Wednesday, March 13, 2024

THE CLIFFORD - EDITH - NINA TRIAD : NO ONE WAY TO LOVE

Notes and excerpts by Missy.


After her initial time with new lover, Clifford Irving, on Ibiza, when her husband Frederik showed up at least three weeks early and she confessed that she love him but was in love with Clifford, Nina  tried on reality and believe that the love affair was over. She wrote in her memoir that her husband's hurt and anger gave her hope for their marriage.

Excerpt: page 167:

As the evening wore on, the cold, hard realities of the whole thing slipped into perspective. Was this not another Ibiza fantasy of no tomorrow (I'd heard of so many)? With two babies, a complex but surely very special relationship with Frederik, and our families who loved us all, could I really jeopardize all this because of this feeling for a man who was, after all, a stranger  -- not so much anymore to me, of course, but to everything my life had been up to that point?  I couldn't -- I was suddenly sure I couldn't.

Frederik's fury gradually subsided. Later, he told me that at the time he was not so angry at my confusion as with my choice.  Clifford, to his thinking, was worth no more than a dalliance, if anything.

Three days later, Clifford and I met and we had very little to say to each other. It was over -- it had to be. That afternoon, Frederik agreed that I should go to Copenhagen for a week... When I returned to Ibiza eight days later, things were all right, as I had determined they would be. I saw Clifford several times again that summer of '64 at parties and around the island, but we hardly spoke to each other.  It was as though we'd both turned off a switch...\

Notes:

Nina and Frederik return to London and then their touring schedule... their routines with their children...  They returned to Ibiza where their rented farmhouse was undergoing some refurbishing.  The place was falling apart, really, almost comedic, if not tragic, as one thing after another needed repair. Yet it was also there they had domesticity.  Frederik was spending most of his time in town while she tended to the children, and Nina was not comfortable with the friends he was bringing to the house.  To Nina her husband seemed strange and remote. In 1965 they traveled to New Zealand and Australia to work. When Frederik would return to the Island and home she felt there had been a communication breakdown. Her third pregnancy had left her feeling unwell and the delivery was a nightmare, unlike her first and second born. the emergency was such that Nina could have died... By 1966 when the duo were in London to sing at Albert Hall, Nina was depressed.  As entertainers their careers were doing well but summers were spent separated.

Then Nina and Clifford had no contact for two years after their parting.  She got a letter from him finally saying he'd heard she'd been ill.  He had divorced Fay, the wife he had been living with when they met, and was living on and off with a German woman named Edith, whom he had known for some time. Edith would become Clifford's next wife.

Excerpts pages 177-178:

We ran into each other at the beach one day, and he asked me to come by his studio for a glass of wine.  A day or so later, I did.  I hadn't heard much from Frederik that summer. He was still off sailing with friends. Our relationship was disintegrating rapidly, and although we loved each other, it was as if we were constantly getting our wires crossed.  I suppose I had my rigid ideas of what marriage should be, and I'd come to realize that basically Frederik didn't want to be married at all...

Clifford and I, trying to recapture a happier time, were soon woven into the spell of the island and began seeing each other again, just the two of us alone. During the afternoons we could steal, we swam off the rocks below his studio, drank wine on his terrace or in the clutter of his paper-strewn workroom, listened to music, talked or argued, and pretended that time didn't exist - no past -- no future, a very common phenomenon in Ibiza  That summer, we were lovers.

Notes: 

At the end of July Nina was back to work but Frederik told her that he had met a girl during the summer, and the husband and wife realized they were friends

More in a future post!

C 2024 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

All Rights Reserved including International and Internet Rights

No comments: