by Peter Rimmer
“Half an hour. Takes them half an hour to get their luggage. All that speed of flying gets down to a five minute slow walk from the plane to the airport building, to stand around looking at each other waiting for their luggage. They take them off the plane one by one.”
“Buy me a drink. I need one. We can watch for Uncle Harry and Tinus through the glass partition from the bar.”
“It would be my pleasure, Miss Genevieve,” said Cousin George crooking his arm.
2
The next day in the kitchen of Abercrombie Place, Vida could see no difference between herself and a household servant. She was not one thing nor the other, neither paid housekeeper nor wife. The scullery maid was cutting the vegetables while Vida did the cooking, the only difference being she would get to eat the food sitting with the guests at the dining room table, all of them not knowing where she fitted in the picture or whether there was a picture to fit in. It was her last throw of the dice.
For years she had watched the Jews being pushed out of Germany. Their possessions stolen, their lives only spared if they had money to buy their way to another life. Palestine, being a British Protectorate, had shut its doors, turning back the ships laden with refugees fleeing Germany for their lives. Only America was still the promised land. America was where people wrote back, urging their Jewish relations and friends to sell what they had and cut their losses.
America was where Vida had set her sights, and in 1936, eighteen months before she met Jacob Rosenzweig with a forged introduction, she had begun to make up a story that would carry her through the rest of her life and, hopefully, make her rich or at least not live from hand to mouth, frightened of her future. Young and poor was one thing, she told herself as she had planned her future. Old and poor without any family quite out of the question. Someone, somewhere, had even said to Vida: ‘The Lord helps those who help themselves’.
First she had laid out her assets in her mind. She was thirty-two years old. Prettier than most. And, by the luck of spending two years in England, looking after the children of a Jewish family in Kent, she spoke English fluently, even if she spoke with a strong German accent.
To get herself into America Vida knew she had to be Jewish with a hard luck story that fitted the American image of the oppressed Jews in Europe. The first part was to concoct a story that would make the Americans feel sorry for her, to make them pour out their sympathy to a young woman left all alone. The Jewish underground in Berlin whispered of rich men in America who used their wealth to bring the best of the Jews out of Germany, young people with education or old people with money.
With little time for anyone to check credentials, Vida used her friend who worked as a printer to make up her degree and give her the appearance on paper of having more than a poor secondary education. Payment for that was cheap; all she had to do was sleep with him which for Vida with Kurt was a pleasure.
Telling her family, none of whom were Jewish, the family having emigrated from Lebanon in the previous century, that she was going back to England as a child nurse to younger friends of her family in Kent, she had booked her passage to America. Even her Wagner surname was false, the name she said she had taken to hide her Jewish ancestry from the Nazis.
By the time Vida landed third class in New York, having used herself and her mother’s jewellery as payment, she was the epitome of a Nazi victim of hate, her family dead, most likely because of her father’s political beliefs, no one knowing what had happened to them. Only by luck had Vida avoided being sent away. It was the luck of speaking English that made her story plausible. She could explain herself. Make the Americans understand. Make people cry at her story, and, most important, as she had always understood, make people feel sorry for such a terrible story and want to give her help.
Finding Sir Jacob Rosenzweig had been the easy part of her journey. Inveigling her way into his life only a little more difficult. He was lonely, past the age he thought possible to indulge in female comfort. Even Miss Cohen had missed what was coming when Vida walked into the Manhattan office of the Rosenzweig bank of New York and given the secretary her letter of introduction from a well-known Jewish family in Berlin who, soon after giving her the letter, had unfortunately been imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp, their business and factory confiscated, something Vida was well aware of when Kurt concocted the letter on the Jew’s forged company letterhead.
Dressed in black, Vida was shown into the chairman’s office. Smiling, she had begun the process that had led her to the kitchen preparing for the first of what Vida hoped would be many more dinner parties, and a trust fund, if not a ring on her finger if the old goat could be persuaded to divorce his wife. She could still hear his happy words of astonishment the night she seduced him.
“You look so much younger than forty, my dear.”
Forty, she thought, sounded just right, the lie supported by the white streak in her black hair, a pigmentation flaw since birth. If he had known she was thirty-two he might have questioned her authenticity and smelled a rat.
“I’m going to change for dinner, Amy.”
So far so good, she told herself as she left the kitchen to dress for dinner, the food certain to be perfect, her father a chef in one of Berlin’s top restaurants.
“It’s all in the preparation, Amy. Buying the right food. Being organised in the kitchen. You can’t make good food out of bad ingredients.”
They were going to serve themselves from the buffet when Amy brought the trays of food to the long dining room. Soon after moving into the apartment at Abercrombie Place Vida had fired Jacob Rosenzweig’s cook.
“Why waste money? I can cook as well as Mabel. Never waste money, I say. My mother, bless her soul, was a stickler for avoiding waste.”
All day alone in the flat, the old bag might have found out the truth. By then, the old goat, as she thought of the tall, wiry Jacob Rosenzweig, was besotted. Mabel was asked to pack her bags and given six months’ pay.
“It’s always better to be generous,” she had smiled into his face, sitting on his bony old knees while Jacob sat on the couch.
“Now we are alone,” he had said with a boyish smile.
To Vida’s surprise for such an old man, the old goat was permanently horny, a word she used in her mind, picked up in England from the father of the children she looked after during the day, and the man who had told her money was more important than happiness, that without money everyone found life hard and sad. That money was not the root of all evil but the power to do what she wanted. It had worked for the father of the children in her care, now it was going to work for her. With real money she could tell the whole damn lot of them to go to hell.
Not only was it the first dinner party, it was the first time the dining room was being used. With his new lease on life Jacob had bought the apartment next door, broken down the common wall and joined the two together. A woman half his age was not going to be prepared to sit in the lounge looking at an old man wearing slippers. She needed to be entertained in the best way possible, by entertaining others. What was the point of having so much money, he told himself, if it sat in his own bank? With Vida by his side, the Rosenzweig apartment at Abercrombie Place was going to be known the length and breadth of Manhattan Island as a mecca of entertainment, where the best in film, literature and business came together to express their views.
With Harry Brigandshaw in the offing and the renovation complete, their first introduction to the world of entertaining was made in heaven, even if that young star of film, Gregory L’Amour, was out of town; there was always a second opportunity to fill in that gap, Jacob told himself happily. When Jacob told Vida Genevieve was coming to dinner the light of his life’s jaw had dropped making Jacob feel so good he burst out with a peal of happy laughter, something the walls of the apartment had not heard in abandon since Rebecca ran away back to England and on to Rhodesia to marry Ralph Madgwick.
Adding to a film star, a Hollywood producer, a New York publisher and a famous fighter pilot,
he knew buying the next door apartment had been worth every cent. The recently purchased dining room table that had originated in a French salon during the eighteenth century seated twelve people in considerable comfort, a long beautiful piece of mahogany that stretched the length of the two original rooms, the connecting wall having been removed by Jacob’s builder.
At one end he would hold court. At the other end would sit Vida in all her beauty with her beautiful foreign accent to charm the guests. Like a good game of tennis, they would play the brilliant conversation between themselves up and down the ornately decorated table spread with the new silverware from Christie’s, bought for him in London without one word reaching Aaron his eldest son to be reported to Aaron’s mother and Jacob’s wife. Everything was going so smoothly Jacob felt like hugging himself.
At four o’clock, Jacob did something he had not done once before in his life; smiling to everyone, he walked out of his office on a Tuesday afternoon before the office closed.
“You have Colonel Brigandshaw’s appointment in my diary, Miss Cohen?”
“Three o’clock in this office tomorrow afternoon.”
“Splendid.”
“You don’t have an appointment, Mr Rosenzweig.”
“I’m going home. Have all my guests confirmed?”
“Mr Hollingsworth is bringing a friend as you asked. His wife is home in California. Mr Pearl too but won’t be bringing a young friend. Colonel Brigandshaw will partner his niece, I think he called her, his nephew a friend of Genevieve’s.”
“Colonel Brigandshaw was married to Genevieve’s aunt, God bless her soul. The Goldbergs?”
“Unfortunately, the chairman of the board said he and his wife would not be able to attend. They have a prior engagement.”
“A shame Mr L’Amour is out of town. What about the flowers?”
“They are to arrive an hour before the guests together with the flower arranger. Why not a caterer, Mr Rosenzweig?”
“Vida is the best cook in the whole wide world. She just loves doing everything for me, Miss Cohen.”
Miss Cohen waited for the lift doors to shut before shaking her head and gave the closed door a bitter smile.
“She’ll have me out if I’m not careful. Poor Mabel. Everything! I’ll bet she does everything.”
Only when she sat back at her desk, the space outside the glass door empty in front of the lift, did she recognise the true origin of her emotion. Miss Cohen at thirty-eight, two years younger than the new girl from Germany who had bowled over her boss, realised she was jealous. Wondering why she hadn’t tried seduction herself, she wound the letterhead into the top of her typewriter and began hitting the keys as hard as possible, reading off her shorthand of Jacob’s words as she furiously typed.
“Who would ever have thought he had it in him?” she mumbled to herself between clenched teeth. “I’ve wasted ten years of my life here. Instead of running around New York all the time it was staring me right in the face.”
Jacob was still smiling as he walked into Tiffany’s ten minutes later. Even though he was not the dashing young man from fifty years ago, working in his father’s London office on the pittance of a salary ‘commensurate’, as his father had put it, ‘with his knowledge of merchant banking’, he now had the money to buy his lady diamonds to place round her beautiful neck. He would make Vida happy the way she was making his whole life worthwhile once again, invigorated by the transfer of her youth to his old body. He had done so much for so many and put up with Hannah’s affairs, now it was time before he died to spoil himself, to enjoy himself, even make a fool of himself if that was the way it turned out.
“Can I help you, sir?”
“Diamonds. Diamond necklaces, to be precise. I would like to see your diamond necklaces.”
“How much do you wish to spend?”
“As much as necessary. Tonight we throw our first dinner party. Tomorrow, who knows. Do you think being selfish is wrong, young lady?”
“Buying diamonds for a lady is not selfish.”
“Oh yes, it is.”
“How old is your wife?”
“She is forty, so she says. And no, you don’t have to look that shocked. The lady is not my wife.”
“Let me see what I can find.”
An hour later spent in pleasure, Jacob pointed out the necklace he wanted.
“Please send the bill to my bank.”
“It doesn’t work that way, sir. We have to know the bank will honour your cheque.”
“But the bank is mine.”
“We all have our own bank.”
“I own the bank, kind lady. Sir Jacob Rosenzweig, late of Rosenzweigs London. Now plain Mr Rosenzweig of Rosenzweigs New York. You have heard of the Rosenzweigs, Merchant Bankers?”
“Yes, yes I have. Can you confirm your identity?”
“Please phone Miss Cohen at my office.”
“Right away, sir… So you wish me to send your office the bill?”
“Indeed, I do.”
Taking out a wallet from the inside pocket of his jacket, Jacob handed the girl his business card.
Gerry Hollingsworth described it later to one of his cronies in California as the whore giving him money for her services; banks entertaining their borrowers was new to him. In his experience, finding money to make a movie was all ‘sell, sell, sell’. Only one in four ever made money. But the bank taking equity in the film, owning part of the cinema rights, meant Gerry as producer of the film was not required to give old Jacob Rosenzweig his personal guarantee for the bank loan to finance the making of Holy Knight. If the film failed to make a profit they each lost their own investment, both of them writing off the film to other more profitable projects.
Unlike Max Pearl, the publisher, sitting opposite across the dinner table, the money for the film came before anyone knew what it even looked like. At least Max had had the chance to read the complete book before he published Holy Knight. Had the chance of making a judged assessment of its worth before committing a cent to the publication. The poor sod who had to ‘sell, sell, sell’ was the author Robert St Clair, sitting next to him, and without a bestseller to his name what chance would he have had in the rat race of commerce, Gerry asked himself? When everyone wanted to ‘have it made’ before they committed a cent of their own money. How many times had he said ‘it’s a something’ to some wavering investor like Harry Brigandshaw on the other side of the table looking bored.
Giving a sidelong look at the lady at the top of the table, Gerry would have put money on the necklace round her neck being brand new by the way it sparkled. All the diamonds he had given away dulled down without regular cleaning. Twice Gerry had seen her fingers go up to her throat and touch the diamond necklace, as if to make sure it was still there. And diamonds they were, of that Gerry was certain. The real thing had a very specific look to it, like the rare face of an honest man.
Of course he knew the prize of the evening was Genevieve sitting next to the young man with the same odd way of speaking as Harry Brigandshaw, an accent to Gerry that sounded like speaking with a clothes peg stuck to the nose, and the one with the nasty questions when it came to putting Harry’s money into the film. To some extent, the well-known author in Robert St Clair was a prize. Even Max Pearl as a well-established publisher would be asked to literary circles.
So that had to be the answer to the evening; Jacob was showing off his wares and his power to the girl at the end of the table, the not unattractive girl who was wearing the diamonds and wisely keeping out of the general conversation other than to smile and to listen. Lucky old bastard. Young enough to be his granddaughter, if Gerry knew anything about young girls on the make.
Making a mental note to find out who she was, Gerry idly studied the rest of the décor in what looked like a spanking new dining room. Max Pearl was holding court on the subject of Jewish poets, a subject Gerry, a Jew converted to the Church of England in a second step out of trouble, the first being changing his surname, knew noth
ing about. Gerry did not even look Semitic, something prominent in the face of the girl listening with bated breath to every word gushing out of his well-oiled mouth as Max warmed to his subject, helped by the odd pull from his glass of expensive wine.
The cut crystal chandelier, over the centre of the long, antique table covered in George the Third silver, was the central point for the interior decorator, whoever he was; what Gerry would describe in a film as the central point, the commanding presence that dominated everything down below. An exquisite vase, solitary on a pedestal and brimming with fresh cut flowers, stood behind the lady sitting at the head of the table. Between the Georgian silverware were lines of flowers in shallow holders, each of which were joined back to back down the centre of the table. Instead of keeping the different types of flowers apart, just the heads floating in the slim troughs of shallow water were mixed, giving a flow of colour from one end of the table to the other, a touch that had caught Gerry’s professional eye when Jacob first ushered them into his sumptuous dining room, the sideboards groaning with trays of food in ovenproof pots and covered dishes brought in by a bemused girl through the door that Gerry guessed led to the kitchen.
Whoever had decorated the room or arranged the flowers knew what they were doing, as did the cook, Gerry found out, when he helped himself to his supper, lifting the lids from the covered dishes one by one, the large whisky he had drunk in the lounge on arrival sharpening his appetite. Next to him he watched the girl he had brought from the agency helping herself to food, the girl still struck dumb by the presence of Genevieve. The agency girl wasn’t the best he had seen in New York but good enough for one night just the same, the thin waist and large bottom just to Gerry’s taste when it came to his women. Something that once, long, long ago, had attracted him to his wife.
Sipping his wine, his stomach pleasantly full, Gerry watched them all around him, wondering what each of them were really thinking in their heads. Staring more at Genevieve, something he had done since finding her and giving her a part in one of his films, he was confronted by the mismatched eyes that first made men look at her, one blue, the other almost the colour of coal. But then they flashed at him with a daggered look of annoyance, and Genevieve held her spread fingers over her face to keep his look away from her, a gesture he knew all too well, his level of frustration peaking instantly at the rejection. Only when she looked at the young man, who had asked too many good questions at the meeting in his hotel earlier in the afternoon, did her expression change to a soft and dreamlike wanting, the yearning written plainly all over her face. Forcing himself to remember how much money Genevieve had made for him, Gerry turned his attention to the whore in the seat next to him, trying to rack his brain for her name.
