There were moments at Hove, where during the summer months he would give big week-end parties, travelling down himself late on Saturday night and finding the place full. Bridge groups, musical groups, bathing groups scattered about his house. And moments at Henley, when they drove over from the Maidenhead house and boarded the launch that had been sent up the day before in readiness, and there were more picnics, and more champagne, more laughter.
It added to the amusement and the vitality of these parties to be summoned in the middle, with the gaiety at its height, and the voice in his ear that said: ‘You’re wanted on the telephone, sir, very urgent,’ because this was a reminder of work and of power, and a word from him on the quivering wire meant a portrayal of this power. His ‘Yes,’ his ‘No,’ his ‘Buy,’ his ‘Sell’ was a signal bringing loss or gain to hundreds of men and women he would never know and who mattered not.
Power, satisfying and sweet.
There were moments in his home when he resolved overnight upon some decision, and his word was law and must be obeyed.
‘Rachel, we’ll spend Christmas at Brighton after all. I should prefer it. We’ll ask fifteen or twenty people - I’ll leave the invitations to you, but show me them before you send them out. I won’t have Willie Kahn - he drinks too much and he can’t carry his wine. Your friend Nell Jacobs? No - I don’t care for her. You can ask Nina Chesborough, she’ll probably refuse.’
Or it would be: ‘Rachel, I’m sick of the gold walls in the drawing-room. They were amusing at first but now they bore me. We’ll have parchment instead.’ And: ‘By the way, I’ve found a good-looking pony for Gabriel; it comes from the Stonyhurst stud. Time she learnt to ride properly,’ looking quizzically at his daughter, a long-legged, secretive child, over-intelligent, over-precocious, unlike anybody in face - neither he nor Rachel - save for the long straight nose betraying her race, but with a mop of fair-coloured hair and hot blue eyes - Jean Blançard’s eyes.
The child was always with governesses, or nurses, or tutors; he hardly knew her, but she belonged to him and that was enough. He caught glimpses of her sometimes walking to a dancing class; she grinned at him, waving a hand as he passed in the car, or he would hear shouts of rebellion from the schoolroom quarters and would wonder with amusement if the young imp had a temper.
‘Gabriel is rather troublesome,’ Rachel would confess. ‘Mademoiselle says she can do nothing with her.’
‘Probably handles her wrong,’ grunted Julius. ‘I’d cope with her myself if I had the time. She’s probably too clever. We’d better send her on the Continent and she’ll find her level. No child can learn anything in England.’
So Gabriel would travel with governesses in France, with governesses in Germany, and with governesses in Italy, and Julius would be aware of her from time to time flashing upon his line of vision; the best-dressed child at a children’s party Rachel gave, the straightest back when riding in the Park, a pair of very long legs escaping his grasp as she ran from him up a staircase with a loud infectious laugh. A slim small figure splashing into the bathing-pool at Maidenhead before breakfast when the coast was clear and the guests were still in bed, and she, perceiving she was observed, putting her finger to her lips for silence and winking at him, which was surprising in its spontaneity. And he caught himself thinking: ‘I must do something about Gabriel,’ and promptly forgetting her because she would appear no more that day.
There were moments when in the still dark silence of the night sleep would not come to him, and he lay with his hands behind his head staring at the walls around him; at the warm body of Rachel by his side deep in her placid slumber. And there would come to his mind the memory of a high wistful note flung into the air from a flute like a message of beauty - a song, a whisper, an intolerable cry; and there out of the darkness was the white, happy face of Paul Lévy, the flute at his lips. And there beside him were the blazing eyes of the young Rabbin of the Temple, and the lost ecstasy of his voice, rising higher - higher, the voice and the flute mingling exquisitely in one, rising beyond the white clouds and the farthest star to the gates of a secret city.
And then Julius was troubled, then he was alone. He put his hands over his ears so that the music would not come to him, mocking, cruel and persistent, the song that was not his, the thin high note that he had never held.
Resistance struggled within him, and he whispered like a child who tells himself stories in the dark, ‘I don’t want it - I don’t want it.’ And as he cried with the heaviness of sleep now coming upon him he was afraid of an old black nightmare with a hooded face who peered into his eyes before dawn, and who was death, and terror, and ultimate loneliness.Then the morning was brave and the sky a worldly grey, and he woke as Julius Lévy who held what he possessed, and all these fears were little sad terrors of the night banished by work and play. Paul Lévy was a white ghost who played his flute in vain. His songs were valueless; he called no tune. Julius Lévy was a magician with the world at his feet. He sat at his roll-top desk in his office above the roar of traffic and the hum of living things; he heard the rattle of typewriters, the sound of voices. He sacked one of his managers who crept from the room like a beaten cur, he promoted another in his stead, who grovelled at his feet and fawned upon his hand. He settled over luncheon for a new building to be raised immediately in Sheffield; and by afternoon the plans were on his desk and the agreement signed. He interviewed Marius from Paris, who wanted him to put capital into a café concern on the Boulevard Haussmann. He snatched an hour to drive down to the Lévy Chocolate Factory in Middlesex, which was going to be enlarged. He drove away to the sound of cheers, his workers lined up to watch him go, and he smiled, waving a hand - tapping on the glass to the chauffeur: ‘Back to the office. I’m late as it is.’
Then once more, before the end of the day, with the telephone at his ear: ‘That you, Isaacs? What news of Bolivian Plantation Territory? ... Well, that’s an advance in three hours, go on buying until the market closes . . . United Havanas risen two and a half points, you say. Well, they won’t keep it up, you can sell out. I’ve heard on good authority there’s to be a textile strike in France within twenty-four hours, start selling Courtauld’s right away, they’re going to be hit by it. They’re firm at the moment, and if you sell now, I’ll have made a packet. Hullo . . . hullo . . .’ Some disturbance on the line, and here was his other number being called, his private number. So while he shouted his instructions to Isaacs down one line he held the second earpiece with his left hand and listened. ‘Who’s there? Oh, it’s you. What do you want, Nina? I feel very flattered. So you’ve changed your mind. Excellent. Afraid? What is there to be afraid of? No, nobody’s going to see you if you get into a taxi-cab and give the Chelsea address. I’ll order dinner for eight-thirty.Yes - I’ve been wondering when you were going to give in. Three months is a long time to wait . . . No, I’m not laughing at you . . . A bientôt, then.’ And replacing the receiver and turning to the other mouthpiece: ‘Are you there, Isaacs? I’ve changed my mind about United Havanas. Don’t sell, they’ll keep steady if they rise three points on the day ...’
Then pushing the telephone from him, and glancing at the time.
‘Ring through to Mrs Lévy, and say I won’t be home for dinner,’ and a message to the chauffeur that he should not be wanting the car.
Lighting a cigar and stretching himself, smiling because of Nina Chesborough and the profits of the day, and standing on the pavement before the café in the Strand while the attendant dashed to find him a taxi. Pushing his hat on the back of his head, and laughed suddenly, winking at the flickering star in the sky.
For somewhere there was a cart rattling on the high road between Puteaux and Courbevoie, and Grandpère Blançard cracked his whip at the plodding horse and said to a boy: ‘One day you’ll stretch yourself and wink an eye at the sky, and you’ll do someone down for a hundred sous, and you’ll pocket the money and walk out and have a woman. That’s life, Julius ...’
And Julius Lé
vy tapped his nose as he had done nearly forty years back, whistling a French song under his breath, and he was thinking: ‘Ha - Grandpère Blançard, he knew me, he understood.’
On Julius Lévy’s fiftieth birthday he signed a contract in which it was stated that every single provincial town in England should henceforward boast its Lévy café. He had worked long to achieve this. His plans had stretched and extended themselves to embrace north, east, west and south, and now the ambition was realised and he had, as he had always intended to do, and in his own words, ‘Put a chain around England.’
There would be no town in future days lacking a Lévy café: Lévy’s was something permanent and solid, it had identified itself with the English character and because of its general familiarity had become a national advertisement.
Yes, Julius Lévy, born in obscurity, a foreigner, a Jew, who had sold rats in the streets of Paris for two francs apiece when he was ten years old, could call himself at fifty a millionaire.
It was curious that this final agreement should be signed on his birthday. It was as though his life were divided into chapters by time and circumstance, and now he had come to the end of another chapter that must be sealed, and put away and closed. He could do nothing further with his cafés, they had reached the height of their prosperity - henceforward he would look upon them as if from some great distance; they were his children, but they had grown up.They no longer needed him. Closely controlled and run by men of intelligence and understanding, how should there any longer be work necessary for the founder, and what else remained but for him to sit back and reap the immense profits?
That was the position on Julius Lévy’s fiftieth birthday, and it seemed to him that in realising his dream he had let it go from his reach for ever. For a moment, blankly, and with intense astonishment, he wondered what he was going to do.The markets of the world were left to him of course, but these had been side-tracks to his life: they were a relaxation.What else remained when your work no longer needed you? To start all over again? To escape, to hide his identity, to go on the Continent and begin life once more with eightpence in his pocket, and beg for employment as a baker’s assistant in the poor overcrowded quarters of Paris or Berlin? For about five seconds he considered this seriously, and then like a flash came the vision of his house in Grosvenor Square; the great hall, the broad curving staircase, the boom of the dressing-gong, a strange hurried picture of his return home every evening. And he knew now that he could not go back to the beginning again, that his knowledge and intimacy of luxury made the experience of any other thing a terror and an impossibility. He was caught in the web to eternity. He was more a slave to comfort and indulgence than Rupert Hartmann - poor Rupert, dead now some years ago - had ever known. He wondered why the appreciation of these things should creep so insidiously upon a man, and why he, who as a youngster bit his finger-nails and never bothered at all, should bathe now twice a day, should hurl blasphemy at his valet if the large towel had not been sufficiently warmed upon the steaming pipes, or the shower a fraction ill-adjusted, or the water under-scented with perfumed salts.
He wondered why in the early days food had meant no more than the satisfaction of hunger - onions and a hunk of cheese being perfect fare - and now he laid his knife and fork aside if he fancied his grouse was over-cooked.
Once he had risen with his entire party from a restaurant because at the last moment plovers’ eggs had been unobtainable. One became angered easily nowadays at little things. Angry that the roses were not in bloom at Granby Hall during a wet week-end in June - why keep an estate in Buckinghamshire if the gardeners were not efficient? Angry because the Paris modiste had turned Rachel out in a dress that fitted loosely round her hips. One suffered much from irritation, from dislike of people and places. The week-ends at Granby were not, after all, so very amusing. People became bores after twenty-four hours, and one wondered how it was going to be possible to endure them for another twenty-four. By avoiding them one merely wandered about the estate by oneself and then one was lonely.
It would come to Julius in these moments that he had no friends.There was no one he cared about who brought a warmth to his heart or a sensation of excitement to his loins. Rachel - yes, but then Rachel was like a chair or a table about the house - she belonged, she was there, she was the necessary furniture.
No, he had no friends. Sensations these days were rare. He failed to be moved by wit or beauty. Once there had been the amusement of the Chelsea flat, Nina Chesborough, Lottie Deane, and others. Lottie had been a beauty at that time. He remembered the box that was taken in his name every night of the eight months her play had run, and how she had sent for him, exasperated and angry, ready to cover him with abuse, and she had gone out to supper with him instead. Nina, jealous, a fish-wife, a whore like many ladies of the land, sending anonymous letters to Lottie, and Lottie in her turn jealous because he turned from her to Mary Annesly, wife of Bill Annesly the polo player.
Scenes, jealousy, fierce loves that lasted a year and a day, and the fun of giving women presents, plastering them with jewels; and then the sordid discoveries of husbands who lived on these wives one kept. Husbands who did not hesitate at blackmail. Husbands who demanded compensation because their third child had not been begotten by themselves.
And now one had become a little weary of all this.The sensations were always the same. One fancied, in the secrecy of the heart, that women no longer gave themselves for love, they acted a little like one acted oneself, their sighs were forced, their cries were insincere. They wanted that diamond bracelet very much more than they wanted one’s person.
Niti Lokala had been the last - over two years ago too - nobody since then. She had bored him very easily, and he hated her lies.
No, he had no friends. Parties and functions and entertaining had only been amusing because of the woman of the day. There had been the constant show and display, the glittering parade of what one could do.
The fun of Rachel as a wife whose charm and beauty baffled his mistresses, that had been good; they had always felt themselves to be slightly insignificant beside her. Now Rachel without a rival was merely herself. His wife, one of his belongings. She was getting big, too, she had put on a couple of stone last year. She was fond of bridge. She had plenty of friends; she lived her life. She had never been a very amusing companion.
The child was in Italy, due home soon, he supposed. This week, to-day, he had forgotten. She was nearly fifteen. Lumpy and awkward, he supposed. He hadn’t seen her for ages.
No, he had no friends. He was a millionaire, he had cafés all over England, and his work was gone from him. He could, he supposed, spend a year or so amusing himself. He could travel. But he did not want to travel. People and places everywhere were very much the same. Natives in New Guinea beating drums - he had seen the dancing girls in the Kasbah - where was the difference? If he went to Italy it meant he would be obliged to look at pictures or float about in gondolas - well, he had pictures worth many thousands at Granby Hall, and at Maidenhead he had his own electric canoe.
Rachel and he had gone down to Monte Carlo for a few weeks during the winter, and he had found it dull. Blue skies - and people chattering, people squabbling, people smiling at one because of one’s money. Travelling to new places was not worth while, it meant being without one’s accustomed things, one’s ways of living. Besides, travelling alone . . . He could, perhaps, go in for racing. Get advice, buy a crop of yearlings, and start a stable. He would need someone though to share the enthusiasm, and that applied to every hobby; work was the only satisfying business that could be achieved in solitude. His fiftieth birthday - and he had had everything that he had ever wanted. Surely there must be something somewhere that was not exhausted?
His fiftieth birthday, and he was bored, irritable, and lonely. He was going back to a solitary dinner at Grosvenor Square, and a solitary night. Rachel was down at Granby. He would have gone down himself but for the meeting that was over at last. He knew his evening -
the perfect dinner served at eight precisely, he himself changed as though people were dining, and Moon, getting rather old and deaf, standing behind his chair. Silence, and the clock ticking, and the coal settling in the fire. Sitting alone over a glass of brandy and a cigar, and wondering what things, if any, in his life had been worth while.
He began to hate the thought of his evening, it was a menace. It challenged him, it was the finish to the life that had been, it was the beginning of the one to come. He did not want it; he was afraid. He crossed to the window and looked up at the sky. A white cloud passed above his head moving swiftly like a wreath of smoke and was gone.
Down in the street Mander waited with the Rolls, a small figure at the wheel in his purple livery, reading an evening paper. The two things were like symbols to Julius: the car below waiting to take him home, and above the white clouds flying.
He slammed the door behind him, and stepped on to the landing, and pressed the button of the lift. Mander jumped from his seat when he saw his master in the street and crushed his paper out of sight; then he flung open the door, touching his hat.