Onyx (27 page)

She reached for Caryll. He snatched away his hand.

“Your father must be very clever,” she offered. “His factory's so important that the Prince of Wales has come.”

“Mmm.”

“There're Onyx motorcars all over the world.”

Caryll, who had learned the inflection of surrender only too well from his own misfortunes, knew he could have the upper hand. His innate flaw, gentleness, prevented him from claiming supremacy. “I have an album of Fivers photographed all over the world,” he said. “Basutoland, the Himalayas, Siberia.” They had reached a green-painted door with a glass panel reinforced by wire mesh. “You've got nice hair,” he blurted.

Zoe tugged at a strand of her own, then his. Both children whooped delightedly.

Inside, looming Foote-Burt spindle drillers and Ferracute power presses dwarfed and drowned out their guardians, who smelled of stale perspiration and whose canvas aprons sported tiny flags. The nearest workers, hoping to see royalty, looked up from their rapidly moving machines: seeing only two well-dressed children, they shrugged and went back to their tasks.

“I say!” Justin shouted. He stood panting in the doorway behind them. “What, exactly, do you two little nits think you're doing? You'll have everyone looking for you.”

Caryll bent his head.

Zoe crossed her arms over her moire sash. “Even his Royal Highness?” she demanded.

“The prince is getting ready to leave.”

“Then you don't mean everybody.”

“I mean Mother,” Justin said, his deep-set blue eyes sparkling dangerously.

Outside, she took her time replacing her straw sailor, smoothing twin pink streamers down the precise center of the nape of her neck before sauntering back to the marquees.

The whistle screamed. A fortune in machinery clanked to a halt, and more than five thousand workers poured from every building, jostling to see, waving caps, shouting “Huzzah!” as the royal Daimler eased along the recently swept paths of the factory and through the gates. In the street, police linked arms to hold back the shabby, madly enthusiastic crowd that refused to disperse until every limousine had swept by. Antonia's Lanchester was the first to go, the Edges' Rolls—Trelinack and Caryll perched on its jump seats—the last.

IV

Tom had agreed to an interview with a man from the
Daily Telegraph
, and Maud had insisted on waiting. Ignoring the caterers as they dismantled the striped marquees, she stood tapping her glasses into her gloved hand, her head hunched a little so her large, practical tan summer hat formed a toadstool top to her black astrakhan cape.

Alas for Maud. Having connected Tom's numerous lengthy trips to England with Antonia's guilty jumpiness, storms were raging within her. Had he been coming here to be with her …? Yet despite that ineradicable jealousy Maud's literal mind formed a thin membrane of doubt that protected her from the worst.
Suspicions aren't truth
, she told herself.

Tom strode toward her. Hatless, his glossy, prematurely gray hair blowing around a face tanned from the sea voyage, his new suit showing off his well-knit body, he was, she realized with a tremor in her throat, a virile, attractive man.

She asked, “How did it go?”

“All right,” he said. He no longer appeared buoyed by the day's triumph.

They were silent as he drove. Along these mean streets the occasional dray was hauled by a blinkered, swaybacked plug, but crossing the Thames, the Onyx became part of motorized streams: solid-tire buses with advertisements for soap or cocoa blazoned across their upper decks, lorries, taxicabs, expensive automobiles as well as Onyxes, Morrises, Austins, Fords. In less than fifteen years the horse had been just about supplanted.

Head lamps—oil, gas, and electric—hazed circles through the purplish green twilight. Maud leaned back into the pressed-air cushion, her body heavy with apprehensive determination. She knew it a powerful error to invade the territory of her husband's heart, her breath caught in anguish at the thought of it, yet she had to know, didn't she, if there was anything between him and that scrawny, black-haired bitch? “She's still as full of life as ever.”

“Who?”

“Your old flame. Antonia Dalzell. Mrs. Hutchinson.”

The tendons of Tom's hands stood out as he gripped the steering wheel more tightly. “Yes,” he said, brusquely changing the subject. “That reporter gave me a bad time. The press here isn't fond of foreigners. Thank God Hugh had the brains to hire a British public relations firm.”

“He saw her when he came over.”

“Hugh?”

“But you never ran into her?”

An old-fashioned Gabriel horn blared as a brass-lavished open car swept by. “A 1907 Napier,” Tom said.

“She's a friend of Monty's, isn't she?”

Tom said nothing.

“He sent her the invitation. You've never seen her at their house?”

“Years ago they dragged me to a dance,” Tom said. “She was there.”

“Was her husband dead then?”

“Maud, the
Telegraph
man put me through hoops. I've had enough grilling for one day.” Tom's upper lip rose; the expression was reminiscent of Caryll's when he ran home to evade the older bullies up the street—an unhappy, cornered, shamed look that should have been confession enough.

But Maud's mind was a dictator, prodding and harrying her until she had whipped away the last ambiguities.

She swallowed. “He must've left her well fixed. I've sewed enough to know Paris when I see it. That dress was Paul Poiret. Who can afford
him
? Maybe in that set, rich men buy their mistresses extravagant clothes.” As Maud spoke she considered the identity of the probable benefactor. She shivered, clasping her icy hands together. “Of course, there was the Major,” she said. “I'll bet
he
left her everything. He was very fond of her—the Woodward Avenue bunch never stopped talking about the two of them. What they said!”

“All right, Maud, that's enough,” Tom growled.

At this point Maud had fully expected to bring her convictions into the open. But fear, a horrible black fear, canceled her natural honesty.

“Monty's mistress was there today,” she said. “That giggly little blonde. Lady Chapin. Did you know about it?”

“I don't come to England to gossip,” he snapped.

His temper, Maud sensed, was being reined by thin, cutting wires of willpower. Her mouth tasted salty. She longed to remain silent, yet words kept flooding. “Edwina told
me
right out. She's a chip of ice. I can't imagine accepting it. She says it happens as a marriage wears on. But then we're so tangled up together, you and me. There's Caryll, the Farm.” Recently they had purchased several hundred rolling, uncleared acres near Bloomfield Hills, and Maud was working on house plans with Albert Kahn, who had designed the Hamtramck plant. “Maybe these things are different here.”

Tom braked at the hotel's red baize carpet, and the doorman hurried around to open Maud's door. A bellboy raced down the steps. Tom was the rare chauffeurless guest, and the doorman's assistants always jumped at the chance to take the wheel. The boy's narrow wedge of a chin fell as Tom said, “Not now, thanks. I'm going on.”

Maud, one shoe on the running board, stared at her husband, expecting to see resentful fury. The hotel torchères shone on something infinitely more chilling. Tom's long, angular face suffused with pity. For her.

“Go ahead to Monty's party without me,” he said.

V

This trip, his family's first to Europe, they had not arranged to meet at the flat, so when he used his key the scent of roses surprised him. Switching on the light, he saw the tall vase on the piano, a chocolate box on the table. He ate a cream while the operator reached her number.

Drum asked, “May I say who is calling?”

“Mr. Foreman.”

Antonia promised to be there in a half hour.

He took one of the long-stemmed yellow roses and went outside, pacing up and down, aware of the delicious fresh night coolness on his face, feeling the spring of his thigh muscles.

I'll get a divorce
, he thought.

Halting, he peered at the rose, amazed at the simplicity of what seemed to him a snap decision. In reality he had thought often of a divorce but had shrunk from examining the ramifications out of fond loyalty to Maud, out of love for Caryll. The idea had sunk into his mind's subterranean depths, nearly four years of gnawing, worrying, chewing. Maybe the thought would have stayed there below the level of consciousness if it hadn't been for the joy of Antonia's being there at his triumph, or had Maud not hammered questions at him, then so resolutely attacked his love. Tom began to stride again, his footsteps jubilant, impatient in the quiet street.

Divorce …

A taxi's side and head lamps pierced Upper Swithin Place. After counting out silver for the cabbie, Tom bowed ceremoniously, handing Antonia the rose.

“Do you often come here alone?”

Her smile was one of high excitement. “Call me a foolish, romantic woman. I miss you.”

They had reached the flat, and he closed the door behind them. “Is that why you were at the reception?”

She was suddenly anxious; stricken. “Wasn't that awful of me? Tom, I couldn't help it. Monty sent an invitation and I was writing my excuses when the children came in. They saw the card. It seems Justin's been dying to have a tour of your factory. And Zoe had a tantrum about seeing the Prince of Wales. The two of them never gave me a chance.” Her voice shook. “So there I was, the other woman, the interloper.”

“Antonia, you were the one person who belonged. Remember the quadricycle?”

Those pleading lines between delicate black brows eased. “That's what I kept thinking. From that funny little machine to this enormous factory!”

“So I impressed you?”

“Bowled me over,” she said. “What about the ball at Monty's?”

He bent, striking a match to the gas jets. “It's proceeding without me.”

“You can't miss
that
.”

“Sit down.”

“Is it Maud? Did she suspect? I tried to be casual, but—”

“Sit down,” he repeated, waiting until she was on the sofa. “Antonia, hasn't it ever struck you how ridiculous this is? False names, secret telephone messages, pretending we barely know each other, sneaking in here. For God's sake, we're not international spies.”

“It's how people have an affair.”

“When was this ever just that?”

“A love affair.” She was playing with the snap of her purse. “What else could you call it?”

“I'm getting a divorce.”

Her hand flew to her mouth. “No!”

“It's the only way.”

“Maud helped you get started. And what about Caryll?”

“She's not petty or spiteful, she'll be good about him.”

“I saw how you are together. Your face lights up. And he … when he looks up at you, Tom, it's as though he's looking into the sun.”

Tom folded his arms on the mantel, resting his forehead on his knuckles. The heat of gas flames penetrated his striped trousers. He gave a long, shuddering sigh. “He's what's kept me going. But I want to be at the center of my life. Antonia, you are the center of it.”

“Stop it! Tom, you know this is impossible.”

“I made you a promise. It'll be kept.”

“You don't know Justin.”

“He's fourteen already. In a few years he'll be off on his own. And what about us?” Tom broke off abruptly. Into his mind had come an image of a barren room and a young, ill-looking Antonia setting the various weights of love on her personal scales, a scales whose balance was inevitably tilted in favor of the weak, the needy. “I'm not about to make the same mistake twice,” he said. “I won't push you. We'll keep meeting like this if you insist, but—”

“Why a divorce, then?” she broke in. “Maud guessed, didn't she? Is this her idea?”

Tom shook his head. “No. And we never said the words linking you and me, but she knows, she knows. She put me through the meat grinder. Christ! It hurt her, it hurt me, and that's all the good it accomplished. I felt so damn sorry for her that I could have cried.” He swung around, staring at Antonia with haunted eyes. “I just can't go on anymore.”

Her ambivalences showed as nakedly as his. “Darling, you're grayer,” she said in a low, hoarse tone that he thought of as her bed voice. “I wasn't with you when you went grayer.”

“Since that afternoon at the Hyde Park Hotel I haven't looked at another woman,” he said thickly. “I don't think I ever have.”

She took a step toward him, and they abandoned argument and reason. They had not been together in more than four months, he needed to be joined to love and happiness, he needed her. Their fierce kiss smelled of champagne from the British Onyx reception and lasted while they sank onto the sofa, pushing aside their clothes. They made love, reversing their usual pattern, slithering with heedless swiftness the first time, then later in the bed finding tender, inexhaustible languor that was oblivious to the past or the future. Antonia gave no promises; however, she did not insist, as she normally did, on leaving before midnight, and this, Tom decided, augured well.

VI

Daily Telegraph
, Wednesday, June 3, 1914.

FACTORY OPENING

Yesterday afternoon the Prince of Wales cut the opening ribbon at the British Onyx factory in Southwark. Among those present were:

Prince and Princess Louis Battenberg, the Marquis of Whitfield, the Dowager Countess of Milton, Lord and Lady Allingham, Lord and Lady Comstock, Lord Considine, Sir John and Lady Fielding, Sir Henry Royce.

Anyone who has seen the British Onyx factory appreciates it is the most advanced in the world, a matter of national pride. Nothing has been left undone to produce motorcars and lorries in the swiftest, most efficient manner with the use of endless conveyor belts, traveling cranes and a vast array of especially designed machines. The factory's goal, praiseworthy in the extreme, is to meet the travel requirements of the average man at a price many Englishmen can well afford. Mr Edge and Mr Bridger are to be congratulated on their enterprise.