Onyx (28 page)

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.

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.