Onyx (24 page)

“Nothing special,” Hugh said. “But she is a friend of mine.”

IV

On November 22, 1910, three judges met in the old Post Office Building of New York to reconsider the Selden patent case. Though more than forty attorneys crowded the chambers, each side was granted less than five hours to present oral testimony before the judges retired to poke and prod at the accumulated mass of briefs and exhibits. The only new evidence submitted was a carton of coiled, yellowing drafting paper. Blueprints of Thomas K. Bridger's early motor carriages.

Tom's sleep grew yet more migratory, his hours at Hamtramck more frenzied.

His savage fever, however, was only in part for Onyx: his powerful and complex urge to be with Antonia bedeviled him until his entire being strained and struggled against his entrapment on the Western Hemisphere. Only the hours he spent with Caryll brought him surcease.

After six weeks of deliberation, on January 9, 1911, the judges reconvened in the Post Office Building to read the petrified phrases of legal language. The Selden patent, they had decided, was restricted. It covered only one kind of engine. Neither the Ford nor the Onyx automobile infringed on Selden's patent.

That night Onyx and Ford hosted a victory banquet at the Pontchartrain. Behind the red carnations that graced the head table sat Tom, Rogers Sinclair, Olaf Baardson, Henry Ford and Edsel, who was now eighteen, and Ford's partner, James Couzens. Their recent ALAM opponents, men like William Crapo Durant, head of General Motors, and Ransom Olds, were at the round tables. A boozy conviviality settled old differences. After an enormous meal, a black quartet played “The Ford March & Two-Step” then “Come Drive in My Fiver,” and red-faced, newly moneyed men brayed out the lyrics of the two popular songs.

Rogers Sinclair rose to his feet, lifting his beefy arms for silence. “Your hosts thank you for the tribute of those beautifully rendered anthems,” he said. He read aloud a few of the congratulatory telegrams, dropping them back with the others in the overflowing laundry basket. “That's as much crowing as you're going to hear from me. But I am a salesman, and accordingly I aim to sell you on the advantages of having one George Selden and his patent out of the way. Now there'll be no more clamps on production. From here on in, all of us can set our minds to turning out the cars that the public is crying for—I prefer they cry for Fivers rather than Model T's, but don't let Henry know it.” At this Henry Ford allowed a whimsical smile, everyone else roared. Rogers teetered on his stout legs before signaling again for quiet. “On a serious note, you see at this table the two greatest men of the automotive age. Tom Bridger and Henry Ford. They battled the giant Trust. They won the good fight. Because of them, every man in the country, rich and poor, can have his own transportation. And this, as we all know, is what our grand new industry is about.” Vigorous applause stirred the haze of cigar smoke. “I'm going to ask our sturdy warriors to express their feelings on this victorious night. First, my brother-in-law, Tom Bridger. Well, Tom?”

Rogers had gulped far too many bourbons, otherwise he never would have called on Tom, who disliked and distrusted oratory.

Tom half stood, resting his palms on the table. “Free,” he said in a dry, sardonic voice. “That's the word I'm going to say. I feel free to go ahead making the best damn cars at a scratch low price.” He sat back in his chair.

Soon after, he left. He did not return to his house, where Maud was putting on a dinner for Mrs. Trelinack, Yssy, Melisande, and other Onyx wives deprived of their husbands' company by the banquet. He sped out on Jefferson through the cold moonlight to Hugh's. “I'm going back to England to start that plant,” he announced.

“By all means,” Hugh said, a little tipsy on Mumm's.

“Immediately.”

“Sail on, O Tommy, sail on. Build us a world empire.”

V

He arrived in London around eleven in the morning. The Hyde Park Hotel was freezing—the boiler was being repaired, the reception clerk said apologetically, so the central heat was off. Tom kept on his coat, telling the hall porter that he would unpack his own valise. Alone, he examined the telephone with bemused wonder, as if the familiar instrument were a machine from a far-advanced civilization. He picked up the earpiece.

Evidently the hotel dining room was not dependent on the main boiler: a luxurious warmth spread from the radiators along the wine-colored walls. The clothes worn by the lunching women were misty lavenders and grays—half-mourning for the late monarch. The tables hummed with cultivated voices, and from behind a bower of potted palms came the haunting sweetness of violin, harp, and cello.

“What's that they're playing?” asked Tom.

“‘Meditation' from
Thaïs
,” Antonia replied.

“Pretty.”

She nodded.

“Until you walked into the lobby,” he confessed, “I was terrified you wouldn't come.”

Smiling, she bent her head, and the soft white feathers of her hat trembled on glossy rolled black hair.

Tom raised his glass. “Thank you for being here.”

Waiters gathered, ceremoniously boning and serving the trout, pouring more wine from the bottle chilling in the three-legged silver ice bucket.

Neither ate much.

Antonia's silences were not awkward but in harmony with the silvery tenderness of the rippling music, and Tom sipped pale wine, imagining himself back in their green Belle Isle languor.

After the charlotte russe he said, “I have a present to you from Onyx. A token. Not nearly what you deserve for winning our case. It's upstairs.” He did not mean this as a snare, a lure, a deceit, yet the final sentence seemed to hover above the small yellow fringed table lamp. He slashed his signature across the bill. The fragile mood had snapped.

The lift and hallways were wrapped in cathedral chill, the unkind winter dampness penetrated the cold of his suite. “Be right back,” he said, hurrying into the other room for his gift, and the bed with its folded green satin eiderdown, an explicit double bed, dispersed the last evanescent trace of his romanticism. He fumbled through his valise for the gold mesh evening purse he had deliberated over at Tiffany's in New York.

In the sitting room she was smoothing wrinkles from her white kid gloves. He remembered her habit of playing with some small object when she was upset.

Putting down the box, he wrapped his arms around her, reaching under the satin lining of her cape, which was made of a long-haired, creamy fur. They clung together, hip to hip, breast to breast, cheek to cheek, not kissing, the breath of each thrusting against the other's eardrum. Her eyes were squeezed shut, his were open and suffused by a pale, intense light. The leverage of their arms shifted to enclose each other more securely. After a minute he pulled back, peering into her eyes. She flushed. The pinkness allotted him courage to go unsteadily to lock the door.

When he awoke, the room was wadded with purple shadows.
It must be after four
, he thought, moving his palms up her spine and across the delicate shoulder blades: her spareness seemed to make the intimacy of their nakedness more eloquent.

“So you're awake,” she said.

“Did you sleep too?”

She shook her head.

“Have I told you how lovely you are?”

“Several times.”

Though snug under the blankets and satin quilt, he saw that their breath showed. “What would they say if I offered to give them a hand with that boiler?”

“Go back upstairs and dress, guv'nor.”

He laughed. “I'm very, very happy. Was it good for you, too?”

“Beautiful.”

“Then why the pensive look?”

She sighed. “You never used to ask questions.”

“You wanted me, didn't you?”

“So much that I'd made up my mind not to see you. But when you telephoned, the will went out of me, the way the waiter boned our trout.”

He touched her lips and she kissed his fingertip. “Happy?” he asked.

“Yes, very. But there are other considerations.”

He touched her hair, sighing. Yes, there was guilt. There was no way he could rationalize that making love to Antonia in any way resembled his other marital defections. “I know.”

“We're not the same as we were.”

“I won't patronize you by saying Maud means nothing to me. I wouldn't hurt her. Ever. We're close in so many ways.” He tried to conjure up an explanation of what he felt for his wife, the warmth, concern, friendship, and totally banked passion, without sounding disloyal, all the while knowing in his heart that lying naked with Antonia, whom he loved, was the ultimate disloyalty. “But this part doesn't mean anything to her. You aren't committing any larceny. She doesn't want me like this.…” A spasm of misery caught at his throat before he realized this was the oldest line that any man could give his mistress.

She moved a long, slender leg to touch his. Sympathy.

“Antonia, I meant it when I said I adored you. Was it the thrill of the moment when you said you loved me?”

She turned her head away. “I never stopped,” she murmured. And he could tell that her confession came from a conscience as festering as his own.
We both married decent, well-meaning people. Jesus, what a mess
.

Yet Antonia's vague melancholy pleased him. “I'll come over often,” he said. “We'll drown our guilts together.”

“
No
.”

“But I explained about Maud. She's on
my
conscience. And you have nobody to feel guilty toward.”

“I'm terrified about Justin.”

“Your boy?” Tom blinked with surprise.

“I can't risk this sort of thing, Tom.”

Tom put his thumb under her chin, making her look at him. “Is there somebody else?”

“Men take me to the theater, dining, Ascot.” The covers moved as she shrugged her shoulders. “Nobody like … I have no lover. I never have. It's Justin.”

“You aren't making sense.”

“Ever since you came to the house I've had this dream. In it, Justin finds out about himself, and his face disintegrates like wax melting.”

“A nightmare.”

“I know, but …” He felt the shudder run through her. “You're the one man I could never allow to become part of my life.”

“Antonia—”

“He's sensitive and thoughtful, he'd put two and two together. It would destroy him.”

In the dimness her eyes shone with tears. The small hairs at the back of Tom's neck prickled. He realized that however implausible this rationale might sound to him, an interdiction lay in her heart and mind, and Antonia was quite capable of sacrificing their love on the altar of some hallucinatory threat to her son.

Hallucinatory? A chill ran through him. He thought of his wife and how honest she was with him—what would the knowledge do to her? He thought of Caryll,
his
son. He said, “It's just as important to
me
that people not know.”

“This was a miracle.” Her whisper caught. “A one-time miracle.”

“Nobody's going to find out,” Tom said, reaching for her hand, pressing her palm against his heart. “Your son will never know Claude Hutchinson isn't his father.”

“You can't promise that.”

“The owner of Onyx can. I have money, I have power. I swear it to you on my life, Antonia.”

“Secrecy can't be bought, Tom.”

“You bet it can.” He pulled her toward him, the level arrogance of his voice roughening to urgency as he repeated, “I swear to you on my life, Antonia. Do you believe in that?”

Her long, tremulous sigh was one of acquiescence.

“Thank you,” he said, touching his mouth to hers, raising the covers over their heads so she would not be chilled as he kissed the small hollows below her neck. Her pulses beat faster, her skin grew hot, and his erection pressed against her thigh. She shifted. As he went into her they both gasped.

“Darling, this time let me,” she whispered.

He remained still and she pressed around him, slowly, insistently carrying him farther and farther from himself, and soon he no longer noticed his heart slamming against his ribs or the pressure of her kisses on his shoulder, he knew no physical sensation other than this undulating joy. It was as though a vestigial, prehistoric sense were returned to him, as though this hard core of his being could experience the infinity of tenderness and wonder in the world. All at once the waves surged violently and she cried out. A light burst through his blood. Yet at the ultimate moment he fell prey to the tick of sadness inherent in each human joy:
This could always have been mine
, he thought.

After their breathing quieted, he said, “Antonia, I give you my word. The boy will never know.” His voice was a grainy rumble. “Trust me.”

“Ahh, Tom, I must, I must.” She spoke in such a passion of love and hopelessness that he pulled her face to his chest, consoling her.

VI

Upper Swithin Place, two miles or so from Rutland Gate, was a treeless enclave of apartment blocks where none of her friends would venture, yet too distinctly middle class for her servants to visit. The tall crimson-brick building had a vacancy on the ground floor, and this particular flat opened onto the side path, a narrow cement ribbon visible only to tenants who might be leaning out of the overhead windows. Tom went to great lengths to ensure that the flat not be linked to him or to Antonia. He put gold guineas into a bank for the estate agent who would pay the rent, arrange for furnishings, hire a charwoman to clean two mornings a week. Tom even went so far as to have cards printed
J. Foreman
so he could slip one in the small iron frame above the doorbell.

Those first few afternoons proved typical of their hours in Upper Swithin Place. Being the more prompt, Tom would arrive to draw the chintz curtains, then Antonia would hurry in to press her cold, glowing cheek to his: she always brought something for him—maybe from her gloved fingers would dangle the strings of a pastry box, or in her chinchilla muff would be tucked new sheet music that she would later sing, accompanying herself on the upright piano. First things first, though. She retired immediately to the bathroom, where she inserted something called a pessary that during her marriage she had secured from a Dutch physician, a blessed device that obviated the need for condoms. They made love unhurriedly and to their mutual delight—if they made love a second time it was swift and guileless, an embellishment of their good-bye kisses. They put on dressing gowns and went into the other room for tea. The shaded wall brackets and false-logged gas fire cast a glow. To his surprise Tom found he could talk about Maud, recounting her doings and praising her good common sense without any wrong notes or sense of shame. His own guilts taught him the validity of Antonia's qualms about Justin. He could not once say Caryll's name. Even in some casual reminiscence about a family outing, coming to Caryll's part in it, his tongue grew thick and he lapsed into silence. In fathering a child on this woman whom he adored, had he not betrayed his legitimate son, whom he loved greatly?