Onyx

by Briskin, Jacqueline;

  “I advised her of the value.” Again Mitchell Polhemus made that rusty smile of warmth. “A most unusual lady. She’s convinced that the plans belonged neither to her uncle nor herself.”

  Hugh sat down again. “Mr. Polhemus, you said there was a second condition.”

  “That Thomas Bridger never learn the plans came through her.”

  So Tom was no careless memory to her. “The Major steals Tom’s brainchildren, the niece returns them. How am I meant to hide that?”

  “Your reputation, Mr. Bridger, your reputation. I’ve heard that you’re singularly brilliant at unearthing information.”

  The remark was intended as a compliment, and normally Hugh would have accepted it as that. But in the throes of his peculiar subverted grief for the Major, beset by old questions, attempting to fight off an asthma attack, he asked himself how it was that he who had spent his years advancing Tom, he who was desirous only of his brother’s good, had earned a reputation as Tom’s dark angel, a snoop. “I won’t tell him.”

  “I have your word?”

  “I’ll obey both of the lady’s conditions.”

  “There’s a crate filled with the papers. My chief clerk himself will bring them to Detroit.”

  Hugh saw his visitor to the front door, then rushed up to his rooms. His black valet, medically trained, administered a soothing hypodermic.

  IV

  He was completely recovered by seven thirty. The family was invited to dinner, and Hugh—tall, slim, elegant in his evening clothes, his new diamond studs glinting—awaited them in the drawing room. The high, interlaced wood ceiling had been inspired by Knole in England, plushy red velvet curtains covered numerous leaded windows, the paintings were softly wrinkled with age, the bowls of chrysanthemums aromatic, the needlepoint sofas many. All in all the setting for large, convivial groups. Hugh recalled his youthful dreams of lavish entertaining. My social life turned out simple, thanks to the deceased Major, he thought, his hand shaking a little as he inserted a black Sobranie into an amber holder, then the favorable comparison of the size and aristocratic harmony of this house to the chateau on Woodward restored his satisfaction.

  Rain hushed the purr of the Trelinacks’ Daimler, and the first Hugh knew of their arrival was the sound of the butler opening the front door.

  Trelinack’s powerful muscles had slackened to fat, and his cheerful face blossomed an alarming purple over his tight wing collar. When he had suffered his heart attack two years earlier, he had begged Tom to buy him out. Tom had paid him four times what he asked, and now the Cousin Jack was an unlikely millionaire. Mrs. Trelinack’s thick hair was completely white, her royal-blue satin bosom adorned by a sapphire and diamond necklace, yet despite these changes she retained that fresh look of recently having bathed herself in a farmhouse copper tub.

  Greeting anyone, even these kindly, simple old people, made Hugh a trifle uneasy, and he gulped down the sherry his English butler offered. Rogers and Yssy Sinclair arrived next. They had four sons and Yssy was pregnant again. Rogers towered over his plump little wife, a beefy man with the broad smile of a successful salesman. Melisande and Olaf Baardson swept up in their Pierce-Arrow. Olaf, Norwegian born, a handsome six four, had been Tom’s first pattern-maker, though whenever this was mentioned, Melisande changed the subject. They had one child, and Melisande insisted that it was for this quiet, pale little girl’s future rather than her own social aspirations that she endured the rigors of summering in Newport.

  Rogers was in charge of sales, Olaf superintendent of the Rock Avenue plant, and the two began talking Onyx. Mrs. Trelinack, Yssy, and Melisande discussed the doings of the children while Trelinack, confused by his retired status, bumbled between the men and women like a big bee lost from its hive. Hugh, as was his habit, watched from the depths of his wing chair, aware of the glancing around, the air of incompletion, as though the evening were not yet begun.

  It was nearly eight, the inviolable dinner hour, when into the sound of rain came the putt-pop barking of a Fiver. The women patted their fur-trimmed dinner gowns, Rogers and Olaf straightened, on the ready to rise, and Trelinack, already on his feet, was all but standing at attention. The involuntary respect made Hugh smile. Yet he himself was hurrying to the door to meet the latecomers.

  Tom’s brown hair had a premature sprinkle of white, and the lines of his mordant smile were deep cut around his eyes and mouth. Maud was still handsome, but her frank chestnut-brown eyes were permanently magnified by the gold-rimmed spectacles that she now needed full time. The decade, however, had pressed more lightly on their appearances than those of the others. They don’t need to change, Hugh had once decided, the world recognizes their invisible crowns. Recently, however, he had modified this opinion. Tom and Maud Bridger were formed of incorruptible elements that neither money nor power nor time could corrode.

  Clinging to Tom’s hand was Caryll.

  Amid the adults the child looked very small, younger than his age, which was six. His starched collar extended over the lapels of his Norfolk jacket, his black stockings were pulled neatly under his short trousers, a lovingly turned-out child who resembled both parents. Tom’s gray eyes shone in Maud’s round face.

  “Well, Caryll,” Hugh said.

  Hesitatingly, the child came to him, giving him a peck on the right cheek, a timid kiss. His uncle would have empathized with the boy’s shyness—had it not extended to himself. Hugh’s shrewdness about human motives had one dangerous blind spot. He attributed every reaction he aroused to his maroon disfigurement. Why do they have to drag the child everywhere? he thought irritably, and without realizing it, grimaced.

  Caryll pulled away. “Uncle Hugh,” he mumbled. “I made you something.”

  “That was good of you, Caryll.”

  “I put it with Mother’s present,” Caryll said, retreating to Tom, who took him on his lap.

  V

  Hugh had seated Maud to his right, and over the bluepoints, he said, “Caryll mentioned making me a present.”

  “He found a photograph of five camels and a Fiver on the Sahara Desert, and it tickled him. He cut it out of the magazine and glued it on cardboard. I left it on the hall table with some books I’ve finished.”

  “That’s very kind of you both,” he said. With all her money, he thought, she could buy me new ones. She’s as tight as ever. Yet he was also recognizing that he would enjoy her used books: Maud read voraciously and passed on to him what most pleased her.

  Hugh tried, unsuccessfully, to rouse some lively talk as the family ate their way through the oysters, rich and dark terrapin soup, lobster basket, saddle of lamb with chestnut puree and asparagus that were delicate white because Hugh’s gardeners had piled earth around their growing spears, a salad of grapefruit and oranges shipped by train from a special grove near Riverside in California, blue raspberries, a snowy mountain of vanilla mousse. The two parlor maids served the food while Larkin poured Château Latour, Moët & Chandon brut, Clos de Vougeot.

  The women returned to the drawing room. Caryll drowsing in his grandmother’s arms where he had been since the lamb.

  Hugh, host extraordinaire, pressed cigars and brandy on the men before saying to his brother, “Could you come into my office for a minute. There’s something I want to show you.”

  The two crossed the hall, and Tom dropped into the chair opposite the Elizabethan table. “What a day,” he sighed. Even in weariness there was a tension, a vitality to the lean body. “At four this morning I got a call from the Hamtramck”—he was completing a vast new factory complex in this township, an enclave of Polish labor surrounded by Detroit—“that the new radiator conveyor belt had broken down. Christ! I want it to be right before I go to England.”

  “I had a visitor this afternoon.”

  “You?”

  “Mitchell Polhemus came to see me.”

  Tom jerked straight. “Polhemus? He came all the way to Detroit? What did he want? To tell us to lie down and die?”

  “A
s a matter of fact he’s on to something that should help us.”

  “Come off it, Hugh. I’m too tired for your games.”

  “During most of the ’90s a client sent him automotive blueprints. None were filed, but they’d be an enormous boost to our side.”

  “How do we get them?”

  “Polhemus says they belong to you.”

  “Me?” The gray eyes narrowed, the jaw clenched shut in a piercing expression that caused Onyx executives to shiver. “You’re telling me that the Major stole my inventions?”

  “A kinder word is borrowed,” Hugh said sourly.

  “He knew I despised patents! So he filed them himself, the lying, thieving, arsonist old prick!”

  “We can have the blueprints on one condition.”

  “Well?”

  “We must never contact Polhemus’s client.”

  “That,” Tom snorted, “he has my word on.”

  Hugh felt the warmth of a well-maneuvered victory. “So at last we have something to impress the Appeals Circuit. Now go on home and get some sleep.”

  VI

  The house, like the others lining Chandler Avenue, was red brick with a square patch of lawn. A green tile roof peaked above the second floor with its three bedrooms and the one bathroom that the three Bridgers shared with the French-Canadian hired girl. The rest of the family, embarrassed that their new homes were far more opulent, grumbled out of Tom and Maud’s earshot that the couple owed it to Onyx not to live so humbly. Maud, though, had gotten a bargain in this sturdy house, and Tom had turned the stable into a satisfactory garage. Neither considered moving.

  Tom went to put away the Fiver. After he had pushed the garage doors shut, he stared up at the sky. The rain had stopped an hour ago, and the half-moon rode between filmy, silvery clouds, a cold, sharply romantic night when the opaque shadows were haunting mysteries. Tom’s brief spurt of rage at the Major’s perfidy had evaporated, and he was left, inevitably, with Antonia. His mind hazed, for how can one remember ecstasy or pain? He could no longer swear whether she had been lovely or too thin with odd features, for with the years she had become less of a person than textures, a swiftly eager movement, the silken feel of inner thigh, the sound of irrepressible laughter, the shiver of joy on his skin.

  Wet lilacs spread their perfume, so sweet that tears came into his eyes. Antonia … Was there any regret like the regret for a lost world?

  “Tom?” his wife called from an upstairs window.

  “Here, honey.”

  “Caryll’s waiting.”

  The little boy was in bed, his washed face raised expectantly. This was their ritual. Whenever Tom was home at Caryll’s bedtime—and he always tried to be—he shared his day’s happenings. Tonight he talked about the foul-up with the conveyor that he’d designed to carry finished radiators from the second-floor shop where they were built down to the enormous hall where Fivers were assembled.

  “Father,” Caryll said. “I’ve been thinking. Can’t you make some red?”

  “The radiators?”

  “No, the cars.”

  “Why?”

  “Red looks pretty with dark colors like Onyx gray.”

  “We have to make them alike, Caryll, so they can be cheap enough for everyone to own one.”

  “It was just an idea,” said the child quickly, placatingly.

  “I want your ideas,” Tom said, hugging his son’s thin, supple body, cupping the curve of skull, abode of numberless questions and thoughts. Again the intensity of his emotions brought him near to tears. “Tell you what,” he said into the soft brown hair. “Saturday we’ll go to Hamtramck together. Those radiators dangling along overhead are quite a sight.”

  Caryll lay back in his pillow, smiling into eyes that were the clear gray of his own. Tom kissed him good night.

  Maud’s glossy braids hung over her blue flannel robe as she sat at her desk entering numbers into the book where she kept track of her smallest expenditure. She stopped writing as Tom closed the bedroom door. “What was that with Hugh?” she asked.

  “He discovered some plans of mine tucked away.” Tom sat to unlace his shoes. Close as he felt toward Maud, he could tell her no more. Those purloined plans were entwined with Antonia.

  “Will they help the appeal?”

  “I’ll say!”

  “Isn’t that the end?” Maud took off the robe. Her silk and wool nightgown showed womanly curves, the frank pressure of large, round nipples. “Onyx spends a fortune on lawyers but Hugh digs up the important evidence.” She climbed into the sturdy walnut bed, setting her glasses on the table. “Good night, dear.”

  Tom slept naked, and after he undressed and turned out the light, he curled against her warm back, kissing her shoulder, tracing her firm, ample breasts through the soft fabric. Her nightgown and the linen smelled faintly of sachet, the scent of their marital nights.

  “Oh, Tom,” she sighed. “I thought you were tired.”

  “It’s been a long time.…” His hand moved downward. Gentle, encouraging, a supplicant.

  She shifted. “All right, if you want.”

  “Don’t you ever want, honey?”

  “It’s different for a woman,” she said.

  For once Tom wished his wife had compromised her honesty. His mind flashed to that summer when emotions had poured from him like liquid gold. Ashamed that his erection was for a different time, another woman, he rolled onto his other side.

  “Tom, you’re always a romantic about it. Turn around. It doesn’t bother me.”

  “Bother?”

  “Melisande and Yssy both hate it.”

  “You mean you discuss our private—”

  “No,” she said. “They do. Women talk, Tom, they talk. Melisande says it’s a horrible mess and she always bathes right after. And Yssy says it usually hurts but she puts up with Rogers because she wants more children. A little girl. I hope she gets one this time.”

  Was it his imagination or had her voice wavered in the dark? When Caryll was born the doctor had stopped a hemorrhage and there would be no other children for them. In a hidden crevice of his mind Tom regretted this bitterly. He reached for Maud’s hand. “Honey, I’m sorry.”

  But Maud was too practical to grieve over never-to-be-born children. “I have everything I ever wanted. You. Caryll. This house.” She touched his arm. “Tom …?”

  “It’s all right, honey.”

  “Good night, then, dear.”

  Tomorrow, he decided, I’ll go to lunch at the Pontchartrain. The automotive men drank at the green marble bar of the Pontchartrain Hotel, they ate in the dining room and drew carburetors, gears, transmissions, on the white damask tablecloths, and afterward some of them would head for a two-story house several blocks away, excursions that did not brush Tom with guilt. The casually bought, unsatisfactory sex had nothing to do with Maud, who was his best friend.

  Her breath lengthened.

  Sleep eluded Tom. His nights had become insomniac with worrying about the appeal. If they lost, he would be ordered to fork over ruinous royalties, money he did not have. Though he gave huge annual bonuses to executives and generous ones to his workers, he took very little out of the business himself. Hugh was forever nagging at him to put aside massive sums for the contingency of losing. Caution was impossible for Tom. Like a drunk, like a God-possessed saint, he had no control. His goals shimmered eternally ahead of him, and he plowed back his profits.

  Pulling on his robe, feeling his way down the stairs to the sitting room, he stretched out on the sofa. How many nights had he lain here brooding about those black-robed judges with their calm, unrelenting faces? What would they decide?

  The windows were growing light when he finally slept. He dreamed he was in that clearing, green shadows of the sycamore dappling Antonia’s luminous white body as she held out her arms to him, a tenderly erotic invitation. “Ahh, Tom,” she murmured. “How I’ve missed you.…” The dream, like all his dreams of her, was colored with an intensity that ti
ed every detail to his soul, and his possession of her was so real that he awoke with a harsh, triumphant cry. The embarrassing thing that happens to adolescent boys had happened to him.

  VII

  Hugh sat back in his office chair, frowning at the single page that had come from the envelope marked Personal and Confidential.

  Hugh had gravitated quite naturally to snooping.

  Rogers Sinclair was in charge of sales, but Rogers was a salesman, a glad hand with no fine touch, and certain early Onyx dealers had been deadbeats, swindlers, and in one publicized case, a bigamist. Hugh had therefore hired a two-man team of traveling detectives to check out every dealership candidate. The reports, a lifetime of intricate secrets, had proved heady reading for the recluse. From time to time his investigatory probing ran far afield from dealerships, and on these occasions he retained a New York firm.

  It was their London correspondent who had compiled the list of Antonia Dalzell’s vital statistics from 1899 to the present. Hugh was frowning because a small fire in the registry office had destroyed the two statistics most vital to him.

  These were the date of her marriage to Claude Hutchinson, American—the letter informed him that this marriage had occurred sometime in either 1899 or 1900—and the birthday of her oldest child, a son, Justin, in 1900.

  The remaining information was precise. Oswald Dalzell, her father, had died of pneumonia on January 27, 1901. Her youngest child, a daughter, Zoe, was born on September 1, 1906. There was a middle child, a son, Arthur; however, he had died of scarlet fever on March 25, 1908. A week later Claude Hutchinson had succumbed to the same disease. The widow had a leasehold on a house in Rutland Gate, London, inherited from her uncle, Major Andrew Stuart, also of that address, who had died of cancer on August 17, 1909.