Audrey Hepburn: An Intimate Portrait (54 page)

It
took place only a few hundred yards from Audrey’s home in the Eglise de
Tolochenaz, a simple, brown, stone church. A shaken, pale Mel Ferrer arrived
with his fourth wife, Lise. He stood quietly at the sidelines, rhythmically
squeezing his camel-colored gloves and biting his lip as if to hold back the
tears. “Come, Papa,” Sean called to his father. The two men tightly
embraced one another before walking through the church portal. Rev. Maurice
Eindiguer, the retired Episcopal minister who had married Hepburn and Ferrer in
Burgenstock in 1954, conducted the short, moving service.

He
cried, too, but silently, like so many of the mourners, who seemed intent on
conducting themselves with the quiet aplomb of the woman they so loved.
“Even in her illness,” he said, “she visited those children in
Somalia. She was a wonderful, giving lady who thought less of herself than
anyone I ever met. She reached out to those dying children, year after year. A
movie star? They didn’t know that. She was a lady who hugged them. And in their
faces was a light reflected from her smile.”

More
than seven hundred townsfolk waited quietly outside the church to pay their
last respects to their neighbor and friend, Madame Hepburn. They heard the
sweet hymns being sung by a nearby girls’ choir, and some of them joined in.

The
graveyard was visible from the church. Audrey’s casket, a simple blond oak, was
carried by her sons, Sean and Luca; her beloved, Robbie Wolders; her ex-husband
Andrea Dotti; and her dear friend Hubert de Givenchy. Ferrer, too frail to
offer his assistance, walked nearby.

As
she was laid to rest, friends threw white tulips into her grave. It was marked
by a simple wooden cross that read: AUDREY HEPBURN 1929-1993. Next to the cross
there is a small garden. But no one to tend it now.

“Last
Christmas Eve,” Sean said when he was asked to say a few words about his
mother, “Mummy read a letter to us. [It said] `If you ever need a helping
hand, it’s at the end of your arm. As you get older, you must remember you have
a second hand. The first one is to help yourself; the second one is to help
others.‘ ”

Beneath
that stunningly breathtaking exterior was the heart of a saint. It was a rare
confluence of attributes. Audrey touched as many people with her kindness as
she did with her beauty.

“I
am and forever will be devastated by the gift of Audrey Hepburn before my
camera,” said photographer Richard Avedon. “In a way that was unique
in my experience as a photographer, I loved her, but I always found her
impossible to photograph.

“However
you defined the encounter of the sexes, she won. I couldn’t lift her to greater
heights. She is already there. I could only record. I could not interpret her.
There was no going further than who she was. She paralyzed me. She had achieved
in herself the ultimate portrait.

“There
was a moment between us she knows nothing of. I was walking one freezing
evening in the Tuileries. I saw Audrey coming toward me. She was out with her
dog. The way she moved through the low winter light, through the leafless
trees, the absolute shadow she and the iced branches cast in my direction,
stopped me dead—forced me to cross the path to avoid the flat-out immobilizing
power of her presence. There was no way I could enter that perfect moment. She
was already there.”

Audrey
finally achieved a perfection in her life that matched her outward and inward
beauty. Her death, however untimely, however unfair, came at a time when she
was doing exactly what she wanted—and when she finally knew what that was:
working ceaselessly to help starving children, puttering around in her beloved
garden, enjoying quiet times with Wolders and her two sons. Through hard work
and good luck, she had exorcised the demons of insecurity that had plagued her
youth.

In
her last years, Audrey experienced unabashed joy. The story of her life had, at
last, achieved a happy ending.