Onyx

by Briskin, Jacqueline;

  Tom, uncomfortable at large social functions, stalked down the three shallow steps to where the host and hostess stood greeting their guests. Lord and Lady Comstock were a stout couple in their fifties, he with a white walrus mustache, she double-chinned, both smiling cheerfully. Edwina presented Tom.

  “Ahh, Bridger,” said Lord Comstock, pushing back his shock of gray hair. “I saw you race once. A place with some barbaric name. Rippie something.”

  “Rappahannock.”

  “Exactly. You drove that slate Onyx like a shot. Are you giving England a chance to see you do your stuff?”

  “Sure. It’s the way I push the product.”

  Monty and Edwina stiffened at this gaffe, but Lord and Lady Comstock laughed heartily. “That’s right,” said the hostess. “You make the little monsters.”

  More at ease, Tom moved into the ballroom. The eddying conversations, the calls and cries of greeting, the footsteps on the waxed floor, made a deafening thrum, and Edwina moved closer to point out the distinguished guests: Prince Louis Battenberg held court in one corner, and in an alcove Princess Louise and her husband, the Duke of Fife, looked slightly bored with their entourage.

  A burst of masculine laughter drew Tom’s attention to a window embrasure. Five men, three in brilliant uniforms, circled a tall, slender woman in cream silk. She wore no tiara in her China-black hair, her only jewelry a strand of small sapphires around her throat. Tom had caught her in profile. The wall fixture formed a path of light along the delicate contours of her nose, which wiggled as she told what must have been an amusing anecdote.

  It took Tom several beats to recognize Antonia, for this was not his solitary love; this Antonia was a creature born to captivate groups, to refract her joie de vivre as a diamond flashes light. She raised her hand, a vivid Highland-fling gesture, and the men roared again.

  Edwina noticed the direction of his gaze. “She’s a countrywoman of yours, Mr. Bridger.”

  “Who? Where?” Monty asked. “Ahh. Mrs. Hutchinson. Delightful woman, delightful. Would you like to be introduced?”

  “I know her,” Tom replied. “I was a mechanic at her uncle’s factory.”

  As Monty turned crimson, a loud waltz burst from the minstrels’ gallery. Gentlemen placed hands over shining white waistcoats, bowing to ladies, and couples whirled onto the dance floor: the regular beat of shoes, the jangle of spurs, the rush of skirts, sounded over voices and music. Tom pushed through the crowd to the window embrasure.

  “Antonia,” he said thickly. “Hello.”

  She blinked at him, her animation fading. Her hand went to her throat where the pulse beat visibly.

  He asked, “May I have this dance?”

  “Sorry, old man. The waltz is mine,” said a stocky man wearing a crimson evening kilt and a silver-buttoned dress jacket.

  “Roderick,” Antonia murmured. “This is Mr. Bridger from America.…”

  Tom, viewing this as acceptance, placed his hand on her narrow, supple waist. At this the man, Roderick, stepped back.

  Tom was not a good dancer; he had learned too late and had too little practice. Antonia, however, danced exquisitely. She dipped and swayed gracefully while her feet in their satin slippers moved lightly. But she was silent, holding herself apart from him, her eyes fixed on a point beyond his left ear. Once he managed to catch her glance, and her eyelids trembled, revealing the same fear she had shown that afternoon in her garden. She was afraid of him. But why? True, he had hurled thunderbolts of bitterness at her; still, she had sent him back his blueprints. Ten and a half years, then, must have washed away some of the bitterness. Tom ached to give himself up to the old vertigo of her nearness, but her subdued silence killed his pleasure.

  “Your paintings are unusual,” he said at last.

  Red marks showed on her pale cheeks. “You should never have come to the house.”

  Hurt, he paid her back. “You didn’t have to run away as if Jack the Ripper was calling. I only wanted to say thanks for the plans.”

  “Mr. Polhemus was never to mention where they came from.”

  “You’ve forgotten my brilliance,” he said. “Who but your uncle would have stolen my ideas?”

  She bent her head. He could not see her expression, but the perfume of her hair—she still used rosewater—reached deep into his memory. “He died the year before last,” she said.

  “I heard. I also heard that you married your old beau, and he died too.” The band, without halting, swung into “The Merry Widow.” Appropriate, Tom thought. “Widowhood becomes you,” he said.

  Under his hand her rib cage expanded and contracted. He slowed his steps. “I’ve got a mean, hurting sense of humor, Antonia. Remember? I’m sorry.” And to bolster his apology, he added, “I saw your boy and girl. They’re fine-looking children. I have a boy too. How old is yours?”

  Her body tensed. Her feet ceased to move. She stared directly at him. “How dare you!” she whispered.

  “What is it? All I did was ask about your children.”

  “You’ve become very cruel.” Tears were caught on her lower lashes.

  “Antonia, I don’t understand.”

  She pulled away from him. “I’ve turned my ankle,” she said. They were at the edge of the floor where older women sat gossiping. She sank onto the nap-worn red velvet upholstery of a vacant chair.

  “Does it hurt much?”

  She nodded.

  “Shall I find a doctor?”

  “That’s not necessary.” She gazed at the energetic waltzers as though they might deliver her from her misery, which Tom knew had nothing to do with torn ligaments in her slim ankle.

  Sitting on the gilt chair next to her, he spoke with low intensity. “I don’t understand what I’ve done. Should I apologize for what happened in Detroit …?” The question trailed away. Her eyes glinted with outrage and horror. He changed the subject. “The plans were just what we needed. The lawyers say they’re evidence that I developed my automobiles along very different lines from Selden’s patent. Crucial to the appeal.” He leaned toward her. “Antonia, it’s ten years since I was a monster. Isn’t there a statute of limitations?”

  “Why are you poking and prying about my son?” Her voice shook.

  “Your boy? Antonia, I don’t understand at all.”

  “Why did you come to see him?”

  “I told you, I wanted to thank you. Is there a reason I mustn’t come to your house? Are you engaged … or something?”

  One of the ladies seated nearby had risen and was approaching them. Diamond tiara aglint in iron-gray hair, she bent her head solicitously. “Antonia, whatever is it? You look ghastly.”

  “I twisted my ankle quite badly.”

  “You poor dear. Come into the cloakroom and we’ll put ice on it. Can you manage?”

  “I’ll try, your grace,” Antonia said, standing. Tom rose too. Without a glance, she left him.

  He watched the two women circle the dance floor. Antonia held the train of her ball gown by its silken loop.

  She was not limping.

  She had lied to get away from him and didn’t care if he knew it! His throat went dry, his hands began shaking. He pushed his way around the crowded dance floor, not seeing the Edges, who had stopped dancing to wave at him, or his host and hostess, who turned from greeting a late arrival to look askance at him. Outside, he gulped at the damp evening air, blindly walking several blocks before hailing a taxi.

  “What address, guv’nor?”

  “Where there’s women,” Tom said roughly.

  VI

  He arrived back at the Hyde Park Hotel around teatime: the guests gathered around the low tables in the lobby glanced politely away from his rumpled dinner clothes.

  As he unlocked the door of their suite Hugh jumped up from a desk strewn with papers. “Tom! Where have you been? I’ve had people out looking for you.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “You’ve been gone almost a day. Monty said you left the ball early. A
nd it’s after four in the afternoon.”

  “London whores don’t punch a time clock!” The taxi driver had wound through the narrow alleys of Soho to a house considerably more luxurious than the one near the Pontchartrain Hotel. He had chosen a bosomy redhead and for the first time in his life been incapable; he had downed Scotch after Scotch, then passed out on the prostitute’s useless bed. “Don’t spy on me, Hugh!”

  He slammed into the bathroom. Before he shaved, he peered with bloodshot eyes into the mahogany-framed mirror and scarcely recognized himself.

  He emerged shaved, bathed, changed, mumbling an apology. Hugh had ordered tea. Tom, discovering he was hungry, fell on thinly sliced sandwiches and small iced cakes, pouring himself several cups of tea, the strong, dark oolong that his mother-in-law brewed.

  Hugh sipped a single cup. “All week you’ve been a madman, and now this binge. What is it? Worried about the appeal?”

  “I saw her.”

  Hugh feigned ignorance. “Her?”

  “Antonia. I went to Rutland Gate last week. She was home, but she refused to see me. And she was at the ball. She pretended she’d hurt her foot to get away. She hates me, Hugh, hates me. And for some reason she’s terrified of me.”

  Hugh set down his cup. “When you went to the house, did you see him?” he asked carefully.

  “Then she does have a lover. A royal one?”

  “The son, I meant.”

  “The children were in the garden. She hustled them away.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “I saw them for a minute from an upstairs window.”

  “The boy’s ten.”

  Tom curved his hands around the chair arms, sitting forward to stare at his brother’s knowing, divided face. “Ten?”

  “I don’t know his birthday. I tried to find out, but the records had burned.”

  A curious emotion, scalding as rage yet not rage, cruised through Tom and he pushed away the tea cart, spilling over the milk jug. He barged out to the anteroom, grabbing his hat.

  Hugh ran after him. “Where are you going?”

  “To get a few answers.”

  “Cool down, Tom. Think this through before—”

  But Tom had already slammed the door.

  VII

  The butler lowered his gaze. “I’m afraid, sir, that Madam is not receiving. She is indispo—”

  “I’ll see her anyway.” Tom pushed into the narrow hall.

  “Who is it, Drum?” called a boy’s upper-class English contralto.

  “A gentleman, Master Justin. He insists on seeing Mrs. Hutchinson.”

  “I’ll handle this, Drum.” The boy ran lightly down the stairs. Drum retreated to the crepuscular shadows as if to give the youngster rein while protecting him. From me, Tom thought. “My mother is resting, Mr.—?”

  “Bridger,” Tom supplied. The door was open, but it was not the twilight drafts that caused the chills weaving over Tom’s body. He was scanning the boy’s face: the arched nose already proving its bone structure, the fully modeled mouth, the shining black hair that tousled over his high, arching forehead. On the surface, Antonia. Her child alone. The eyes, however, were not Antonia’s. They were wide apart, their deep blue intensified by the shadow of the frontal bone. Looking into those eyes it all rushed back to Tom, his father silently breasting the loneliness of the Great Plains, his father directing him to his chores with a shifting glance, his father staring up after death’s monstrous embrace.

  Under his scrutiny the child stood more erect. “Mr. Bridger, are you cold?”

  “I …” Tom drew a deep, visceral breath.

  “Maybe we should close the door, sir. You’re shivering.”

  “I’m fine. I was hoping to see your … mother.”

  “Mr. Bridger, did you visit last Saturday?”

  “I was here, yes.”

  The boy’s freckles showed the color of a peach against his pink and white skin, and he squared his shoulders under the school blazer. “I hope you don’t think this very rude, but Mother has nobody but me. After your last visit she was most frightfully upset. Last night she came home early, ill, but even if she were herself, it seems best if you don’t call on her.” This final exigency he blurted out, as though he had steeled himself.

  “We were friends.”

  “Probably being an American, you remind her of Father,” the child offered. “She misses him most dreadfully.”

  “I don’t mean to upset her, son.” Tom reddened, swallowing. “What’s your name?”

  “Justin—Justin Hutchinson.”

  “Justin, I’d appreciate it if you’d give your mother this.” He took out a card, penciling on the back: We have matters to discuss.

  Scrupulously averting his gaze from the message, the boy turned the card. “I say! Onyx!” He had not yet grown into his teeth, and his eager smile revealed him as a ten-year-old rather than knight defender of this narrow early Victorian house and all ladies therein. “You’re that Mr. Bridger? The racer?”

  “Me.”

  “The paper said you’ve entered the Ben Nevis run. Is that true?”

  “No, I’ll be home in Detroit by August.”

  “Jolly good!”

  “Why?”

  “I’d rather an English car won.”

  “Justin!”

  At the shrill cry they turned to the staircase. Antonia was skimming down, her loose, silvery houserobe spectral in the dim light, her hair grazing her shoulders.

  “Mother, I thought you were in bed.”

  “Why didn’t you let Drum answer?” she demanded.

  “I did, Madam.” The butler spoke from the shadows. “I explained to the gentleman you weren’t receiving.” Shooting an indignant glance at Tom, he paced with theatrical steps into the gloom. A door closed.

  “It’s not Drum’s fault, Mother,” Justin said, his cheeks red. It was apparent that this virago was an incomprehensible stranger, an unknown incarnation who shocked and wounded him. “I wanted to explain to Mr. Bridger—”

  “Go upstairs.”

  “—that you were ill,” Justin finished, resolute, brighter color flooding his face.

  “Mrs. Drum has tea ready.” Antonia pushed him.

  He resisted. “Mr. Bridger, you’ll remember what I told you?”

  “Yes, I will,” Tom said.

  “It was a pleasure meeting you, sir.” Justin’s smile broke. “Wait until I tell them at school you aren’t entered in the Ben Nevis!” He took the stairs two at a time.

  Antonia watched him disappear before she turned to Tom. “Must you keep hounding us?” she whispered.

  “Why didn’t you want me to meet him?” Tom asked.

  She glanced around, frightened. “We can’t talk here. Wait. I’ll be right back.”

  He stepped outside, leaving the front door ajar. The lamplighter was making his rounds, and in a circle of yellow light, Tom brooded.

  Having come face to face with a son he had not known existed, he was attempting to sort out his impressions. The boy had been brave to speak like that to a strange adult. Protecting his mother. It had come as a shock that he talked with the precise articulation of the British upper class. Tall for his age. Sturdily built. Over his heart he wore a school crest embroidered with gilt thread and crimson silk. He was thoughtful—or was it the eyes? A trick of pigment and bone structure? He went out of his way to be fair-minded: Probably being an American, you remind her of Father.

  The boy’s image faded, and Tom loosened his tie knot. He was choking with perverse resentment that had nothing to do with Justin—or, rather, everything to do with him. She never told me, Tom was thinking. She left Detroit without a word. The boy proved with annihilating finality the depth of her loathing.

  My son?

  Son meant a younger, less forceful boy who looked on him not with veiled hostility but adoration, who did not remind him of his own father’s lost battles. Caryll was his son.

  VIII

  In less than
five minutes Antonia came out, hatless, hair tied back, clasping a voluminous black cape around her. In her ungloved hand she held a large iron key. “We can talk in the gardens,” she said calmly enough, yet when they crossed over to the gate, she could not insert the key in the lock, and he had to do it for her. Their footsteps crunched along the path to a bench hidden in the shadows of some large, sweet-scented bush.

  “He’s a handsome boy,” Tom said, keeping his voice level. “He’s mine.”

  She sighed assent.

  “I said unforgivable things, but how could you go away and not tell me?”

  “Uncle begged you to marry me.”

  He turned, peering. It was too dark to see her expression. “Never.”

  “He abased himself. Uncle. He never in his life was humble.” Her voice shook. “He told you I was crazy, ill, desperate. He offered you money to marry me, he said he’d continue to pay Father’s bills, he said you need never see him.”

  “He gave you a line of bull.”

  “What is the point of tormenting me?”

  “He lied to you.”

  “Oh, Tom.”

  “If he’d even whispered you needed me, don’t you think I’d have been out there like a shot? My God, I thought the sun rose and set on you.”

  “Flaherty took it to you.”

  “Took what?”

  “Uncle’s pleadings.”

  Goosebumps prickled on Tom’s body. “The letter,” he muttered.

  “Yes, a letter.”

  “I never looked at it.”

  “Tom, stop this, please stop.”

  “I mean it. I never read it.”

  “Flaherty brought back your reply.” Her murmur was scarcely audible. “I saw your reply. It cut me into pieces of the same size.”

  “Hugh had just come home from having his bandages taken off, the burn scars were hideous. I didn’t want any part of your uncle.… I didn’t unfold … I took the clippers … shoved the bits back in the … envelope.… I never saw … never read …”

  He bent his face into his hands, and the harsh noises coming from his chest were like rocks grating together, not quite human. The wracking physical upheaval was niggling compared to his helpless, hopeless grief. During one fragment of time, one blazing, angry minute, he had cut her life, that black-haired boy’s destiny, his own soul, and that temporal chip was buried, not to be resurrected, lost forever. What might have been was not a phrase in Tom’s vocabulary, yet now each time he heard another say it, he would be haunted by the possibilities, the excruciating desire to relive that moment. He would give all he possessed to relive it. He drew deep breaths, attempting to control himself. Feeling her hand gentle on his shoulder, he clasped the palm to his wet cheek.