“Hugh, how wonderful to meet you like this. You still live in Detroit, don’t you?”
“Out beyond Grosse Pointe,” he said. “Lake St. Clair runs along one side of my property.”
Zoe tugged at her mother’s hand, whispering loudly, “Mummy, can we show Mr. Bridger, or will it vanish?”
“I’m sure it won’t.”
Zoe looked up at Hugh. “We have a secret,” she said.
“What kind?”
“Is it time, Mummy?”
Antonia glanced at her enameled lapel watch and nodded.
“We’ll take you,” Zoe said.
“Then your secret is a place?”
“No. It’s magic.”
“Magic? What kind?”
“Come and you’ll see.”
“Do,” Antonia interjected warmly.
Hugh said, “If it’s all right with Justin.”
Justin glanced up from rewinding his kite string. “Please join us, Mr. Bridger,” he said, polite, aloof.
They curved along the path in the direction of the Albert Memorial. Hugh’s heart pattered and jerked as each passerby inspected him. Zoe grasped his and Antonia’s hands, occasionally abdicating her weight to them. Justin either loitered a pace behind or moved ahead with his dog, not joining in the conversation unless Hugh directed a question at him.
Hugh resolutely forced himself not to stare at the boy. When first he had gazed down at the sprawling child, the memory of other wide-apart, deep-sheltered eyes had shimmered remote yet clear in his mind, and an elated stir had twisted in his abdomen, a blood knot tying itself. Had he not been reasonably certain of Antonia’s boy’s paternity, he never would have ventured forth from the hotel, yet he was unprepared for this atavistic burst of kinship. He had never felt any tribal bond with Caryll, whom he considered a weak excuse of a child. This boy’s one of us, he thought with a covert glance at Justin.
The boy’s reaction when they had bumped into each other had been vital, open, warm. Now the eyes were narrowed under the porched brow. (Antonia thought of this as his Heathcliff look.) I wonder what drove him into himself, Hugh thought. Well, certainly he’s not afraid of me.
Zoe tugged urgently. “This way,” she cried, pulling him into the shadowy gap between walls of boxwood.
They were in a miniature grove. Here, on the hidden patch of grass, three tapestry pillows surrounded a cloth set with Limoges demitasse cups, a platter of buttered brown bread, a silver chocolate pot from which steam still curved.
Hugh gasped spontaneously.
“The fairies do it, but only for us,” Zoe chortled. “All the time I bring my best friend Janey Smith-Tolliver and her nanny here, but there’s never anything. It only happens when Mother, Justin, and me’re together. Fairies are like that, you know.”
The dog stretched out, its tail thumping, Zoe and Justin sat, and Antonia knelt gracefully to pour the cocoa. “Here, Hugh,” she said. “I’ll share with Zoe.” She must have arranged every detail of the midmorning picnic with her servants, yet as she looked up at him over the gold-scalloped rim of the miniature cup, her glance held no trace of compliant adult amusement, only the same pleasure that shone in Zoe’s eyes.
Hugh sat between the children. “Delicious. Miss Zoe, I’m glad I’m not Janey Smith-Tolliver. I wouldn’t have missed this for the world. And you know the most magical part? This is the first time I’ve left my hotel rooms.”
Justin turned. “You haven’t seen the Tower?”
“Not even the changing of the guards.” Hugh’s fingers tensed on the miniature handle, and worried he might break it, he set the cup carefully in its saucer. “The truth is, Justin, I’m a coward, a terrible coward. I cannot bear to have people staring at me.”
“But you’re such a pretty color,” consoled Zoe, her fingers reaching for his face.
Antonia caught her daughter’s buttery hand. “Cowards never admit what they are, Hugh,” she said softly.
“That’s true, Mr. Bridger.” Justin’s reserve had dissipated, yet there was no trace of pity in his response to Hugh. He turned to Antonia. “Mother, I have an idea. Remember when you hired the motor cab during the Easter hols?”
Antonia and Zoe nodded, and the three turned expectantly to Hugh. They wanted to take him sight-seeing! When the stares of the nannies and other strollers in the park already had carved him into Quasimodo! His starched collar went chokingly tight and his mouth dried.
“Nobody saw us,” Justin said, his cheeks reddening. “We stayed in the motor cab and drove by the Tower, the Houses of Parliament. We saw the new front of Buckingham Palace. Everything. We’d seen it all before, walking. But this was different. Motoring, everything glides by like a lantern show.”
“I wish I could, but we’re leaving tomorrow morning.” Three weeks he had waited on a razor’s edge, then, as he abandoned hope, this morning’s telephone summons.
“There’s this afternoon, Mr. Bridger,” Justin said firmly.
Hugh looked into a grave face unmolested by age or doubts. What an eagle of a man he’ll be, Hugh thought. A leader. Tom’s real son. I can take a bit more. “It sounds like a perfect way to end my time in London.”
Antonia jumped to her feet, brushing off her skirt. “Cook’ll pack us a lunch basket while Drum arranges for the motor cab,” she said.
The rumpled cloth and strewn French crockery were left in the glade.
III
The afternoon spread untrammeled by time, one shapeless wad of happiness. As they returned to Rutland Gate a brilliantly striped balloon swept overhead, the tiny, distant passengers waving from its gondola: Hugh could swear that Antonia somehow had contrived this dusk-hazed vision as her final delight.
“That was the best afternoon of my life,” he said sincerely. “Why did we have to bump into one another at the end of my trip?”
“We’re going to write long letters,” Antonia said.
“I can print,” Zoe told him.
“I’ll post that picture.” Justin had already promised to forward his new form photo as soon as he could have a copy made.
“Remember to mark the boys you told me about,” Hugh said. “Now the ice has been broken, when are the Hutchinsons going to visit me in Detroit?”
Antonia said hastily, “You’ll come here and stay with us. You haven’t seen a dot of London.”
The driver, who had deposited the large wicker basket in Drum’s arms, came to stand at attention by the open taxi door. Antonia touched a kiss near Hugh’s unscathed cheek, Zoe hugged him. Hugh turned to Justin, and saw the boy’s regret at parting. They shook hands.
“Good-bye, Mr. Bridger,” the boy said.
“Now that we’re going to be pen pals, Justin, make it Hugh.”
“Bon voyage, Hugh,” Justin said gravely. It was apparent that he treasured calling a grown man by his first name.
They halted on the top step, Antonia holding Zoe, Justin next to them, the three smiling and waving. Hugh’s great attribute in carrying out his plans was lack of haste; he could sit with feline patience until events arranged themselves in readiness for his molding, and as the cab pulled away he was thinking: Tom’s true heir, that’s a beginning. He waved back.
The Edges’ chauffeur was to drive them down to Southampton. That evening when Hugh telephoned Monty to say good-bye, he said casually, “By the way, I believe we have a mutual friend. Mrs. Hutchinson.”
“Yes, I do know her. Charming woman, charming. Tom ran into her at the Comstocks’ ball.”
“I’ve known her forever.”
Nothing as yet had been settled about British Onyx.
“Want me to keep an eye out for her?” Monty asked with the eagerness of a man hoping to give an unexpectedly small down payment on a large, coveted piece of property.
“Nothing special,” Hugh said. “But she is a friend of mine.”
IV
On November 22, 1910, three judges met in the old Post Office Building of New York to reconsider the Selden patent case
. Though more than forty attorneys crowded the chambers, each side was granted less than five hours to present oral testimony before the judges retired to poke and prod at the accumulated mass of briefs and exhibits. The only new evidence submitted was a carton of coiled, yellowing drafting paper. Blueprints of Thomas K. Bridger’s early motor carriages.
Tom’s sleep grew yet more migratory, his hours at Hamtramck more frenzied.
His savage fever, however, was only in part for Onyx: his powerful and complex urge to be with Antonia bedeviled him until his entire being strained and struggled against his entrapment on the Western Hemisphere. Only the hours he spent with Caryll brought him surcease.
After six weeks of deliberation, on January 9, 1911, the judges reconvened in the Post Office Building to read the petrified phrases of legal language. The Selden patent, they had decided, was restricted. It covered only one kind of engine. Neither the Ford nor the Onyx automobile infringed on Selden’s patent.
That night Onyx and Ford hosted a victory banquet at the Pontchartrain. Behind the red carnations that graced the head table sat Tom, Rogers Sinclair, Olaf Baardson, Henry Ford and Edsel, who was now eighteen, and Ford’s partner, James Couzens. Their recent ALAM opponents, men like William Crapo Durant, head of General Motors, and Ransom Olds, were at the round tables. A boozy conviviality settled old differences. After an enormous meal, a black quartet played “The Ford March & Two-Step” then “Come Drive in My Fiver,” and red-faced, newly moneyed men brayed out the lyrics of the two popular songs.
Rogers Sinclair rose to his feet, lifting his beefy arms for silence. “Your hosts thank you for the tribute of those beautifully rendered anthems,” he said. He read aloud a few of the congratulatory telegrams, dropping them back with the others in the overflowing laundry basket. “That’s as much crowing as you’re going to hear from me. But I am a salesman, and accordingly I aim to sell you on the advantages of having one George Selden and his patent out of the way. Now there’ll be no more clamps on production. From here on in, all of us can set our minds to turning out the cars that the public is crying for—I prefer they cry for Fivers rather than Model T’s, but don’t let Henry know it.” At this Henry Ford allowed a whimsical smile, everyone else roared. Rogers teetered on his stout legs before signaling again for quiet. “On a serious note, you see at this table the two greatest men of the automotive age. Tom Bridger and Henry Ford. They battled the giant Trust. They won the good fight. Because of them, every man in the country, rich and poor, can have his own transportation. And this, as we all know, is what our grand new industry is about.” Vigorous applause stirred the haze of cigar smoke. “I’m going to ask our sturdy warriors to express their feelings on this victorious night. First, my brother-in-law, Tom Bridger. Well, Tom?”
Rogers had gulped far too many bourbons, otherwise he never would have called on Tom, who disliked and distrusted oratory.
Tom half stood, resting his palms on the table. “Free,” he said in a dry, sardonic voice. “That’s the word I’m going to say. I feel free to go ahead making the best damn cars at a scratch low price.” He sat back in his chair.
Soon after, he left. He did not return to his house, where Maud was putting on a dinner for Mrs. Trelinack, Yssy, Melisande, and other Onyx wives deprived of their husbands’ company by the banquet. He sped out on Jefferson through the cold moonlight to Hugh’s. “I’m going back to England to start that plant,” he announced.
“By all means,” Hugh said, a little tipsy on Mumm’s.
“Immediately.”
“Sail on, O Tommy, sail on. Build us a world empire.”
V
He arrived in London around eleven in the morning. The Hyde Park Hotel was freezing—the boiler was being repaired, the reception clerk said apologetically, so the central heat was off. Tom kept on his coat, telling the hall porter that he would unpack his own valise. Alone, he examined the telephone with bemused wonder, as if the familiar instrument were a machine from a far-advanced civilization. He picked up the earpiece.
Evidently the hotel dining room was not dependent on the main boiler: a luxurious warmth spread from the radiators along the wine-colored walls. The clothes worn by the lunching women were misty lavenders and grays—half-mourning for the late monarch. The tables hummed with cultivated voices, and from behind a bower of potted palms came the haunting sweetness of violin, harp, and cello.
“What’s that they’re playing?” asked Tom.
“‘Meditation’ from Thaïs,” Antonia replied.
“Pretty.”
She nodded.
“Until you walked into the lobby,” he confessed, “I was terrified you wouldn’t come.”
Smiling, she bent her head, and the soft white feathers of her hat trembled on glossy rolled black hair.
Tom raised his glass. “Thank you for being here.”
Waiters gathered, ceremoniously boning and serving the trout, pouring more wine from the bottle chilling in the three-legged silver ice bucket.
Neither ate much.
Antonia’s silences were not awkward but in harmony with the silvery tenderness of the rippling music, and Tom sipped pale wine, imagining himself back in their green Belle Isle languor.
After the charlotte russe he said, “I have a present to you from Onyx. A token. Not nearly what you deserve for winning our case. It’s upstairs.” He did not mean this as a snare, a lure, a deceit, yet the final sentence seemed to hover above the small yellow fringed table lamp. He slashed his signature across the bill. The fragile mood had snapped.
The lift and hallways were wrapped in cathedral chill, the unkind winter dampness penetrated the cold of his suite. “Be right back,” he said, hurrying into the other room for his gift, and the bed with its folded green satin eiderdown, an explicit double bed, dispersed the last evanescent trace of his romanticism. He fumbled through his valise for the gold mesh evening purse he had deliberated over at Tiffany’s in New York.
In the sitting room she was smoothing wrinkles from her white kid gloves. He remembered her habit of playing with some small object when she was upset.
Putting down the box, he wrapped his arms around her, reaching under the satin lining of her cape, which was made of a long-haired, creamy fur. They clung together, hip to hip, breast to breast, cheek to cheek, not kissing, the breath of each thrusting against the other’s eardrum. Her eyes were squeezed shut, his were open and suffused by a pale, intense light. The leverage of their arms shifted to enclose each other more securely. After a minute he pulled back, peering into her eyes. She flushed. The pinkness allotted him courage to go unsteadily to lock the door.
When he awoke, the room was wadded with purple shadows. It must be after four, he thought, moving his palms up her spine and across the delicate shoulder blades: her spareness seemed to make the intimacy of their nakedness more eloquent.
“So you’re awake,” she said.
“Did you sleep too?”
She shook her head.
“Have I told you how lovely you are?”
“Several times.”
Though snug under the blankets and satin quilt, he saw that their breath showed. “What would they say if I offered to give them a hand with that boiler?”
“Go back upstairs and dress, guv’nor.”
He laughed. “I’m very, very happy. Was it good for you, too?”
“Beautiful.”
“Then why the pensive look?”
She sighed. “You never used to ask questions.”
“You wanted me, didn’t you?”
“So much that I’d made up my mind not to see you. But when you telephoned, the will went out of me, the way the waiter boned our trout.”
He touched her lips and she kissed his fingertip. “Happy?” he asked.
“Yes, very. But there are other considerations.”
He touched her hair, sighing. Yes, there was guilt. There was no way he could rationalize that making love to Antonia in any way resembled his other marital defection
s. “I know.”
“We’re not the same as we were.”
“I won’t patronize you by saying Maud means nothing to me. I wouldn’t hurt her. Ever. We’re close in so many ways.” He tried to conjure up an explanation of what he felt for his wife, the warmth, concern, friendship, and totally banked passion, without sounding disloyal, all the while knowing in his heart that lying naked with Antonia, whom he loved, was the ultimate disloyalty. “But this part doesn’t mean anything to her. You aren’t committing any larceny. She doesn’t want me like this.…” A spasm of misery caught at his throat before he realized this was the oldest line that any man could give his mistress.
She moved a long, slender leg to touch his. Sympathy.
“Antonia, I meant it when I said I adored you. Was it the thrill of the moment when you said you loved me?”
She turned her head away. “I never stopped,” she murmured. And he could tell that her confession came from a conscience as festering as his own. We both married decent, well-meaning people. Jesus, what a mess.
Yet Antonia’s vague melancholy pleased him. “I’ll come over often,” he said. “We’ll drown our guilts together.”
“No.”
“But I explained about Maud. She’s on my conscience. And you have nobody to feel guilty toward.”
“I’m terrified about Justin.”
“Your boy?” Tom blinked with surprise.
“I can’t risk this sort of thing, Tom.”
Tom put his thumb under her chin, making her look at him. “Is there somebody else?”
“Men take me to the theater, dining, Ascot.” The covers moved as she shrugged her shoulders. “Nobody like … I have no lover. I never have. It’s Justin.”
“You aren’t making sense.”
“Ever since you came to the house I’ve had this dream. In it, Justin finds out about himself, and his face disintegrates like wax melting.”
“A nightmare.”
“I know, but …” He felt the shudder run through her. “You’re the one man I could never allow to become part of my life.”
“Antonia—”
Onyx Page 18
