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.
Maud stood reading the paper in the window alcove of the suite’s sitting room. She wore a brown-checked traveling ensemble with a loose-waisted jacket that turned her ample curves into a block. Her wide cheeks had lost their color, and she looked weary. She had not slept. Last night she had telephoned Monty, telling him without giving any excuse that she would not be at the party, nor would Tom. Though the Bridgers were his guests of honor, Monty, accustomed to Maud’s bluntness and Tom’s eccentric social behavior, asked no questions. Then Maud had gone to bed without dinner. She saw Tom’s absence as a declaration of war against her. And whether it is a country or a person that enters into a combat, she knew, the old rules of easeful comfort cannot apply. Spartan strengths, extraordinary resources must be mobilized. Thus Maud assuaged her welling grief by formulating a battle plan. She had observed that Edwina, Yssy, and Melisande had kept their respective spouses by overlooking husbandly excursions from the straight and narrow matrimonial bed.
The way to hold onto Tom, she thought, is to act as though that harlot doesn’t exist. How will I manage that? I must. She buried her face in the pillow so that her son and her father in their adjacent rooms would not hear her deep sobs.
At five thirty, when Tom had tiptoed from the dressing room into the other bed, she had feigned sleep.
“Mother.”
She looked up from the newspaper. “Yes?”
Caryll sat at a table strewn with newspapers that he was clipping, his raglan overcoat folded over the back of his chair. “Don’t you think we ought to wake Dad?”
“You’ve asked that a dozen times,” Maud said.
“But we planned to leave at nine and it’s after ten and he never sleeps late.”
“He’s entitled to after excitement like yesterday.” She set the Daily Telegraph in front of him. “Here’s another one for your scrapbook.”
The bedroom door opened. Tom came in stretching. His too short bathrobe bared strong, brown-haired calves. “I guess I overslept,” he said, yawning.
Caryll was on his feet. “We’ve been ready for hours. Grandpa’s waiting downstairs already.”
“Something’s come up, Caryll. I can’t leave today,” Tom muttered. They would not be returning to London, and he could not sail without seeing Antonia one more time.
Caryll’s round cheeks trembled with dismay. “You mean the trip’s off?”
“Are you kidding?” He rumpled the boy’s hair. “We’ll go in a couple of days.”
“But that’ll mess up our stops. We planned our stops to buy gasoline so carefully.” Caryll picked up a map of England strewn with little yellow flags to indicate where two-gallon cans of BP petrol were available. “Look, Dad, I found another outlet in Cornwall, near St. Just.”
“Caryll,” Maud said. “It’s not like you to pester your father. And there’s no problem. You, me, and Grandpa will start today.”
Tom looked at her warily, baffled by this unexpected aid when she must surely know the reason behind his delay: she refused to meet his gaze. “That’s right,” he said. “I’ll catch up.”
“Grandpa can’t even fix a flat,” Caryll said dejectedly.
“Chauffeurs aren’t expensive here,” Maud said. “The hotel can arrange for one.”
“Why can’t Mr. Edge take care of it, Dad?”
“Caryll, what is the matter with you?” Maud reproved.
Tom turned away from his son’s disappointed gray eyes. “I’ll meet you in Truro.”
VII
When Tom arrived at the Truro Inn, he found Caryll had one of his feverish stomach upsets. Maud had ordered an extra bed in his room, remaining with the child constantly.
Tom paid the chauffeur, who started on the long train journey back to London. Both Trelinacks had been born in nearby villages, and Tom drove his father-in-law to cottages where ancients with faces as red and round and wrinkled as last year’s apples reminisced about the old days. In soft drizzle he sat on a dais next to Trelinack, who wept tears as gentle as the misting rain while the cornerstone for the Margaret Trelinack Memorial Hospital was laid.
Caryll recovered. The four of them leisurely explored beaches, pirate coves, quaint stone villages, and the cliff-guarded ruins of Tintagel Castle. “I’m Arthur Pendragon,” Caryll shouted into the wind.
Tom never had a chance to talk alone to Maud. Each night, wherever they were, she would retire early to share their son’s room. “You can’t be too careful with these stomach problems,” she said. Tom had no weapon against her refusal to let him broach the topic of divorce. He felt inadequate and cruel, he was dismayed to have caused the subversion of her natural frankness. At times he hated her, other times he quelled a yen to take her in his arms, his sturdy, tenacious little wife, his friend, and cosset her—yet forever he was aware that he and Antonia were flesh of one flesh, born to share the same soul, he was incomplete without her, and he could not remain married to another woman.
On June 22 they boarded the George Washington to discover their staterooms jammed with floral tributes and baskets of
fruit from satraps of British Onyx as well as those grateful few on whom Hugh had bestowed dealerships.
Tom, his pulses ripping swiftly, locked the door.
“Why on earth are you doing that?” Maud asked.
“I’ve been trying to talk to you ever since I came down from London.”
“Tom, we do appreciate the vacation,” she said with her pleasant smile. “You’ve been wonderful to Pa. And just look at Caryll. Brown as a berry—I’ve never seen him so happy.” A pressed dinner gown had been laid across her bed, and she picked it up.
Tom took the caramel-colored satin from her, dropping it back on the spread. “Honey,” he said, wanting to sound kind, yet aware of the grating note in his voice, “I’m not blaming you. It’s nobody’s fault. But the truth is we haven’t been close in years.”
“You’re my best friend,” she retorted. “If it’s bed you want, Tom, I’ve always been willing.”
The engines throbbed, a foghorn sounded its lonesome wail. “I’ll still be your friend after the divorce,” Tom said.
“Divorce?” Her arm, jerking involuntarily, caught the wicker handle of a four-foot-tall fruit basket. With a cry she stopped the beribboned arrangement from falling. “What a waste!” she cried. “Who needs more food on shipboard! You pay for far more than you can ever eat!”
“We just don’t have much in common anymore.” Tom stumbled into silence as he thought of Caryll, whom they both adored, dressing for dinner in the stateroom across from this. “I don’t mean to hurt you,” he said gently. “But I know that you realize there’s somebody else.”
“It doesn’t matter how often you shove it into that black-haired bitch, I’m not giving you up!” Maud cried in a high, thin voice. With a horrified look she clasped her hand to her throat. Her strategy—never admit, never question—had been betrayed not only by her honesty but also by a welter of jealousy, love, and other baffling intangibles. She ran into the bathroom.
The foghorns wailed. Tom gazed at the dark wisps licking at the portholes, inconsolable, convinced that he had altered his wife in ways as dreadful and immutable as if he had drowned her in this shrouded sea.
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