“I can,” I said. “Be my sales director. The Americans are looking for one, but I’d thought of offering you the job for some time.”
“Oh my Gawd!” He tried to hug me, but my stomach got in the way. Finally he compromised by shaking my hand and demanding, “Who says women shouldn’t be in business?”
“Hofstadt and Baker will when they hear I’ve appointed a sales director without consulting them.”
I was right. The Americans said I was ignorant, that the important post should be filled by someone well-educated, that they would cable New York to arrange for my removal from power.
“Go ahead,” I said, guessing correctly that Paul would refer the matter back to Hal.
There were further heated scenes. By this time my employment of Cedric was only one of the long list of mistakes the Americans attributed to me, and at last they announced outraged that if I persisted in ignoring their advice I would be bankrupt within a year.
“That won’t concern you,” I said politely, “since you won’t be working for me. I’ll arrange for Mr. Beecher to give you the necessary severance pay and you can leave for America at your earliest convenience.”
They asked incredulously if I was giving them notice. I confirmed that I was.
“But you can’t do that!” they chorused in horror.
“I’m terribly sorry,” I said, “but I rather think I can.”
As soon as they had roared out of the room on their way to Milk Street I telephoned Hal.
“They’ve got to go,” I said to him. “They’re useless. London isn’t New York, and England isn’t America, yet they persist in applying the wrong set of rules to the wrong set of circumstances. Hal, I’ve never asked you for anything before, but I’m asking you now. Back me up. I know I’m right Trust me. Please.”
He trusted me. The salaries were terminated, the Americans departed in fury, and before I had had the chance to recover from my first board-room battle, Alan entered the world.
V
Harriet and Cedric came with me to the hospital, but after that I was on my own. I was nervous yet immensely excited, and suddenly as all my business struggles faded into insignificance I could think only of Paul three thousand miles away in New York. During the hours of labor I said his name aloud as if he could hear me, and when the word fell emptily into the silence the tears streamed down my cheeks. All my bitterness towards him dissolved. I no longer cared how badly he had treated me, and as the pain of labor deepened I drew strength from my memories of that splendid summer until I knew not only that I still loved him but that I was going to move heaven and earth to get him back.
That was when I recovered from the overwhelming blow of his rejection. That was when I realized that although he himself had made the mistake of thinking our affair was over I did not have to compound his error by accepting it. It no longer mattered what Paul thought. That was irrelevant. I knew he belonged with me at Mallingham, and when Alan was placed in my arms all my hatred of losing surged through me and I vowed to pour my whole soul into winning what I wanted most.
“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!”
VI
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 classes 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 analyzed 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 may 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 labor, distribution, expensive packaging and advertising we would still be able to net a margin of more than twenty-five percent 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 décor 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 color I abhor, but as Cedric said, “It’s feminine, dear,” and I had to admit that the dusty-pink velvet upholstery gave an added voluptuousness to the gilt furniture and to 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 color 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 hairdressing 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 makeup, 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. By the end of 1925 I no longer had to beg for a loan, and amidst the clamor 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 not only was 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 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 inspections 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’s 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 acknowledgments. 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 that the mug was a gesture in my favor.
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:
Torquatus volo parvulus
Matris e gremio suae
Porrigens teneras manus
Dulce rideat ad patrem
Semihiante labello.
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 beekeeping, the philosophy of Marcus Aurelius and the sexual inclinations of Gaius Julius Caesar (I suggested that 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 do only 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 and Company, Paul received a continuing record of his son’s progress.
Paul’s interest became less guarded. His letters became not only more frequent but more relaxed. Gradually even his references to Alan became less strained, and shortly after Alan’s second birthday, he began to write vaguely about how amusing it would be if we could meet again in New York. I retorted: “Isn’t it time you made a pilgrimage to England again?”—for I knew that the leading investment bankers made such visits annually. But all Paul said was: “If I went to Europe again I fear I’d never come back!” and I knew then that if I could only coax him across the Atlantic I would win my arduous waiting game.
I wrote how beautiful Mallingham looked in the spring and described every inch of the house lovingly for him. It was no use. He persisted in saying how much I would enjoy New York, until my patience, worn thin after two and a half years of diplomacy, finally snapped. “If you really want me to visit New York,” I wrote in exasperation, “why don’t you issue me a frank, straightforward, honest-to-God invitation instead of sending letter after letter full of coy hints and dismal ‘wish-you-were-here’ refrains?”
There was a silence. I waited for his reply but received only a formal acknowledgment from his chief assistant O’Reilly saying that Paul had been unwell with some minor ailment and would attend later to his private correspondence. I waited. Then I wrote three times asking if he felt better. There was still no reply. I was just thinking in despair that he was either dead or repelled by my unwise display of impatience when I received his irresistible invitation to visit him in America.
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