第 26 页

Matthew looked on with delight at the success of his closest friend, but he was sad to think that it meant they might now be parted. William felt it too, but said nothing; the two boys had to wait another nine days to learn that Matthew had also been accepted to Harvard.

Yet another telegram arrived, this one from Charles Lester, congratulating his son and inviting the boys to tea at the Plaza Hotel in New York. Both grandmothers sent congratulations to William, but as Grandmother Kane informed Alan Lloyd, somewhat testily, 'the boy has done no less than was expected of him and no more than his father did before him.'

The two young men sauntered down Fifth Avenue on the appointed day with considerable pride. Girls' eyes were drawn to the handsome pair, who affected not to notice. They removed their straw boaters as they entered the front door of the Plaza at three fifty-nine, strolled nonchalantly through the lounge and observed the family group awaiting them in the Palm Court. There, upright in the comfortable chairs sat both grandmothers, Kane and Cabot, flanking another old lady who, William assumed, was the Lester family's equivalent of Grandmother Kane. Mr. and Mrs. Charles Lester, their daughter Susan (whose eyes never left William), and Alan Lloyd completed the circle leaving two vacant chairs for William and Matthew.

Grandmother Kane summoned the nearest waiter with an imperious eyebrow. 'A fresh pot of tea and some more cakes, please!'

The waiter made haste to the kitchens. 'Pot of tea and some more cakes for table twenty-three,' he shouted above the clatter, 'Coming up,' said a voice from the steamy obscurity.

'A pot of tea and some cream cakes, madam,' the waiter said on his return.

'Your father would have been proud of you today, William,' the older man was saying to the taller of the two youths.

The waiter wondered what it was that the good-looking young man had achieved to elicit such a comment, William would not have noticed the waiter at all but for the silver band around his wrist. The piece so easily might have come from Tiffany's; the incongruity of it puzzled him.

'William,' said Grandmother Kane. 'Two cakes are quite sufficient; this is not your last meal before you go to Harvard.'

He looked at the old lady with affection and quite forgot the silver band.

13

That night as Abel lay awake in his small room at the Plaza Hotel, thinking about the boy, William, whose father would have been proud of him, he realised for the first time in his life exactly what he wanted to achieve. He wanted to be thought of as an equal by the Williams of this world.

Abel had had quite a struggle on his arrival in New York. He occupied a room that contained only two beds which he was obliged to share with George and two of his cousins. As a result, Abel slept only when one of the beds was free. George's uncle was unable to offer him a job, and after a few anxious weeks during which most of his savings had to be spent on staying alive, Abel searched from Brooklyn to Queens before finding work in a butcher's shop which paid nine dollars for a six and a half day week, and allowed him to sleep above the premises. The shop was in the heart of an almost self-sufficient little Polish community on the lower East Side, and Abel rapidly became impatient with the insularity of his fellow countrymen, many of whom made no effort to learn to speak English.

Abel still saw George and his constant succession of girl friends regularly at weekends, but he spent most of his free evenings during the week at night school learning how to read and write English. He was not ashamed of his slow progress, for he had had very little opportunity to write at all since the age of eight, but within two years he had made himself fluent in his new tongue, showing only the slightest trace of an accent. He now felt ready to move out of the butcher's shop - but to what, and how? Then, while dressing a leg of lamb one morning, he overheard one of the shop's biggest customers, the catering manager of the Plaza Hotel, grumbling to the butcher that he had had to fire a junior waiter for petty theft.

'How can I find a replacement at such short notice?' the manager remonstrated.

The butcher had no solution to offer. Abel did. He put on his only suit, walked forty-seven blocks, and got the job.

Once he had settled in at the Plaza, he enrolled for a night course in English at Columbia University. He worked steadily every night, dictionary open in one hand, pen scratching away in the other; during the mornings, between serving breakfast and setting up the tables for lunch, he would copy out the editorial from the New York Times, looking up any word he was uncertain of in his secondhand Webster's.

For the next three years, Abel worked his way through the ranks of the Plaza until he was promoted and became a waiter in the Oak Room, making about twenty-five dollars a week with tips. In his own world, he lacked for nothing.

Abel's instructor at Columbia was so impressed by his diligent progress in English that he advised Abel to enrol in a further night course, which was to be his first step towards a Bachelor of Arts degree. He switched his spare-time reading from English to economics and started copying out the editorials in the Wall Street journal instead of those in the New York Times. His new world totally absorbed him, and with the exception of George he lost touch with his Polish friends of the early days.

When Abel served at table in the Oak Room, he would always study the famous among the guests carefully - the Bakers, Loebs, Whitneys, Morgans and Phelps - and try to work out why it was that the rich were different.

He read H. L. Mencken, The American Mercury, Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis and Theodore Dreiser in an endless quest for knowledge. He studied the New York Times while the other waiters flipped through the Mirror, and he read the Wall Street Journal in his hour's break while they dozed.

He was not sure where his newly acquired knowledge would lead him, but he never doubted the Baron's maxim that there was no true substitute for a good education,

One Thursday in August 1926 - he remembered the occasion well, because it was the day that Rudolph Valentino died, and many of the ladies shopping on Fifth Avenue wore black - Abel was serving as usual at one of the corner tables. The comer tables were always reserved for top business men who wished to eat in privacy without fear of being overheard by prying ears. He enjoyed serving at that particular table, for it was the era of expanding business, and he often picked up some inside information from the titbits of conversation. After the meal was over, if the host had been from a bank or large holding company, Abel would look up the financial record of the company of the guests at the lunch, and if he felt the meeting had gone particularly well, he would invest one hundred dollars in the smaller company, hoping it would be in line for a takeover or expansion with the help of the larger company. If the host had ordered cigars at the end of the meal, Abel would increase his investment to two hundred dollars. Seven times out of ten, the value of the stock he had selected in this way doubled within six months, the period Abel would allow himself to hold on to the shares. Using this system he lost money only three times during the four years he worked at the Plaza.

What made waiting on the corner table unusual on that particular day was that the guests had ordered cigars even before the meal had started.

Later they were joined by more guests who ordered more cigars. Abel looked up the name of the host in the maltre d's reservation book.

Woolworth. He had seen the name in the financial columns quite recently but he could not immediately place it. The other guest was Charles Lester, a regular patron of the Plaza, whom Abel knew to be a distinguished New York banker. He listened to as much of the conversation as he could while serving the meal. The guests showed absolutely no interest in the attentive waiter. Abel could not discover any specific details of importance, but he gathered that some sort of deal had been closed that morning and would be announced to an unsuspecting public later in the day. Then he remembered. He had seen the name in the Wall Street journal. Woolworth was the man who was going to start the first American five-and-ten-cent stores. Abel was determined to get his five cents worth. While the guests were enjoying their dessert course - most of them chose the strawberry cheese cake (Abel's recommendation) - he took the opportunity to leave the dining room for a few moments to call his broker in Wall Street.

'What are Woolworth's trading at?' he asked.

There was a pause from the other end of the line. 'Two and one-eighth. Quite a lot of movement lately; don't know why though,' came the reply.

'Buy up to the limit of my account until you hear an announcement from the company later today!'

'What will the announcement say?' asked the puzzled broker.

'I am not at liberty to reveal that sort of information over the telephone,' said Abel.

The broker was suitably impressed; Abel's record in the past had led him not to inquire too closely into the source of his client's information.

Abel hurried back to the Oak Room in time to serve the guests coffee.

They lingered over it for some time, and Abel returned to the table only as they were preparing to leave. The man who picked up the bill thanked Abel for his attentive service, and turning so that his friends could hear him, mid 'Do you want a tip, young man?'

'Thank you, sir,' said Abel.

'Buy Woolworth's shares!'

The guests all laughed. Abel laughed as well, took five dollars from the man and thanked him. He took a further two thousand four hundred and twelve dollars profit on Woolworth's shares during the next six months.

When Abel was granted full citizenship of the United States, a few days after his twenty-first birthday, he decided the occasion ought to be celebrated. He invited George and Monika, George's latest love, and a girl called Clara, an exlove of George's, to the cinema to see John Barrymore in Don Juan and then on to Bigo's for dinner. George was still an apprentice in his uncle's bakery at eight dollars a week, and although Abel still looked upon him as his closest friend, he was aware of the growing difference between the penniless George and himself, who now had over eight thousand dollars in the bank and was in his last year at Columbia University studying for his B.A. in economics. Abel knew where he was going, whereas George had stopped telling everyone he would be the mayor of New York.

The four of them had a memorable evening, mainly because Abel knew exactly what to expect from a good restaurant. His three guests all had a great deal too much to eat, and when the bill was presented, George was aghast to see that it came to more than he earned in a month. Abel paid the bill without a second glance. If you have to pay a bill, make it look as if the amount is of no consequence. If it is, don't go to the restaurant again, but whatever you do, don't comment or look surprised - something else the rich had taught him.

When the party broke up at about two in the morning, George and Monika returned to the lower East Side, while Abel felt he had earned Clara. He smuggled her through the service entrance of the Plaza and up to his room in a laundry lift. She did not require much enticement to end up in bed, and Abel set about her with haste, mindful that he had some serious sleeping to do before reporting for breakfast duty. To his satisfaction, he had completed his task by twothirty and sank into an uninterrupted sleep until his alarm rang at six a.m. It left him just time enough to have Clara once again before he had to get dressed.

Clara sat up in his bed and regarded Abel sullenly as he tied his white bow tie, and kissed her a perfunctory goodbye.

'Be sure you leave the way you came, or you'll get me into a load of trouble,' said Abel. 'When will I see you again?'

'You won't,' said Clara stonily.

'Why not?' asked Abel, surprised. 'Something I did?'

'No, something you didn't do.' She jumped out of bed and started to dress hastily.

'What didn't I do?' said Abel, aggrieved. 'You wanted to go to bed with me, didn't you?'

She turned around and faced him. 'I thought I did until I realised you have only one thing in common with Valentino - you're both dead. You may be the greatest thing the Plaza has seen in a bad year, but in bed I can tell you, you are nothing.' Fully dressed now, she paused with her hand on the door handle, composing her parting thrust. 'Tell me, have you ever persuaded any girl to go to bed with you more than once?'

Stunned, Abel stared at the slammed door and spent the rest of the day worrying about Clara's words. He could think of no one with whom he could discuss the problem. George would only laugh at him, and the staff at the Plaza all thought he knew everything. He decided that this problem, like all the others he had encountered in his life, must be one he could surmount with knowledge or experience.

After lunch, on his half day, he went to Scribners bookshop on Fifth Avenue. They had solved all his economic and linguistic problems, but he couldn't find anything there that looked as if it might even begin to help his sexual ones. Their special book on etiquette was useless and The Nature of Morals by W. F. Colbert turned out to be utterly inappropriate.

Abel left the bookshop without making a purchase and spent the rest of the afternoon in a dingy Broadway cinema, not watching the film, but thinking only about what Clara had said. The film, a love story with Greta Garbo that did not reach the kissing stage until the last reel, provided no more assistance than Scribner's had.

When Abel left the cinema, the sky was already dark and there was a cool breeze blowing down Broadway. It still surprised Abel that any city could be as noisy and light by night as it was by day. He started walking uptown towards Fifty-ninth Street, hoping the fresh air would clear his mind. He stopped on the comer of Fifty-second to buy an evening paper- 'Looking for a girl?' said a voice from behind the newsstand.

Abel stared at the voice. She was about thirty-five and heavily made up, wearing the new, fashionable lipstick. Her white silk blouse had a button undone, and she wore a long black skirt with black stockings and black shoes.

'Only five dollars, worth every penny,' she said, pushing her hip out at an angle, allowing the slit in her skirt to part and reveal the top of her stockings.