Onyx (30 page)

Hugh studied the small, unpretentious gold lettering until the name blurred before his eyes.

Footsteps rang somewhere in the empty hall. Hugh barged inside.

II

It was Saturday, Caryll's day at the Hamtramck. When Tom received the message that Hugh was coming to his office, the portent of such an act had struck him with a deadly cold. He had dispatched the little boy to examine the scale wooden models of the next year's cars. (Contrary to public belief that the Fiver was changeless, there were numerous improvements each year.)

As Hugh rushed in, the waxen pallor of his handsome side made the scar tissue of the other more a dark red carapace.
It's bad, very
, Tom thought, and totted up the possible catastrophes, unable to keep his eyes from his brother's divided face.

Hugh returned the gaze, removing his hat with what seemed intolerably slowed movements.

“Hugh?”

Sinking into a chair, Hugh said in the coaxing, tender voice used with terminal cases, “Come sit down.”

“Why?”

“Please?”

Tom sat on a large brown leather conference chair. “What the hell is going on?”

Hugh opened his mouth, and closed it. There were small beads of sweat on the human side of his forehead. “She's dead.…”

“She?” For one blinding, cruel moment Tom prayed that he meant Maud.

Hugh was resting a gentle hand on his shoulder. “… Antonia …”

Tom shrugged away from the hand, standing. He saw with microscopic clarity each knot of scarred flesh, that vestige of an ear. “No!” he said loudly. “You're lying. You're a fucking liar!”

“I wish to God I were.”

“
You
wouldn't have heard.”

“Monty cabled. He knows she's a friend of mine. An air raid; it happened during an air raid.”

Tom's mind refused to work.
Antonia? Dead
? “You miserable cocksucker!” he shouted, and hit his brother across his good cheek, a crisp slap. Hugh did not flinch. As Tom watched the red mark appear in the handsome flesh, a low, involuntary sound spawned deep within his chest, a prehuman howling that lasted a million million years and acknowledged the ultimate and most irrevocable of truths.
Dead. She's dead
. He began to shudder.

Hugh did what he had been unable to do years earlier, when Tom had lost her the first time. He reached out and put his arms around his brother.

For a few moments they stood, the warmth of living flesh attempting to compensate for the eternal ice. Tom, the dry sobs still heaving through him, pulled away. “Thank you for coming here …” he said with reasonable clarity. “Now go.…”

“But—”

“Hugh.” It was a hoarse command.

Hugh took one last look at his brother, who had gone to lean on the window ledge. The back of a shuddering man was outlined against the bleak sky and an enormous factory.

Caryll was in the outer office, crayoning. Seeing Hugh, his eyes rounded with surprise. “Uncle Hugh … W-what are you doing here?”

Hugh was wrapped in his brother's anguish. “I had to talk to your father,” he said with a horrible ersatz smile.

Caryll's gray eyes rounded apprehensively, and he shrank back to the chair rungs.

Afraid of me
, Hugh thought.
What a miserable excuse of a boy
. “He's going to be busy,” Hugh said. “Come along. I'll drop you off.”

In the car each slumped in his corner. Caryll, sensitive, knew he had somehow insulted his uncle, but was unable to brook the distance of the handmade needlepoint upholstery between them to make it up. Hugh's mind was skipping among the possibilities of supplanting this nephew with Antonia's boy—their transatlantic correspondence had upheld his original opinion that Justin had strength, guts, moral integrity, and he had hoped that marriage to Antonia would prove these qualities to Tom.
Well, death stymies the best-laid plans
, he thought with a deep, wheezing sigh. He considered the brother who was his life, he thought momentarily of the endless factory—of Tom's empire.

I'll have to go over to England
, he decided.

III

Ten days later, ensconced in his rooms at the Hyde Park Hotel, Hugh picked up the telephone on its first ring.

Monty's voice said, “We're downstairs.”

“The children?”

“Yes. Edwina's along too.”

Hugh had never met Edwina Edge. He poured himself a quick sherry.

Edwina entered first, majestically dowdy in her draped mud-green serge, her nostrils flaring as she examined his face.

Monty introduced his wife. “Welcome back to London, Hugh,” he said.

Zoe stood close to her brother as the two offered their subdued greetings. Edwina had outfitted them for their orphaned state in thick black clothing several sensible sizes too large. Sleeves adangle to their knuckles, they were mournful, transitional chrysalid creatures. The softness of Justin's face had receded, and the bones of his cheeks, jaw, and high-bridged Roman nose were groping toward manhood. He had shot up and moved his new length of body a trifle awkwardly. The hideous orphans' weeds failed to douse Zoe's beauty. Indeed, the contrast set off the exquisite rose-petal skin and vivid red hair. Her huge dark eyes gazed at Hugh with melting appeal.

Monty said, “I must say I was surprised you made this journey.”

“It was most unnecessary,” Edwina said. “We have matters in hand. It's high time these two were away at school.”

Zoe darted a glance at Justin, and he rested a comforting arm around her shoulders.

Seeing this, Hugh said, “Monty, Mrs. Edge, if you don't mind, I'd like to talk to the children alone.”

“We quite understand,” conceded Edwina with her chill smile. “Monty and I will have a coffee in the lounge.”

As soon as the door closed, Justin's mouth relaxed and Zoe came to sit on the ottoman near Hugh. “With this beastly war,” she said, “it was heroic of you to come.”

“Nonsense,” said Hugh, though he was in consummate agreement. Not only was he braving Tom's wrath—why was his brother so prone to call any well-meant assistance by the ugly name of meddling?—but also wartime high seas. The
Stephen Decatur
had been packed with returning British supply officers and noisy young Americans on their way to enlist, so Hugh had been forced to share a tiny, interior cabin with his secretary. He never had left it. Every claustrophobic, stormy knot had been stained with his fear that some overzealous German U-boat captain might ignore the American flags painted on both sides of the hull. “This will sound strange coming from somebody my age, I know, but outside of family, you two are my only friends.”

“We feel as if you're a relative,” Justin said.

“We don't have any real ones,” Zoe added.

“I can't tell you how sad I am about your mother.” Hugh's commiseration was gruff with sincerity. “A terrible loss.”

Justin blinked fiercely and swallowed. “I'm going to Trackenham, that's in Kent, and Zoe's enrolled at Lady's Court in Eastbourne.”

“We're not even being sent to the same town,” Zoe said in a frail, high voice. “Justin'll be a thousand miles away.”

Hugh asked, “Didn't Mr. Edge explain?”

“Yes,” Justin replied, “and it's wonderfully good of you to ask us to live with you, but—”

“I have plenty of room.”

Justin sighed. “It's all arranged. Mr. Edge has already been down to talk to my headmaster, and tomorrow Mrs. Edge and Zoe'll take the train down to visit Lady's Court. You see, it's just …”

“I'll die in Eastbourne,” Zoe interrupted. Without a preliminary snuffle she began to weep. Antonia's death had hurled her far from the sun, and the thought of being separated from Justin, her sole other source of warmth, spun her into a yet more remote orbit of ice.

Hugh gave her his handkerchief with a jerky little flourish: unused to children, he did not know how to proceed, but when she lifted her arms, he drew her onto his lap, surprised at her small weight, surprised, too, that he cared for this exquisite, crying waif, albeit without the tribal intensity that marked his emotions for Justin. He stroked soft, bright hair.

“I'd love … to come to America,” she sobbed. “I've told Justin … over and over.”

Justin sat on the next chair. Whiteness marked the corners of his mouth. “Why can't you at least try to understand my side, Zoe? It's cowardly for me to leave.”

“
She
hates me!”

“She's that way with everyone. And Mr. Edge is a jolly good sort. We'll only see her over the hols.”

“If she picked the school, it's beastly! They'll whip me, they'll starve—”

“This isn't
Nicholas Nickleby
,” Justin interrupted.

“Mother never sent us to boarding school!”

“Everybody goes. In no time you'll have droves of friends.” He bowed his head, his voice cracked as he said, “Zozo, for me to leave now is a bad show.”

“So that's it, Justin?” Hugh asked. “You feel that going to Detroit would be running away?”

Justin nodded. “Yes.”

“I can't see it like that, not if you're using the time to prepare yourself. We have an excellent military academy. It's run by a West Pointer, Colonel Marshall. They have drills and that sort of thing. My brother's boy goes there. They take day students—”

Zoe, sniffling, interrupted. “Is there a girl's day school in Detroit, Hugh?”

“Several,” Hugh replied, his eyes fixed on Justin.

“There's a lot to be done here at home,” Justin said. “Some of us in the upper forms have been helping teach the lower forms. That way the younger masters are released to join up. There's the same program at Trackenham.” Justin looked down at his knee. “Mother was killed on the way home from the hospital. She was a woman and an American, but she was doing her bit. Think of how much more important it is for me.”

“Your father was against violence,” Hugh enunciated neutrally. “You've mentioned that in several of your letters. It seems to me he would never have wanted his children—his little girl—to live where there were bombing raids.”

“Father wouldn't have liked the first thing about this war, and neither do I,” Justin said. “But the fact is we're in it. And until we've won, I belong here. You're right about Zoe, though, Hugh. She should go to America.”

Zoe slid from Hugh's lap, clutching at her brother's arm. “Without you?”

“Stop being such a crybaby, Zoe.”

“Mummy would want us together!”

“You'll be with Hugh.”

“Mummy'd want you to look after me and you know it! We'll come back as soon as you're old enough to enlist. By then I won't mind Mrs. Edge.… Don't desert … me.…” She gasped her words dramatically between heaving sobs.

“Calm down, Zozo,” Justin muttered, embarrassed and dismayed.

“If you leave me … I'll hate you always.… You'll be my enemy forever.”

Zoe flung herself to the carpet, kicking her clumsy new black shoes and flailing her clenched fists on large Axminster roses. Hugh, flustered by the outburst, yet collusive, retreated to the bedroom for a fresh handkerchief while Justin, obviously an old hand, knelt gripping her shoulders.

“Stop this, Zoe,” he ordered. The more desperately loud the boy's commands became, the louder grew Zoe's sobs and gasps. Her beautiful face and vein-knotted little throat turned crimson. Finally her brother capitulated to the torrent of blackmailing shrieks. “
Pax
,” he sighed.

“You mean it?” she gasped.

“We'll go to America.”

“Both of us?”

“Until I'm seventeen we'll be together,” he promised.

She allowed him to lift her to the couch, where her tantrum quieted with unabashed speed to hiccoughing little sighs.

“Then I'll book your passages,” said Hugh, who had already arranged for the three best cabins on the
Stephen Decatur
's homeward voyage.

Nodding, Justin blew his nose. “Excuse Zoe, will you, Hugh. She's awfully upset about Mother.” His throat worked, and he continued in a cracking voice, “It's very decent of you to take us.” He turned abruptly, but not before Hugh had seen the grief and unquenchable shame in the deep-set, bloodshot eyes.

The Edges did not question the alteration in the children's fates. Antonia had left no will, and one simply did not go into courts of law unless forced to, so it was up to one or the other of her friends to take over as guardians. The couple were hardly about to argue with Hugh Bridger—Tom's brother—when he decided that he wanted the job.

With a frigid little nod Edwina Edge said she would see about the children's clothes. She returned with brother and sister to Rutland Gate, where the Drums were packing boxes, crates, trunks as they closed the house—Drum was joining the Volunteer Motor Drivers and Mrs. Drum was off to Dorset to help on her brother's farm.

Monty remained in Hugh's suite. “There's a matter of some importance to discuss,” he said.

By now Hugh shared Tom's opinion that the Englishman had a touch of genius, was intensely capable and trustworthy: he no longer saw Monty's vaulting ambitions as an irritant but as a leash binding him to Onyx. He sat back in his chair. “What is it, Monty? The army contract?” The army recently had doubled its orders for Fivers.

“They now will need in addition a much larger lorry, one with a hundred-and-thirty-inch wheelbase and a forty-horsepower motor. They're offering us the contract. The prime minister approached me.”

“Asquith himself, eh? It must be a very important contract.”

“Very. For days I've been cabling Tom. Of course we can't use the Southwark plant, it's going at capacity already. In my opinion we ought to subcontract and find a suitable site to set up an assembly, something along the lines of Ford's Trafford Park. I've cabled all the information to Tom. He's never replied.” Monty leaned forward. “He already has a tremendous capital investment here. Is he worried that England might be beaten? I know a lot of you Americans are for Kaiser Bill.”