B table, right down to the different wines being poured for each group. I’d tried to play it straight but there were plenty of laughs to be had by those who read it. Once the story had been written, the first to congratulate me was my editor, Timothy Shaw.

  ‘Outstanding, Savannah,’ he marvelled, as he almost salivated over Oliver’s glossy photographs, which would be used to illustrate the article. ‘That is exactly what I hired you for—to take a risk in your coverage of these events and get everyone talking. We need to show people that The Sydney News is at the forefront of social change.’

  Despite the fact that I had been living in London for two years, writing about reggae music, and had then done casual shifts back home, often following late night police radio reports, Timothy thought I was the perfect choice to cover the Sydney social scene.

  ‘It’s actually better that you’re new to it all,’ he had insisted. ‘You’ll be able to look at it with fresh eyes and not bring along any baggage.’

  I had immediately agreed because at least it meant that I was working on a mainstream newspaper and I would not have to spruik my stories as a freelancer. I told myself that after I had acquitted myself well on the social pages, I would be allowed to move on to something more challenging.

  Enthusiastic, enigmatic and knowledgeable, the private-school-educated Timothy was typical of the new breed of tabloid newspaper editors. He was charged with bringing over the readers from the stuffy broadsheets to the more refreshing, cheeky style of The Sydney News. Tall and substantial with a penchant for linen blazers, chinos and flamboyant ties, he dressed as if he were off to a polo match and not to the news floor. A lively presence, whenever he was in the office the air buzzed and popped around him.

  Being congratulated by my editor so early on was a heady experience, but I knew that I also had to return Susie Carruthers’ calls, which would not be easy. After all, it was only fair I should let her know that the story was to be published the following morning, so that she could prepare for it.

  I was nervous as I dialled her number, with my fingers crossed that I would get the answering machine. But she answered the phone on practically the first ring.

  ‘Susie?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s Savannah Stephens from The Sydney News.’

  I could hear the relief in her voice as she began, ‘Oh, thank goodness you called, because I just have to explain—’

  I cut her short. ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ I said, ‘but the story about Mrs Bonney’s party will be printed in the paper tomorrow.’

  ‘What?’ Despite her impeccable manners and her self-control, Susie let out a little scream. ‘Oh no!’

  ‘Sorry, it’s already being printed.’

  Both of us said nothing more for a few beats before she finally thanked me stiffly for letting her know and replaced the receiver.

  Following publication, there were no ca
lls from Queen Bea, who would never respond to the article in person but would leave that to others. No doubt this was because she and Harry were too busy packing for a sudden trip to Europe. The couple was spotted at the airport the very next day and they planned not to return for several weeks, by which time the embarrassment of the dinner party fiasco would have surely blown over. In the days following the publication of the article, Susie Carruthers let everyone know that the Madrid Fling was postponed until later in the year because the response had been so overwhelming that a new venue had to be found.

  I felt a little guilty about the treacherous report but at least it didn’t canvass the real reason that Queen Bea had thrown a tantrum—because she had been rejected by a bisexual soapie star. Most people thought that she’d just had a little turn for the worst.

  Queen Bea’s dinner party debacle brought to life on the front page of The Sydney News did not make my reputation as a society observer, but it did put people on notice that the days of fawning over socialites in the press were numbered. It also earned me grudging respect from my peers in the news room and quite a bit of jealousy over the rarely bestowed photo by-line. Some of my colleagues had waited years and had still not attained that—and here I was, a blow-in hired to work on what was still disparagingly referred to as ‘the women’s pages’.

  The atmosphere on The Sydney News floor was often as toxic as the cigar smoke that habitually curled around Malcolm Yates, the pompous chief-of-staff. Thankfully, I was not in his firing line because, like most of the alpha types on the newspaper, he rarely ventured up to the back of the news room, where those of us who wrote about fashion, cooking, parties and gossip were situated. It was as if the hardened news hounds believed they would be contaminated if they rubbed shoulders with us. In the news-room caste system, we were the untouchables.