Julius (29 page)

There were other parties too where Julius Lévy acted host, and these because they were less known were whispered over and wondered at, and nobody was sure if the reports were true or false, because the very essence of their attraction was the veil of mystery that shrouded them, dark and secret. It was said that he had a house in Chelsea somewhere, of which his wife held no knowledge, and that here he played sultan to a harem of lovely ladies whose birth and position should have taught them greater discretion. It was said that girls were decoyed here from the streets and were not permitted to depart until he had had his way with them. It was said that strangers visited the house by night and that they wore masks to conceal their identity.

Legends grew up about the habits of Julius Lévy: he was oriental, he was a sadist, he was a pervert, he kept black women, he took opium. Story after story was whispered behind hands and nobody brought certain truth of any of these things.

Julius lived as it pleased him to live, and it mattered little to him what people said or thought. He believed that hunger should never go a-begging, and because of this his fancy fell on strange faces at times and in strange places. It would seem to him that surely along this dark river there must be something rich, and something rare; new treasures to stand within his reach and dazzle his eyes - always hungry, always thirsty, always curiously jaded.

And he searched, and he stretched out his hands, and he drank deeply of what he found, but part of him was blunted, part of him was stale, and part of him was lost for ever with the fierce sharp joy of a boy who threw stones at a washer-woman’s window.

For this was worthless, and this was old, and this was like a close dank fungus smell, and there was nothing exquisite, or lingering, or dangerously sweet; and he must travel on, on, always a little further to the next river, to the sound of uncharted waters beyond the bend, to the shadow path across the hill. In spite of disillusion, and cynicism, and the dull, stale taste in the mouth, Julius Lévy never wearied of his search. He was as tireless as the child who discovers a road beyond the garden gate, every moment in his life was a living moment of adventure that counted with him and made its mark.

He was his own god, he, Julius Lévy, and the power he made for himself. He was beholden to nothing and to no one and his destiny belonged to him.

There were moments when he stood in the Oxford Street café, the largest of all his buildings, with its great white front and its dome and its golden lettering and its glass doors, and he would watch the stream of people during the lunch hour fill the deep restaurant and the floors above; black dots of men and women like swarms of flies into a spider’s web. The chatter of a thousand voices, the clatter of plates and glasses, the scraping back of chairs, the strains of the orchestra, the swift bustle of the efficient white-coated attendants, the good-food atmosphere. There was life and power and excitement in this picture before him. There was vitality and strength. It brought to him the same sensuous enjoyment that the market had done long ago in Neuilly with the bargain cries, the heaps of cauliflower, onions, fruit and cheese, the fluttering of the stalls in the breeze, the scattering litter of dust on cobbled stones.

There were moments in his offices in the Strand, leaning back in the chair before his roll-topped desk, pausing a moment for a suitable phrase in a letter, which his secretary waited for him to dictate. From his window he could hear the traffic noise in the Strand below, he could see the grey roofs of buildings stretching down to the City - a dome, a spire of a church.There was the ceaseless hum of movement that was City noise, that was working, breathing humanity. A day of ceaseless activity would spread itself before him; one glance at his calendar would insure him of this.These letters to dictate and the constant interruptions, the low b-r-r of the telephone at his elbow, switched through to him from the outer room by another secretary and therefore meaning an important call: ‘Birmingham wants you, Mr Lévy’ ...‘Hullo? Hullo’ - Standish, the Birmingham manager, with some essential matter to report - ‘All right, Standish, I understand the situation, and I’ll wire instructions.’

Going through with the letters - ‘I wouldn’t have bothered you with this, Mr Lévy, but there’s been some trouble over in Kensington ...’ ‘Well, send Kelly to me, he must go down there and take over until Johnson is fit ...’ The telephone again, the manager of the Western United Bank: ‘Yes, I tried to get you twenty minutes ago. I want twenty-five thousand from No. 5 transferred to the Liverpool branch. Can you fix that? Fellow called Wilson is my representative there . . .’ A tap at the door. ‘Mr Conrad Marx to see Mr Lévy, he has an appointment.’

‘Show him in right away.’The architect for the new building scheme in Oxford Street - a roof garden that in summer could be covered in within five minutes in case of rain. ‘Look here, Marx, you’ve got to prove to me on paper it can be done in the time, otherwise I’m not employing you.’

More letters, more telephone calls, more interviews, and somewhere about one-thirty a luncheon with Stanley Leon and Jack Cohen across the way at the Savoy.

‘I want you to see what the devil is happening at Leeds, Cohen. Complaints all the time. You can sack Frue if he’s the trouble. If he isn’t I’ll come up myself and raise hell,’ and to Leon: ‘I see Holborn dropped three thousand last week, how do you account for it?’ Then catching a glimpse at another table of a fellow he recognises as the director of the Bank in Hamburg, leaves his companions and crosses over to their table: ‘Hullo, how d’you do, Schwaber? Tell me the truth about the Carlheim Steel. I’ve heard the Hamburg factory’s gone up in flames.’

‘How in God’s name did you get wind of it?’

‘I had my scouts out as usual. Sold every share I possessed yesterday afternoon. So it is true? That’s all I wanted to know. Come to dinner to-morrow. Rachel’s got Vanda coming, we’ll get her to sing.’

Then wandering back to his own table, the servile waiters bowing before him, his big cigar between his teeth, and hearing somebody murmur: ‘There’s Julius Lévy.’

By three o’clock before his desk again in the Strand offices. More interviews, more telephone calls, and then at a quarter to five finding Henry waiting for him with the Rolls to take him along to the Oxford Street café, where he was kept until half-past six; but his temper was good and he was looking forward to his evening. As he leaned back in the car he remembered with satisfaction his telephone message to Isaacs in the City as soon as he left the Savoy after lunch: ‘Yes, the Carlheim factory’s burnt.There’ll be a sudden rise in Worldorf when it gets known. Start buying at once and quit when they start jumping. If they reach the old level you can sell, they won’t go beyond that.’

There were moments when work could be put aside for a little space, when he was not Julius Lévy the thinker, but Julius Lévy the host. The bright sun shining in a cloudless sky, and driving with Rachel down to Ascot, she in lavender blue with a lace hat on her pile of red-brown hair, those envied pearls about her throat.And sitting in the box above the course watching King Edward arrive in the royal carriage drawn by milk-white horses, and then luncheon served by Moon and the two footmen in the room behind the box: cold salmon, chicken, strawberries and cream, champagne, the laughter of his guests, beautiful women, the shouts of the crowd warning them that another race had started. Gaiety, excitement. ‘Julius, my dear, how like you to be the only creature to back the winner,’ Nina, Baroness Chesborough, touching him on the shoulder in pretence of mockery, handsome, intelligent, and he looked at her until her eyes fell; she wanted to be his mistress - and the light, and the colour, and the scent and movement of women, the thud of horses’ hoofs on the turf, their bodies sleek and glistening with sweat, the patch of blue hydrangea below the King’s box, a friend laughing in his ear: ‘Hullo, Lévy - you’ve got a wonderful crowd in your party.’ Another glass of champagne, another cigar, another smile at Nina Chesborough, and the whole of his pleasure concentrated in one glance on the buttons of the livery worn by Moon and the footmen, gold buttons on which the letter ‘L’ stood plain for all to see.

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.’