The Rich Are Different (69 page)

‘I always distrust people who make those sort of remarks,’ said Dinah. ‘My father used to say that his life would have been quite different if he’d ever found a woman who had understood him, but of course the truth was that all his women understood him much too well. What went wrong with your father’s life, Steve? I thought you told me he had pots of money and loads of friends and was the life and soul of every party.’

‘Yeah.’ I was
silent remembering my father. She waited, not rushing me, but at last she said: ‘You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.’

‘Hell, it’s no big deal,’ I said. ‘He drank.’

‘Did he? God, what a coincidence! So did my father! What did your mother do – leave or stay?’

‘She stayed.’

‘Mine left.’ Now it was her turn to be silent.

‘What happened to her, Dinah?’

‘Don’t pretend Paul never told you!’

It all came out. Dinah’s mother had been a suffragette who had died in jail. I was just about to make some sympathetic comment when she said fiercely: ‘And don’t you dare say “like mother, like daughter” because I shan’t think it’s at all funny.’

‘Jesus, Dinah,’ I said nettled, ‘where’s the resemblance? You’re no idealist! You wouldn’t even get up on a Hyde Park soapbox to crusade for your beliefs, let alone go to jail for them! You’d be too busy sweet-talking Hal Beecher into giving you a new loan to expand your million-dollar business!’

She stared at me. To my surprise I saw she was at a loss for words.

‘Well, it’s true, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘The one thing all Paul’s people have in common is that they’re plugged fairly and squarely into reality. A little sentimentality now and then is just about excusable, but idealism? Forget it! You don’t get along in the world by toting around a set of romantic ideals – Paul found that out when he was just a kid and he never forgot it.’

She was still silent. I wondered what she was thinking. At last I said: ‘Were you afraid I’d laugh about your mother being a suffragette? What’s the problem? You know how
I
feel about emancipated women!’ And I kissed her with unmistakable enthusiasm.

She laughed and kissed me back. ‘What a sportsman you are, darling!’ she teased. ‘All for fair play between the sexes!’

‘Particularly play,’ I said, but I was pleased. I was kind of proud of my modern outlook on women, and in a further effort to convince Dinah that I was all for female emancipation I asked if I could visit her office to see the tycoon tigress in action.

I knew from Hal Beecher’s reports that Diana Slade Cosmetics was making around four hundred thousand pounds a year, which at the going rate of exchange was well on the way to two million dollars. Twenty-four different cosmetic products were show-cased in the famous Grafton Street salon and peddled by a network of salesmen in every major city in the British Isles. The salon, which preserved the firm’s reputation for expensive products for the aristocracy despite a surreptitious recent trend to tout a cut-price line for the masses, was run by Dinah’s friend Harriet, an energetic spinster with a face like a greyhound. Harriet took care of the society side, the constant entertaining and socializing, while Dinah only revealed herself at a party when she wanted to give her clientele a treat. This strategy had evolved when Dinah had been a new unmarried mother beyond the social pale, but now it had been revived to give Dinah an air of mystery. It was not
only a neat public relations move but also meant Dinah could have some sort of private life. The two girls got along well. I did no more than poke my nose in the salon since it was obviously the kind of place where no man could feel at ease for more than two seconds, but I could almost hear the purrs of the clients as they submitted themselves to God only knows what feminine rites.

In the executive offices upstairs I met the sales director, a tough little fairy with a tongue like prussic acid, and the production director who controlled the laboratory. There was another director in charge of the warehouse and inventory. The advertising department was run by a woman, a situation which would have rocked Madison Avenue, and frankly I thought the advertising could have been improved. It was too wordy, but Dinah said the English women appreciated ads which ran on and on like a three-decker novel and produced the sales figures to prove it so I had to back down. There was also a lady in charge of personnel, but I approved of that because all the little typists like to run to a nice motherly figure if any randy member of staff starts pinching bottoms.

‘And what do
you
do?’ I asked with a grin when the tour was finished and we were drinking tea in her office. ‘Put your feet up on your desk and knit?’

It turned out she was just like the senior partner at Van Zale’s. She spent her time being nice to people, pouring oil on troubled waters and trying to head off bloodshed in the boardroom. She soothed all the important clients who wanted their hands held, talked earnestly with bankers and lawyers and occasionally blew up the accountants. Memos were initialed, letters dictated and tea consumed. The only difference from being a Van Zale senior partner was that twice a week she popped downstairs to have her hair done.

‘What about the commodities we deal with?’ she said with a sigh when I told her what I was thinking. ‘Yours is so much more interesting than mine! I’d rather deal with money than cosmetics any day – banking’s such a fascinating field.’

I was so touched by this wistful enthusiasm that I suggested she came with me to Paris at the end of May. I wanted to survey the prospects which awaited a French office of Van Zale’s, and since she was interested in opening a Paris salon I thought we could combine business with pleasure in the biggest possible way.

Well, we did. That was no surprise, but the revelation of the trip was how useful Dinah was to me in my reconnaissance among the
banques d’affaires
and the
banques de crédit mobilier
who specialized in the flotation of industrial undertakings in France and abroad. She did make one or two inquiries about office space for Diana Slade Cosmetics, but she was more interested in the bankers I knew and the potential clients I’d lined up. I inquired too about office space and spent time on my own while I estimated how much business I’d need to generate to make a French base a paying proposition, but mainly I was concerned with meeting people and this was where Dinah was an enormous asset because she spoke first-class French. My French was fluent but it was Canadian, the result of handling the affairs
of some Montreal clients for some years, and although I had taken courses in European French I found the Parisian accent and vocabulary very different from the French I was used to. Fortunately Dinah came to my rescue whenever I got bogged down, and I soon took her everywhere with me. The people we met were entranced by her. She was always faultlessly dressed and groomed, always so unobtrusively intelligent. Together we studied the Banque de Paris et de Pays-Bas with its capital of three hundred million francs and its equally lush reserve fund, and plotted on the map of Europe the bank’s branches in Amsterdam, Brussels and Geneva.

I like sticking pins in maps. Dinah said I ought to have been a general, and as time passed I really began to feel as if I were surveying some challenging new battlefield and pondering how to deploy my troops. I took a look at another House, the Banque de l’Union Parisienne, and studied several more. Tiring at last of sticking pins in the map I turned to current economic conditions and gave them a thorough examination. The previous year the franc had been stabilized and the national currency restored to a gold basis. There was now an exchange rate of 25.52 francs to the dollar, 124.21 to the pound sterling, and in addition the Paris rate of discount was as low as that of any other European country except Switzerland. It seldom seemed to rise above three and a half per cent.

All this was very promising, and enjoying myself hugely I dictated long memos to my New York partners, but when I was satisfied that they would be impressed by my industry I sat back to take a good hard look at the situation. Before I could think of establishing a base in France I had to perfect my French. I also needed to know a lot more about French banking procedures. I had forgotten how diverse Europe is compared with the monolith of America, and although in the States I could have got away with reviving a static office in Philadelphia while launching a new branch in Baltimore, I realized I would be wisest to conquer England completely before I attempted a French invasion. I had to cope with unfamiliar cultures, tightknit native banking communities and an alien industrial structure. I didn’t want to bite off more than I could chew.

However, I remained optimistic about my prospects, and thought a European empire was still well within my grasp provided I was prepared to be patient.

‘I just know I can make a success of this if I put my mind to it,’ I said to Dinah as we sailed back across the Channel.

‘Of course you can, darling!’ she said enthusiastically, and suddenly I thought how marvellous it would be to have her travelling with me every step of the way, helping me with the clients, listening so intelligently whenever I wanted to discuss business, understanding whenever I confessed to having problems. Caroline would try to help but it wouldn’t be the same. Besides although Caroline was a successful hostess in America I couldn’t help wondering how she would measure up to European standards. I sensed uneasily that the English would classify her as a strident example of American womanhood and retreat with horror behind the mask of their
impeccable manners. Caroline had had only moderate success when we had been in Europe before, and she had been younger and quieter then. Now that she was older and noisier I had the unpleasant feeling she was going to be more of a hindrance than a help to me at this very crucial moment of my career, and I couldn’t think what the hell I was going to do about it.

Caroline was now scheduled to arrive in early July. We had decided to keep our Long Island home for use during our annual visits to the States, but she had disposed of our East side Manhattan apartment and was shooting off letters demanding to know why I hadn’t been house-hunting in England. She wanted a house in Surrey, the smart county, and a house in Mayfair.

I did get some brochures from realtors but the truth was I couldn’t face house-hunting because I couldn’t face the thought that my days as a bachelor were coming to an end. I was having such a wonderful time. There were dinners and parties and weekends in the country. There were movies and theatres and night-clubs. There was Ascot and Wimbledon and even – I still yawn to think of it – the Test Match at Lords with all my clients marvelling because I knew the difference between the English cricketers and the visiting South African team. I did blot my copybook once by calling the bowler the pitcher but Dinah gave a little laugh and said wasn’t I witty so they all thought I was making a joke.

Of course everyone quickly realized Dinah and I had more in common than the balance sheet of Diana Slade Cosmetics, but we didn’t go careering around like Bright Young Things who drank and drugged while dancing the Black Bottom and then had to be fished out of the gutter the next morning and chauffeured home. I had my suite at the Ritz, she had her house in Belgravia and what happened on the weekends at Mallingham was our own business. But we were seen a lot together at the Trocadero and the ‘43’ and everyone knew we liked Beatrice Lillie’s style and cheered Mary Pickford with her shorn curls and had seen Noel Coward’s operette
Bitter Sweet
three times, so I guess the grapevine must have been humming busily.

It was a great life. When I look back I wonder how I ever found the time to go to Milk Street but I was working hard and soon I’d yanked the office out of its dozy humdrum rut. The moment Hal left I fired the old dodderers who had accumulated, raked in some youthful brains and streamlined office procedures so that every detail was handled twice as fast. Then when the bank was ticking over with the efficiency of a Swiss watch I fixed a new blade in my invisible hatchet and set about severing clients from British issuing houses as I raked in as much new business as I could handle.

‘If only Caroline wasn’t coming!’ I said for the hundredth time to Dinah. It was the weekend before Caroline was due to leave New York and I was savouring my last hours of freedom in the dunes above the beach at Waxham.

‘Steve, do stop moaning about Caroline! I specially wanted you to come to Mallingham this weekend because I thought it would cheer you up, and besides …’ Her hand slipped into mine ‘… I’ve got some important news which I’ve been saving as a surprise.’

‘Anything that
takes my mind off Caroline,’ I said gloomily, ‘just has to be good news. What is it?’

She sat up and stretched herself luxuriously. For once she was wearing the minimum of make-up and her skin was clear and fresh. Her dark eyes glowed. I was just thinking I’d never seen her look so pretty when she exclaimed in a voice vibrant with happiness: ‘It’s the best news in the world, Steve – the best news I could ever wish for.’ And with a sigh she nestled against my chest, gazed out to sea and murmured dreamily: ‘I’m going to have another baby …’

[1]

My first thought was: Jesus Christ, what am I going to tell Caroline? Then I thought: Oh, the hell with Caroline! And the relief of tossing Caroline aside in this fashion was so enormous that I suddenly saw the only solution to my problem. I’d been fooling myself in thinking a compromise was possible once Caroline was in London. Caroline would never tolerate me having any relationship whatsoever with Dinah. There would be rows and scenes and the children would suffer. It would be hell on earth.

Taking a deep breath I faced the truth squarely. I loved Dinah. I didn’t love Caroline. I didn’t want to be with Caroline. The only person I wanted to be with was Dinah. I didn’t want to stay married to Caroline. I wanted a friendly divorce and the right to see Scott and Tony as often as possible.

These thoughts all flashed through my mind in seconds and by the time Dinah turned to look at me I knew what I was going to say.