As soon as they started in his direction, Bunsen had turned the search-light of his attention on them, drowning them in his brilliance. He hesitated now for the briefest of instants, looking down at Stuyvesant’s hand, before removing his shoulder from the mantelpiece and returning the handshake. His clasp was experimentally firm, although the man’s fingers would be more suited to the delicate work of attaching wires to blasting caps than to wrenching off stubborn engine bolts. If it came to a squeezing contest, Stuyvesant knew he could make Bunsen wince. But that game was far too childish for what he had in mind.
“So you’re Sarah’s American.” Bunsen’s voice was amused and therefore dismissive; in that instant, Stuyvesant’s role became clear.
“I’d like to think so,” he replied, meeting the hazel gaze with all the confidence he could muster. Set out baldly like that, it could be taken either as brash American humor, or as a declaration of intent. Bunsen’s eyes narrowed briefly as he tried to decide which; Stuyvesant gave him no help, merely maintaining his air of open, firm friendliness. Yeah, I’m a Yank, buddy, and we can beat you so easy, we don’t even got to say it.
Their hand-clasp had gone on for just a bit too long; Bunsen ended it, with a brief squeeze before relaxation. Stuyvesant widened his smile, and looked down at Sarah, who had a little frown line between her brows. “You didn’t tell me your friend here looked like a movie actor.”
No one could take it as an insult, but at some level, Bunsen had to wonder. Stuyvesant barrelled on. “Sarah tells me you’re something with the government. I have to say, I sure chose an interesting time to come over here, didn’t I?” Another, double-handed slight—“something with the government”—but again impossible to pin down as anything but amiable stupidity.
“Indeed you did, Mr. Stuyvesant. Although in fact I’m not with the gov—”
“Oh, call me Harris. Any friend of Sarah’s, and all that.”
The interruption threw Bunsen off track, although he was experienced enough at the tooth-and-nail techniques of British debate that he didn’t show it. He nodded, and said, “I spent the day with a group of miners who would say we are looking at interesting times, indeed.”
“You ever worked down the mines, Richard? You don’t mind if I call you Richard, do you?” He glanced around and admitted, “Never much caught on to the shades of English formality. We Yanks are always putting our feet in it.”
Bunsen gritted his teeth genially at the familiarity. “No, I’ve not worked down the mines. Been down, of course, a number of times. How else to understand the lives of the miners?”
“Good plan. And shoveling coal isn’t to be recommended, really, as a permanent way of life.”
“You’ve worked…” Bunsen began in surprise, before he could help himself.
“Oh yeah,” Stuyvesant said. “Just for a few months, back when I was fourteen or fifteen. A cousin got injured and needed someone to help out, so I put on his clothes and took his place until he was back on his feet. ’Course, by that time I was already nearly six feet, constantly hitting my head. But you being a government man and all, maybe you can tell me, I hear that one of the demands your coal miners are making is for seven-hour days. Seven hours sounds pretty cushy to me.”
Bunsen’s mouth compressed at the idea of being a government man, but his voice stayed even. “In this country, the miners’ workday is determined exclusive of winding time. That’s the time it takes to deliver the man to the coal face itself,” he explained, less for Stuyvesant’s benefit than the rest of the ears. “In Europe, the statutory eight hours is from the time they leave the surface until they reemerge. Considering the depth of some of our mines, men often end up with considerably longer than eight hours below in order to spend their seven hours at the face.”
“That makes sense,” Stuyvesant agreed amiably. “Thanks for clearing that up. You play billiards?”
“Not just now, thank you.”
“Maybe later, then. Sarah, you must dance? Even Red Emma was a prize hoofer, when she was young.”
Reaction to the name rippled through the room—Stuyvesant had made sure he’d spoken loudly enough to be heard.
“You know Emma Goldman?” Laura asked.
“Met her a couple times. Quite a woman. Not much to look at, but she knew how to have a good time—’course, this was before the War.”
Sarah stared up at him. “You—did you dance with her?”
She’d have been less surprised if he’d claimed to have done the Charleston with the Queen. “Sure. ’Course she’s getting on in years, but she used to be a terrific dancer. Full of…” Deliberately, he looked over at Bunsen before he finished the thought, and half lowered one eyelid. “…enthusiasm.”
And then he seized Sarah and whirled her onto the impromptu dance floor, not waiting to see the thought hit Bunsen: When it came to Red Emma’s appetites, “enthusiasm” might readily describe something more intimate than dancing.
Stuyvesant was not a bad dancer, and he’d picked up some of the latest steps on the ship from New York. His pleasure at having Sarah to himself was intensified by the waves of frustration coming from Bunsen’s corner: sniping at Bunsen but giving him no target in return had definitely got the man’s attention. Especially when there were pretty girls in the vicinity.
But looking at Sarah, seeing her face go pink with exertion and happiness, was bittersweet. She was the one vulnerable place that he’d shown Richard Bunsen, and Stuyvesant had no doubt that Bunsen would seize the weapon he’d offered. Sarah was not going to have an easy time, before this was over.
Sometimes, he really hated his job.
“Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby” bounced and jangled to an end, after which Simon Fforde-Morrison, with more sensitivity than Stuyvesant would have expected, slipped into the slower “It Had to Be You.” Stuyvesant did not hesitate, but wrapped his arms around the girl and swung her into the dance.
Blonde hair smelled different from other shades, he reflected. All too soon the song was over, and Sarah was tugging him back in the direction of the solar.
Bunsen was waiting. He looked as if he’d been chatting with his friends, but Stuyvesant could tell he’d been waiting for him to return. “Did you know that Emma Goldman now lives in London?” Bunsen asked, his voice silky: Anyone could claim to know a person, it said, but not everyone could back their claim up.
Stuyvesant looked Bunsen in the eye. “Yeah, so I heard, giving speeches on modern drama, isn’t it? I’m glad she got out of Russia before she froze to death. But if you’re asking if I’m going to look her up, no, she probably wouldn’t remember me. This had to be twelve, fifteen years ago.” In fact, the Goldman meeting happened during the first political outing for big, young Harris Stuyvesant, who’d been brought in when the Bureau needed an agent able to pass for a working-class tough. “She and I got arrested together, if you must know.” He took a swallow of his drink, making sure that everyone in earshot was hanging on his words, then admitted, “I got picked up by mistake, really, one of those wrong place wrong time situations. But she was a nice old girl, tons of fun as we got ourselves driven in and booked, and she told me to look her up later. So I did.”
“Why were you arrested?” This was from Laura.
He summoned a look of embarrassment. “Well, there was this demonstration of garment workers. I wasn’t involved in it, but I worked down the street and was going by when the police charged the crowd, on horseback, their nightsticks flailing. I saw one of the bas—one of them aiming straight at this skinny little girl, couldn’t have been older than seventeen, and I, well, I stopped him.”
“What did you do?” Sarah asked, enthralled. Stuyvesant did not look to see the effect of all this twaddle on Bunsen; he didn’t have to.
“I didn’t do anything to him, not really. I mean, I’m not about to get charged with assaulting an officer—but I had this tube in my hand, just a cardboard tube with some papers rolled up in it, and the horse’s…er, a sensitive part of the hor
se was right there in front of me, so I waited until the creature was, what do you call it, tipped upwards?”
“Rearing?” supplied Laura.
“Exactly, rearing a little, which meant it couldn’t kick backwards, and I just sort of, poked it. Distracted the cop no end.”
The group around him erupted with laughter. Even Laura’s dark eyes were dancing. Stuyvesant shrugged modestly and drained his glass. “Anyway, Emma and I were hauled in, we struck up a conversation, then later I did look her up once or twice. That’s it.”
“So, what, are you a Red, too?” This slurred question came from the doorway to the billiards room, where the burst of laughter had attracted several of the players. The boy who spoke was one of the evening’s latecomers, drifting in after dinner in an ordinary lounge suit and a definite lack of focus to his eyes. Stuyvesant hoped for the sake of the felt on the tables that the tipsy idiot didn’t try to play billiards tonight.
“Nope,” Stuyvesant answered, “just a working stiff. Not, I think, like you.”
The young man heard the insult in Stuyvesant’s tone if not in his words, but before he could do more than bristle, his friends had come forward en masse. In a practiced set of moves, one placed a cue in his hand and told him it was his turn while another offered him a drink, and the young drunk was hustled away.
Stuyvesant glanced at Laura. “At a guess I’d say that’s not one of your friends.”
She shook her head, both vexed and amused. “Patrick’s.”
“I wouldn’t want to be inside his skull tomorrow.”
“I wouldn’t want to be there tonight,” she said repressively, then turned to her sister Constance and asked about the dress she wore.
The evening went on in the same vein, with Stuyvesant and Bunsen like a pair of jousting chameleons, taking on each other’s colors as they aimed their jabs. Stuyvesant played his American face for all it was worth—gullible, self assured, competent in a score of areas, mature but energetic, uninformed politically but clearly on the side of the angels, brash but forgivable because he meant no harm. He flirted with the girls and acted the buddy with the men, sent the occasional innocent but stinging remark in Bunsen’s direction while giving nothing to grasp in return.
Except for the one. By the end of the evening, everyone there including Sarah herself knew how smitten Harris Stuyvesant was with her. And everyone there could see how hopeless it was, because Richard Bunsen already had her.
It was crystal clear to Stuyvesant that Bunsen had not laid claim on Sarah Grey before that night: If Sarah’s earlier surprise at Bunsen’s attentions during dinner hadn’t already shown him, Laura Hurleigh’s growing puzzled resentment would have proved it.
He had marked Bunsen on the nose: Like many leaders of causes, Bunsen was possessive about his women, even those he did not intend to make use of.
And beyond that, Stuyvesant thought Bunsen would be a believer in the dictum Keep your enemies near. In fact, he was putting all his chips on it, waiting on the result with increasing anxiety as the night progressed.
Any sensible man would take his possessions and walk away from a potential threat. Anyone but a man filled with his own grandeur would suggest to Laura Hurleigh and her friend Sarah that they should have nothing to do with this American stranger, who could prove dangerously untrustworthy. They would do that, both of them, drop him in a flash if Bunsen asked. However, to give that order, Bunsen would have to admit, to himself and to Stuyvesant, that the American was a threat.
Better to hold a snake close, behind the head, than to leave it loose to bite.
But Sarah would be in for a hard time, he thought, and cursed The Bastard from behind clenched and smiling teeth.
The night grew late, then early. The musicians took a break every hour, twice coming back from a turn in the garden smelling faintly of marijuana, but eventually Fforde-Morrison’s voice gave out and he traded the megaphone for the gramophone, opening up his crate of records. Half the young latecomers piled in their cars to weave down the drive, headed for a party they’d heard of in Oxford. Their companions either cavorted to the recorded music, squabbled over the rules to some arcane card game, or sobered up and edged towards their more formally clad elders. Stuyvesant’s young accuser had been propped into a chair with a pool cue, and was snoring over the din.
Stuyvesant had a hard head for the booze, but even he was feeling the effects. He perched on the arm of a sofa with Sarah at his side—Bunsen, to his surprise, had slumped into the deep cushions of the other sofa rather than claiming the Duke’s chair. That chair had been taken by the Lady Constance; the other family and guests were scattered in a wide circle around the fire. Stuyvesant nursed his drink, listening passively to three separate but occasionally overlapping conversations, a Babel of talk that ebbed and flowed around him like waves on a beach.
“—sun on the flesh like a warm”—(here Lady Constance giggled like a young girl)—“milk bath, restoring one to—” She had yet to strip off her clothing for a demonstration, although Stuyvesant had not given up hope. Her audience was Gilbert Dubuque, too sozzled to do more than gape at her with a glass drooping in one hand. Lady Constance was facing away from the circle around Richard Bunsen and was speaking with some determination, refusing to acknowledge the unsavory discussion of politics going on literally behind her back.
“—for example, the wage issue of the Samuel Report which, despite all promises to abide by the Report, was simply buried beneath—” Bunsen was pontificating to Lord Daniel, Lord Patrick, a monocled Oxford don named Baxter who had been invited by Patrick, and, of course, Laura and Sarah. Except that in all fairness, he wasn’t pontificating, he was speaking with reason, compassion, and sobriety; the slight dishevelment to his hair and loosening of his collar only added to the effect.
“—all of Hyde Park just wall to wall with vehicles, it was the wildest thing to come across without expecting it.” Lady Pamela was droning on to Dubuque’s chinless friend, whose name Stuyvesant never had caught, and to Lady Evelyn about the terrible state of affairs in London.
Constance: “—New Gymnosophy Society, gymnosophy meaning ‘naked philosophy,’ you know, and we’re looking—”
Bunsen: “—like poor old Comrade Pollitt last year, kidnapped by the bloody Fascists of the O.M.S.—Maintenance of Supplies, I ask you, as if the Unions would even consider starving the country into submis—”
Pamela: “I understand Harrods’ shooting range is busy ’round the clock, everyone preparing to keep the revolting masses at bay. Or was that Selfridges’?” Pamela’s painted eyebrows arched together in a frown.
Constance: “—sandals, of course, to allow air between the—” Constance giggled again, a habit that seemed unrelated to the topic or even any natural pauses in speech.
Bunsen: “—and charges were dropped, both for the kidnapping and the theft of the van, they were dismissed as a light-hearted romp. Can you imagine the sentence Communists would have got in the same circ—”
Pamela: “—torn between going to their place in Surrey or holding out in Town to watch the show, only Edwina is convinced they’ll be ripped from their beds by the mob and Harry is—”
Constance: “—of course, spring is just the most enticing time of year, one finds oneself wanting to throw off restraints although it’s still so terribly chilly, and—”
Bunsen: “—and you heard about the Fascists’ wholesale buying-up of Workers’ Weekly, an issue with an article of mine that they didn’t like on—”
Pamela: “—so in the end they’ve decided to send the dogs and the children to Surrey and stay in Town themselves, only now they’re worried that the cook will join the Strike and put poison in—”
Constance: “—such a pity we had to close the Moonella club in Essex, some horrid building project nearby and they did protest so, how ridiculous to be so stifled that a glimpse of nude—”
Stuyvesant found himself wondering if the two Hurleigh sisters who were fighting so hard to
deny Bunsen an uncontested audience were doing so because of aristocratic sensibilities, dislike of politics in general, or a disapproval of Bunsen in particular.
Bunsen: “—typical of their approach, they’re so caught up in protecting their interests that they can’t see their interests would actually be better served by overhauling the entire system and turning the Parliament buildings over—”
Pamela: “Poor Johnny, he’s lost two teeth right in the front and they were such pretty teeth, but he’s certainly learnt not to shout at large men with signs in their—”
Constance: “—all have club names, of course, we have to be careful to preserve our privacy. Mine is Byff, with a Y you see, and there’s—”
Of course, it could simply be that the two women couldn’t bear to cede the floor to anyone, be he commoner, blue-blood, or royal.
Bunsen: “—while the boys who should be helping us are practicing as constables—”
Pamela: “—the railway could possibly want with Buffles I can’t imagine, I certainly wouldn’t trust him not to send the whole train off a bridge or—”
Constance: “—my friends in the Folk Dance Society that we should come down and entertain the strike-breakers in Kensington—”
Bunsen: “—unless the General Council and the owners reach an agreement, which we’ll have to make sure doesn’t happen—”
Certainly neither Hurleigh sister—and then the import of Bunsen’s monologue penetrated Stuyvesant’s fog and he snapped to attention, but the next words were drowned by one of Constance’s loud, girly giggles, and in fact, he couldn’t have been sure of what he had heard, because Bunsen continued, “—because the Strike is going to be just devastating for the workers, of course. The Unions have funds, but they won’t go far with several million men out on strike.”
Without warning, a growl rose up in the room, sounding as if one of the Duke’s hounds were closing for the kill. Conversation died. The faces looking behind Stuyvesant took on expressions of horror; Bunsen started to fight his way out of the cushions, Laura dropped her glass, and Stuyvesant whirled to confront whatever was coming at him from behind the back he’d dared to turn.