Julius (40 page)

Julius never bathed amongst them. Because he was sixty, in some half-conscious way he feared their ridicule. But he would watch them through glasses, or pull out from the yacht in a boat, or even land and walk away amongst the trees, and then turn to see if some opportunity was taken in his absence. He discovered nothing, no calls, no beckonings, no sudden swift departures. Perhaps they were too clever for him.

One night it had seemed to him, with a queer upward lift of his heart, that Gabriel had smiled at him in the old way. After dinner she had played the flute on deck, silencing that gramophone he loathed, and she had looked at him across the heads of those fools as though she were saying: ‘We know, don’t we? We have nothing to do with them.’ Perhaps she was tired now, perhaps she wanted to come back. This morning it was she who had suggested coming alone with him in his boat; she sent the others to the usual beach, whilst they were to row round the farthest point. ‘There’s some deep water there, I want to dive,’ she said. And the others were too lazy, they said they would follow later.

Julius pulled across the channel with slow, methodical strokes. Gabriel lay back in the stern, gazing at the sky. As he watched her he wondered if this was really a wish of hers, wanting once more to be alone with him, or if it was another change of mood. It seemed to him so long since they had been alone together. They chatted of little unimportant things, and he knew that this was not the real purpose of their being with one another, it was a subterfuge. His heart beat loudly, he smiled to himself, and he hummed a song under his breath.

They landed at the point, leaving the boat, and walked until they came to a strip of land where the sea ran deep and the trees came to the water’s edge. They sat down, pretending to watch the colour of the water and the reflection of the trees, and then she moved away from him suddenly and began unclasping her bracelets.

‘I’m going to bathe,’ she said. He reached out his hand to her.

‘Gabriel,’ he said. ‘Gabriel,’ looking up at her, pulling her towards him, but she shook herself free and went on with her undressing. And now it was she who smiled, and she who hummed the tune.When she had finished, she kicked her clothes on one side and stretched, her arms above her head.

‘Oh! darling, I’m so happy,’ she said.

He made no answer, and then she said: ‘I have a new thing about living, it’s not going to be the same any more. It’s going to be more wonderful than anything has ever been. I’m so happy.’

‘What do you mean?’ he said.

‘Oh! You can guess, can’t you?’ she said, and she was laughing at him. ‘You know everything there is to know about me. I said I’d tell you if I ever wanted anyone. Well - it’s happened at last. I’m not going to be me any more. I’m going to be somebody else, Gabriel will go for ever.’

She looked at him a moment, and frowning she said: ‘This will hurt you, of course, but - I can’t help that. I can’t think of anyone but myself when I’m happy. You said I was always to think of myself.’

Still he said nothing, and she went on: ‘I shan’t tell you who it is yet, because that would spoil it. I’ve been clever, haven’t I? Nobody would know! I can’t tell you what it’s made me feel - all young again, and unspoilt, and as though I didn’t know things. You won’t recognise me soon. I’ll be domesticated and subservient and humble, and talking about chintz curtains and servants and babies’ napkins.’

She laughed again, and threw a handful of sand in his face. ‘Say something,’ she said. ‘Don’t sit like that: Oh! I’m in that mad drunk mood when I want everyone to be happy because I’m happy. Can’t you see? I’m sick of my old self. I want just to get away silently and be lost and nobody to find out. D’you understand? Say you understand. It’s going to spoil everything if you’re against me.’

Watching his face it seemed to her that he could scarcely have heard a word of all she had been saying, because his expression had not changed, and his eyes were cold. She wondered if he were thinking of someone else. Then he looked up and he said: ‘Père was not a clever man, he left traces in the Rue des Petits Champs and had to run away.’

‘What are you talking about?’ she said. ‘Haven’t you been listening?’

‘Yes, I heard you,’ he said, and he got up and went to the water’s edge and looked towards the point. There was no sign of the rest of the party.

‘Aren’t you going to bathe?’ he said.

She hesitated.‘Yes - of course,’ she said.‘But what’s the matter, are you angry with me?’

He shook his head. ‘Not with you,’ he said. ‘But angry with myself for bringing you into the world.’ He held out his hands. ‘With these,’ he added.

She smiled. ‘You act all the time,’ she said. ‘You’re never yourself for a moment. I’ll talk to you later.’ She waded in and began to swim out into deep water, her back to the shore. It came to him then how lucky a thing it was that nobody had ever seen him swim. Never in thirty, forty, fifty years. Swimming belonged to his boyhood. He went in after her, swiftly, silently, fully dressed, not even kicking off his shoes. Round his right hand was twisted a handkerchief. She did not hear him until he came up behind her, and she turned on her back and cried out, astonished, shaking the water from her hair. He was on her before she could move, seizing her throat in his right hand, bending her legs with his knees, pressing her down into the water beneath him. She fought in his grip, but was unable to free herself. She opened her mouth: ‘Papa - Papa . . . Papa . . .’ a last cry, a last choking struggle for breath. As he held her beneath the water her frightened blue eyes flashed up at him in a moment’s recognition. She looked like his mother. He was thinking: ‘Père never thought of a handkerchief, he must have left his finger-prints on her throat.’ He went on holding her beneath the water, beating her legs with his knees, and he wondered how long it would be before her body sagged under him, and grew limp, and was lost to him . . .

J
ulius Lévy went to live in Paris after his daughter was drowned. It was the only place that suggested itself when he awoke to realisation. He had been very ill those first weeks, he had taken chill from having been so long in the water, the doctors said. He must have gone in without a thought of his own danger, hampered by his clothes and because he was unable to swim he could not get to her. The party from the yacht told how they had come upon him up to his neck in the water, shouting at the top of his voice like a madman. It was appalling. Nobody who was there would ever forget.

It was a mercy that he should be taken ill, he was spared the dreadful aftermath of discovery, the finding of Gabriel’s body, the necessary details involved. One of the members of the party took all this upon his shoulders. He did everything, he made arrangements. Julius Lévy questioned none of this, he lay in bed on board his yacht and would see nobody.

Only his doctor came to him.

When his secretary, summoned from London, tried to induce him to make some statement as to his wishes, he sent him away, he would not see him. ‘I don’t want to know,’ he said. ‘Do what you like. Make what arrangements you like: I don’t want to know. Leave me alone.’

They feared for his reason. They left him undisturbed. This was bound to be, they said; this was the shock, the reaction. No one knew how it would ultimately affect him.

The party dispersed, of course, immediately after the accident, and Julius Lévy was left alone on the yacht.

Gabriel’s body was taken back to England. She was buried beside her mother at Granby.

Julius did not ask where they had carried her. It was as though he would cut all memory of her from his mind.

And the yacht waited at her moorings in the harbour at Cannes, with Julius Lévy, her owner, below in his cabin, never coming on deck, never moving, the door closed. Alone, seeing no one.

There was no other topic of conversation in Cannes but Julius Lévy, and how long he would remain. His secretaries, his doctor, his crew could tell nothing of his plans. They waited, wretched and distressed, shaken by this tragedy that had fallen so swiftly upon them all, and they listened to the silence that struck forcibly now there was no laughter, no song, no sound of music, and all the while the hot sun blazed down from the hard sky upon the yacht still and quiet at her moorings.

Then one morning Julius Lévy came up on deck. He climbed up to the bridge of the vessel and stood for a moment looking out towards the sea. He stood awhile, the breeze playing in his white hair, his hand resting on the canvas that protected the bridge, and then he turned suddenly and called to the captain, who was watching him from the window of the chart room.

‘Will you get under way as soon as possible?’ he said.

The captain came out on to the bridge.

‘Certainly, Sir Julius. We can get up steam and be off by noon if you wish it.’

‘I do wish it,’ said Julius; and then the captain hesitated a moment, coughed, and said: ‘Where are we going, Sir Julius?’ He paused awkwardly, wondering if he had been tactless, presuming, and then Julius Lévy laughed and shrugged his shoulders. It was terrible, the captain said afterwards, to see him shrug his shoulders, and then the way he pulled out his cigarette case and tapped it and offered him a cigarette. It was callous, strange.

‘Plans?’ he said. ‘I have no plans. I’m finished with plans.’

And then he went down the ladder to the deck below, half laughing to himself and muttering aloud:

‘Plans? Why the devil should I be expected to make plans?’ At the bottom of the ladder he looked up and called: ‘You’ll put me ashore at Marseilles, and sail this ship to the South Seas for all I care. I’m not going back to England.’

The captain stared at him, worried and perplexed. He did not understand his orders. He thought Julius Lévy had gone crazy, and he was afraid. All this was too much responsibility. He would have to consult someone, the secretary, that doctor, the manager who had come down from London, anybody.

Julius Lévy repeated his orders, however. He gave notice all round that he was leaving the yacht at Marseilles.

‘Take the yacht back to Stockport and sell her,’ he said. ‘Do what you like. I can’t be bothered with those things.’ And then when his secretary tried to tell him of the business that awaited him, all the mail accumulated, the messages, the cables, the people who wished to see him, he waved his hands, he swore, shouting aloud: ‘I tell you I’ve finished with all that. I don’t want to think any more. Get rid of people; don’t answer letters. The whole lot of you can go to the devil.’

Then the secretary, in desperation: ‘Where are we going, Sir Julius? Are you going to stay in Marseilles?’

‘Marseilles? No, you poor fool. We’re going to Paris. Back to the place where I was born.’

Everyone was bewildered and upset. Nobody understood what he meant. Arrangements were made, though. There were three cars waiting at the quay in Marseilles to take Julius Lévy and his personal servants and his luggage to the station. There were three compartments reserved for him in the train
de luxe
.

He was settled in a corner with cushions and papers, his food being brought to him from the wagon restaurant.

It seemed to him that there were a dozen officials fussing about him, rubbing their hands, bowing from the waist.

‘Can’t you leave me alone?’ he said.

He drummed with his fingers on his knee, and he remembered how the last time he had travelled this route he had walked by road from Dijon, his clothes in rags, and Père had played upon a flute like a beggar. That was over fifty years ago.

When they had made up his bed, and he had washed, and was undressed, and lay stretched between the sheets, it came to him that he would be lying thus when the train passed through Dijon, and from Dijon to Paris he would be rocking gently in this bed staring at the dark sky, never sleeping. And once he had lain amongst stones in a truck, bruised and bleeding, unconscious and safe, close to Paul Lévy’s heart.

All night long he tried to keep his mind on these things, and he was thinking:‘I want the road back. I don’t want to go forward any more. I want the road back.’

When the train drew in at the Gare de Lyon there were several people waiting to meet him at the platform. There was the managing director of his cafés, there was Isaacs from the City, Brunt, editor of the
Weekly Gazette
; there was Max Goldheim - the whole crowd. He was bored by them. Why were they there? Somebody was saying something about his usual suite at the Crillon.

As he leant back in the car, his managing director beside him talking gently, nervously patting his arm - he didn’t listen to a word - he supposed he was going to the Crillon, because he had generally gone there when he had visited Paris on business. All that seemed very long ago, though, as if it had happened to a different man.

He peered from the window, his eyes dazzled by the morning sun, his ears full of the sounds, the cries, the turmoil that was Paris; in his nostrils the old familiar smell of dust and cobbled stones,
tabac
and dark burnt bread; and as the car rattled through the streets he felt that this Crillon Hotel was not his, it did not belong to him. They should be taking him eastward, across the quays to the old houses and the narrow byways, back to the garret in the Rue des Petits Champs.

 

He decided from the very first that he would never return to England. England belonged to another time. He had had all that. It had been possessed, and locked away. It was finished now. His people could make all the arrangements they pleased. Sell his estates and the whole of his property. None of those things interested him any more. He did not want to think again, nor to use his brain in the smallest matter. He wanted to be quiet and still; he wanted to sit at a window and watch the people passing in the streets. No more effort, no conversation. Just to sit at some window and bite his nails . . .