A Beautiful Rival, page 2
As they stood looking around the new salon, watching the men at work, Manka said, “It’s only two weeks till Edward and the boys arrive. Will they stay in our hotel?”
Helena shook her head. “I’ve leased an apartment above the salon. It’s not huge but it will do to start with.”
Edward had been looking after their two sons, Roy and Horace, in Paris while she prepared for her US launch. Manka had accompanied her, since she was at a loose end after the breakup of her marriage. Thank goodness she’d gotten rid of that waste of space, Helena thought. Manka had appalling taste in men.
“You’re lucky you got a good husband,” Manka said. “Edward’s a gentleman.”
Helena smiled but didn’t comment. He was charming, intelligent, and universally popular, but he wasn’t perfect—not by a long shot. He’d always had an eye for the ladies, and gravitated toward the most attractive one in the room like a compass needle swinging to the north. At parties, she usually found him chatting to some beautiful woman in a corner, standing too close, smiling too intimately.
“I like women’s conversation,” he’d say if she complained. “What’s wrong with that?”
“It’s disrespectful,” she argued. “It looks as though you are playing around behind my back.”
“Who cares how things look?” he protested. “You and I know the truth. That’s all that matters.”
She had never found any evidence of affairs, but still she was suspicious. They had been living apart all winter while she set up the American business, and he was a man who liked women. Although he had written regularly—long, intimate letters—she was skeptical that he had slept alone every night.
“You shouldn’t neglect him for so long,” Manka commented, as if reading her thoughts. “Aren’t you worried his head could be turned by some Parisian floozy?”
“His head turns more often than the revolving door at the Paris Ritz,” Helena muttered. “But I hope he remembers which side his bread is buttered on.”
Chapter 3
Elizabeth
April 1915
Elizabeth hired society designer Elsie de Wolfe to decorate her new salon. She wanted it to be refined and chic, with a style befitting the most high-class of beauty salons, not just in New York City but in the world.
“Have you seen Helen Hay Whitney’s Italian Renaissance–style lobby?” she asked, picturing the gilt and marble hallway, with a Michelangelo statue standing atop a tinkling fountain. “Something like that.”
Elsie’s mouth gave a slight twist of distaste. “Perhaps a tad less ostentatious,” she replied. “And more twentieth century.”
Subtle beaux arts style was best, Elsie advised, with an American rather than a European feel. Elizabeth’s heart was warmed by her assertion that Parisian style was passé these days.
“I like the fact that your last salon had a red front door,” Elsie continued. She handed her a paint chart, and pointed at a bold shade of scarlet. “But why not choose more of a daring red, like this one? At the women’s suffrage march apparently they all wore lipstick this color.”
Elizabeth had gone on the march. She was strongly in favor of women’s right to vote and it was exactly the image she wanted for her business.
“I love it,” she said. “From now on, all my salon doors will be this shade of red.”
Next she called her advertising manager and told him to plan a campaign that positioned hers as the crème de la crème of beauty salons.
“I want your ideas by the end of the week, dear,” she said. “And make them good or I might have to bounce you.”
He scurried away. Elizabeth was famous for “bouncing” employees who displeased her, and not giving them a reference either. A little healthy fear kept them sharp.
While she was immersed in plans for the new salon, Mr. Dunlop, the manager of the pharmaceutical company that manufactured her products, rang to say he wouldn’t be able to fulfill her orders that month because he hadn’t been able to purchase any lanolin.
“Why on earth not?” she demanded.
He was hesitant. “A new beauty business has bought up all the supplies. They seem to be stockpiling.”
“What new business?” Elizabeth asked, but she knew the answer before he told her. That woman: Madame Rubinstein. “Why is she stockpiling?”
“The owner said she thinks America will join the war in Europe and she wants to be sure she has enough ingredients to see her through.” The manager paused. “Perhaps you could contact her and ask if she will share some with you?”
“Perhaps you could jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, dear,” Elizabeth suggested, then slammed the receiver hard into the cradle. Madame Rubinstein hadn’t been in New York for five minutes and already she was causing trouble.
“Laney?” she called to the outer office. “Find me some lanolin. I don’t care how you do it. Kill some goddamn sheep if you need to.”
“Will do,” Laney called back.
Over the following weeks, Elizabeth found herself thinking obsessively about Madame Rubinstein. She couldn’t get her out of her head, like a bluebottle buzzing against a window, or a sharp stone in her shoe. Mr. Pease reported that she had leased premises on East Forty-Ninth Street, only a block from Fifth Avenue, which was not nearly far enough away to Elizabeth’s mind. How could she ensure the newcomer’s salon failed and she retreated back to the other side of the Atlantic where she belonged? She fantasized about unleashing a plague of rats or termites in her salon but had no idea how one would go about such a thing. Perhaps, as a foreigner, Madame Rubinstein would inadvertently breach some city regulations and could be reported anonymously. She could only hope.
Once a week she wrote to her younger sister, Gladys, in Toronto. Elizabeth had been closest to Gladys of all her siblings, as they were the two youngest and were often left unsupervised while the others worked on the farm. They used to play make-believe games, pretending they were a king and queen hosting balls and decorating their pretend castle—a dusty area of the farm’s yard they marked out with rocks.
They hadn’t seen each other much since Elizabeth moved to New York eight years earlier, but they still felt close, and she complained to Gladys in a letter about the city’s newest salon owner.
“Madame Rubinstein seems aggressive,” she wrote. “It’s not civilized behavior to barge into someone else’s territory.” It briefly crossed her mind that she had done the same thing when she started her own business five years ago, but she dismissed the comparison. That had been different.
“You’ve got nothing to worry about,” Gladys soothed in her reply. “Your customers are loyal. They won’t want to risk trying unusual new products that could ruin their complexions. It’s too much of a gamble.”
Gladys went on to write that her husband, Albert, was having a difficult time at the office and it made him bad-tempered when he got home. He was critical of her housekeeping and found fault with meals she served, but she was trying to be patient and understanding.
Elizabeth bristled. She had taken against her sister’s husband from the start. In conversation he invariably raised his voice and spoke over everyone else. She’d seen the way Gladys tensed in his presence, as if waiting for him to find fault, and she suspected he was a bully. She wondered if he ever struck Gladys. She feared for her gentle younger sister. The world was full of bullies like Albert—and like Madame Rubinstein.
She confided in Tommy, a beau who took her dancing most weeks at Irene and Vernon Castle’s dance school. He agreed with Gladys that she had nothing to worry about. “You’re too far ahead in the game for a newcomer to catch up,” he said. “Never forget you’re Elizabeth Arden, head of the biggest-selling American beauty brand. She’s an unknown here.”
Elizabeth wasn’t mollified. She sent Laney to spy on progress of the building work at East Forty-Ninth Street. When Laney returned, she brought a flyer she’d been handed in the street outside.
A Famous European House of Beauty Announces the Opening of Its Doors in New York, it read, before introducing Madame Rubinstein as the accepted advisor in beauty matters to Royalty, Aristocracy, and the Great Artistes of Europe.
“What twaddle!” Elizabeth snapped, fury bubbling up. “You wouldn’t catch any self-respecting princess in her salons. They look like bordellos, for god’s sake. Did you find out when she is planning to open?”
“The first of May,” Laney said. “Two weeks on Saturday.”
“Ha!” Elizabeth exclaimed. “That proves she knows nothing about the American market.” All her clients left the city for the summer, returning in September, and that’s when she would open her own new salon with a fanfare. Meanwhile, Madame Rubinstein would be left with her staff twiddling their thumbs on full salary during the hottest months.
Elizabeth felt reassured. Her rival was an amateur. Surely her position was safe.
A few days before Madame Rubinstein’s salon was due to open, Elizabeth was alarmed to browse the latest copy of Vogue magazine and find a full-page advertisement for the new salon opposite an article about her. Madame Rubinstein was illustrated in a white laboratory coat, peering into a vial of liquid, her black hair pulled into the tight chignon Elizabeth remembered from her visit to the Paris salon.
According to the article, Madame Rubinstein had studied medicine at the university in Kraków and learned about skin from the top experts in Europe, before starting her business in Australia, where the dry heat of the sun meant women’s skin was prone to premature aging. She had imported precious Carpathian herbs with antiaging qualities from her native Poland, and these formed the base for her miraculous Valaze creams. She claimed she was the only beauty specialist in the world to understand that there are different types of skin—dry, oily, combination, and sensitive—and that each requires different products.
Elizabeth harrumphed—“Nonsense!”—before continuing to read.
It seemed Madame Rubinstein considered herself a “woman of no country” with houses in Melbourne, Paris, London, and now New York, where she planned to make a home with her “wonderful” husband and two “adorable” sons.
“Blah, blah, blah . . .” Elizabeth said under her breath. She had never married, never had children, and didn’t regret it one iota. She hated women who boasted about their offspring, as if they were somehow superior to others who had chosen not to squeeze out a few babies.
She stopped when she came to a paragraph in which Madame Rubinstein was quoted as saying: “Results are what matters. I don’t think American women will be fooled by fancy gold lettering and pink packaging if the cream doesn’t improve their skin.” No other US brand had gold and pink packaging: she could only be talking about Elizabeth Arden products. The cheek of it! If this was a declaration of war, Madame Rubinstein had picked the wrong goddamn woman to fight with.
Elizabeth threw down the magazine, feeling a twinge of betrayal that Edna Woolman Chase, the editor of Vogue, had allowed an article like this to run. She considered her one of her closest friends. Why hadn’t she spiked it, or at the very least warned her it was coming?
“Laney dear,” she shouted through to the outer office. “I want you to set up a lunch for me with Edna as soon as possible. And find out all you can about the Rubinstein woman. How did she start her business? Is she backed by family money? What are her secrets?” There were bound to be secrets. Launching a business as a woman was tough. Toes had to be trodden on. Lines had to be crossed. “Hire whomever you need. I want facts, and I want them now.”
“Do you mean a private detective?” Laney asked, scribbling in her notebook.
“Exactly.” Elizabeth furrowed her brow. “And when her salon opens, I want someone posted outside to tell me who visits.”
Laney hurried off and Elizabeth sat back and closed her eyes. What if some of her society clients were tempted to defect to the newcomer? Madame Rubinstein’s scientific drivel and talk of royal patronage might sound convincing if you didn’t know better.
She could feel her heart beating beneath her ribs, the in and out movement of her chest. The fear was still there. No matter how much money she made, she was still scared that one day someone would come along and take it all away.
Who are you, Florence Nightingale Graham—a girl who never finished school, who was shunned by her classmates because she had cooties in her hair—who are you to mingle with high-society ladies? If they knew where Elizabeth Arden had come from and who she had been as a child, they would never so much as give her the time of day.
Chapter 4
Helena
April 1915
The week before her salon opened, Helena’s eye was caught by a stark advertisement on the front page of the New York Times, placed by the Imperial German Embassy: Travelers intending to embark on an Atlantic voyage are warned that a state of war exists between Germany and Great Britain. . . . Vessels flying the flag of Great Britain or any of her allies are liable to destruction. . . . Travelers sailing in the war zone do so at their own risk. Her heart skipped a beat. Her husband, Edward, and her two sons had set sail from Le Havre just the day before.
Why the heck hadn’t he left Europe sooner? Why did he wait till this war got so serious? His excuse was that the sea could be rough during winter crossings and he was waiting for milder weather. Was that the truth or was there some woman in Paris he’d been reluctant to leave?
She hated telephones. She was never sure which bit to speak into, and she suspected the operators were eavesdropping on her calls. All the same, this was an emergency. She got one of her assistants to dial and ask to be put through to the American Line shipping company. There was a wait of almost half an hour because all their lines were busy. When she finally got a flustered clerk at the New York office, she wasn’t convinced by his assurances.
“Your husband is on the St. Louis, flying under an American flag. The Germans wouldn’t dare attack an American ship.”
“Everyone said they wouldn’t dare attack Belgium,” Helena argued. “Who knows what they’re capable of?”
“The St. Louis is due to dock at Pier 54 on Thursday evening,” he told her, sounding bored, as if he had repeated it many times that day. “We are in regular contact with the captain and he hasn’t reported any trouble.”
“Can I send a telegram to my husband?” It felt important to warn him about the newspaper advert. He probably didn’t know the danger. The lessons learned from the sinking of the Titanic three years earlier were that you had to get places on lifeboats to survive. At the first sign of trouble, he must hurry the boys to the lifeboat station and make sure they wore their lifejackets.
“I’m afraid we can’t send civilian telegrams,” the clerk told her. “Military ones only.”
“I can pay you. Ten dollars for just one message,” Helena offered. He refused. She increased her offer to fifty, probably more than a month’s salary for him, but he was adamantly unbribable. She slammed down the telephone in frustration.
For three days, she waited for news. She wished she hadn’t read those reports about the Titanic because now she had visions of her loved ones struggling in freezing water. Twenty minutes was thought to be the longest anyone survived. She wasn’t even sure if the boys could swim. Roy was five and Horace was three. Had anyone taught them yet? Edward and the nanny took care of that side of things.
Helena hadn’t planned to fall in love, hadn’t planned to marry, hadn’t planned to have children, but now she couldn’t imagine life without them. It was terrifying how vulnerable it made you to love other human beings so much that you knew you would never recover if anything happened to them. She hated situations she couldn’t control, but an Atlantic crossing with German U-boats prowling was one—and pretty women with loose morals fluttering around her husband was another.
The evening before the salon opened, Helena hosted a champagne party there. It had been arranged before she knew about the German threat to shipping, and she decided it would be bad form to cancel. She would have to push her worries to the back of her head, just for one evening.
A selection of women’s magazine and newspaper writers were invited, and to each she gifted a pot of Valaze cream suitable for their skin type plus a piece of jewelry. She had researched the women’s coloring in advance and chosen appropriately from a selection of jewels she’d bought wholesale in Paris. To a Vogue journalist with cornflower-blue eyes she gave a sapphire ring; for a Harper’s Bazaar one with dramatic dark hair, she chose ruby drop earrings.
“I can’t possibly accept such an expensive gift,” the Harper’s Bazaar writer exclaimed, trying to hand back the box.
“Of course you can,” Helena said with a grin, thrusting her hands behind her back and refusing to accept it. “I absolutely insist.”
The writers wandered around, admiring the opulent décor while listening to Helena tell them about the science behind her treatments, and the press coverage afterward was priceless. Wherever she went in the world, Helena made it her top priority to befriend the press.
Bookings for the early weeks were already better than expected. Edward had written copy for a series of advertisements that played on women’s fear of aging. They explained what happened when skin loses elasticity: jowls sag, foreheads furrow, and creases are etched around the eyes. The process starts in the twenties and gets worse over time—but, the advert explained, it’s never too late to stop the clock. Her products and treatments, designed with the benefit of her rigorous scientific training, could reverse all the signs of aging, smoothing existing creases and lifting jawlines. She knew that’s why women came to her salon—in the hope that it was true.
At each customer’s first visit, she stopped by their treatment chair to give a personal appraisal that was always laced with flattery.
“Your skin is dry on the cheeks, oily on the nose and forehead,” she told one woman. “I can tell you take good care of your appearance. You have such lustrous hair! I guarantee that with a few weeks’ regular use of my products, your skin will look as if you are twenty again.”
