One of Joe Berardo’s dreams was to meet three men: the Pope, Richard M Nixon and Harry Oppenheimer. HFO was the first box to be ticked. Joe met Harry in the early eighties over negotiations concerning Ergo, the mine dump retreatment operation of Anglo American. Joe owned the dumps, Anglo, the processing plant. Preparing to see HFO, Joe took along two presents – a bottle of Madeira Bual 1908, undoubtedly a great wine from the year of HFO’s birth. In 1999, Andrew Jefford’s tasting note for the D’Oliveria read as follows: “A wine of glowing clarity from its brick-red heart to its green rim (typical of all old Madeira). It seemed to smell of time itself, mossy and earthy yet ethereal too; it unraveled enthrallingly in the mouth, with different layers of flavour settling like geological strata firmly down on the tongue and gripping it for minutes with suggestions of grapes, raisins, pepper, salt, caramel, chocolate.”
The second gift was more idiosyncratic: a photograph of the grave of Harry’s younger brother Frank, who had drowned in the early hours of a Wednesday morning after a night on the town in Funchal, in April 1935 – 75 years to the week that Joe related the story to me as we tore around the highways north of Lisbon, looking for ancient windmills that rotate clockwise in contradiction to the modern ones that spin anti. Edward Jessup, describes the tragedy in Ernest Oppenheimer: a study in power (Rex Collings, 1979).
“Frank had left his home at 106 Berkeley Court, Baker Street, London the previous Saturday for a short holiday in Madeira. During that week the hot oppressive sirocco blowing from Africa had swept the island with wild gusts of desert fury in a way seldom seen. With the dying wind a hot canopy of moist air shrouded the black night with clinging humidity. After dining with friends at Reid’s Hotel perched high on the mountains overlooking the sweltering city nestling below, Frank and his party had gone to the Casino to play and dance. He appeared to be in excellent health and because it was such an exceptionally hot night, a bathing excursion was arranged.
Unlike his more conservative brother, Harry, Frank loved fast cars and parties. He drove to the municipal Lido at Funchal where he had a bathe. Suddenly he collapsed at the edge of the pool with his head resting in the shallow water. His friends tried desperately to revive him, but he was dead when the doctor arrived. He was twenty-six years old. The Portuguese doctor was of the opinion that the cause of death was congestion due to bathing too soon after a meal.”
Frank was a director of many of the East Rand gold mining companies whose dumps were now in Joe’s portfolio. Frank was the apple of his father’s eye and Jessup notes “Sir Ernest’s grief was deep. The sad and tragic loss of his youngest son numbed his being. Chilled with shock, the well of his mind ran dry.”
