The Rich Are Different (38 page)

‘I’m going to get Paul back,’ I said to Harriet as I walked out of the
hospital with his son ten days later, and when she exclaimed in horror: ‘But you can’t possibly do that!’ I laughed till the tears came into my eyes and said: ‘Oh yes I can!’

[6]

I took a lease on a large old-fashioned flat in South Kensington and invited Dulcie and her baby to move in with me. Joan and Eddie had just separated, the lease on their flat had expired and Dulcie was in need of a home and people to look after just as I was in need of a housekeeper and nursemaid. We both missed Cedric, Robin and Harriet, but I thought it was time I left the raffishness of Chelsea and soon Harriet too moved to a better area as we increased our efforts to woo the cream of society to our Mayfair salon.

Once I had decided that my product must first appeal to the aristocracy I had realized that I must launch my venture by opening a salon. Paul had talked glibly of mass production but in fact there were already on the market for the working-class various lotions and pastes ranging from hair tonic to bust food cream as well as the cheap scents which one would expect from companies who seldom charged more than a few pence for their wares. I wanted to make a large amount of money rapidly, and I saw no quick profit in selling lavender water at twopence a bottle. Moreover, after buying a bottle of skin tonic from a competitor and having the contents analysed, I discovered that the so-called magic properties of this aid to beauty consisted only of water, grain alcohol, boric acid and perfume. The ingredients might have been cunningly balanced but the cost of the materials could hardly have been more than threepence a bottle. The product was retailing for nine shillings.

‘There’s a moral in that story,’ I said to Harriet, and we calculated that even after the costs of labour, distribution, expensive packaging and advertising we would still be able to net a margin of more than twenty-five per cent on each bottle sold at wholesale.

‘The moral,’ agreed Harriet, confirming my earlier theories, ‘is not to chase a mass-market who only have pennies to spare for cosmetics, but to woo the select few who think pennies are only for tipping page-boys.’

After calling on numerous estate agents I found suitable business premises in the heart of Mayfair. The ground floor was then converted into a salon while the upper floors remained as offices, and after protracted arguments about the salon’s decor we settled on a style which managed to be reminiscent of both Versailles and a Toulouse-Lautrec bordello. Our speciality was gold mirrors. We also had plenty of pink, a colour I abhor, but as Cedric said: ‘It’s feminine, dear,’ and I had to admit the dusty pink velvet upholstery gave an added voluptuousness to the gilt furniture and the gilt-framed reproductions of the paintings of Rubens at his most sensuous. The carpet, I regret to say, was baby blue. The only redeeming feature was that the colour reminded me of Cambridge. In this profusion of nursery
pastels our clients were manicured and massaged and had their hair dressed, their chins strapped and their faces painted by three expert beauty consultants whom we captured at great expense from Oxford Street, Bond Street and – this last was a great triumph – Paris. The Parisian had been personal maid to Harriet’s mother for some years, and when the Marchioness died that Christmas Harriet ensnared the maid whose talent for hair-dressing had long been a byword in the family.

These experts had the burden of putting our theories into practice and we came to rely heavily on their advice. At first our major emphasis was on shampoo and hair tonic with soap and bath salts in three different perfumes, but soon the emphasis was directed to skin tonic and skin food, particularly our skin cream which I had insisted should be feather-light and as greaseless as possible. I had to work long hours to find the right texture, but in general the preparations were easy to make. The challenge lay in ensuring they smelled not only unique but irresistible.

I had to borrow more money from Hal in order to make the advertising splash I knew our salon deserved, but I was determined not to skimp on a single detail. In addition to all the paid advertisements in the magazines, Harriet’s friends on
The Illustrated London News
gave us an enthusiastic paragraph on the ‘World of Women’ page, and Harriet herself used all her aristocratic connections to lure our clients through our baby-blue Georgian front door. The salon was launched. It swayed, tottered but stayed afloat, and when within six months it was sailing triumphantly on the crest of the waves Cedric and I packed a large suitcase with our wares and set out to conquer the provinces. I had thought we should start the search to find wholesale outlets in the West End, but Cedric had enough experience of the cosmetics business to know that we would have to produce evidence of provincial conquests before Harrods would grant us an audience.

My life became busier than ever. I was concerned with all aspects of the business, and my waking hours were occupied with problems which ranged from matters of taste, such as whether to advertise eye make-up, to matters of production, such as whether I could afford to expand the laboratory facilities and engage a first-class chemist to perfect my lipstick formula. Lipstick was in many ways the easiest product to manufacture. The basic formula was simple and fashion decreed only three shades, light, medium and dark, but it was a messy product and I longed to eliminate a woman’s chance of a smudgy disaster.

I finally decided I could afford a specialist when my perfumes started to make money. I had devised the idea that fashionable women should change their perfume when they changed their clothes, and as my clients changed clothes three or four times a day, this naturally led to increased perfume sales. I advocated ‘Hera’ for the tailored suit, ‘Artemis’ for the afternoon frock and ‘Aphrodite’ for the evening gown, and soon we had abandoned our limited laboratory facilities by the river in Pimlico and I was buying a small warehouse which could be converted into a factory.

Newcastle-upon-Tyne held out against us but Birmingham followed
Manchester’s example and Cedric was already licking his lips at the thought of the West End. By the end of 1925, I no longer had to beg for a loan, and amidst the clamour of the sales conferences and the advertising meetings, the marketing and the research, the warehouse and the salon, the staff and the clients, I dimly realized I was not only making ends meet but was launched firmly on my road to independence.

By this time I had written many letters to Paul and had received many in return but the correspondence had been initiated only after much hard work and frustration. When Alan had been born in the March of 1923 I had written again to Paul. Having told myself that I was now not merely his discarded mistress but the mother of his only child I had thought it would be easy to write with confidence, but it had taken me three days before I had achieved a pleasant neutral style which ran no risk of alarming him.

‘My dear Paul,’ I began, ‘Alan came punctually on the twenty-seventh of March and weighed seven pounds one ounce. Since you and I both have brown eyes I thought there had been some mistake when this blue-eyed baby was offered to me for inspection, but apparently his eyes will turn brown later and the doctor assured me that it was most unlikely that I had produced a genetic freak. My housekeeper is looking after him at present while I work but before she collapses with exhaustion I am going to offer Mrs Oakes’ daughter Mary the post of full-time nanny. This will be a promotion for Mary as she has only been a nursemaid up till now – although God knows being employed by the notorious Dinah Slade can hardly rank in respectability with her present post among the aristocracy of Suffolk! However, enough of domestic trivia. I won’t refer to the business since that subject is best left to our official correspondence, but if Hofstadt and Baker continue to whine that I’m an incompetent woman unhinged by pregnancy I assure you that I intend to make them look even stupider than they look already. When I find the time to dust the lens of my camera I’ll take some photographs of Alan and send them to you. He’s pink, bald and interesting. Yours, D.’

Of course I had already taken two rolls of film but I did not want to inundate Paul with a tidal wave of maternal bliss. My father had always said how dreary he found women who gushed endlessly about the joys of motherhood, and I wanted to intrigue Paul, not to bore him.

His reply to my letter was pleasant but polite as if my news had rendered him uncharacteristically at a loss for the appropriate charming phrase. He said he was extremely glad to hear that I was well, and he added in a quaint Victorian fashion that he did hope the experience of childbirth had not been too severe an ordeal. He was glad to hear Alan was thriving. After that remark he seemed unsure what to say next but he did comment that it would be ‘nice’ to see a photograph at some later date. He concluded the letter: ‘Affectionately, PAUL.’

I did send some photographs, two at a time in a steady stream, but received only the briefest of acknowledgements. However, when I informed Paul with icy courtesy that Alan’s christening was imminent I received a
registered parcel containing a silver christening mug. There was no card enclosed, no message of any kind.

‘You
bloody
American!’ I shouted, hurling the mug at the wall in a rage, but afterwards I remembered how Paul had insisted he could never acknowledge Alan and I saw the mug was a gesture in my favour.

Calming down I selected the best of my latest batch of photographs, enlarged it and posted it to New York with a note which read:

By return of post came a note quoting the second verse of Catullus’ poem in praise of a baby. I smiled. Presently I sent more pictures, more scraps of Latin and an occasional epigram in Greek, and in a bright, breezy, studiedly unemotional correspondence we discussed the role of the chorus in Greek drama, the structure of the Theban plays, the true meaning of
Lysistrata
, the socratic concept of democracy and the homosexuality of Alexander the Great. Tiring of the Greeks we then discussed the influence of Cato on Marcus Junius Brutus, the virtues of Sulla (I claimed he had none), the mystical properties of Lucretius’
De Rerum Natura
, Virgil’s views on bee-keeping, the philosophy of Marcus Aurelius and the sexual inclinations of Gaius Julius Caesar (I suggested the famous incident in Bithynia had been an isolated incident magnified by his enemies until it had assumed mythical dimensions). Eventually we devised quizzes to test each other’s knowledge; they were great fun and brushed up my classical skills enormously.

He would ask politely after Alan and sometimes he would make some awkward comment on the photographs. He truly seemed to have no idea what to say on the subject of his son, and in his reticence I sensed some Protean conflict clouding his clear incisive mind. However, I was determined to be patient because I knew that once he had accepted that I still had a part to play in his life I would be well on the way to winning him back.

Meanwhile I was well on the way to winning a reputation for my products in London. Harrods at first turned us down, but Marshall’s and Gorringe’s agreed to give us a try and it was when they rapidly sold out of stock that Harrods reversed their decision. With my salon expanding, my staff increasing and my cosmetics on sale in Knightsbridge I visited Paris to cull new ideas and even toyed with the idea of a salon across the Channel, but Hal told me I should shore up the success I had won in London before I looked for fresh worlds to conquer.

It was a relief to take his advice. I was probably much more exhausted than I realized, for the strain of working seven days a week with few breaks
for nearly three years was considerable. At home I lived quietly. Every spare moment I had was spent with Alan and although I longed for Mallingham I seldom saw it. At first I tried to go there every other weekend, but the pressures of work made this impossible and I became more confined to London. This in turn precluded the hermit-like existence for which I yearned whenever I escaped from the office, for Harriet gave numerous dinners and luncheons to cultivate our clientele and I reluctantly found I had to attend. At first I thought I could escape by pleading that my past private life rendered me socially unacceptable, but to my surprise Harriet promised I would be lionized. She was right. Apparently my refusal to fade away into obscurity just like any other decent unmarried mother had enthralled the gossips who had been following my career, and now my phoenix-like resurgence from the ashes of my love affair had transformed me into a
femme fatale.

No one could have been more amazed than I was. I still thought of myself as too well-educated to appeal to anyone except Paul, and so it came as a shock to discover men of all ages brazenly displaying their ambition to step into Paul’s shoes. In vain I explained that I did not belong in the
demimonde
, but when I started talking about self-respect and claimed that promiscuity was psychologically untenable, my pursuers all laughed in delight and said how original I was. I became exhausted fighting off these Lotharios, but there was no doubt that their admiration, spurious though it was, was good for my self-esteem. I did become more confident socially, but since all my admirers seemed vastly inferior to Paul I was never tempted to embark on another affair. Anyway I had no time. One can only do so much, and being a mother and running a business took all the energy I had.

Alan grew. He became the most beautiful baby in the world. He sat up, smiled, screamed imperiously. Soon he crawled. At eleven months he was staggering beside me as he clutched my fingers in his hot little hand, and when he began to talk he became not only the most beautiful baby in the world but the cleverest. My camera clicked constantly, and far away across the Atlantic Ocean at the offices of P.C. Van Zale & Company, Paul received a continuing record of his son’s progress.