Four Generations (The Gollantz Family Saga Book 4)
Four Generations
The Gollantz Family Saga Book 4
Naomi Jacob
Copyright © The Estate of Naomi Jacob 2015
This edition published 2018 by Wyndham Books
(Wyndham Media Ltd)
27, Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX
First published 1934
www.wyndhambooks.com/naomi-jacob
Publisher’s note: As this novel was written, and takes place, many decades ago, occasionally terms of the times are used that would not be used today.
The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, organisations and events are a product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organisations and events is purely coincidental.
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The Gollantz Family Saga series
by Naomi Jacob
published by Wyndham Books
The Founder of the House
That Wild Lie …
Young Emmanuel
Four Generations
Private Gollantz
Gollantz: London, Paris, Milan
Gollantz and Partners
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To
LAURA
(Mrs. Walter Ashmore)
with my love
MICKIE
Contents
BOOK ONE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
BOOK TWO
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
BOOK THREE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
BOOK FOUR
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
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BOOK ONE
Chapter 1
Viva wasn’t attending to the service. She never felt that weddings in fashionable churches were really services at all; they were necessary, and they gave one an opportunity of seeing one’s friends en masse. In this case it enabled her to review the whole of her family and Emmanuel’s as well.
She glanced at her husband, then her eyes travelled up to the altar where Julian stood, then to the broad back of Bill Gollantz, who was standing at the other end of the pew in front of her.
‘You none of you ever look frightfully at home in an English church,’ she had once said to Bill after one of the Heriot weddings.
‘Perhaps because we aren’t,’ Bill said. ‘Perhaps the faith of our fathers is too strong for us. Angela says that when she married the Guv’nor, he gave a most ghastly exhibition of funk.’
She had shrugged her shoulders. ‘That’s rubbish, Bill, and you know it. None of you have ever been inside a synagogue in your lives. You all went to English schools and you all look absolutely English. That’s a pose, that stressing “Here have we no abiding city”.’
The grin had faded from Bill’s face as he answered: ‘Is it? I wonder. I don’t know. Somehow I believe that it crops up once in a way, and all the Heriots and Wilmots and the rest of ’em count for nothing. P’raps not so much in me, I’m all Heriot, but in Julian and ‒ certainly ‒ in Emmanuel.’
She had felt a queer annoyance, almost a sense of distress, and had repeated that he talked nonsense, and that it was only a faint echo of the romanticism which had been so strong in old Emmanuel.
‘You’re all romantics at heart,’ she said, ‘and it’s so damned out of date!’
Looking at Julian now, she had to admit that he looked modern enough and self-controlled and all the other things which she felt romantics ought not to look. He stood there, very slim, very straight, far too handsome, his face expressionless, the light catching his fair hair. The sight of him irritated Viva a little.
She thought: ‘He’s far too good-looking, too successful, too ‒ everything. It’s only two ‒ no, three years ago since he allowed Emmanuel to shoulder his nasty little sins and cut himself off from us all for a year! Now, it’s all forgotten, and ‒ apparently forgiven. He’s making a success in the Party, he’s marrying a frightfully rich wife ‒ I don’t wonder she’s glad to change a name like Van der Hoyt ‒ and I suppose one day he’ll be Prime Minister! I believe that he is different from Emmanuel and Bill. He’s a sort of intellectual pirate, is Julian. He’ll make anyone “walk the plank” ‒ and yet I like him. He’s stimulating.’
The organ began to play, and she realized that the service was over, and that Julian and his little American wife were turning away from the altar. Emmanuel leant down and said that he didn’t think they wanted to go and join them in the vestry, and Viva shook her head. She certainly didn’t want to. She remembered at her own wedding it had been rather fun, but she had played ‘lead’ that day. She didn’t want particularly to play second fiddle to Mrs. Julian Gollantz.
Emmanuel said: ‘I suppose we can sit down now, can we?’
‘Why not? Tired, Emmanuel?’
‘A little …’ Then very quickly, ‘Not really, no, I’m not really tired. This place is so hot, isn’t it?’
She looked at him as he sat at her side, and thought that he did look tired, his shoulders stooped a little, and once or twice he blinked his eyes as if they felt heavy.
‘Max leaves too much to him,’ she thought. ‘Ever since he came back he’s done nothing but work, work, work. It’s all right for Max to say that he can trust Emmanuel with everything, and for Angela to tell everyone what a marvellous flair he has, but none of them think about me. I scarcely see him, and when I do he’s too tired to talk. Taking them all round, they’re a self-centred lot, the Gollantz family!’
Charming, all of them, but they ‘used’ people. Angela had used that wretched old Bill Master for years just because she knew that he adored her. Max and she used Emmanuel and even Bill very often. Angela might laugh and say: ‘Darling Bill, he’s like his godfather ‒ dependable.’ They had a sort of tribal spirit, they gathered a crowd of people round them and never let them go. There were the Davises, old Meyer Bernstein, the Bermans, to say nothing of the whole collection of people who were distantly ‘family’ ‒ the Hirschs, Ludwig
Bruch, and the Jaffes. All of them ‘relied on’ to do this and that and the other. Angela had caught it from the Gollantz family when she married into it and it had become part of her, Viva thought. Julian always admitted that he used anyone who could be of the slightest use to him.
She let her thoughts run on, back to old Emmanuel.
‘They’ve made him a sort of legend,’ she thought. ‘They’ve built up a whole series of stories and recollections about him. His manners, his methods, his dignity ‒ everything about him. The huge picture that hangs in the dining-room at Ordingly pervades the whole house. It’s not Max’s house, it’s only a home where the cult of old Emmanuel Gollantz is practised.’
Bill moved down the pew and leant back whispering that they were coming, and the organ blared out and everyone looked towards the door of the vestry.
Viva said: ‘The last bit of church atmosphere has gone. From now on it’s only a social function. Nice little turned-up nose the bride has, hasn’t she?’
Bill said stolidly: ‘I like her, she’s a dear little girl.’
Emmanuel said nothing. He was staring straight in front of him, and Viva wondered if he didn’t want to meet Julian’s eyes. They spoke when they met, Emmanuel was always perfectly friendly and courteous, but he never went out of his way to talk to his brother. Viva remembered that she had never seen them shake hands.
Julian was making a sort of royal progress down the aisle, he was turning this way and that, his smile varying, Viva thought, according to the importance of the person to whom he directed it. Emmanuel still stared straight before him, and, leaning a little sideways so that her arm touched his, Viva felt that his muscles had tightened. She watched Julian and saw him catch Bill’s eye, and nod in a friendly elder-brother sort of fashion; then he saw Emmanuel, and for an instant his eyes widened. He moved a little from the direct path and drew nearer to his brother.
Scarcely checking his walk, he said: ‘Emmanuel …’
Viva watched, fascinated, wondering if Emmanuel was going to forget the Gollantz tradition so far as to make an even miniature scene. She nudged him, and he seemed to force his eyes to meet those of his brother.
Julian bent his smooth fair head towards his wife, and Viva caught the whispered words; she felt that Julian wished that she and everyone else should do so.
‘Emmanuel ‒ my best friend …’ Then he raised his head, met Emmanuel’s eyes, and put out his hand. It was all done so quickly that the procession never halted. It was characteristic of Julian to do things swiftly, neatly, without fumbling.
She felt, rather than noticed, the pause before Emmanuel put out his hand and took his brother’s. The clasp lasted the merest fraction of a second, and possibly only Viva noticed that the pressure came from Julian; Emmanuel only gave his hand.
The bridesmaids passed, and Angela with Hervey Van der Hoyt, Max with Mrs. Van der Hoyt. They slipped out of their pew and made their way towards the door. Emmanuel never spoke, and she listened to Bill, who walked on her other side, talking all the time. As they stood waiting to get into the cars, Angela turned and smiled at them over her shoulder. Emmanuel made an almost imperceptible movement towards her, then drew back and said:
‘Hello, darling. Nice you look!’
Bill’s voice, younger and more gruff, said:
‘She is always the best-dressed woman wherever she is.’
Angela turned away and disappeared into a car with Van der Hoyt. Viva felt another moment of irritation. This was a demonstration of the Gollantz tradition. Angela must always be praised, treated as if she were the only good-looking woman in the world. Max did it, Bill had learnt to be quite good at it, and Emmanuel had done it ever since she could remember.
‘This is ours,’ Bill said. ‘Come along.’
Emmanuel’s hand was under her elbow to help her in, and as she turned to him she smiled and said:
‘Oh, Emmanuel, cheer up, my angel! It’s a wedding, not a funeral. I shall begin to think that you were in love with the bride yourself!’
‘No one would know so well as you,’ Emmanuel said, ‘what a foolish thought that would be. No, no, I’m all right.’
Bill grumbled: ‘I hate this reception in Town; wish it could have been at Ordingly. After all, that’s our own place. This beastly Town house that old Van der Hoyt’s taken has nothing to do with us.’
There it was again! ‒ Us ‒ Ordingly. Viva moved restlessly. The whole thing was getting on her nerves, and the reception would be terribly hot and boring, with high-pitched American voices as well as the soft lisping of the Gollantz Foreign Contingent.
In the entrance hall they met her mother. Lady Heriot had been a Gaiety girl in the days when the ladies of the chorus of that theatre invariably married into the peerage, or at least into the titled classes. She still talked as she had done when, as Miss Beatrice Grantley, she captured the heart of Walter Heriot, Fifth Baronet.
‘My dear, what a crowd! Hello, Billee ‒ Little Billee, eh? Manny darling, how are you? Going to look after your unfortunate mother-in-law? That’s right. Take me round and let me meet all the tribes of Judah, some of them look too charming for words.’
She walked away with Emmanuel, and Viva stood watching them for a moment, thinking how queer it was that Emmanuel, of all the three brothers, got on best with her mother.
‘Let’s go and congratulate old Julian,’ Bill said.
‘None of you would ever congratulate Julian,’ Viva said. ‘You would only tell his wife what supreme good fortune is hers in marrying into the family.’
Bill lifted his eyebrows, half whimsically. ‘Well, there might be something in that,’ he said. ‘Anyway, let’s go and do it.’
Julian seemed to possess the gift of talking to a dozen people at once, saying the right thing to each one, and apparently giving the person to whom he spoke his undivided attention. He came forward to meet them. Bill shook hands and said: ‘Good luck, old man,’ then turned to speak to his sister-in-law. Viva could hear her rather metallic voice chattering away to him, and she waited for Julian to speak.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘that’s done!’
‘I hope you’ll both be very happy.’
‘That’s kind of you, Viva. She’s very charming.’
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘More Gollantz patronage! I’m disliking you all very much today.’
‘But you always do dislike me!’ he laughed.
‘Haven’t I every right to?’
‘Oh ‒ right! That implies that you feel it your duty to dislike me.’
She said very quickly: ‘Believe me, it’s a pleasure as well.’
‘You didn’t always ‒ feel like this.’
‘I didn’t know you so well.’
He said very softly: ‘Doesn’t it ever strike you that perhaps you knew me much better? I wanted to marry you so much that I embarked on my career of unscrupulousness, and lost!’
‘But felt your aptitude for it and won on your next venture ‒ with Emmanuel.’
For the first time she saw him flush, and for a moment he hesitated, turning quickly to shake hands with some tall man whom Viva didn’t know, saying: ‘Thanks awfully ‒ and I can’t tell you how delighted we are with the goblets. Beautiful ‒ thanks so much, Charlie.’ Then he turned back to her and said very quietly: ‘My dear, you’re rapidly developing into that most objectionable of mortals ‒ the female cad.’
She held out her hand, smiling. ‘I had a good master, Julian. Good-bye, I must find Emmanuel.’
She didn’t search very long, for she caught sight of him in the distance talking to old Simeon Jaffe, who had come all the way from Vienna. She saw Jaffe, with his parchment skin and beautiful white hair, take Emmanuel’s face in his hands and kiss him on each cheek. She thought: ‘I know that expression on the faces of the Foreign Contingent so well. Old Jaffe is telling him how like old Emmanuel he is. Oh, Lord, here’s Walter!’
Her brother limped towards her, leaning on his stick more heavily than usual. His wh
ite, fat face always repulsed her. She had very little belief in the affection of families for each other, and never made any bones about disliking Walter cordially.
‘W’arrer show!’ he said. ‘God, how ever you came to marry into this mob beats me, Viva.’
She said: ‘You’d better go home, Walter. This mob never understands that getting tight is a necessity to a gentleman.’
‘Tight!’ he said. ‘I li’ that. Have you seen our respected father? He’s helpless.’ Walter chuckled.
Viva’s mouth twisted as if she tasted something unpleasant.
‘Oh, go away, Walter! I hate everyone today, particularly my own people. You may not like the mob, but they can behave decently.’
It was pleasant to find Max and listen to his voice, watch his deft movements as he brought her champagne and minute sandwiches, and stood listening with grave attention when she talked, as if she was the only concern he had in the world.
‘Max,’ she said, ‘I’ve been horrid to you all today, and I’m beginning to be rather ashamed of myself. I’ve been railing ‒ inwardly ‒ against the Gollantz tradition.’
‘Is there one?’ Max said. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘Haven’t you one in your business?’
‘Oh, that ‒ yes. We had it handed down to us from my father.’
‘And you’ve evolved another for home consumption, haven’t you?’
The smile reached his eyes ‒ nice kind eyes, Viva thought. He looked younger, as if he had thrown off some of the weight which he usually carried.
‘Have we? You know so much about us, my dear. Tell me.’
‘You all stick together so ‒ you’re so tribal. Look at them here today. They’ve come from Vienna, Berlin, Paris, even Madrid, to make a show! You all admire each other so strenuously. You all flatter Angela, you all praise Emmanuel, talk of Bill’s solid worth ‒ it’s just a little tedious for a mere Gentile, Max.’
He said nothing, only continued to smile, as if he laughed at some secret piece of knowledge.
‘You’ve even forgiven Julian,’ Viva said, and would have given a great deal to have unsaid the words after she had spoken them.