Onyx (23 page)

“But you don't like him?” she asked weakly.

“No,” Justin said, reddening. “He upset you.”

“Justin—”

Her son interrupted hastily, “You don't have to worry, Mother. I tried hard not be cheeky.”

“He's not coming here again.”

“Mother … do you think he felt that way about me because of Uncle Andrew?”

She turned away. “Have you had your tea yet?”

“I wasn't very hungry. Would a famous man like him carry a grudge?”

“Cook is fixing me a tray. Emmy could bring up another plate. Yesterday I bought some new records. ‘The Nightingale Song' and Madame Farrar's ‘Un Bel Di.' While we're waiting, I'll play them for us.”

Justin's eyes were brilliant blue sparks under his brow: one of his greatest delights was listening with her to the trumpet-topped Victor. He was young enough to be seduced by treats. He said, “I'll tell them in the kitchen.”

He pounded down the back stairs.

Antonia moved slowly along the dimly lit hall to her room. Though her primal strength was directed at keeping father and son apart, she felt an irrational, obstinate chagrin that Justin had seen Tom in such a bad light and Tom so patently had not fallen for Justin.

CHAPTER 11

“Well, what about Antonia's boy?” Hugh asked when Tom returned to the hotel.

“Sorry to disappoint you. The true-born son of Claude Hutchinson.”

“Is that what she told you?”

“His birthday's sometime in late October, Hugh. A conceived-in-matrimony child, and rather a snot.” Tom yawned elaborately. “Last night was a real sizzler. After dinner it's bed for me.”

Hugh waited in the sitting room for nearly an hour after Tom had retired, then cautiously opened his brother's door. Tom stretched on his back, arms out, breathing in long, deep sighs. Hugh eased the door shut. Though it was after eleven, he telephoned his secretary in his small room on the ground floor, telling him to dress and bring the photographer's envelope from the hotel safe.

Hugh carried the packet into his bedroom, locking the door. He sat in a good light, frowning over the picture posed on the brick steps of Eddington College School.

The following morning he ordered an investigator to be stationed at the Rutland Gate entry of Hyde Park.

II

Justin manipulated the diamond-shaped kite with its red and blue tails, Caesar barking next to him. To catch the vagrant breeze he swerved onto the path. He thudded into the tall man. The man stumbled, regaining his balance, but Justin sprawled, flinging out his hands to protect his face from the gravel.

“I'm ever so sorry, sir,” he gasped. “Caesar, down, down.” He scrambled to his feet.

“Here's your string,” Hugh said.

Justin gave him a brief stare, then said, “Thank you, sir.”

“You're hurt. That hand's bleeding.”

“It's nothing.” Justin pulled out a handkerchief, licking on it before scrubbing away the tiny stones embedded in the graze at the root of his right thumb. “I should have been looking where I was going.”

“Difficult when you're trying to get a kite up.”

“Do you have them in America—you are American, aren't you, sir?”

“I am. And it's how Benjamin Franklin discovered lightning is electricity.”

“Right you are,” Justin said, smiling.

Antonia, carrying Zoe, ran toward them. Like all the ladies in the park, she wore black. The second week in May, Edward VII had succumbed to a chill and the country had plunged itself into deep mourning: though Hugh was a fervid anglophile, he had not a grain of sympathy for this mass grief—the late King Edward was a ringer for Major Stuart. As Antonia neared them, her narrow spatted boots slowed.

Eyes widening, she recognized Hugh.

Emotions rushed at her in waves. The initial shock of seeing his scars was immediately swallowed by the pleasure of bumping into an old friend, and this feeling in turn was inundated by the remembrance that Hugh had broken his promise to keep the blueprints secret. Then she was realizing that the man and boy standing on the gravel path were uncle and nephew.
Does Hugh know
? Her grip on Zoe tightened. The child squirmed in protest. Antonia set her down.

“Antonia?” Hugh cried. “Antonia!”

His voice rang with uncomplicated joy. Her doubts fell from her and she ran to him.

Justin, who was using his teeth and left fingers to tie the handkerchief around his wound, looked up to see his mother brushing a kiss at the stranger's misshapen cheek in the way that she greeted her closest friends. Then he was startled to be introduced to someone called Bridger. Lowering his head, he concentrated on his task a moment too long before holding out his crudely bandaged hand. “I'm pleased to meet you, sir,” he said guardedly.

“And this is my daughter, Zoe.”

Zoe put one buttoned white boot behind her in a curtsy-like dip.

She was a child stepped from a Sargent portrait. Clouds of burnished red-gold hair contrasted with enormous dark brown eyes, and the small features promised lovely regularity. Zoe had stamped her plump foot when confronted with the dark, sensible clothing of little English girls her age, and since Antonia was unconventional enough not to have hired a nurse, Zoe had had her way: in her pink laine frock and its tiny bolero—both mapped with grass stains—she was dressed as if for a pose.

Exquisite
, Hugh thought.
Without hyperbole, she is exquisite
. “How do you do, Miss Hutchinson.”

“Mummy! He called me Miss!” Zoe cried. “You have a face like a clown.”

“Zoe!” Antonia exclaimed.

“A long time ago I was hurt in an accident,” Hugh said seriously.

“When
I
get hurt, my scabs fall off, and then there's nothing,” Zoe said. “Won't yours fall off?”

“No.”

“You're a pretty color, like stewed plums. Can I touch?”

Hugh squatted to take her hand in his, guiding small, damp fingers to the slick, unfeeling flesh. Then he stood, smiling down at Antonia.

“Hugh, how wonderful to meet you like this. You still live in Detroit, don't you?”

“Out beyond Grosse Pointe,” he said. “Lake St. Clair runs along one side of my property.”

Zoe tugged at her mother's hand, whispering loudly, “Mummy, can we show Mr. Bridger, or will it vanish?”

“I'm sure it won't.”

Zoe looked up at Hugh. “We have a secret,” she said.

“What kind?”

“Is it time, Mummy?”

Antonia glanced at her enameled lapel watch and nodded.

“We'll take you,” Zoe said.

“Then your secret is a place?”

“No. It's magic.”

“Magic? What kind?”

“Come and you'll see.”

“Do,” Antonia interjected warmly.

Hugh said, “If it's all right with Justin.”

Justin glanced up from rewinding his kite string. “Please join us, Mr. Bridger,” he said, polite, aloof.

They curved along the path in the direction of the Albert Memorial. Hugh's heart pattered and jerked as each passerby inspected him. Zoe grasped his and Antonia's hands, occasionally abdicating her weight to them. Justin either loitered a pace behind or moved ahead with his dog, not joining in the conversation unless Hugh directed a question at him.

Hugh resolutely forced himself not to stare at the boy. When first he had gazed down at the sprawling child, the memory of other wide-apart, deep-sheltered eyes had shimmered remote yet clear in his mind, and an elated stir had twisted in his abdomen, a blood knot tying itself. Had he not been reasonably certain of Antonia's boy's paternity, he never would have ventured forth from the hotel, yet he was unprepared for this atavistic burst of kinship. He had never felt any tribal bond with Caryll, whom he considered a weak excuse of a child.
This boy's one of us
, he thought with a covert glance at Justin.

The boy's reaction when they had bumped into each other had been vital, open, warm. Now the eyes were narrowed under the porched brow. (Antonia thought of this as his Heathcliff look.)
I wonder what drove him into himself
, Hugh thought.
Well, certainly he's not afraid of me
.

Zoe tugged urgently. “This way,” she cried, pulling him into the shadowy gap between walls of boxwood.

They were in a miniature grove. Here, on the hidden patch of grass, three tapestry pillows surrounded a cloth set with Limoges demitasse cups, a platter of buttered brown bread, a silver chocolate pot from which steam still curved.

Hugh gasped spontaneously.

“The fairies do it, but only for us,” Zoe chortled. “All the time I bring my best friend Janey Smith-Tolliver and her nanny here, but there's never anything. It only happens when Mother, Justin, and me're together. Fairies are like that, you know.”

The dog stretched out, its tail thumping, Zoe and Justin sat, and Antonia knelt gracefully to pour the cocoa. “Here, Hugh,” she said. “I'll share with Zoe.” She must have arranged every detail of the midmorning picnic with her servants, yet as she looked up at him over the gold-scalloped rim of the miniature cup, her glance held no trace of compliant adult amusement, only the same pleasure that shone in Zoe's eyes.

Hugh sat between the children. “Delicious. Miss Zoe, I'm glad I'm not Janey Smith-Tolliver. I wouldn't have missed this for the world. And you know the most magical part? This is the first time I've left my hotel rooms.”

Justin turned. “You haven't seen the Tower?”

“Not even the changing of the guards.” Hugh's fingers tensed on the miniature handle, and worried he might break it, he set the cup carefully in its saucer. “The truth is, Justin, I'm a coward, a terrible coward. I cannot bear to have people staring at me.”

“But you're such a pretty color,” consoled Zoe, her fingers reaching for his face.

Antonia caught her daughter's buttery hand. “Cowards never admit what they are, Hugh,” she said softly.

“That's true, Mr. Bridger.” Justin's reserve had dissipated, yet there was no trace of pity in his response to Hugh. He turned to Antonia. “Mother, I have an idea. Remember when you hired the motor cab during the Easter hols?”

Antonia and Zoe nodded, and the three turned expectantly to Hugh. They wanted to take him sight-seeing! When the stares of the nannies and other strollers in the park already had carved him into Quasimodo! His starched collar went chokingly tight and his mouth dried.

“Nobody saw us,” Justin said, his cheeks reddening. “We stayed in the motor cab and drove by the Tower, the Houses of Parliament. We saw the new front of Buckingham Palace. Everything. We'd seen it all before, walking. But this was different. Motoring, everything glides by like a lantern show.”

“I wish I could, but we're leaving tomorrow morning.” Three weeks he had waited on a razor's edge, then, as he abandoned hope, this morning's telephone summons.

“There's this afternoon, Mr. Bridger,” Justin said firmly.

Hugh looked into a grave face unmolested by age or doubts.
What an eagle of a man he'll be
, Hugh thought.
A leader. Tom's real son
.
I can take a bit more
. “It sounds like a perfect way to end my time in London.”

Antonia jumped to her feet, brushing off her skirt. “Cook'll pack us a lunch basket while Drum arranges for the motor cab,” she said.

The rumpled cloth and strewn French crockery were left in the glade.

III

The afternoon spread untrammeled by time, one shapeless wad of happiness. As they returned to Rutland Gate a brilliantly striped balloon swept overhead, the tiny, distant passengers waving from its gondola: Hugh could swear that Antonia somehow had contrived this dusk-hazed vision as her final delight.

“That was the best afternoon of my life,” he said sincerely. “Why did we have to bump into one another at the end of my trip?”

“We're going to write long letters,” Antonia said.

“I can print,” Zoe told him.

“I'll post that picture.” Justin had already promised to forward his new form photo as soon as he could have a copy made.

“Remember to mark the boys you told me about,” Hugh said. “Now the ice has been broken, when are the Hutchinsons going to visit me in Detroit?”

Antonia said hastily, “You'll come here and stay with us. You haven't seen a dot of London.”

The driver, who had deposited the large wicker basket in Drum's arms, came to stand at attention by the open taxi door. Antonia touched a kiss near Hugh's unscathed cheek, Zoe hugged him. Hugh turned to Justin, and saw the boy's regret at parting. They shook hands.

“Good-bye, Mr. Bridger,” the boy said.

“Now that we're going to be pen pals, Justin, make it Hugh.”

“Bon voyage, Hugh,” Justin said gravely. It was apparent that he treasured calling a grown man by his first name.

They halted on the top step, Antonia holding Zoe, Justin next to them, the three smiling and waving. Hugh's great attribute in carrying out his plans was lack of haste; he could sit with feline patience until events arranged themselves in readiness for his molding, and as the cab pulled away he was thinking:
Tom's true heir, that's a beginning
. He waved back.

The Edges' chauffeur was to drive them down to Southampton. That evening when Hugh telephoned Monty to say good-bye, he said casually, “By the way, I believe we have a mutual friend. Mrs. Hutchinson.”

“Yes, I do know her. Charming woman, charming. Tom ran into her at the Comstocks' ball.”

“I've known her forever.”

Nothing as yet had been settled about British Onyx.

“Want me to keep an eye out for her?” Monty asked with the eagerness of a man hoping to give an unexpectedly small down payment on a large, coveted piece of property.