Empress Bianca (34 page)

However, neither Philippe nor Bianca knew one, but Ruth Fargo Huron did. She unhesitatingly suggested Ruby Leighton, a well-known professional who had achieved the then almost unheard-of accomplishment of being listed in the
Social Register
, despite being Jewish. Through a combination of energetic effort and savvy, she had carved herself a niche in the New York property world and could now provide access to the best apartments in the best buildings in the best locations in Manhattan.

Wisely, Ruth Fargo Huron had warned Ruby Leighton that Bianca had an atavistic approach to property. ‘She is as passionate about houses as most people are about their husbands and children. Bear that in mind when showing her around.’

As luck would have it, Ruby did not have to heed her warning, for Bianca fell in love with the first apartment the realtor arranged for her to see. It was a twenty-four room duplex on Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park in the upper Seventies. It had the most incredible rosewood
panelling in the drawing room and library; and intricately carved sandstone fireplaces in both drawing-room and dining-room. These had come from one of the Richelieu
chateaux
at the turn of the twentieth century, when Grace Vanderbilt was refurbishing her palatial New York residence. The apartment also had two separate servants’ bed-sitting rooms, with adjoining bathrooms, on a lower floor, so Bianca would be able to have live-in help without using up any of the seven bedrooms with en suite bathrooms in the main apartment.

‘I love it,’ she said at the end of the viewing, as decisive as ever when she saw what she wanted. ‘We’ll take it.’

Ruby Leighton noticed she had not even bothered to ask the price.

Bianca, however, was about to get her first lesson in the intricacies of purchasing property in New York and to discover that her cosmopolitanism was not quite at the peak she thought it was. ‘I wish it were that easy,’ said Ruby, ‘but this is New York, and no one can just buy an apartment in a co-op…especially a co-op in one of the most desirable buildings in Manhattan…without first being vetted and approved by the management committee.’

‘You mean to tell me that we have to be
approved
before we can buy it?’

‘Yes, and that will apply to any other apartment you might like.’

‘I’ve never heard of such a thing in my life,’ Bianca exclaimed, her South American pride offended by such a humiliating system. ‘What nerve.’

Ruby, however, was amused. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘You’ll pass with flying colours. I’ll see to it. I know two members of the management committee. One is in the
Social Register
with me and the other would like to be, so he’s as obliging as can be. I think he thinks that by being nice, we’ll spread the word to the compilers of the
Register
that he ought to be invited to be listed.’

Ruth Fargo Huron had mentioned that what made Ruby Leighton one of the finest realtors in town was a unique combination of savvy, charm and good connections. As she talked, Bianca could see what her friend had meant.

‘All you have to do,’ Ruby continued, ‘is turn up to the meeting of the management committee on time, bring your husband and to dress as sedately as if you’re being tried for murder.’ Bianca blanched. Wondering
what she had said wrong, Ruth continued as if nothing were amiss. ‘Basic black dress. Nice string of pearls…not too big, not too small. Nice pearl stud earrings. Light makeup. Hair not too elaborately styled. And a darkblue or grey tailored suit for your husband, with a plain white shirt and the tie of a good club like the Union if he’s a member, otherwise something very conservative from Hermes. You want to give the impression that you’re people of means but not flashy. That will convey the message they want to hear, which is that you’ll fit in with the other residents and cause no trouble. Management committees are terrified of people who are famous or flashy. They think the former will attract the press, which is the last thing they want, and they’re convinced the latter will have loud, all-night parties that will give the other residents a hard time and the building a bad name. There are sound financial reasons for those concerns, I can assure you, because if a building gets a reputation for having a bad resident, no one wants to buy into it, and all the other resident’s find that their property values are adversely affected as a result.’

Armed with that advice, Philippe flew up from Mexico especially for the meeting with the management committee, during which he and Bianca did exactly as they were told. Ruby proved to be as good as her word, and by the time the apartment was theirs, she and Bianca had become fast friends.

Ruby, in fact, would prove to be quite a catalyst in Bianca’s life. It was through her that Bianca became friendly with Valerian Rybar, the interior designer who had been married to Guinness heiress Oonagh, Lady Oranmore and Browne and whom Bianca had patronized in a limited way while married to Ferdie. Now she discovered that they had much in common, including an Ottoman heritage, a love of social life and tastes that inclined towards the exotic and the extravagant. As her ‘style’ would become one of the major features of her life, its importance was not to be denigrated, trivial though it might appear to be, to those with more substantial matters to which to dedicate their lives; and her relationship with Valerian Rybar became one of the most compelling in her life.

It began as it would continue; within an hour of their meeting it was apparent that most - if not all - of Valerian’s more outlandish innovations appealed to Bianca. Encouraged to greater heights by her receptivity, he poured forth the most amazing ideas for the Fifth Avenue apartment.

Within weeks she had not only commissioned him to ‘do up’ the place
but they had also become so friendly that they were meeting for lunch and cocktails two or three times a week.

Within six months, Valerian Rybar and Bianca turned a conventional pre-war apartment into a riotous meeting of East and West. The drawing room and the library became a blaze of overstuffed sofas, covered in the finest hand-woven antique Ottoman fabrics, which were then engulfed in masses of cushions, also of antique Ottoman fabric. The dining-room’s walls were covered in antique hand-woven fabric, this time from the days when Bulgaria was part of the Ottoman Empire, although the dining table and chairs were genuine Hepplewhite and therefore as traditionally English as it was possible to be. The European accents were furthered by a unique combination of Old Masters and more contemporary painters.

There was a magnificent Tintoretto over the fireplace in the drawing room, a Picasso from his Blue Period over the fireplace in the dining-room and a stunning Corot over the fireplace in the library. Dotted throughout the apartment were works by David, Van Dyck, Rubens, Gainsborough, Modigliani, Dufy, Miro, Jackson Pollock, Roy Lichtenstein, Velazquez, Augustus John, and Sir Gerald Kelly. Pride of place in the entrance hall went to two massive oil sketches that the eighteenth-century English master Sir Joshua Reynolds had given to Lady Gordon: one of Charity, the other of Justice. These had originally been displayed in the staircase hall of the Earl of Winchelsea’s country house, Haverholme Priory, a century before. Their companions, Faith and Hope - as Bianca and Valerian knew only too well - reposed in the English residence of a famous British aristocrat whom she had met once.

As with so much in Bianca’s life, the creation of this Fifth Avenue extravaganza was fostered by her determination to forge a well-cut future enhanced by a well-constructed past. Many of the items were found by Ion Antonescu, who had been in Europe ferreting out treasures, as he had done with L’Alexandrine, from the homes of the nobility or from the auction galleries and dealers at the commission rates agreed with Bianca at the time of their divorce.

While Ion searched, and the apartment was taking shape, Mr and Mrs Philippe Mahfud lived in the old apartment at the Waldorf Towers that she and her late husband used to occupy whenever they were in New York.

During this period, Ruth Fargo Huron helped to introduce Bianca and Philippe to her social set by hosting a series of luncheons and dinners
for them. Word soon spread among this moneyed group that there was a new couple in town. ‘I can’t get over how easy New York is,’ Bianca observed to Valerian one day while they were choosing fabrics over lunch at Mortimer’s. ‘We’ve only been here for a few months, and already we’re inundated with invitations.’

‘That, darling one, is because Ruth and I have been spreading the word among the movers and the shakers.’

‘In Mexico or the South of France, social circles are so much more restricted. People won’t invite you to anything unless they’ve met you several times through friends, and you’ve known them, or the person who’s introduced you, for an eternity.’

‘New York doesn’t work like that. Success is the only criterion. If you have something to offer…if you’re beautiful or elegant or well connected or rich, Manhattan’s yours for the taking. And,’ he laughed wickedly, ‘we’ve been telling all and sundry how divinely elegant and entertaining and rich you are.’

‘Well, you know, darling, I’m the new kid on the block. I don’t really know how this great city of yours functions,’ replied Bianca, always one to disclaim knowledge she possessed if it served to make others feel good.

‘Take Ruth, for instance. It required a series of dexterous manoeuvres to work her way up from being just a partner in an advertising agency to being the pre-eminent socialite she now is.’

‘How did she do it?’ Bianca asked: so eager to catch a glimpse of the Holy Grail that she almost choked on her asparagus salad.

‘Well,’ drawled Valerian, sitting back in his chair and enjoying the power that gossip gave him, ‘it took her about ten years. First, she met John Lowenstein…he’s in public relations…and got him to get her on a few lists…you know, parties given by places like Sotheby’s and Tiffany’s and Belmont’s and Bergdorf ’s. That’s how she met Walter Huron…at a party at Bergdorf ’s. So, she meets him and dates him then she marries him. That was a big step up, because he’s a serious player in the airline industry, while she was…without being bitchy…just another middle-class success story. He catapulted her onto another level entirely. Then through him she met Aileen Mehle…that’s Suzy Knickerbocker the society columnist…’

‘I know who Suzy is. In fact, she was at a luncheon Ruth had for me three weeks ago…’

‘Did you like her?’

‘I thought she was charming.’

‘She is. But then, you’re just the sort of person everyone here wants to be charming to. A genuine British aristocrat with style, money and…’

At those words, a warm glow suffused Bianca. It was so reassuring that all her new friends here accepted that she was an aristocrat whose adventurous father had gone to Panama to oversee the family fortune there before moving on to Mexico.

‘It’s sweet of you to make me sound so desirable. But how did Ruth parlay being just another rich man’s wife into the social leading light she now is?’ Then, in case Valerian realized that she wanted to know the strategy so she could replicate it, she added as a disclaimer: ‘It’s always so interesting to hear how one’s friends function.’

‘Well,’ Rybar said, licking his lips gleefully with his tongue. He did so love it when his audience yanked him back onto the path of revelation.

‘Let me see…where as I? Ah, yes. The upward trajectory. Well, my darling, she did it the way everyone else does it. Through the charity world.’

‘You mean things like the Cancer Society…’

‘Good God, no,’ Rybar said, a look of genuine horror settling on his face. ‘Cancer and those other diseases kill more than just people. They kill social aspirations as well, unless you combine one of the fashionable charities with them. The only causes that count in New York are the arts. You know, things like the Metropolitan Opera or the ballet or the Philharmonic or one of the museums. Ruth started out by supporting the Met and the Museum of Modern Art and has ended up on the boards of both institutions. Of course, it’s cost her…or rather, Walter…dearly. They say the Met’s cost him $3,000,000 and the Museum of Modern Art closer to $7,000,000. But I’m sure he and Ruth think its been worth the price, because they’re now powers to be reckoned with socially…which was not the case before she first took to charity.’

To Bianca $10,000,000 did not seem too high a price to pay to fulfil her ambition of becoming one of New York’s most powerful socialites.

Later that evening, after Philippe had returned from the office, she recounted her conversation with Rybar. ‘Maybe it would be good for the bank if I got involved with a charity or two in New York,’ she concluded.

‘Bad idea,’ Philippe said. ‘We don’t need any more invitations than we have, and the whole venture would be counter-productive and could
impact adversely upon my business. If you start supporting charitable causes too actively, people will interpret your efforts as a sign of weakness. They’ll say: “Oh, we thought Mrs Philippe Mahfud was this fantastically rich widow who’s married to this fantastically rich banker and is a figure to be reckoned with socially in Europe and Central America. Why would someone who is so grand need to be scavenging around in the dustbins of New York society, trying to make her mark through charity work? We thought she was already established. She can’t be, if she’s trying to establish herself here the way all the other climbers have done.” You see the logic? Your actions will diminish the regard people have for us and will ultimately undermine our reputations. No. All we need to do is behave in a Latin American, European or indeed a Middle Eastern way. Go out and about. Accept the best invitations, and reciprocate when the apartment’s ready. The way you entertain, I promise you, everyone will beat a path to our door.’

‘Do you really think so?’ Bianca asked, mentally allocating some of the sums she had set aside for endowing charities to the buying of lavish presents for all her new and future friends. It was something for which she was already acquiring a reputation. As far as she was concerned, everyone loves a giver, and she was going to show New York what she had already shown Mexico and the South of France: when it came to giving, she had no equal.