Julius (34 page)

‘Don’t be such an idiot,’ said Gabriel; but Papa would run his hands through his hair and become temperamental. ‘I can’t stand it - I’m going up to Town,’ and he would rush away and shout at the servant to tell Mander to bring round the Rolls, he was going to London.

Gabriel lit a cigarette and shrugged her shoulders. If he liked to behave like a criminal fleeing from justice he could for all she cared. She knew there would be a wire from him in a couple of hours’ time, sent off from some post office in the Midlands, and then another wire from London when he arrived, and then the telephone the next morning before breakfast.

‘I’m coming back,’ he would say, his voice faint on the long-distance call. ‘I can’t stand this.’

‘All right,’ she would answer.

‘I’m going down to the City this morning to see what’s going on, and then I’ll be right back. Did you sleep?’

‘Like a top - I always do.’

‘It’s more than I did. Listen: do you want anything?’

‘No.’

‘I’ll find time to go into Cartier’s and see if they’ve got anything good.’

‘Oh, don’t bother.’

‘Yes - I want to. It makes an interest. It’s damned cold in Town. Would you like another fur coat? - you were twittering about a chinchilla the other day - here - are you there? - are you there? - don’t cut me off.’

‘I’ve got to go, Papa; the horses are waiting, and I don’t want to be late. Good-bye.’

She hung up on him, laughing to herself. God! what a crazy man. She was glad he was coming back. And crossing the hall she would see the figure of her mother standing in the doorway of the breakfast-room, making a pretence of glancing at the morning paper, then looking up. ‘Was that your father?’

‘Yes, he’s fed up with Town.’

‘Didn’t he ask to speak to me?’

‘No - he was in a hurry.’

‘I wish he wouldn’t be so restless, always chopping and changing about. It makes arrangements so difficult. Besides, he dashed off yesterday without even telling me.’

‘I shouldn’t let it worry me, if I were you,’ said Gabriel. ‘He’s always doing things like that. I never let it interfere with my plans.’ She flicked her boot with her riding crop and crossed the hall, whistling to the dogs.

Typical of Mother to moon about and imagine household arrangements were being disturbed. As if it mattered whether people were early or late for meals, or whether the numbers were odd, or if the servants were put out. Servants were paid, weren’t they? She resented her mother dealing with the Melton staff. Gabriel felt they were her own property and responsibility. She couldn’t think why Mother bothered to traipse up to Melton, anyway. She obviously did not enjoy it. Everything ran so smoothly when the household consisted of Papa and herself alone. Guests did not matter one way or the other.

It was a great relief when Mother finally developed a severe pain in her side and, taking alarm, at once declared she must return to Grosvenor Square and undergo some treatment. Gabriel felt as though she had been living under some strain and could now breathe and be herself again.

Rachel sensed the obvious relief of her husband and daughter when she told them she was motoring up to London. As she stood on the steps, while the suit-cases were put into the car, and her maid fussed round her with her rug and her dog, it was as though she were a guest being sped away who had made too long a stay. A guest in her own house. And Gabriel was the hostess, hatless, at her ease, belonging there, giving the order to the chauffeur that Rachel herself should be giving: ‘There won’t be room for those flowers inside, Mander; they’ll get crushed. They’ll have to go in front. Look out ...’

And Julius, too boisterously cheerful, saying without sincerity: ‘Now, Rache, take things quietly in London. Don’t overtire yourself. Get that fellow to put you right, and don’t stand any nonsense from him. Good-bye, my dear.’

The duty kiss, first Julius, then Gabriel, the climb into the car, exhausting with so many rugs and coats, and the dog, and her hot-water bottle. The maid in front with the chauffeur.

‘Good-bye.’ The forced smile at them through the window, the wave of her hand, and then the car gliding away down the drive. She craned to look back through the window, but they had turned already up the steps, dismissing her from their minds, Gabriel with her arm round her father and he calling the dogs. They had their day in front of them, cut and divided from hers.

Rachel tried to picture the anti-climax if she suddenly tapped on the glass and told Mander to go back, she had changed her mind. She wished she had the courage. And as the car drove out of the gates and to the main road Rachel thought of the long dreary drive that lay ahead of her until she reached London, with the straight unhelpful backs of the maid and the chauffeur in front of her, her only consolation the water bottle that eased the pain in her side, and the warm body of the griffon on her knee.

But to Julius and Gabriel left behind it seemed as though the air were free once more and the house welcomed them in the old way; the hall was wider, clearer, most beautifully theirs again; even the dogs jumped and wagged their tails, barking loudly at Julius, who flipped at them with his stick.

The sun shone from a placid sky. It had rained in the night, and the harsh white frost that had stopped hunting for a whole week was turned to soft mud and gravel and rich damp turf.

‘If this blessed weather holds, we can turn out again to-morrow, ’ said Gabriel.‘Come on, let’s wander along to the stables.’ And they set off round the corner of the house, holding each other’s arms, keeping the same step, singing the same song:

So the winter passed and the early spring, no dull moment to Gabriel, whose entire life was spent in the saddle.

Once more hunting came to an end, and it was good-bye to Melton and the trek south to Newmarket at the beginning of April - racing again, and the Spring Meeting at Epsom - Gay Lord driving Gabriel to fury by failing to win the City and Suburban, and her temper restored again because Follow Me proved his stamina the next week at Newmarket.

Then May came along, and for the next few months of the summer Gabriel could not be dragged away from the Island except for the Derby and Ascot week in June and Goodwood later. And her time was spent at the helm of
Adieu Sagesse
or in luxurious idleness in a deck-chair on the
Wanderer
, gramophone at hand, a crowd of young people about her.

Whether it was because the summer of 1913 was notoriously wet and sailing conditions were seldom ideal, rain and gales day after day in July, or whether the very atmosphere at Cowes and the life on the water held no longer quite the same thrill to her because the novelty was gone, Gabriel found herself losing interest in regattas and races; she began to weary of the one topic of conversation on the lips of her yachting friends.

What was the fun in
Adieu Sagesse
when a half gale made sailing impossible, or, worse still, when a flat calm and a steady drizzle made sailing merely a dragging and a boring pastime?

The Island was ugly in the rain; there was nothing to do. It was absurd to go across to London, because at that time of the year London was dead.

Granby? Mother was down at Granby. Ill again - she had a nurse on hand now. Nobody knew quite what was the matter with her. It occurred to Gabriel that her mother must lead a strangely empty existence, never caring much about things. Odd of her. She supposed it was middle age. And yet Papa was several years older than Mother, and nobody could call his existence dreary; he was always so enthusiastic, so terribly alive. He had a personality that stood out above everybody else’s; he made other men - young men especially - look so stupid, so callow and inexperienced. Papa was young too, but in a different way. Subtle, queer, there was a glamour about him.

Perhaps one of the reasons she was feeling restless and bored was because Papa had been spending more time in London this summer. He was gambling in the City again, and getting the same thrill out of it that she had got last year out of sailing. She had driven down to his offices once, when she was passing through London, and he had not been expecting her, of course. He was busy. She had been told to wait in some room as though she were nobody, some creature without an appointment. And she had not been able to stand that; she had walked straight through into his private room without knocking. He was speaking through the telephone. He had looked up when she burst into the room, and instead of throwing down the receiver and leaping up from his chair as she expected, he put his hand over the mouthpiece for one second and said to her: ‘Sit down - don’t talk,’ and then on with his rapid, unintelligible conversation. He was smiling, but it was not because she had come into the room. For the first time in her life Gabriel realised that this was power and Julius Lévy held it between his hands. She watched him speaking into the telephone, and as she looked at him who was so deep in his game, taking not the slightest interest in her, it was as though the faint imprint of a hand touched her and lingered indescribably, mysterious and pleasing, a new sensation that was disturbing and exciting at the same time, curiously physical like a pain in her body, and it had never come to her before.

When he had finished and turned to her, smiling for her once more, glad that she was there, she was abrupt and careless to him, coolly lighting a cigarette and leaving him after a few minutes, pretending a composure that she did not feel.

She had crossed over to the Island that afternoon, and in some dim inexplicable fashion the memory of those few minutes remained with her unchanged, mingling and becoming part of her dissatisfaction with the weather, and Cowes, and yachting. She was restless, bored. She wanted new things and she could not put a name to the things she wanted.

People irritated her suddenly, especially young men, they were such fools. Life seemed empty for no reason that she could see. One moment it had been exciting and breathless and fun, and now it was none of this - the charm had gone.

She felt as though there were no definite scheme of life awaiting her; her will was blunted for the time being and she was a blank page ready to receive some impression or suggestion.

In August she would be eighteen. Papa was giving a dance for her. He said he was going to make the whole of Cowes look like a carnival at Venice. Everybody would be there, of course. It was the finish of Cowes week and people who might otherwise have left would stop on because Julius Lévy was giving a party.

‘This dance is your official appearance in the world,’ he told her, laughing. ‘I believe they call it coming out.’

‘I thought I’d been out for three years,’ said Gabriel.

‘Yes - you and I think so. But convention likes to make a thing of a girl’s eighteenth birthday. Anyway, we’ll have a splash. We’ll give ’em something to remember us by. Rather fun, eh?’

She shrugged her shoulders.

‘Oh! you’re just a blasé young woman nowadays,’ he said.

‘What’s wrong? You know
Adieu Sagesse
ought to have got an easy first on Wednesday and you were well beaten; you weren’t trying. I was watching you through my glasses.You were thinking of something else.’

‘Oh! go to hell!’ she said suddenly, and went out of the room.

For a moment Julius was startled; he crossed to the window and saw Gabriel jump into a car and drive away at a ridiculous pace. Restless, eh? Bad-tempered and funny about something. Then he wondered if there was any difference between a boy and a girl at that age, and whether they went through the same identical means of ridding themselves of superfluous energy. He had a sudden vision of himself as a boy climbing through Nanette’s window and he laughed.

Too much, too soon. Was it, though? Had it spoilt life for him in certain senses? He was never quite sure. Besides, it was all so long ago. He had forgotten what it felt like to be a boy. The present was the only thing that mattered to him - the present and the future. The future seemed very close to him now, the white clouds passing near. He would not have to reach out for those clouds, they would come to him.

Julius went outside on to the wide verandah stoop, and chose a long easy-chair in the full glare of the sun. He stretched out his legs upon another chair and placed two cushions under his head. Then he lit a cigar and closed his eyes, his mind and body relaxed, a faint smile playing on his lips.

Rachel came over to Cowes for Gabriel’s eighteenth birthday. She rose from a sick bed at Granby and came across to the Island without a nurse in attendance, making a supreme effort of will-power for the occasion. She was constantly in pain these days; her mysterious disease whispered vaguely as ‘something internal’ was in reality the beginning of cancer. Nobody had told her, but she knew. There was something in the too cheerful outlook of her nurse, the hearty manner of her doctor, that warned her like a red lamp of danger.

She bought books about cancer and read them when the nurse was not with her. The books all agreed about the ultimate inevitable pain in the death that followed.There was no certainty as to the length of time a growth took to strangle the life-force, and this frightened her and made her feel as helpless as a child groping in the dark. To her cancer was a name of dread, something that must never be mentioned.

She must cover up her knowledge and pretend to a forced cheerfulness with the nurse who waited on her.

She thought that if she stayed in Granby when a dance was given for Gabriel at Cowes there would be two stories mingled horribly in the minds of their friends. ‘They don’t live together any more. She has had to give way and let him lead his own life; terrible for her.’ And then, in a lower tone, hardly above a whisper: ‘She’s ill, too - they say it’s cancer.’