Barbara Harris, Barbara Grant Jaynes

Born in East Africa to English parents Leslie and James Harris, Barbara Grant Jaynes attended an English boarding school from the age of ten. Barbara first met Cary Grant in 1976, when she was head of public relations for the Royal Lancaster Hotel in West London. He stayed there on visits to London as a director of Fabergé. She was 28 and he was 75. "We liked each other from the start", she says, "but for two years we were just great friends. I never envisaged having any other kind of relationship with him, but because he was such an extraordinary individual, regardless of the 47-year-age gap, I couldn't stop falling in love with him, even though I knew that our time together would probably be limited, the quality of it was extraordinarily important to me and I wouldn't have changed it for the world". "At the beginning, when we were just friends", she says, "Cary would call from the U.S. to tell me he was coming over, and I would take him down to see his relatives in Bristol and to see my parents. He would come in my Mini. He would be sitting with his knees up to his nose because he was so tall. I instantly liked him as a person. We used to have great fun just talking and laughing. He would ask me for more personal details about my life. I had a boyfriend and he used to tease me about him". Two years after they first met, Grant was invited to Princess Caroline's wedding in Monaco. "Gregory Peck and his family, the Sinatras - everyone was there, and they were all at a famous restaurant called La Chaumière up in the hills", says Barbara. "One of them said to Cary, "You're all by yourself. Isn't there anyone you'd like to have here?" and he said, "Yes, there is, but she won't have anything to do with me". And that was sort of true because, although I did enjoy his company immensely, he was so much older than me. But his friends persuaded him to call me to see if I would agree to join him in France. He was convinced I wouldn't want to, but I agreed to give it a try. At first I wasn't sure and hesitated, and then I suddenly decided, 'Yes, I'd love to come over'. It was then that the whole relationship started for us. We stayed in a lovely hotel and I spent a lot of time in Gregory Peck's house while Cary was at the wedding. Afterwards, he hurried back to be with me". Although Barbara found herself surrounded by the ream of Hollywood who had arrived for the royal wedding, it appears she wasn't fazed by any of it. "It doesn't matter what field they're in", she says, "you either like people or you don't. I've always been far more interested in the person than I was in the name. Both with Cary and anyone else I met". Even when Grant decided he wanted Barbara to go over to Los Angeles to see if she would like to live there with him, she went for three weeks to test the waters. "He showed me everything, introduced me to all his friends, and by then I was absolutely caught. I moved to the U.S. to be with Cary". The couple married in 1981. Grant was 77 and Barbara was 30. Before proposing, Grant decided to visit his daughter, Jennifer, whom he'd had with his fourth wife Dyan Cannon. Jennifer was still at school and Grant wanted to find out how she would feel about him marrying Barbara. "Apparently, Jennifer burst into tears", says Barbara. "To begin with Cary thought she was upset, but, to his relief, it was tears of joy". She later learned Jennifer was hugely relieved that her father had at last found someone he could be happy with. Two weeks after he visited his daughter, Cary proposed. "He did actually go down on his knee", says Barbara, laughing at the recollection. The closer Barbara came to Grant, the less important the age difference became. "I often thought about it before I ever went to America. But I wouldn't have gone if I didn't think I could manage the situation", she says. "I became less aware of it the more I got to know Cary, because he had such an inquisitive mind and was interested in everything. He was wonderfully fit and had a great physique. He looked better than an awful lot of people I knew who were 30 years his junior. For me he was so open. He would talk about himself, about anything. I thought he was very easy to get to know".  In 1965, Grant married Dyan Cannon, becoming a father at the age of 62 with the birth of Jennifer. Barbara says, "I think Cary had wanted children beforehand. Part of the reason he didn't have them, he said, was his own selfishness. He was too involved with his own career. But Jennifer meant the world to him". Now 52, one of her biggest regrets was that she never had a child of her own. "We did talk about it and we were trying to have a baby. In fact, when he died, that very month we thought that I was pregnant. But if I was, I lost the baby". She has never forgotten the day Grant died. She was traveling with him on one of his lecture tours. 'During a rehearsal I noticed that he was becoming a little bit confused, and that wasn't like him. He called me up on to the stage and asked me to stay with him. Then he said he really wanted to go and just rest, and walked off into the dressing room area. It was at that stage that I realized there was something seriously wrong We called for an ambulance. At the hospital they said he was having a massive stroke. He could have died in his bed at home, he could have died anywhere. But he was on the road and at least he was doing something that he loved to do". On his death, Barbara inherited his house and shares with his daughter the multi-million-pound fortune he left behind. (Barbara's share was about £30 million). She remarried in 2001, to American businessman David Jaynes. "Cary made me listen to him. He used to sit me down and say, 'I'm not going to be here for all your life and when I'm not here, I want you to marry. I want you to love again and I want you to be very happy.' Wasn't that the most generous thing in the world?"