The World of Tomorrow

by Brendan Mathews

  He was in the parlor playing Scott Joplin—his mother had been mad for Joplin since her days at the conservatory in Boston—when a boom from the street rattled the windows and shook the china plates on their stands. He paused his playing for only a moment, waiting to see if the sound would repeat, and then he resumed, his fingers bouncing over the keys, right hand chattering with the left. Then came the thunder of his father on the stairs, not even like feet on the treads but like a whole body tumbling end over end, and then the wrenching of the front door and the clack of the knocker against the brass plate, then a shout. None of it stopped Martin from playing. He played faster and louder, an endless loop, just the way that Joplin wrote it, until his father burst in, smoke-stained and wild-eyed, with a look Martin had never seen but would come to know well in the years ahead. Leave it! he said. For God’s sake! Leave it, will you! Martin pulled his hands away like the piano had been electrified. It was six months, at least, until his father arranged for him to use the piano in the pub in Ballyrath, and only in the mornings when the pub was closed, and only if he didn’t play too loud, and for God’s sake, he was never to play any ragtime.

  THE WORLD’S FAIR

  FRANCIS THOUGHT HE HAD already seen the Binghams’ best car, but he was mistaken. The car that had conveyed him to the Plaza on Monday was apparently used for short excursions and the ferrying of minor nobles traveling without retinue. The Pierce-Arrow that delivered Francis, Mrs. Bingham, Anisette, and Félicité from Fifth Avenue to Flushing was a men’s grill on wheels, a mobile Union League Club. The interior was done in burled walnut and red leather and fitted in lustrous brass. A hinged cabinet concealed crystal tumblers and a decanter of bourbon beside an ice bucket that had apparently been filled just before departure. The Bingham women fell into familiar roles: gracious, glowing, glowering. Félicité had arched one eyebrow when Francis arrived that morning, no doubt surprised that he had kept the commitment. To her, his appearance would mean that he was either a faithful suitor or twice the con man she’d figured him for, someone willing to stomach a little scandal if it meant a life of luxury.

  Crossing the East River, Mrs. Bingham asked after Sir Malcolm, and whether Sir Angus had yet conveyed news of his brother’s progress to his parents. “A mother worries,” she said. “Especially when her babies are so far from home.”

  Francis assured her that his brother had spent the week in splendid leisure—if anything, he said, young Malcolm was growing bored at the Plaza—but he hadn’t the energy to concoct for her any stories about their dear, sweet mother, Lady MacFarquhar. For her part, Anisette seemed positively serene, and communicated with him mostly through smiles and glances.

  As they neared the fairgrounds, Félicité peered out the window and commented on the dreariness of Queens: “Bad enough we have to drive through it,” she said. “But can you imagine living here?”

  Francis aimed for the easy bonhomie that had carried him through dinner on the Britannic and at Bingham Castle, but he felt the effort showing through the frayed spots in his Angus MacFarquhar costume. The fear and dread boiling in him couldn’t possibly be contained by the calm, clubby charm that Angus affected. He expected that, if he failed, men with guns would be roaming the city by nightfall to make good on Gavigan’s promises. If there was a lesson that Cronin was trying to impart by telling him the name of the man who had outfoxed him, Francis wouldn’t live long enough to learn it. For now, it only gave him someone to curse.

  THE GUESTS WERE asked to arrive by noon, and by eleven o’clock an armada of Rolls-Royces, Duesenbergs, Regents, and Cadillacs jostled for berths along the curb. Automobile parking near the fair was limited, and the chauffeurs engaged in a more decorous version of a Midtown taxi bullfight, their engines purring and surging, their black flanks shining in the midday sun. The guest list had swollen, a cattle call of the city’s elite, but each was aware of who had made the cut and who had opted for exile in Westchester, or Greenwich, or Newport on this sun-blasted Saturday.

  Just as they were to exit the limousine, he caught Anisette’s eye and gave her a wistful half-smile, an empty gesture that could not carry the weight of what he would take from her when he fired the shot. Of course she would be standing next to him. She would see it all. He thought for a moment that if she preceded him to the dais, he could use her to shield himself from view as he reached for the—and he realized with shame just how quickly he had turned her into not merely a pawn but a prop.

  Once outside the car, the party passed through a cluster of boxy white pavilions celebrating advances in pharmacy, electric shavers, and wristwatches. These buildings lined the Street of Wings, which gave way to the Court of Power, the Plaza of Light, and Commerce Circle. The Bingham party was led to Perylon Hall, which resembled a midmarket beach resort during the off-season: two white slabs stacked one on the other, with curved balconies supported by slender pipes that called to mind rain gutters.

  The interior of the hall, however, had been reimagined as a fantasy of Merrie Olde England. Every room and corridor had been gauded up in carpets and tapestries, altar screens and bishop’s chairs and portraits of minor nobles. Honestly, the place looked like a jumble sale at a bankrupt monastery. One entire wall of the banquet room where the guests were asked to wait was decorated with a tapestry depicting a medieval pilgrimage. Its weavers may have begun with a vague notion of The Canterbury Tales, but there were too few nuns and priests and too many rose-petal-lipped youths sporting beneath a canopy of ivy. Women in conical fairy-princess hats demurely eyed curly-headed squires in muscle-packed tights. Banners decked in chevrons, rampant lions, and stout towers suggested allegiances that divided this happy pack into factions indistinguishable to outside observers.

  Against the opposite wall, a broad window overlooked a spiral garden and offered a picture-postcard view of the fair’s signature pieces: the Trylon and Perisphere. A long line of fairgoers stretched up a sinuous ramp that cut through the tower and into the belly of the giant white orb.

  “Now what do you suppose is in there?” Francis said.

  “It’s Democracity,” Anisette said. “The city of the future. I read about it in Life magazine.”

  “How ridiculous,” Félicité sniffed.

  Anisette exchanged a knowing look with Sir Angus—hadn’t they shared a laugh about her sister’s foul temperament during their walk? It was just the sort of inside joke that would set Félicité’s teeth on edge.

  TWO LONG TABLES in the banquet room were lined with cards, one for each party in attendance, with numbers on the cards indicating the order of entry for each group of twenty. The procedure was explained by a man whose golden Trylon and Perisphere lapel pin conferred on him an instant legitimacy—as if they were visitors to a strange land, and he the ambassador. He was quick to say that the numbers had been assigned entirely at random, using a computing machine created expressly for the purpose of random-number generation. The Binghams found themselves in group 17.

  The man with the lapel pin invited the first group to assemble at the door. Each party would be led down a broad corridor by a woman in a straw hat topped by a replica of the Trylon and Perisphere. In a chamber arrayed in antiques—not just Louis XIV, but Louis XVI, too—they would be presented to Their Royal Highnesses, each of whom would offer a beneficent nod as the Americans’ names found purchase in the royal ears. Many in the hall wondered if anything more than an answering nod would be appropriate. “Charmed to make your acquaintance” seemed awfully familiar, and wasn’t there a rule against Americans bowing to foreign kings? Wasn’t that why everyone was so suspicious of the Catholics, with their Italian popes and their bowing and ring-kissing? Perhaps the king himself would offer some arcane salute used since the days of Richard the Lionheart to acknowledge the fealty of loyal vassals? That would be a sight to see.

  As soon as the groups began to form, a film of sweat rose on Francis’s forehead. These were the final moments. The doors would open and the procession would begin. The groups were
led into a long corridor and lined up, groups 1 through 20, but no one was allowed past the final door and into the royal chamber. There was a great buzz and chatter; the royals were ten minutes late, then twenty, then thirty. The well-wishers had queued along the corridor like the world’s most lavish breadline when, with a gasp from groups 1 through 5, the double doors parted and the ones on whom the computing machine had smiled disappeared from view. Francis steeled himself. If he had tried for charm and wit in the banquet room, he now wanted silence and an end to small talk. The line was moving, group 2 was through the doors, and he knew that he would not have much time to act.

  A ripple of shocked whispers raced to the back of the line: The Italian ambassador—who invited him?—had saluted the king with the raised fist of the Fascists. Definitely a breach of etiquette. The line moved again, and Francis figured that he had ten minutes, perhaps fifteen, before he reached into the sporran for the gun. A tremor twisted his guts. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, picturing how he would slide the gun from its pouch, raise it, and fire. Just like Cronin had shown him.

  “Sir Angus, could I have a moment of your time?” Mrs. Bingham was at close quarters, speaking in a near whisper. Anisette had drifted from his side, feigning interest in a pair of wimple-and-ruff portraits in order to open a channel for her mother. Félicité stood stern and alone by the edge of the group.

  “You’ll have to forgive me,” he said. “You caught me daydreaming.”

  “I do apologize, but I wanted to take une petite minute to address a delicate issue, but one it is my duty, as a mother, to perform.”

  In imagining the sequence of events in the royal chamber, Francis had not yet reached the part about what he would do after the king had fallen: Would he wait for the guards to return fire? Or immediately place the gun to his own head?

  “As I’m sure you’re aware,” Mrs. Bingham went on, “Anisette is quite fond of you. But before I encourage this fondness to grow into something more, I need to know whether these feelings of hers are shared by you. Forgive my bluntness, but do you have any… intentions regarding Anisette? And I know this is an inopportune time—”

  “It is, I confess, not the best moment—”

  “—but a mother must always protect the heart of a child as dear as Anisette, and if your feelings are not aligned with hers, then I need to prepare her as best I can for the—well, for the blow that will cause.”

  “I assure you, I am quite fond of Anisette,” he said. “But now isn’t the right time for me to make any… declarations.”

  “Of course,” she said, with a grim set to her eyes. “I think I take your meaning.”

  Why was he being coy? He could vow to make Anisette the queen of Scotland or the queen of the moon. In a few minutes, all his promises would be null and void.

  “You’re not pledged to another, are you?”

  “Oh no, nothing like that,” he said. “But with so much on the agenda for today—”

  “No one said it had to be today!” Mrs. Bingham tittered with obvious relief. “But is it safe to say that we are in accord regarding the future of your acquaintance with Anisette?”

  “Quite safe,” he said, and when Mrs. Bingham winked at him, he winked back. If he could speak in a voice that wasn’t his, and kill for a cause he didn’t believe in, then why couldn’t he make promises he could never keep? It was easier to let everyone bask in the warm glow of dashing Sir Angus right up until the moment it all collapsed, like this city of the future built to impress but not to endure.

  The line shivered with a spasm of whispers like the night sounds of crickets—had the German ambassador made an appearance, too?—and then Anisette poked her doll’s face through the crowd and said, “Maman! The king!” and sure enough the king was striding past them, politely waving, and then the queen as well, and then they were gone, moving quickly and apologetically past the line and out another set of doors. The crowd was stunned into silence. Written on their faces: elation turned to dejection; a welter of voices, half-formed questions and expressions of pique and gall. The man with the lapel pin reappeared before the doors of the banquet hall and raised his hand to call for quiet. “On behalf of Their Majesties and the commissioner of the World’s Fair, Grover Whalen,” he began, and the rest came in bursts barely audible through the thicket of disappointed American gentry: delayed, regrets, unprecedented, regrets, overwhelmed, regrets, outpouring, regrets. Someone in the throng demanded to speak to Whalen, another to the mayor, and a third to the governor. Still another called for an investigation of this so-called random-number generator.

  Francis had lost his chance. He felt, oddly, disappointed. More disappointed than anyone in the building. He’d been prepared. He knew he could have done it. He also knew that he must still do it. He must find another, more difficult way, but still it must be done. Already Gavigan could be dispatching his killers into the city. Francis hoped Miss Bloch had heeded him; he couldn’t have been more clear without giving it away. The wedding would offer some cover, but if Francis failed, it would end for all of them at Martin and Rosemary’s home.

  As he calculated his next steps, the man with the lapel pin announced that refreshments were served. Trays of triangle-cut sandwiches—watercress, cucumber, sliced ham—were placed on the long tables. Piles of melon balls and bowls of Waldorf salad appeared. Champagne was poured. The mood of the room shifted from self-sorrow to resignation to an almost festive air: the crowd, elegantly attired, were guests at perhaps the most exclusive party of the summer. For the sake of Anglo-American relations, they vowed not to raise a fuss about the tardiness and the tactless departure of the royal couple and the inconvenience it had caused their American hosts. They chose instead to celebrate, to show—what was the English phrase?—a stiff upper lip. When one of the men raised his glass and loudly proclaimed, “God save the king!” the others raised their glasses and repeated the proclamation with all the lustiness of tavern-goers in an opera.

  Francis sought out the man with the lapel pin and asked in his best Angus-ese if he knew where the king was going next: Had they reconfigured his entire agenda or was he still expected to luncheon at the Federal Building and then to receive guests at the British Pavilion? The man looked Francis up and down; something about the tartan and the brogue passed muster. “Now, let me see,” he said as he withdrew from his jacket a typed timetable of the day’s royal comings and goings, down to the minute.

  “You’re a lifesaver,” Francis said, sliding the sheet from his hands while giving him a hearty clap on the shoulder. Ignoring the man’s squeak of protest, Francis darted back through the crowd and its What a wasted Saturday, its God save the king, its Blame it on FDR. He thought he might simply disappear—Anisette had been spared the sight of him gunning down the king, and that might be all he could offer by way of a farewell—but in the center of the bustle, he ran directly into the Bingham women awaiting their Scotsman.

  IN SIR ANGUS’S absence, Anisette’s mother had told her of the conversation in the corridor, and Anisette felt like a balloon about to burst. He had confessed his feelings, her mother said, and some next step was imminent—not today, but soon. Anisette was excited, of course, and nervous for what was to come, but mostly she wondered how one person could contain all this happiness. She looked around the roomful of bald heads and powdered faces and she was certain that no one, not at this moment, felt a joy like hers. And just then, Angus emerged from the pack of tuxedos and chiffon with a slip of paper in his hand.

  “I am so sorry about this turn of events,” he said. “I know how you all looked forward to this day.”

  “On the contrary,” Mrs. Bingham said. “I think we will remember this day most joyfully for years and years to come.” Her face was pure triumph. The only topper would have been if Sir Angus, on one knee, had presented a ring to Anisette in front of the assembled throng.

  “I’m so glad you feel that way,” he said, darting a look over his shoulder, “but I regret that I must take my
leave, for now. There is an urgent matter that I must attend to.”

  Mrs. Bingham looked baffled. Anisette registered a shock, but recovered quickly. “I saw you talking to that man,” she said, her voice bright and playful, as if she’d caught him in a fib. “The note he gave you—was it from her? Forgive me, from Her Majesty?”

  All around the Binghams, heads began to turn. The sight of the kilt, the timbre of the empire in his voice, the mention of Her Majesty. He had seen it before on the Britannic, like a gravitational pull.

  “You’ve found me out, clever Anisette.” He tried to keep his voice down, but still a circle had begun to form around them, taking in the spectacle. “I’ve been informed that it would be Her Majesty’s great pleasure to renew our acquaintance, but I am afraid it’s strictly tête-à-tête. Protocol and security and what have you. But Her Majesty did ask me to extend her personal gratitude to the Bingham family—and to you, ma’am, especially—for the warmth of your hospitality to two so closely linked, in blood and sympathy, to Her Majesty’s ancestral home.”

  By the close of his brief oration, the Binghams had become a magnet for the curious, the softhearted, the envious, and the ambitious. Mrs. Bingham beamed magnanimously and Anisette, abashed, studied the lotus pattern of the carpet. Angus’s speech was worthy of, if not Darcy, then certainly Bingley, and hadn’t she always thought herself more Jane than Lizzie anyway?