Julius (30 page)

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 Lévy 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.

‘Where to, sir?’ he said.

Julius hesitated, wondering for one moment if there was any place upon the earth he cared to take himself, realising with a sense of ridiculous frustration that possessing his wealth he could command trains, boats, cars, hotels - he had only to say a word and his word would be obeyed. Supposing he said now:‘Mander, we are going to-night to Timbuctoo,’ the man would touch his hat and say: ‘Very good, sir.’

Julius glanced up and down the street - the same ceaseless traffic, the same endless stream of passers-by - and he said: ‘Home, Mander.’

He sat with his chin balanced on his stick, he gazed moodily out of the window. He thought of the big library at Grosvenor Square - ladders placed against the walls to reach the highest shelves - and how he never read. Did anybody bother about those books? he wondered. Surely not Rachel; she bought the new novels. Perhaps under-housemaids browsed amongst those shelves. He never went into the room himself. It struck him forcibly that his life was a sublime piece of irony, that all his money was a gigantic parade to no purpose. Because nobody cared. Nobody was interested. He was Julius Lévy, aged fifty to-day, and what of it? Perhaps it was not so very interesting after all.

The car drew up to the house. Before Julius could lean to the door Mander had opened it, had whipped the rug from his knees.The footman, listening for the sound of the car, was already standing upon the steps. Moon was waiting in the hall.

‘Shall you be wanting the car again, sir?’ Should he? No - to what end? ‘Not to-night, Mander.’

There were letters waiting on the salver. Useless to glance at them because his secretary would go through them and answer them for him. There was no work he need do of any kind. Menials performed every service.

It was extraordinary, he reflected, that the process of washing one’s hands and relieving the burden of nature still remained to one. They were, perhaps, the only things to remain. He went through the hall, and along the passage, and across the farther corridor to the privacy of his own room. His study, his sanctum, where in days gone by he had worked late in the night, time being too short, the day too quickly sped. And now for the first time in his life time would hang heavily on his hands. He paused before opening the door, because it seemed to him that even from those sound-proof walls he could hear something. Something faint and thin, like a note of music. Yes, there again, a call, a cry, a whisper flung into the air. It was the sound of a flute. Somebody was playing Paul Lévy’s flute. He opened the door and now the note came clear and strong, piercing like a challenge. And it was not the far-flung sob of mystery and pain and spiritual distress that Père had sung; it was not the whisper of immortality beyond the clouds, of things unseen, of things unknown, of pale and lovely unsubstantial dreams; this was a song of life and love and passionate beauty, of laughter unafraid, of adventure on the hills, of a ship on the sea, of danger in the deep woods; it was a song of triumph, and brutality, and joy. He looked into the room and he saw her standing by the window with the flute to her lips, watching the white clouds pass across the sky. She raised herself on tiptoe as though by drawing herself up she could throw the notes into the air, as though she would break the silence, disturb and torture the dumbness of the dark room.