Four Generations (The Gollantz Family Saga Book 4) Read online

  Max’s smile died, and she thought that his eyes were reproachful.

  ‘I’m sorry, Max, forgive me. I didn’t mean to say that.’

  He laid his hand on hers. ‘But, my dear, you did mean to say it,’ he said. ‘You wanted to jolt me out of some of my smug self-satisfaction, didn’t you? I understand. I know how boring we must be to you, and that’s why I like you so much ‒ you generally hide your boredom so well. We are tribal, but after all that’s not to be wondered at. We were developed in that way, we were tribal from our inception as a nation. Everyone is, Viva, more or less. Even you have your cousins, second cousins, ramifications that even after all these years I cannot follow. Angela astonishes me when she says that young Rowsley, who is going to marry Trent’s daughter, is a connection of hers. I never knew what that word meant until I married Angela. We don’t have connections, we have relations. And this adulation of each other ‒ it’s honest enough. We don’t flatter Angela, we only pay tribute to her. We’re very grateful to her, my sons and myself. She and I are very proud of our sons ‒’ He stopped and then said again. ‘Very proud of our sons. They are successes, and’ ‒ he laughed ‒ ‘they’re ours. You see, we’re really rather a simple race, in spite of all our accredited trickery and “slimness”. We say what we feel about the things that matter. Old Jaffe kisses Emmanuel because he loves him as Emmanuel, because he respects him as a clever fellow, and because he sees in him something of the first Emmanuel whom he loved.’

  Viva sipped her champagne and nodded.

  Max went on: ‘As for forgiving ‒’

  She said quickly: ‘No, Max, never mind ‒ leave that!’

  ‘No, no,’ he said, ‘I want to explain. You knew all that there was to know, we’re still grateful to you for making us bring Emmanuel home, and you have a right to know. Julian is our son, and we love him. You can’t, you don’t, stop loving people for what they do. You hate them possibly for that one individual thing ‒ but the love remains. Then we are very proud, and it would be terrible for us to let the world know that once ‒ once ‒ we had something occur which lowered that pride. So we forgive Julian, we have taken him back, and I don’t think that he will ever betray us again.’

  ‘And Emmanuel paid!’ she said softly.

  ‘Emmanuel paid,’ Max said. ‘If he paid Julian’s debt ‒ as it were ‒ didn’t he wipe out what Julian had incurred? If we demand payment again, don’t we perhaps dim a little the brightness of Emmanuel’s sacrifice?’

  ‘It sounds a little like sophistry to me, Max.’

  ‘And perhaps it is, just a little,’ he admitted, ‘but Angela loves her sons and her family, and so do I, and by loving Julian, yes, in spite of everything, we don’t love Emmanuel less. You may discover some day, Viva, though I hope that you never will, that it’s very hard to harbour anger against your own flesh and blood. You see, women like Angela don’t only see their sons as what they are, they see them as they once were, and they can never quite dissociate the little boy from the man. Emmanuel feels no resentment towards us for ‒ taking Julian back.’

  She rose, put down her glass, and, taking a little mirror from her bag, examined her face in it attentively.

  ‘I wonder sometimes if Emmanuel feels anything these days,’ she said. ‘Good-bye, Max. Thank you for talking to me, you’ve charmed away some of my bad temper.’

  ‘What did you mean about Emmanuel?’ Max asked.

  ‘Nothing ‒ I don’t know why I said it.’

  She moved away, and stayed talking first to one person, then to another. Once her mother met her and said:

  ‘My angel, those Austrian Jews are too delicious. Such pets. Did you see Wally? Dreadful boy he is! I hope that he’s gone home. And your father! Told the most frightful story to old Hirsch ‒ that old fellow with the dyed beard. Thank the Lord, he didn’t understand it. You look a bit stuffy, Vi. Tired?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘You rush about too damn much. You ought to settle down and have a couple of babies. Do you all the good in the world.’

  ‘A couple of confinements as a tonic don’t appeal to me, darling.’

  Lady Heriot considered the reply, then said: ‘Oh, I dunno. Lots of worse things, and men like their wives to have babies. I’ve always heard that Jews are frightfully keen on families, it’s a Sheenie trait.’

  ‘Your knowledge of the family lore of the Jews, mother dear, is marvellous. I’ll speak to Emmanuel about it.’

  Her mother retorted: ‘Don’t be so coarse, Vi. He looks as if he could do with something to cheer him up. He’s been kissed by all the old tribal chiefs, and that little French fellow de Lara, and it’s put him off his stroke by the look of him.’

  Emmanuel was standing near Bill Masters, who, leaning on his stick, was talking to the bride’s father. Emmanuel scarcely listened to what they said, his mind was going back to his own wedding nearly two years ago. His mother had said then: ‘It’s the beginning of things, do believe that,’ and he had thought that she was right. Only lately it had been different. Viva was wonderful. It wasn’t Viva’s fault, she hadn’t changed. Only it was as if all his old dreams asserted themselves and insisted that he should remember them.

  Nothing very definite at first, only snatches of memories. A garden very hot under the sun; someone playing, Gilly saying, ‘It’s called a canna, they grow in India’; and someone else saying, ‘They grow here, too, Gilly.’ Then that same voice, ‘What shall I sing, Saul?’

  It was the recurrence of that voice which made him work so hard, which made him insist that his father left more and more of the work of the firm to him. It drove him early to the office, it sent him flying to obscure salerooms where the sound of the auctioneer’s hammer only beat it out more plainly for him. Viva said that he was getting moody, stuffy, that he never wanted to go out, that he had lost his love of the theatre, of music … Oh, it wasn’t Viva’s fault. From today he’d be different. He wouldn’t hear those voices, remember that hot sun, those suffocating Saturdays in Milan, when he had looked forward to twelve o’clock, knowing that it meant the car, the road to Como, and Juliet.

  He loved Viva. Once again he said to himself that she was wonderful. It was his own fault, he was working too hard, trying to do too much. Antiques, pictures, old wood-carving, china, designs for furniture, materials for upholstery ‒ a hundred things! Too much. He’d leave some of it to other people in future. He’d go out more with Viva, he’d dance, hear music ‒ no, perhaps not hear very much music ‒ see plays …

  Van der Hoyt’s slightly nasal voice cut across his thoughts. ‘I hev always maintained that we hev a far more adequate sense of appreciation over home, Mr. Masters, and here is the proof of it. There is not a man in the Philadelphia Orchestra who does not receive remuneration which is in every way commensurate with his ability as an artist. In other words ‒ we are ready to pay.’

  Bill Masters scratched his chin and said: ‘Ye-e-es, I see that.’

  ‘Now,’ Van der Hoyt continued, ‘I heppen to know something about singers. I mean that I know many of the world’s greatest artists in-tim-ately. That is, my wife and I keep open house in Noo Yark. When Juliet Forbes was over with us ‒ you know her, Mr. Masters?’

  ‘Very well indeed.’

  Emmanuel said: ‘Forgive me, sir, but would you excuse me? My wife is signalling to me that she wants to be off.’

  Van der Hoyt said: ‘Why, yes, sure. If she was my wife I know that I’d not keep her waiting ten seconds! Hope we’ll see you again before we leave.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d dine with my wife and me one evening?’

  ‘I’d like it.’

  ‘I’ll ask my wife to arrange it. Good-bye, sir. Good-bye, Bill.’

  They watched his tall figure move over to where Viva stood, then Van der Hoyt said: ‘Funny stiff way these Englishmen hev of always talking about ‒ my wife, my wife, my wife, eh?’

  Bill said: ‘Have they? I never noticed it.’

  The American laughed.
‘Almost as if they didn’t wanter forget it. Well, to get back to my story about Miss Juliet Forbes …’

  Chapter 2

  Viva said: ‘Hello, darling. When are those two people going to start on their honeymoon? I’m bored and want to get home. We’ve got to change and be back at the Carlton by half past eight. It’s going to be the most unholy rush.’

  ‘They’ve gone to change now,’ he said, and, watching Viva’s face, told himself again how pretty she was, and how vital, and what a lucky fellow he was to be married to her. They moved about, meeting sallow-faced members of the Gollantz family, and rubicund-faced members of the Heriot, the Harris, and the Wilmot families, each expressing their approval of Julian’s marriage in their own terms and their own phraseology. For the gathering was composed not only of the Jews ‒ English, French, German and Austrian ‒ who belonged to old Emmanuel Gollantz’s family, but of the English who were the relations of Angela Drew who had married old Emmanuel’s son, Max. The friends and relatives of the American bride were only a very small percentage of the people who thronged to Hervey Van der Hoyt’s rented house in Berkeley Square.

  Once when Viva stopped to speak to one of the family up from Gloucestershire, little Louis Lara touched Emmanuel’s arm.

  ‘I go back to Paris tonight,’ he said. ‘I have scarcely seen you. I want to talk to you very much.’

  Emmanuel, with the queer sense of being pulled back into the past, said: ‘I’d like to talk to you, Louis.’ Then, still living in that time nearly three years ago, he added: ‘Your clothes are beautiful, Louis.’

  Louis preened himself and smiled. ‘They are very good taste, I think. I have looked all day but have not seen another cravat like mine. Have you?’

  Emmanuel said: ‘No, and I don’t suppose I ever shall. Try calling it a tie, not a cravat; and I don’t care for the watch-chain.’

  ‘No? Olympia gave it to me after her first night at the Odeon. It is platinum and pearls.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it, but we don’t wear ’em any more.’

  Louis frowned. ‘But it is typically English. The late Prince Albert always wore one.’

  ‘I know, but he’s been dead some years now. Fashions change.’

  Then Viva turned round and said: ‘Oh, Mr. Lara! How nice! Come home with us and have some tea before we come back for dinner.’

  There was a sudden stir, and Julian came back, and then the bride, ready to go off to the station. Everyone crowded round, and Bill entered, rather hot and dusty, having wrestled with a white satin shoe and yards of string at the back of the car.

  They gathered on the top of the steps, and Julian’s best man, a rising Member of Parliament, did his best to get them into the car quickly and failed, because Julian had to stand with Angela and whisper something to her which made her laugh immoderately, and Emmanuel heard the Press cameras snapping, and cursed himself for a jealous, small-minded fool. ‘Mr. Julian Gollantz shares a last joke with his mother.’ What did it matter, anyway? Who cared?

  Driving back in the car, Viva talked French very fast and very incorrectly with Louis, and Emmanuel sat back and wished that his head didn’t ache so damnably, and that he didn’t keep hearing a nasal voice saying, ‘When Juliet Forbes was with us,’ over and over again.

  Louis adored the house, praised it immoderately, and it seemed hours before they got into the drawing-room and Viva poured out tea. She drank a scalding cup very quickly, jumped up and said: ‘I must go to repair the ravages for tonight.’

  ‘Ravages!’ Louis exclaimed with at least twenty ‘r’s’ in the word. ‘I see none! You look like something that is very fresh ‒ per’aps new-mown hay, what?’

  ‘Stay and talk to Emmanuel,’ she said, ‘and don’t tell English women that they look ‒ fresh!’

  Left alone, the little Frenchman changed. He became older and more human. He looked at Emmanuel gravely, then said:

  ‘And now, my more than cousin, tell me, how is everything with you? I tell you that I myself do not find it all beer and jam. It is not possible to find life a bed without thorns when one is the lover of Olympia! She is too beautiful, too greathearted! But there are compensations, and so life goes on. Tell me, with you it is one long dream of beautifulness, no?’

  Emmanuel poured out a second cup of tea. His head still ached and he hoped it might do it good.

  ‘Life is very good,’ he said firmly. ‘It is very full; I have a great deal of work, and ‒ as you see ‒ I have a very charming wife.’

  Louis nodded. ‘I know, it must be all wonderful. Then why do you look so many years older, my dear?’

  ‘I don’t; it’s only that you always remain so very young. You make other people looked damned old, that’s all!’

  His cousin sighed, and taking out an elaborate cigarette-case, on which his initials blazed in rubies and diamonds, he extracted a cigarette and lit it with care.

  ‘I hev found,’ he said, ‘that when one speaks openly, when one ventures to mention the affairs of the heart, Englishmen think one a cad. But because I love you, my brave cousin, because when life was ended for me you offered me sympathy and kindness, I will dare very much. You are not, I believe, very happy.’

  ‘I think that I have everything to make me happy.’

  Louis nodded. ‘Perhaps. But does it’ ‒ he paused ‒ ‘do the trick? I don’t know. I only know that one day you left us, Guido and me, very happy, and we knew why. The next thing we know is that you have been torn from us, and we are left alone. But ‒ the rest is darkness, and perhaps in my so warm heart for you is still a little pain because you hev not spoken freely to me.’

  Emmanuel rose and walked to the window, standing for a moment staring out into Gloucester Place. He was very fond of this queer, overdressed little Frenchman who had helped him in the days when he found himself wandering about Paris, unable to decide where to go and what to do. Together they had worked in Milan, and when Juliet had come into his life, Louis had been kind and sympathetic. Emmanuel remembered the day when Louis had said that Guido had compared Juliet to Juno, and how annoyed he had been. Then he had returned to England, and here was Louis wondering a little what had happened, and he ‒ Emmanuel ‒ wondering how on earth he could tell him, without inflicting unbearable pain on himself. He turned and walked back to where Louis sat and began to speak in his most matter-of-fact voice.

  ‘It’s rather difficult, Louis,’ he said, ‘but what happened was briefly this. When I was in Milan I became engaged ‒’

  ‘I know that part,’ Louis said. ‘She was beautiful, a Juno, Guido said!’

  ‘We were going to be married, and she decided that she wouldn’t have me. I came back to England, met my wife, and ‒ well, you know the rest.’

  ‘That is very well said, like English gentlemen in plays,’ his cousin said. ‘I saw her ‒ the lady you were engaged to ‒ in Paris.’

  Emmanuel sat down in the low chair near the table and began to fumble with the sugar-tongs, saying nothing, but with his face suddenly rather white and drawn. Louis’s lisping voice continued: ‘We went together, Olympia and I. When it was over, she asked me, did I know her? I said that I had neither the honour nor the pleasure. “If you did,” Olympia said, “I would forgive you if you left me, for she is a rare bird.” I replied ‒’

  The silver tongs clattered down and the hand which had held them clenched suddenly. Emmanuel, speaking in a voice which held no expression except violence, said: ‘Louis, for God’s sake, don’t! I can’t bear it! I don’t want to hear. I’m happy, d’you hear? Happy. Viva is adorable, she’s all I want. I don’t want even to remember that time ‒ it’s over, over, over. I went away because there was a ghastly mistake. Letters were planted on to me that I never wrote. Then one mistake followed another, and ‒ that ‒ my engagement was one of them. Anyway, she threw me over! It’s done, finished.’

  Louis picked up the tongs and replaced them, saying as he did so: ‘Dear Emmanuel, I am so sorry. I am taking off my hat to you always. Your wi
fe is delicious. One day you will be a baronet, and very, very rich. If indeed you hev all that you want, I am very glad; but no mistake is so bad that it cannot be restored ‒ I mean repaired. The people who love you most will understand you best. I, Louis Lara, understand you very well. Good-bye, my dear: I must go and get ready for the festivities.’

  Emmanuel looked up and nodded. ‘See you tonight. Don’t talk, there’s a good chap, Louis. Sorry I got rattled.’

  ‘I talk to you,’ Louis said, ‘never of you ‒ except to offer tributes. Good-bye.’

  Emmanuel sat for a time, his chin propped on his hands, staring into space, thinking, thinking, thinking. He glanced round the room, thought how successful the scheme of decoration had been. The whole house was charming. His knowledge and Viva’s taste had produced something very satisfactory. What a fool he had been to allow things which were over and done with to tear him to pieces! He repeated the phrase again, very softly, ‘Over and done with.’ He had gone away three years ago because he wanted to safeguard Julian from a scandal, not for his own sake, but because he knew what such a scandal would mean to Angela. Even then, as he remembered it, his fine mouth twisted a little. Angela had always loved Julian best of them all. He had met Louis in Paris; together they had opened an antique-shop in Milan. What a one-horse affair it had been compared with Gollantz and Son! A little place in a back street where he had worked with Louis and later with Guido, who looked like an Italian cherub. He had been desperately lonely, and Juliet had come in to buy brocade. They had fallen in love ‒ his thoughts halted for a second. Had she loved him? She had promised to marry him, they had been very happy, he had loved her. Then Max had found out that the letters were not Emmanuel’s but Julian’s, and Angela had come to take him home again.

  Even now the recollection of that last morning made his face twist with pain. She had said, ‘It’s over, Emmanuel,’ and had told him that she couldn’t marry him. He remembered how he had begged, how he had tried to bargain, begged her to take him as her lover if she didn’t want to marry him. He had implored, entreated, had poured out his heart to her, and she had remained firm. ‘No, Emmanuel, no.’