In the Name of Gucci Page 10

  Nevertheless, my mother was in an alien country where everyone spoke a language she hardly understood and was far too nervous to attempt. Then history started to repeat itself because—just as in New York—London fell into the grip of a severe winter. Only this time it was far worse. What started as snow flurries quickly deteriorated into what was dubbed “the Big Freeze,” which began in earnest over Christmas with bitterly cold conditions continuing until early March. There were blizzards and gale-force winds, and in the southeast of England the sea froze in several places. London got off lightly by comparison but the pavement was still too treacherous for Mamma to go out in case she slipped.

  Trapped inside her apartment just as she’d been in Manhattan, she couldn’t help but resent being in this situation yet again, unable to live a normal life. “When you are treated like a secret, you tend to live like one,” she told me sorrowfully. Alone in her flat, she waited eagerly for every long-distance phone call from my father and was saddened that he no longer wrote her the beautiful letters of their early courtship. How she would have loved to read his looped handwriting again, telling her how much he adored her—“Our destiny is to be together—I feel it!” he once wrote.

  His destiny, however, seemed to keep him busier than ever, on a roller coaster he seemed unable to get off. Gucci was well and truly on the world map, just as he had planned, and he’d become too deeply involved to let it expand without his stewardship. His flowery promises of “eternal devotion and nurturing” seemed hollow when he was always so far away, leaving her afraid and lonely.

  Mamma would have been inconsolable if it weren’t for the companionship of Nicola. Ever since he’d come into their lives, the handsome young man she’d had a hand in hiring had become almost part of the family. So much so that my father suggested Nicola move into the apartment while she waited to give birth. His presence proved to be a gift to us both.

  The fun-loving Roman whom my mother refers to as “the first angel to walk into [her] life” introduced her to the British soap Coronation Street. It was a show they both loved, not least because of their endless amusement at the strange northern accents and how much tea everyone seemed to drink. If she didn’t feel like going out for supper, they’d cook pasta and curl up in front of the TV to watch old American movies and other shows. Nicola was obsessed with California and desperate to go to Hollywood, his dream destination. After watching films like Gidget and Beach Party about the surf culture on the West Coast, he developed a rose-tinted idea of living in Malibu surrounded by handsome young surfers. “That’s where I’m headed one day!” he’d tell Mamma. Thankfully for her, he was in London, at her side, and she had never been more grateful.

  My father flew into Heathrow at the end of February 1963 in preparation for my birth. Since he was the father of three sons, he and my mother both assumed that she would be having a boy. Ultrasound wasn’t used widely in British hospitals in the 1970s and it was impossible to know for sure. They were convinced nevertheless and had even chosen his name—Alessandro. So certain were they of my gender, in fact, that they didn’t even pick one for a girl.

  Unlike today, in the 1960s men were rarely present during labor. My father was no exception. He hadn’t been at Olwen’s bedside for the arrival of any of their children and told my mother that he used to go dancing instead. As she told me, “I neither wanted him there nor expected it. The fact that he’d interrupted his manic schedule to be at the clinic at all said everything to me.”

  So, as she struggled through an especially painful labor, my father quietly established that she was in good hands, then went for dinner and to see a movie. Imagine his surprise when, on his return later that night, the nurse told him, “Congratulations! You have a daughter!”

  With the help of forceps, I had fought my way into the world kicking and bawling at 9:25 p.m. on March 1. My weight was seven pounds, eleven ounces, and I was “all arms and legs with a big mouth,” according to Mamma. My father delightedly checked me over in the nursery for himself before rushing to my mother’s room with a huge grin.

  “It’s a girl! She’s beautiful! Once again, you have given me something I have always wanted, Brunicchi!” He was over the moon.

  Only a devoted father could have declared me beautiful after looking at my screwed-up face, purple with rage as I shrieked at the indignity of being born. Having given my mother a tough time during my delivery, I didn’t stop there.

  “I swear that all the fear, sorrow, and anguish I felt during my pregnancy transferred to you,” my mother admitted. “You screamed so much you woke up the entire ward.” Since I refused to be breast-fed and cried nonstop, a pretty Australian nurse named Patricia stepped in and took me in her arms, where I eventually settled down. Such was her tender care my mother decided to name me after her. For my middle name she chose Delia.

  My father stuck around for a few days before flying off to Paris to finalize preparations for the opening of his first store there, near Place Vendôme. The flowers he sent her every other day quickly overwhelmed her hospital room and then her apartment. No amount of flowers now could make up for the fact that she was on her own, however. Barely able to take care of herself—let alone me—and without Delia to show her how, she still feared what would happen to us both. My father was ever kind and attentive but in the last stages of her pregnancy, when she was feeling less attractive, he hadn’t been around as much as before. Was that a coincidence or by design? she began to wonder. Would he move on to someone new? Or abandon her in England?

  “All I could think about was what would happen when we returned to Rome,” she would say years later. Fear robbed her of the sleep she so badly needed and she found it difficult to care for me. She often struggled to get through each day and vowed privately that, if she could help it, she’d never fall pregnant again.

  Our “angel” Nicola was the one who bore the brunt. After a long day’s work, he’d come home to my tearful mother, who’d hand me over to him immediately. “Please, Nicola. She won’t stop crying. I need to sleep!” Never having cared for a baby before, all he could think to do was put me in my pram and wheel me up and down the corridor to give my mother some rest.

  My father flew back to London for my christening at St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church on March 12, almost two weeks after my birth. Built in 1877, it was a severe-looking Victorian edifice and one of the oldest Roman Catholic parishes in London. As the handful of guests—friends and neighbors who formed part of my parents’ inner circle—gathered around the white marble font, the priest doused me in holy water. Nicola was there as my godfather, Lucia had flown in from Rome to be my godmother, and everyone else present was asked to turn to Christ, repent their sins, and renounce all evil.

  Even though I was being “cleansed of all sin” by being baptized, my mother still knew that I was ultimately illegittima. The unsuspecting priest who signed my baptism certificate had no way of knowing that my parents were in fact not lawfully married—another lie perpetrated by my father.

  He didn’t stop there, and went on to officially log my birth at the London registry of births and deaths with his name and that of my mother written indelibly in ink. To legitimize my birth as he had promised, he wrote, “Aldo and Bruna Gucci.” In his mind I honestly think he believed that to be true.

  My mother’s fears about the future were compounded by the fact that he still made no mention of our returning to Rome. It was only when she repeatedly told him how miserable she was so far from home that he conceded. At just twenty-eight days old, I was added to my mother’s passport, cocooned in a blanket, and flown back to Italy.

  “We’ll have to be much more careful from now on,” my father warned her. With me in the picture, my parents had no illusions about how secretive their lives would now have to be. There would be no family outings or walks along the street where people knew them.

  “I’d rather keep a low profile in Rome than be alone in London,” my mother replied, fed up as she was with the weather, t
he food, and the language. She hadn’t considered how low her profile would need to be, however; she was unable to wheel me around in a pram in her own neighborhood without questions being asked. Instead, a Spanish nanny they’d hired would take me out and my parents would meet as before.

  As someone who was once a young mother, I cannot imagine being unable to show my daughter off to the world and take her wherever I want. Yes, it was a different generation and my parents did what they had to under the circumstances, but the idea that they were so restricted saddens me no end.

  They must have believed it was a price worth paying. And that was how they managed to keep me a secret—for almost one year.

  Confrontation has never been my mother’s style. Her general feelings of inadequacy and lack of confidence usually prevent her from speaking her mind.

  I am exactly the opposite. Being a pawn in somebody else’s game characterized my childhood to some extent, giving me no choice but to do what I was told. With age and wisdom, I was able to express myself and let others know how I was feeling.

  Mamma never really discovered her voice in the same way and whenever she came up against any dispute she would often shrink back in silence. Imagine her discomfort then, when, alone with me in Rome one afternoon, she opened the door to her apartment to come face-to-face with a well-heeled emissary from my father’s wife, Olwen.

  “Signora Gucci knows all about you—and the baby,” the woman announced through pinched lips.

  Mamma’s heart leapt into her mouth.

  “Signora Gucci feels that it would be in everyone’s interests if you gave up all claim to her husband, Dr. Gucci,” she continued, fixing my mother with a steely glare. “You’re still young,” she added flippantly. “You can start again.”

  Unable to summon any meaningful words, my mother began to stammer something but was never given the opportunity to respond.

  “If you can’t care for your child on your own, then Signora Gucci is prepared to take her off your hands.”

  Mamma stepped back, physically recoiling from what she was hearing.

  Ignoring her reaction, the woman assured her, “She would have the best possible care.”

  My mother’s hand flew to her chest as she fought for breath.

  “Think very carefully about this,” her visitor concluded before twisting on her heel and leaving my mother gasping for air.

  As she staggered back into her apartment and tumbled into a chair, she recalled the day she’d first set eyes on Olwen when she came into the store to buy Christmas gifts. She’d been struck then by the humility and sweet manner of the woman who’d been Signora Gucci since the 1920s.

  “I was impressed by her,” my mother told me. “She seemed so very nice and proper.” Was it arrogance or desperation that led her to dispatch this cruel messenger? Either way, what kind of a callous mother did she imagine her to be that she’d give up her own child? Even though Mamma knew my father’s marriage was in name only, she still felt guilty about their affair, but this latest move was both offensive and shocking.

  We will never know exactly how or when she found out about us, but in all likelihood the news reached her through Giorgio, the eldest of her sons, who had recently been tipped off by a series of anonymous letters. The first was a single typewritten sheet, which arrived in an envelope with a local postmark. Its unnamed author knew all about my mother and me, and claimed my father lavished gifts on Mamma “like an Indian prince.” More correspondence followed, giving the specifics of my christening in London, our address in Rome, and places my parents had visited together. Set out with forensic attention to detail, the evidence was clearly designed to let my father know that I, his secret love child, could be exposed.

  My father wasn’t easily alarmed and the poisonous letters undoubtedly angered him when his stammering son showed them to him, but he said little and didn’t reveal his emotions. He knew Giorgio and Olwen were close and that Giorgio would be naturally protective of her.

  My mother, however, completely lost her nerve. After all the years of hiding in plain sight, they’d been caught. “I became obsessed with finding out who had written those horrible letters,” she said. “What did they want? They contained so much personal information that I began suspecting everyone, even Nicola.”

  After making a few inquiries, my father broke the news to Mamma that one of her trusted friends—a woman who’d known virtually everything about her—was the one who’d betrayed us. Worse still, she’d been collaborating with a member of his family and together they’d orchestrated the whole thing. There was an ulterior motive, of course, and when it came to light my father agreed to the proposition to avoid any further controversy and put an end to the whole affair.

  The experience bruised my mother badly. Not only had she been deceived by a close friend, it damaged her trust in almost everyone. For the first time she came to realize that—aside from the dangerous legal consequences of being associated with my father—there were disadvantages she’d never even considered, not least jealousy from those she’d once considered friends.

  If she feared that the ominous visit from Olwen’s messenger had heralded the beginning of the end for her and Papà, however, she was wrong. As she tearfully recounted what had happened that day, word for word, my father’s growing fury was apparently frightening to witness. Although she’d seen him snap at colleagues and heard tales of his losing his temper elsewhere, she had never seen him quite so incensed.

  When he heard her tell him that Olwen had offered to take me off her hands, something inside him snapped. His face like thunder, he left immediately for Villa Camilluccia to confront his wife of forty years. My mother would never know precisely what happened during their heated exchange but she was later assured that he’d told her everything about us, reiterating in no uncertain terms his abiding love for Mamma and me.

  “Don’t ever try anything like that again!” he told Olwen conclusively.

  She never did.

  Traumatized by the whole affair and still petrified about the future, my mother resolved to start saving every lira my father gave her for expenses. “The jewelry was lovely,” she told me, “but I couldn’t buy food with it if I needed to.” Instead of squandering the money he gave her to pay for food and the nanny, clothes, and furnishings, she made certain sacrifices—cutting back on household expenses or deciding not to buy a new pair of shoes. Without wishing to give her carte blanche to do as she pleased, my father gave her what he thought was enough, without knowing that she was putting it away for a rainy day like an ant saving all her crumbs.

  It was around this time that that her second “angel” walked into our lives. Her name was Maureen, a pragmatic young woman from Sunderland in the north of England who had replied to an advertisement my father had placed in the Lady magazine. My parents liked her immediately and hired her on the spot. My father had always loved British decorum and wanted me to be raised by an English-speaking nanny so I could learn the language—although her marked Tyneside accent may not have been quite what he had in mind.

  Our real-life Mary Poppins was about the same age as my mother with cropped ginger hair, a knowing smile, and sensible shoes. Mamma appreciated everything about her. She even spoke a little Italian, and with my mother’s rudimentary English, they eventually switched effortlessly between the two.

  As a baby I demanded lots of attention, which Maureen was only too happy to give me. She dubbed me her “Poppet” or “Little Flower” and looked after me in a way my mother simply couldn’t. Demanding to be seen and heard and with more energy than I knew how to handle, at night I’d refuse to lie down, standing in my cot and rattling the wooden rails until they broke. Poor Maureen would sit patiently alongside me, her feet wedged up against the bars of my crib to keep it from breaking, trying to read a book until I eventually ran out of steam.

  In the daytime I was equally restless, picking up whatever was in reach and ripping newspapers to shreds. Exasperated, my mother frequently ex
claimed, “You are most definitely your father’s child! It must be something in the blood.” Inexperienced as she was, she could never have coped with me on her own.

  At least now that my mother and I were out in the open there was less need for secrecy, which must have been a relief for everyone concerned, but my parents still had to be circumspect and keep up appearances. The one blessing was that, no matter how indignant Olwen might have been, she would never be so stupid as to alert the authorities. The effects of such a scandal would have been devastating for her and her children, whose livelihood depended on the success of the business.

  My father had other things to think about, not least how to meet growing demand following an endorsement by Princess Grace of Monaco. The former Hollywood actress Grace Kelly—who’d flouted the plot of Roman Holiday by marrying her prince—was to become one of Gucci’s most loyal customers, drawing swarms of paparazzi and cheering crowds whenever she walked through the doors of Via Condotti that they had to be held back by the carabinieri. On a visit to the Milan store she asked for a silk scarf with a floral print. Too embarrassed to say no, my uncle Rodolfo stepped in to tell her he was in the process of developing such a range and she would be the first to receive one. The “Flora” scarf specifically created for her became another international bestseller that helped spread the Gucci brand around the globe.

  In response to the growing sales, my father decided to relocate the original Florence store to Via Tornabuoni, the shopping thoroughfare in the district, and organized a pre-Christmas opening to mark the inauguration in 1966. His son Paolo and my uncle Vasco meanwhile supervised the construction of a new factory in Scandicci, on the fringes of the city.