Onyx

by Briskin, Jacqueline;

After about five minutes she returned, her face splotchy, watermarks on her dark blouse. “There won’t be any divorce,” she said. “We’re a family, you, me, Caryll. We’re staying a family.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Maud.”

  She adjusted her glasses more firmly on the bridge of her nose. “Onyx is worth a fortune, and it’s getting more valuable every day. Do you think I’d let that go?”

  Tom realized that she loved him, and only extreme misery had wrung this from her. But his stomach quivered and his throat filled, a nauseated revulsion that she felt impelled to reduce their unhappiness, her own and his, to monetary terms. “You can have all you want. Can’t we manage this so we don’t end up hating each other?”

  She gathered up the dinner gown, halting at the door of the long, narrow dressing room. “I’ve given you no grounds, you’ve given me none. None.”

  “I’m in love with her.”

  “Love?” Maud repeated the word as though it were an incomprehensible archaic term. “In Michigan a marriage can be ended because of adultery, desertion, felony, habitual drunkenness. And, at the discretion of the court, for cruelty or neglecting to provide.”

  “You’ve been doing your research,” Tom said bitterly.

  “If you roll on my bed with that whore it won’t be adultery, if you parade naked with her, it won’t be cruelty, if you run off to England to be with her, it won’t be desertion. I’ll never claim it to be.”

  “The state of Michigan doesn’t cover the globe. There are other places, other laws.”

  “Then go someplace else. But I’m your wife, I have my rights. Settling finances like ours could take twenty years.”

  “How much do you want?”

  “I’m keeping it all. And you, too,” Maud said, her voice high and thin again. She slammed the dressing-room door.

  VIII

  Two days before the George Washington docked in New York, on June 28, the First Class purser tacked up a black-edged special bulletin. Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, had been assassinated with his duchess in Sarajevo by a Serbian schoolboy, Gavrilo Princip.

  Those shots fired into the archducal limousine echoed and resounded through a Europe trapped in peace, mired in stale, peaceful decades with no events to measure the pulse of the years. The double murders set men in top hats and men in feathered helmets weaving between ministries, making demands, calling on alliances, threatening, negotiating, issuing ultimatums. One by one the fragmented patchwork of countries entered the excitement.

  On August 4, 1914, when England declared war, her army possessed not a motorized vehicle—not a staff car, not a motorbike, not an ambulance or a supply lorry. In the country only the British Onyx factory had the capacity to mass-produce an entire car. Soon khaki-painted Fivers were spewing into the Thames-side yard where soldiers hastily trained as drivers awaited them. The vehicles with their replacable, interchangeable parts were more valuable to generals than the frangible men who drove them. A generation was learning that warfare no longer swooped in brilliant cavalry charges but huddled in the earth, dependent on dun-colored motorized transport.

  War had never made sense to Tom, and this bloodletting chilled him. He looked out of his personal conflict and was aghast to realize that the Southwark factory, planned so cunningly to conquer his implacable enemy—distance—had become an arsenal.

  CHAPTER 13

  Foam slithered on top of gray water as Antonia rinsed the razor in the chipped enamel basin.

  “Thank yer, ma’am,” said Private Mayberry, who needed shaving only once a week.

  “There’s some good news.” With a cautious glance at the opposite cot where a sharp-featured Sister was changing a dressing, Antonia murmured, “Prince Regent placed in the money.”

  Private Mayberry’s haggard child’s face brightened. “What’d he pay?”

  “Five to one.” Surreptitiously she fished in the pocket of her blue-striped Volunteer’s apron, coming up with a sixpence and two worn shillings.

  “I’d like to send some chocolates to me mam in Leeds. If it wouldn’t be too much bother to go to a sweetshop?”

  “With my sweet tooth I’m in and out,” Antonia smiled. “I have a tip on Blue Charley. Interested in going in with me?” She let the money slip back.

  The faint clink of coins drew the Sister’s attention, and she peered at them, her face a red hatchet between her goffered white headdress and her high white collar. Last week she had jumped on Antonia for placing a bet for Private Mayberry: a hospital regulation prohibited gambling. Antonia bent, combing sandy hair as she whispered.

  When she left the ward, her animation faded and she looked drawn, and the beaky, delicate nose seemed pinched.

  “Mrs. Hutchinson,” the Sister called, hurrying after her along the icy, dimly lit corridor.

  Antonia sighed. “Yes?”

  “I’ve already warned you about the double amputee. I heard the two of you whispering about dog racing.”

  “I’m meant to be cheering his morale.”

  “This is a military hospital. Staff and volunteers must abide by the regulations.”

  “I know, but … Sister, remember how it was when Private Mayberry first got here? He lay staring at the wall, willing himself to die. And you know better than I that the men usually succeed.” Her voice was growing animated. “This is such a tiny pleasure, just to keep him moving toward the future. Until he’s stronger, let him have something to look forward to.”

  “I don’t make the regulations.”

  “But he’s seventeen! He’s lost his right arm and right leg.”

  “I know my patients, Mrs. Hutchinson.” The nurse’s voice was flatly impersonal. “This particular ward is my responsibility. I cannot permit infractions. I’m putting in a request that Matron transfer you.” She turned, rustling away.

  Antonia, close to tears, glared at the starched back and stuck out her tongue.

  II

  She got off the number fourteen bus at the row of shops near Upper Swithin Place. It was already dark and blinds were pulled over every window. A blackout. Since early this month, January 1915, German zeppelins had been dropping bombs on London.

  First she slipped into A&H Bookmakers to place Private Mayberry’s wager—forget that ward Sister sans merci!—then she browsed in Jenkin’s Confectionary, emerging with the five-pound box of chocolates that had occupied the place of honor on the counter and had been ticketed at nineteen and eleven. She hastened around the dark corner and along the narrow path.

  Inside the flat she knelt by the post slot, feeling for a letter. There was none. Kicking off her low-heeled shoes, she pinned the black felt curtains closed before turning on the light. While she waited for the kettle to boil, she sat by the gas fire rereading one of Tom’s old letters—she knew them all by heart.

  When Tom had hired Irving Elliot, a senior partner in a firm specializing in divorce, she had experienced an immeasurable relief: the matter was out of her hands, so be it, she could neither obstruct nor alter the course of events, her life was surging toward the boundless possibilities of marriage. But now she stood on a figurative poopdeck to hold a questioning spyglass on the future. Sanctified by holy vows, would this reckless confluence of passions and obsessions that was her relationship with Tom become deep, safe love? She hoped so. Often she felt as if her torso were being torn in half below the rib cage by the unrestrainable tidal force of all that she felt for him. Her eyes focused on the letter. Come back to America. What’s indiscreet about us being on the same continent? It will be safer for you and your children here. The uneven scrawl jumped with his impatience and command, and her mouth softened in tenderness, as though he had touched her.

  The kettle whistled. Tucking the letter back in the tin box, she made tea, carrying the tray to the wicker telephone table. She put in her call.

  “Hallo, Mother,” Justin answered. His voice sounded deeper on the wire, almost a man’s voice. “It’s a bit late.”

 
“I know. We’ve been rushed—this morning a new group of wounded came in.”

  “The war’ll be over before I’m old enough to go.”

  Please heaven, she thought, grasping the receiver more tightly. Justin was a scant three years younger than Private Mayberry. “Would Father have wanted you champing the bit to get your German?” she asked. Bless you, Claude, for your pacifism, she thought.

  “He wouldn’t even hunt, would he,” Justin reminisced, his voice cracking.

  “How’s Zoe?”

  “Having tea at Janey Smith-Tolliver’s. Mother, remember last spring when Rosburg’s cousins came over from Berlin? I’ve thought a lot about them. They were very decent chaps. But, well, we’re at war … what if I had to shoot one of them?”

  “Had your tea?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then why don’t we discuss it at dinner?”

  “Rather!” When he dined alone with her, he savored his small glass of wine, the candlelight, being grown-up. “I’ll tell Mrs. Drum.” Cook now ran the canteen of the munitions works where the three former housemaids fitted shells: the Drums with one elderly laundress managed the house—and Drum, at sixty-two, talked everlastingly about driving an ambulance at the Front.

  Antonia hung up. Taking her cup to the sofa, she considered her son. How he puzzled and worried every moral issue! In a land suddenly rife with pat chauvinism, he maintained his flawless criteria for justice. But he had his unruly streak, Antonia thought, smiling. A few weeks ago during the Christmas holidays he and some classmates had been caught when police shut down one of those music halls where girls kicked up plump, black-stockinged thighs, and already this term a master had caned him for smoking cigarettes. Antonia, to be honest, found these crimes endearing. Important to her was that Justin never tormented a weaker boy, managed a fraternal benevolence toward the incorrigible Zoe, and let Caesar, wheezing and incontinent with age, sleep in his room until the mongrel died. He’ll be a very nice man, she thought, smiling again. I’ll loathe his girls on sight.

  The sofa jolted.

  Antonia cried out as hot tea spilled on her lap. The Biedermeier clock had plummeted from the mantel, its case shattering resoundingly on the tiles.

  The flat had shaken as though London had twitched its skin.

  Antonia tottered on rubber legs to the window, which was still rattling. “The light,” she muttered, careening to switch off the lamp.

  A lesser explosion vibrated under her stockinged feet.

  In the darkness she stumbled against the telephone table. Her tea tray crashed onto the rug. She jumped across broken crockery to unpin the blackout curtains.

  In the next building people stood at lit windows. There were confused shouts. “Zeppelin raid!”

  At the end of the narrow path an anemic glow brightened alarmingly under her horrified gaze. Shoving open the window, she craned out. Overhead a searchlight beam moved eastward, and in this mobile rivulet of light two zeppelins—sleek sharks—were swimming toward Hyde Park. Toward Rutland Gate! Zoe was with Janey Smith-Tolliver on Harley Street. But Justin was home!

  “Justin,” she cried, and the tensing of her esophagus twisted the name into Juzzi.

  She stamped into her shoes, dragging her thick wool cape around her. She forgot her hat, yet remembered the chocolate box. Slamming the front door, she pounded along the narrow cement path.

  III

  Up the street a four-story building was on fire. Smoke and flames poured from the lower windows. People raced about, a patternless mob, some barging back toward the blazing flats and shops, others scurrying away from the fire. A wild, insistent tintinnabulation. She retreated to the edge of the path as a horse-drawn fire engine erupted past, brass-helmeted firemen clinging to the sides. She began to run in the direction of her home. Ahead of her the sky sucked at brown-tinted smoke. Other fires. She galloped at breakneck, careless speed, not pacing herself for the more than two miles. There were fewer people in the street. Suddenly a white light burst. A frozen moment that affirmed the heaviest coils of smoke lay in the direction of Rutland Gate. Oh, you German pigs, she thought. You dirty pigs! Gasping, clutching the heavy, awkward box to her overtaxed heart, she began to pray mindlessly. Please, God, let Justin be all right, let Justin be safe. Please, God, let Justin …

  She swerved onto a cobbled lane that led to the Brompton Road. The fire’s mottled brown shadows silhouetted ancient cottages. From this viewpoint wasn’t the smoke less ominously centered? It no longer seemed to be quite over Rutland Gate. Please, God. But how could she be positive?

  Holding her skirts above her calves, she raced pell-mell over uneven stones. Sweat poured down her forehead, half blinding her. Her hairpins had loosened, and moist strands flailed at her cheeks, catching on her bared teeth. Blood thundered in her ears.

  She did not hear the motor.

  The driver of course had on no lights. The first she knew of the car was a sudden blow hitting above the small of her back.

  Her mouth opened in a gasp of surprise. The box wrenched itself from her hold, chocolates scattering about her as she slammed against a wall. The force with which she hit the bricks caromed her away.

  She fell full weight, as if from a high window.

  Ancient cobblestones slammed at her head. The universe cracked with an endless implosion. Nebulae burst and danced behind her eyes.

  The driver had braked. Headlights shone.

  It’s not an Onyx, she thought, and entered into darkness.

  IV

  She knew she was in a hospital from the familiar chlorine odors, but her other senses were hazed, as if a mucilage protected the outer world from the pain that shrieked inside her head.

  Formless shadows drifted, their hoarse whispers traveling through the small bones of her ears to bang hurtfully against her brain.

  “She’s coming round.”

  “Mrs. Hutchinson.” An earnest masculine voice. “Mrs. Hutchinson. Can you hear me?”

  How could he expect an answer when flames of agony immolated her?

  “Mother?”

  Justin, she thought. He’s safe. An elusive coolness briefly eased her.

  “Mummy?”

  A blow crashed against her jaw. Amplified torment blazed through her, and she heard a whimper.

  “Zoe! You mustn’t touch her. She needs to know you and Justin are here, that’s all. Here, stand next to me.”

  Antonia attempted to smile reassurance up at the shifting light and dark that were her children, but the effort wearied her perilously.

  She closed her eyes.

  On a flat, featureless, twilit plain stretching horizonlessly, eternally, stood Claude, Arthur, her uncle, and her father, motionless and isolated from one another by intolerable distances: the peculiar contained radiance that illuminated each made the sense of chilling infinity yet more lonely. Her father’s vacant eyes were fixed on her. Uncle, his neatly trimmed beard like a halo slipped around his cancer-wasted features, gazed imploringly at her. Claude, his handsome chin raised, held out an arm, beckoning. And Arthur, small, round, sandy-haired, in his striped flannel nightshirt, gave her that flushed, apologetic glance he had worn when he came to tell her that his bed was wet—Arthur, not self-reliant like Justin or imperious like Zoe, just a sweet, pudgy little boy who wanted to sit in her lap and hear “Greensleeves” and “Shenandoah.”

  Why are they come here, she wondered inside her ring of fiery pain. Why don’t they comfort one another? Why are they come to me?

  “Mother.” Justin’s voice sounded above the rustlings. How much time had elapsed? She could not tell. Her head shrilled as excruciatingly, yet now she could answer the shape above her.

  “Ju …”

  “It’s me,” he replied triumphantly. “See, Dr. Smith-Tolliver, she knows me.”

  The earnest male voice approved.

  Another outline, shorter, formed over her. “Mummy, can you see me? Can you, Mummy? It’s Zoe.”

  “Zzz …”

  �
��She knows me, too!”

  “Mother, you’re awake. That’s a jolly good sign. Soon you’ll be well.” Her son’s fingers engulfed her limp hand. How resolute his grip, this son of hers who would soon be a man.

  The warm, strong hand somehow convinced her that Tom was in the hospital room. Darling, I hurt so much, she thought. Hold me and stop the hurt.

  She closed her eyes. On that eerie, twilit landscape, her father, uncle, husband, and little boy gazed sorrowfully, pleadingly at her.

  “Mother?”

  “Mummy?”

  She looked up, focusing with grisly effort on the mismatched shadows. Tom isn’t here, she thought, and winced as her eyelids closed.

  The others remained isolate in their mephitic gloom, and she accepted with a kind of holy wonder that she was the fixed point of their mortal joys. She did not, even now, realize it was her rare gift to love the unlovable. Instead she thought: How dear they are, how fine it is that I can cheer them up, can warm them with a kiss. It’ll be a snap to make them smile. How alone they look, how sad and alone in that cold land.

  For the last time on this earth Antonia Dalzell Hutchinson was permitted a choice. Her lips parted, her bandaged rib cage expelled air, and the faint sound hung amid hygienic odors as she moved with that swift, impulsive grace into the twilight to comfort the solitary figures of her dead.

  CHAPTER 14

  MRS HUTCHINSON KILLED ZEPPELIN RAID LAST NIGHT STOP HAVE TAKEN CHARGE OF CHILDREN STOP EDGE

  Hugh gave not so much as a passing query to Monty’s taking charge of the orphans: the Edges and Antonia were friends, she had no family, and in such situations men of power and importance like Monty stepped in. The telegram rustled from Hugh’s hand, falling silent on the office carpet.… He was remembering a soft voice guiding him through his black night. He buried his poor clown’s face in his hands. His tears were not exactly grief but a mournful farewell, the lachrymose equivalent of a final taps sounding for the youth and joy he had possessed vicariously through his brother.

  Tom …

  Tom had moved to the Pontchartrain, and though he had never mentioned divorce (Maud, too, continued her atypical sidestepping of any discussion on that issue), Hugh was well aware of what was up. These last months Tom had been seized with that same flush of creativity as when he’d built the racer for Antonia. It was possible to catch the crackling vibrations of his impatience and feel the physical force of his happiness. What about all that love? Where would it go? Cut off, amputated, would Tom bleed to death, like their mother in her nest of suicidal straw?