‘I tell you, sir, it’s wartime that brings out the best in everybody. That fellow Lévy is a patriot. He may be a foreigner and a Jew but he’s putting all the brains God gave him into this business. He’s showing up these chaps in the War Office and in the Government. He knows what the men in the trenches want. Three cheers, all of you, for Mr Julius Lévy.’
Take Granby Hall. Granby was a full-blown Military Hospital, the gallery and the drawing-rooms had been turned into wards, the terrace and the gardens were sprinkled with bath chairs and men in blue. Julius Lévy, the millionaire, had given up his beautiful country seat for the wounded sons of England. The house in Cowes was a convalescent home. The hunting box at Melton Mowbray was shuttered up, furniture in dust sheets. Surely there was no end to the sacrifice made by Julius Lévy and his daughter for England.They lived in only half of the big house in Grosvenor Square, their brief holidays were spent at Brighton. No racing now, no yachting in the Solent. Gabriel appeared in a bewildering array of uniforms. At first she was a V.A.D., she scrubbed the floors of hospital wards, she carried bloodied refuse from operating-rooms. Then she went on the land, she wore breeches for a brief period and lifted hoes on her shoulder and bundles of hay, she milked cows, she fed pigs. Her next appearance was to serve in one of her father’s canteens, in cap and apron, pouring tea (Lévy Tea) into cups and cutting slices of beef (Lévy Beef) on to plates. Breeches once more, she drove vans and lorries, this new occupation coinciding so well with a suddenly developed passion for cars. Then the organisation of bazaars for the blind, and entertainments for the wounded, and concerts for men home on leave. Her picture appearing endlessly in the weekly papers - ‘Gabriel Lévy, one of our most ardent War Workers.’
And finally, when all these exertions began to pall, the realisation that the war work most appreciated and most satisfactory personally, was to take for lingering drives in Richmond Park, officers who were not too badly wounded, and then to change one’s dress and to dance somewhere with officers home on leave who were not wounded at all.
‘That girl of yours is doing splendid work, Lévy. So noble of her, giving up all her fun, her yachts and her horses. Aren’t you proud of her?’
Julius, shrugging his shoulders, making a vague gesture with his hands as though none of this counted.
‘Nonsense - we must all do something to help the country,’ winking at Gabriel over somebody’s shoulder, and later driving back to Grosvenor Square in the one Rolls that had not been commandeered, glancing out of the window as they passed the big café in Oxford Street, the basement of which had been turned into a vast cellar to accommodate frightened crowds during an air raid, and Gabriel said yawning, resting her head against his shoulder: ‘Oh, darling, what a hectic life we lead. How on earth did we manage to amuse ourselves before the war?’
Julius Lévy was made a baronet in 1918.
‘Such a waste, a baronetcy. I ought to have been a boy. Why on earth did they give you it, anyway?’ said Gabriel.
‘How the devil should I know?’
Buy Lévy Leather - Buy Lévy Bully Beef. Three cheers for Sir Julius Lévy.
‘I tell you what, Gabriel. We’ll get rid of the Wanderer if this war ever finishes, and buy a steam yacht about a thousand tons. The Wanderer is a bit cramped.’
‘I know. I’ve been thinking about that, too.’
Three cheers for Sir Julius Lévy, one of the most patriotic and powerful men in England to-day.
Who’ll buy rats, big plump rats, deux francs la pièce - deux francs la pièce?
Something for nothing!
By the time the Armistice was signed in November 1918, Julius Lévy, baronet, had augmented his fortune by exactly three-quarters of a million. The profits that had come to him from Bully Beef and Boots, in addition to the colossal sums he had gleaned from his cafés throughout the country and from his private speculations in the markets of the world, had made him probably the wealthiest man in England. The four years that had passed, bringing misery and horror to most people, had merely doubled his success.
The Great War had been an interlude to him, a passage of time fraught with keen interest and excitement. He had lived intensely during these last years, every moment had served a purpose, and had been used by him as a fresh experience.
In his blood always had run the desire for action, and now he had been able to give vent to this desire to its fullest extent.
For years he had lived ahead of his generation, and with the swift changes brought about by the war it was as though he stepped into his own time. This new restless way of existing at high tension was his way, this nerve-racked atmosphere of rapid movement, sudden destruction and startling creation was his atmosphere. He understood mushroom growth and the craze for speed, he loved all things born in a night. This past war could be no nightmare to him who had no brothers, no sons and no friends. England was not his country, France was not his country, the sufferings of many millions of people would never be able to touch him.
The actual monetary value of his gains meant little to him. He accepted the knowledge of the added three-quarters of a million with a shrug of his shoulder, it was the fight that had counted with him, the satisfaction he had gained in using his brains, and seizing his advantage where others had failed. He had nothing but contempt for those men who had allowed themselves to be broken by the war, who gave way and were beaten morally, who appeared now as shadows of their former selves. So many of his contemporaries had proved unequal to the strain. So many had been bewildered, and had shrunken and grown old. They had not possessed the intelligence to progress; in their curious timidity and super-sensibility to the horrors of war they had weakened and stood aside, they had not made the slightest effort to reach out for the prizes that lay close within hand of every thinking man.
Now they were pushed and shouldered out of the way, they were good for nothing but their morning papers in their fusty clubs. His contemporaries, old fellows, shrinking from noise, disapproving, muddle-headed fools. In two years’ time Julius would be sixty, and he still felt forty-five. This war had made no mark upon him. Like Gabriel, he wondered how he had lived before. Nothing would ever be the same again, not in the old way. Interests had changed, people too. One no longer wanted the same things. Racing, yachting, hunting, the parties at Grosvenor Square and down at Granby, would they be able to take them up again in the old way? Did they not seem slightly wearisome now, out of date? Four years back he had been on that tour round Europe with Gabriel, and he had said to himself he would never want anything more than that. Then the war came. And now that the war was over he knew that neither he nor Gabriel would enjoy these things in the same way again. Something had gone because of the four years. A little seed of dissatisfaction had sprung into being. It was as though a voice unnamed whispered inside him: What now - what next? The war had stopped too soon for him, his energy was baulked. His power and his vitality had been arrested half-way. Now that there was no direction for this to find an outlet the stream would turn inwards towards himself. He would be at a loose end, he would look about him with uncertainty.
Gabriel had a new passion. She was dance-mad like most of her generation. She thought of nothing else. At first Julius went with her and was her partner, she taught him the new steps. Then he found he became bored, there was something absurd about jigging round a room hour after hour.
It seemed to him there must be an appalling waste somewhere to have used his brains for four years and then at the end merely to arrive at this jigging round a room.
Gabriel laughed at him: ‘You’re lazy,’ she said, ‘you’re getting fat.’ And she was whirled off in some young fellow’s arms while Julius watched, faintly irritated, drumming his fingers on the table, yawning, his mind a blank. Something to do, to do, to do ... Of course there were politics. He wondered vaguely if there was anything to be gained from politics. There seemed to be a glimmer of light in this thought. Politics. A Coalition Government was in power. On a sudden impulse he resolved
to stand as Liberal at the next by-election.
‘Why Liberal, darling?’ said Gabriel.
‘Why not?’ he said.
He didn’t care.When Commander Ainsworth, a Conservative, resigned his seat of West Stockport, for reasons of ill-health, Julius Lévy, baronet, contested his successor and won the seat by a majority of twelve thousand. He liked the fight. For the short space of time preceding his election he enjoyed the same sensation as he had experienced during the early years of the war. He was up against something, it was a little battle of its own. He made a good speaker. He took all the shine out of the other fellow, an honest, thick-headed Tory, with a mind like a cabbage. The other fellow was nowhere. Because of his work in the war, Julius Lévy was popular; no one doubted for a moment that he would win his fight.
‘It’s men like you the Government want, sir.’ The same old story. It was easy enough to go around amongst the working classes of West Stockport and tell them how he had worked his way up from a baker’s apprentice down in Holborn. They liked that, they cheered him, they shook him by the hand. ‘Good old Ikey,’ they said. He was familiar with them, his coarse humour was received with roars of ribald laughter. ‘I’m a plain man,’ he told them, ‘no airs about me. You won’t get any long speeches, I warn you. Want a tip for the two-thirty at Newmarket to-morrow? ’ His tip was luckily correct, and gained him probably a thousand extra votes.
Then he left them, waving his hat, throwing the red carnation he wore in his buttonhole to a woman standing on the top of her area steps (another vote) and he walked to where the Rolls was parked discreetly several blocks away, and drove off to address a meeting for the benefit of the West Stockport gentry; different methods then, different gestures.
Lucky business that West Stockport was an important ship-building centre, he was able to have the new steam yacht Gabriel of eleven hundred tons built there. The keel was laid during the election fight and invitations were broadcast for anyone who cared to see the first bolt driven.The champagne was free. Never before nor since had West Stockport known such exquisite extravagance. The streets were hilarious that night, and the lock-ups were full. The invitation cost Julius an unmentionable sum and probably won him his majority.The Conservative candidate could not afford champagne. When the result of the poll was known, Julius Lévy appeared on the balcony of the Queen’s Hotel, and smiled down upon the crowd gathered in the square. The balcony was draped in the colours of his racing stable, an unpardonable piece of vulgarity which delighted him intensely.
‘Well, that’s that,’ he said, aware of disappointment now that the fun was over, and he thought without interest of his approaching status as representative for West Stockport in the House of Commons where he would merely be one of six hundred and fifteen members. Something to do, to do . . .
His next movement was to buy secretly a combination of newspapers including the Daily Watchman, the Evening Post and the Weekly Gazette.
These papers had been suffering a big drop in circulation owing to bad editorial staff work, no particular policy, and poor advertising space.
It seemed to Julius Lévy that there must be a future in journalism.
He turned the Daily Watchman into a twelve-sheet paper, four complete pages of advertisement, and the two centre pages given up to the latest news - the more sensational the better. People wanted sensation. They wanted thrills. They lived to read about the private lives of actresses, the intimacies of divorce courts, the feelings of murderers in condemned cells, the reaction of mothers whose children had been raped. They wanted to know the number of street accidents per day, the quantity of bargains purchasable by post, and the truth about the earl who slept with his cook.
Julius Lévy gave them all this in the Daily Watchman. In six months’ time, with the aid of football and racing competitions, his circulation had increased by over ten thousand. The papers were set, they had only to go straight ahead. The staff were competent and keen as mustard. The Lévy newspapers were in control like the Lévy cafés, and the Lévy factories, and the Lévy stables.
Everything was so easy. He had only to stretch out his hands.
Something to do, to do . . .
When Julius Lévy was driving home from the House of Commons on the night of his sixtieth birthday, there came to him suddenly, like a flash of light in a forgotten corner, the memory of his fiftieth birthday ten years ago.
The evening was much the same, dull and colourless, the many sounds and scents of London were unchanged; even Mander waiting for him in his purple livery, holding the door of the car, was the same silent Mander of ten years back.
Julius remembered his mood of depression, that odd blank sensation of having reached a milestone in his life. He had returned home to find Gabriel, aged fifteen, playing Paul Lévy’s flute by the open window of the study.
Ten years ago. Oh! the uncharted seas, the untrodden ways, the undiscovered paths across the mountains - yes - and the waters under the bridges since then.
‘Mander,’ he said suddenly, throwing his hat and his stick into the car, ‘I can’t make up my mind whether it makes a penny-worth of difference being sixty - or forty-five - or twenty-one.’
Mander smiled: ‘A woman is as old as she looks, a man is as old as he feels, Sir Julius. You know the old saying?’
Julius settled himself in the car, drawing the rug over his knees.
‘All damned nonsense, Mander, you poor mug. A man feels twenty one moment and eighty five seconds afterwards. Matter of temperament. Heigh-ho!’ he yawned, settling himself amongst the cushions. ‘I don’t regret a thing, Mander, not one bloody thing.’
The chauffeur waited politely, his hand on the door. ‘Home, sir?’
‘Yes.’ The door was closed, Mander climbed to his seat.
‘What does he care?’ thought Julius. ‘What the devil do I matter to him?’ He began to go over in his mind pictures of things that had happened, scenes scattered here and there across his track of memory. Gabriel in a black velvet frock coming down the stairs at Granby, Gabriel on horseback at Melton, Gabriel at Venice, Gabriel dressed as a V.A.D., Gabriel driving officers in Richmond Park - Gabriel - still, that sort of thing could go on indefinitely. ‘She was nearly twenty-five. He was sixty. H’m ... ‘Look out, Mander, you bloody idiot, what d’you think you’re doing?’ Nearly ran over that woman, silly fool. She was young and pretty too, he turned to look at her through the window in the back. Bad legs. Where was he, though? Oh yes! - ten years, fifty to sixty. Rachel, poor old Rache. Always thinking about her health those last years. Malignant, the way she had put an end to things. There might have been a nasty scandal at the time. He had been too quick, though. Gabriel in Corsica - she used to wear a pair of sailor’s trousers and a scarlet sash ... The war, you couldn’t get away from the war, thinking back. It seemed to loom over everything. It cut out the memories of the days that had gone before. Buy Lévy’s Bully Beef - and then a title on top of it. Sir Julius Lévy, Bart. No sons. Who cared? - the whole thing was just a lot of . . . Gabriel dancing at that Victory ball, she wore gold. She was best in gold, it was her colour. Vote for Sir Julius Lévy, the man who gets things done. His maiden speech, ‘one of the best maiden speeches of recent times.’ Somebody said that, didn’t he? Or was it he himself in the Daily Watchman? It all came to the same, anyway. Those papers were the envy of Fleet Street, the crashing answer to out-dated journalism. Give him time, he’d show the world. Show them what? Did he care? Did anything matter? He yawned once more, he was tired, he wanted to get home to supper, the comfort of a dressing-gown and slippers and a last cigar, and Gabriel coming in to chat. His sixtieth birthday. They ought to celebrate it.
Home again, and the door opening, and the car driving away, walking upstairs slowly, because his back was aching and there was something wrong with his right knee, he must see Isaacson about it, and so on into his suite of rooms, supper all ready for him.
‘Clear out, I’ll wait on myself. Where’s Miss Gabriel?’
?
??I couldn’t say, Sir Julius.’
‘Well, go and find her.’
That’s better, dressing-gown and slippers, a glass of champagne, cold salmon, early strawberries from Granby.
‘Miss Gabriel is not in, Sir Julius.’
‘Oh, very well.’
Damn her, where to now? Dancing again, always this infernal dancing. What in the world did she see in it? Silly business - jigging about. Bored him stiff. What energy she had, never still a moment. Always on the go. He had been the same at her age. Her age, that’s bad - twenty-five, sixty. He must be tired to keep thinking of that. Funny how one changed; one didn’t care to do the same things as one did ten years back. This was good, lounging in a chair in front of the fire; it was cold for May, one needed a fire, and he was enjoying his supper. Why didn’t Gabriel come, though? Midnight, one a.m., two a.m., might as well wait and ask her where she’s been. But weary, damn weary, head nodding slowly, the paper falling from his hands, mouth open wide, a long spluttering snore . . . Hullo - waking with a start, the sound of a car below in the square. God damn and blast the girl, it was four a.m. He rose from his chair, his legs stiff, he crossed to the window and looked from behind the curtain at a small, closed car drawn up in front of the house. That was she, he could see the glimmer of her white cloak. Why the devil didn’t she get out? Was she talking or what? Two minutes, three minutes, five minutes, eight minutes - damn her, damn her, what were they doing in the car, why didn’t she get out? Why didn’t she get out? His hands had gone clammy cold, his fingers twitched at the curtain. He kept passing his tongue over his lips, and then swallowing. The door of the car opened at last and Gabriel stepped out on to the pavement. He couldn’t see her face. Some fellow with her - never mind about him, though. He didn’t count. At the bottom of the steps Gabriel turned, catching her cloak round her, and then the fellow leant forward and took her face in his hands and kissed her. Julius saw this quite plainly. He saw Gabriel throw back her head and laugh, and reach out her hand to the fellow’s throat and draw him towards her and kiss him. Then they disappeared under the pillars of the porch, he could not see them from his window any more.