Onyx (41 page)

“I'd be so sweet to you.”

“There's somebody else.”

Blood drummed in Caryll's ears, and woodenly as a deaf person he followed her into his mother's camphor-scented dressing room, reaching to switch on the overhead light. “It must be a married somebody,” he said, appalled by the balkiness, the inadequacy of his remark.

She fluffed her vivid hair. “That's how much you know.”

“Then why doesn't
he
marry you?”

Opening her beaded purse, she applied lipstick to her upper lip, pressing down to color the lower one.

“Is it Phil Sinclair? Buzzie Thatcher? If he's not married, you can tell me who it is.”

“I can't see where it's any special concern of yours,” Zoe said, her incomparable eyes fixed on his.

Caryll dropped his gaze.
Don't let her get away with it
, he ordered himself.
Have a showdown, tell her she's a tormenting bitch
. Yet a moment later, glancing in the mirror at the beautiful, desolate face, he had to repress a shameful, weak desire to soothe even this particular misery of hers.

God help me
, he thought.
I can't keep on like this
.

IV

On the first Sunday in November, Zoe came down with a feverish sore throat that confined her to her bed. By the following Sunday her temperature had dropped and the rawness of her throat dissolved, leaving her with the juicy residue of a cold. A lowering slate-dark sky promised snow, and she lounged moodily around her room, which was crowded with get-well flowers, mostly camellias and gardenias, her favorites. Her Gramophone was playing Negro spirituals.

The mournful depth of Paul Robeson's voice meshed with Zoe's gloom. Illness had cut her off from debutante luncheons and balls, from crowded teas. Solitude had inevitably brought introspection, and the facts about her mother and her great-uncle had accumulated unbearably. Uncle Andrew had bought the house in Rutland Gate for Mother, had lived with her before, during, and after her marriage, had died in her arms, had settled the income of his estate (now resting in trust in the Bank of England) on her and her children.

The record clicked. Zoe fumbled replacing the arm.
I have to know
, she thought.
However bad it is, I have to know the real truth
. A frantic light shone in her eyes, and she began to dress.

Sunday, Hugh was in his upstairs library listening to a concert on WWJ. As she came in he turned off his radio console. “Zoe. Why on earth are you out of bed?”

“I had to talk to you.” She gave a sniffling sob and went to look down at the snow-covered entrance bay.

“What is it? You can't still be carrying on about Justin's little fling.” Hugh's tone was one of kindly amusement. His own fears had been laid to rest in part by Zoe's information about the letters, in part by Dickson Keeley's report that the Kaplan girl was seeing a labor organizer four nights a week. “Are you in a pet because Caryll's involved with the Seven and isn't dancing attendance on you?”

“This is serious, Hugh.”

“Can I help?”

“It's Mother,” she said, the unhappiness betraying itself in her cold-clogged voice. “Tell me about Mother when she lived in Detroit.”

The rales rasped within Hugh's chest. Years ago he had concluded that eventually he must unravel his entwined loyalties, must defy his brother to give Justin the straight truth: his plans, though, were not advanced enough, and neither was Zoe the oracle through which he would speak. “I didn't know her that well,” he said carefully.

Zoe came to sit near him. “But you were in love with her?”

After a long hesitation Hugh said, “She glowed with happiness; she reflected it. My guess is that every man who came in contact with her was a little bit in love with her.”

“Even Uncle Andrew?”

The asthmatic tension eased in Hugh. “Who have you been talking to?” he smiled. “Some professor of ancient history?”

“Mrs. Bridger.”

“Maud shouldn't repeat stale, ugly gossip.”

“But … well, Uncle Andrew lived with us.… When he got ill, at the end, I mean, he sobbed all night. Hugh, there were nurses, but he wanted Mother. I can remember her sleeping on the couch in there. With him.”

“Of course she did. Can you imagine your mother leaving anyone to die afraid?”

“What did our father feel about Uncle Andrew?”

“Zoe, you know I never met him.”

Her hand tensed on the pleats of her skirt. “But he
is
our father?”

At this dangerously close thrust, Hugh rose to his feet, glaring down at her. “This is my house, Zoe. Here, the name of Antonia Hutchinson is respected. I refuse to listen to another word.” His voice was etched by the elocutionary precision that over the telephone terrified Onyx executives. “You haven't thrown this at Justin, have you?”

She shook her lovely, red-nosed face from side to side, frightened. “Only you.”

“It's vicious garbage.”

Zoe's lips trembled into a rueful pout. “What a dreadful little fool I am. Of course Mother was wonderful to Uncle Andrew—she was to everybody. Hugh, don't be mad.”

“I'm not.” He raised an admonitory finger. “But you're not to mention this ugliness again.”

“Never,” she promised.

“No repeating it to Justin.”

“I wouldn't dream of it. He's too idealistic about her.”

“Good girl,” Hugh said, again kindly and benevolent.

Zoe blew her nose as if in final punctuation of his anger. Replacing her handkerchief in her sweater sleeve, she said, “This sort of lie would shake him to his roots. It's funny about Justin. He went through the war, he's worked everyplace and with all sorts, but deep down he's innocent. Know what I mean? In his heart he believes we're all as good as he is. I think that's the secret of how he gets people to do what he wants. He appeals to their bit of goodness.”

She's right
, Hugh thought.
Why didn't I ever see that? She cares for Justin as much as I do
. Camaraderie warming him, Hugh put his feet on the ottoman. There was an agreeable lassitude to being with Zoe in front of the fire on a snowy Sunday afternoon, and he began to reminisce. He rarely spoke of that other Hugh, impoverished, burning to be rich enough to set Society on its ear, rebellious of the brother who provided for him, vain of his own angelic good looks, but that old scurvy about Antonia had clicked open a door to the past, and as twilight died into darkness his memories slipped out. Zoe, stifling her sneezes, gazed intently at him as he talked on, with an uncharacteristic loquaciousness.

V

She returned to bed, pushing the cashmere blanket aside. Her fever, which sometimes returned at night, was back at well over a hundred, yet she did not feel headachy or drained.

Hugh's stories, vivid and bright as tropical parakeets, swooped in and out of her mind. Her guardian was no longer an all-powerful, infallible figure, above the doubts and convulsions of love. He, too, had been buffeted by ambivalences; he, too, had been aware of his seductiveness to the opposite sex.

He took out beautiful girls
, she thought.

Her light-headedness turned into resolve. She did not touch her dinner tray. She went into her bathroom. The tall electric heater glowed pink on her as she sponged herself, then lavished perfume on her breasts, her thighs, her fast-tripping pulses. Leaving her nightgown on the tiles, she drew on her new marabou-trimmed peach satin robe.

Hugh sat alone. The dining room candelabra cast light across his sleek, graying blond head. “Haven't you been up long enough for one day?” he asked.

Smiling, she shook her head and reached for the brandy. She downed it quickly and took another.

When she reached for the decanter a third time, Hugh laid his hand on hers. “That's very powerful,” he said.

“I better look out, then. If I get blotto you might take advantage of me.”

For the first time she was speaking to him in the teasing sexual banter she reserved for her boyfriends.

“You've had enough,” he said uneasily.

“Nerving myself up,” she said, then blurted: “Hugh, why haven't you ever married?”

Quiet ascended to the Grinling Gibbons–inspired carved ceiling above them; falling snow wrapped them in its hush.

After a minute Hugh replied in a purposefully matter-of-fact voice, “For the obvious reasons.”

Zoe's dark eyes swam, lustrous with fever and brandy. “To the right girl it wouldn't mean a thing.”

An offer was being made.

They both knew it.

Hugh was keenly tempted. Not by Zoe, though Zoe's magnificent eyes were gazing at him with a profound amorousness. How could so well-boiling an infatuation have escaped him? For the first time in decades he allowed himself to think of … children.… His own genes moving into the future … his own sons to fill the airy palace of his plans … kingmaker to his own tribe.

While he floundered in his momentary valley of decision, Zoe blundered. As though fearing she had not made herself clear, she stood to tighten her robe sash. Satin outlined her long, perfect legs, her small waist, the magnificence of her full, out-of-fashion breasts with their raspberry-shaped nipples. Zoe's body seemed to present not only a promise but a sexual mission. Hugh understood this with a rationality that was absolutely lucid. He experienced not a quiver of lust. For years he had lived in a celibacy whose purity would be envied by most priests: he had sublimated the remotest fantasy, the tiniest hint of desire into his work and his machinations for those he loved. Sweat broke out on his forehead.
I can't
, he thought.
I can't anymore
.

“Where on earth am I going to find a dried-up old spinster content to bury herself with a deformed recluse?” A trailing laugh ended his question.

The brandy had affected Zoe. She did not catch his panic. “If a girl loves—”

“Zoe!”

“—a man the way I—”

Hugh slammed the table, a sharp retort that flickered candle flames. “What's gotten into you today?” he barked. “First destroying your mother's reputation, then getting vicious with me!”

Zoe's face went slack. Her mouth opened and she sank into a chair.

The front door opened. And miraculously delivered unto Hugh were Justin and Caryll, their voices floating down the hallway. The falling snow had muffled the car's approach.

Hugh ran into the hall. “Boys! We're in here, in the dining room.”

Caryll, seeing Zoe, halted below the wood-ribbed entry. “Hello,” he muttered, and came no farther.

Justin, cheeks red from outdoors, came to kiss her shimmery hair. “Good. You're up and around.”

“Hugh's been giving me his famous cold cure.” She turned in her chair to fix her febrile glance on Caryll. “Has your uncle ever tried it on you? Three brandies one right after the other. What a nasty man! Now I'm not talking right.”

Hugh recognized the importance of salvaging her pride: in her thwarted humiliation might she not infect Justin with her own doubts regarding their mother's carnal irregularities?

“Brandy does wonders for my asthma. Why not for your cold?” His voice was rich with avuncular benevolence. “Have you two Sunday laborers eaten?”

“I'm starved.” Justin sat on Hugh's left.

“Caryll?” Hugh asked, his evening pump resting on the nub where the buzzer rose beneath the carpet. “Something hot?”

“No, thanks. I had dinner at Woodland with Dad.”

Zoe smiled. “Then you can keep me company upstairs.”

Caryll said coolly, “Justin and I were planning to discuss the shatterproof windshield. That's why I tagged along.”

“Talking about the Seven while he's eating'll give him an ulcer,” she said. “Upstairs, upstairs.”

And she ran past him, the Louis heels of her mules striking the Great Hall parquet sharply, setting up a provocative motion in the naked, delectably round buttocks below the satin.

VI

She leaned against the Queen Anne chest on the landing and waited for him. They climbed to the second-floor gallery without speaking, side by side. He could feel the heat emanating from her body in perfumed waves. She swept through the open door of her little sitting room.

“I've missed you, Caryll,” she said in a forlorn voice.

“Have you?” His mouth moved stiffly.

“It's been weeks.” She glanced around at the vases of white flowers. “I've been ill.”

“Justin mentioned you had a cold.”

“It's not like you to be such a stranger.”

“We've all been working like mad.”

“Oh, you know I can't bear it when people are angry with me,” she cried.

“I'm tired of being whipped then having to beg your pardon.” He circled the overheated, flower-thick room to stand on the far side of the chaise longue. “It's Hugh, isn't it?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Hugh's the unmarried man, the one you're in love with.”

Her laughter was high, a little drunken. “That's not funny, Caryll.”

“Who else can it be? You're always admiring him, telling me to follow to his advice.”

“Justin admires him and listens to him. Do you think Justin's in love with him? Hugh's been a father to us.”

Caryll gazed at her uncertainly, his senses swollen by her opulent, feverish beauty and the clinging negligee, his brain off the track, too disorganized to weigh her veracity. “Who is it, then?”

“You've lost me.”

“The man you're in love with.”

“Oh, Caryll, you nut.” She moved closer to him. “Honey bear, I didn't mean to hurt you or make you jealous. I just needed time to think.”

Her perfume tickled the depth of his stomach. “About what?”

“The question you asked me.” She raised her hand, caressing his cheek.