Francis was growing more confident with the quality of his counterfeit Scotsmanship. As the entrées were presented, he asked the Binghams what news they had from home. “I must confess that I devote little time to ex-colonial affairs,” he said, but the truth was that life in Dublin had offered only a moviegoer’s knowledge of New York: newsreels, The Thin Man, Forty-Second Street, A Night at the Opera. He should have known more about the city. His older brother, Martin, had emigrated years before, but Francis knew little of his life; he was a musician, married, had a child or two, and lived in a place unmusically called the Bronx. Over the years, communication between the brothers had gone from strained to nonexistent. Martin knew nothing of Francis’s escape, Michael’s condition, or their father’s recent death. Of course Francis would seek him out, but first he had to decide what to tell him. Martin was sure to have questions that Francis wasn’t ready to answer.
But while Martin could be difficult, the Americans were easy. He had assumed that they would be a uniformly anti-royalist lot; what about their man George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson with his “all men are created equal” talk? Surely the Americans would have been bred with a distaste for crowned heads and any hint of duke-or earlishness. But no. Thanks to Francis’s accent and the rumor of a peerage, the Americans aboard the Britannic—the women, especially—were drawn to him like crows to corn. And Francis, for his part, was playing the peacock. The suits he had purchased in Cork were not backbench grays and clubbish blues. He had paired glen plaids with boldly tartaned waistcoats; if he was in for a Glasgow penny, he was in for an Edinburgh pound. It should not have surprised him, once he saw the stir he caused, how easy it was for word to spread. He’d had one brief chat on the top deck with a woman whose hat he had rescued from the rapacious winds of the North Atlantic, and by the late dinner seating Angus MacFarquhar was the most eligible bachelor on the Britannic.
While the Binghams courted the favor of Sir Angus, Horace Walter engaged in vociferous, fact-free talk about Roosevelt and his latest plans for the ruination of the country. His greatest fear was the final takeover of America by communists, socialists, freeloaders, court-packers, and others bent on stripping the best members of society of all they owned and passing it willy-nilly to the drunks and the wastrels who still lined up for free soup and stale bread. Before he resumed drowning himself in gin and creamed herring, he opined that the Depression hadn’t been all bad—that it had, in fact, helped to thin the ranks of a certain class of bounders who had gate-crashed high society in the ’20s.
“A necessary winnowing of the wheat from the chaff,” he said. As he spoke, his hand went, as if by its own volition, to the diamond-topped stickpin in his lapel. He touched it the way Francis had been taught to strike his breast when the priest intoned the Agnus Dei.
The others nodded, either in agreement or out of a desire to move on to another topic. Francis offered a “Quite, quite,” though with little gusto, and fixed his gaze on the man’s pouched sow eyes, then on the diamond, and finally on his wife.
“And what of the royal visit?” The question came from Alex. He and his sister had the same narrow build, the same shell of brilliantined black hair. One of the only deviations between brother and sister was the pencil-line mustache that traced the ridge of his upper lip. Alex eyed him quizzically as wisps of smoke drifted from his cupped hand. “Will you be taking part in the festivities?”
Royal visit? Alex had mentioned it in such an offhand way that it must be common knowledge, but which royals? And visiting where? This was exactly why Francis had meant to stay out of society during the voyage—to avoid just this sort of stumble. He knew that as quickly as his notoriety had spread, so too could his unmasking. He dabbed at his mouth with his napkin, buying time. “My first responsibility must be to my brother,” he finally said. “Any festivities will have to wait until after I have consulted with his doctors.”
Alex arched an eyebrow: unconvinced or unimpressed. Francis folded his hands. He meant for the gesture to be nonchalant, but it looked like he was fidgeting.
“I don’t see what all of the fuss is about.” Marion’s words came slowly, languor mixed with white burgundy. “The crowned heads of England, certainly that’s exciting. But at the World’s Fair? Wild horses couldn’t drag me there.”
“Yes, my lovely,” her husband said, “but what about a wild horseman?”
“Do pipe down,” she said. “No one—”
“Oh, I think the World’s Fair sounds lovely!” Anisette positively beamed. “The crowds may be horrid, I know. But the pavilions look so bright and so full of light and so—oh, what’s the word?”
“I think you struck the nail on the head when you said horrid,” Marion said. “First thought, best thought—right, dear?”
Anisette persisted: “Modern. Everything looks new, but not just newly built. Newly imagined. As if the whole world has been remade, but better than before.”
“Now, that does sound lovely,” Francis said. He was happy to steer conversation away from this royal visit, and to find another topic on which Francis and Francis-as-Angus could agree: a better world—a world of fresh starts—sounded lovely indeed.
“I don’t know that lovely is the word for it,” Alex said. “The aesthetics have an aroma of the fascist about them. All those hard angles and empty-eyed statues. A bit too orderly by half, for my tastes.”
“You’ve got it all wrong,” Horace said. “A more fascist aesthetic is just what the World’s Fair, and in fact the whole country, needs. The Italians, if you can believe it, they’ve got it figured out. And of course the Germans. Exemplary. Government and business working together, hand in fist—”
“Oh, Horace, not this again,” Marion said.
From the next table came a swell of oohs and aahs: dessert, a ziggurat of glazed fruit, had been set alight. Francis was nervously aware that it had been almost two hours since he’d left his brother, and seeing his chance, he rose from his seat, begging leave of the ladies of the table. “My brother,” he offered by way of an excuse. “He needs minding, and I fear I have dallied too long in your charming company.” He gave a curt nod, a winsome smile, and then he was striding out of the dining room. Only Horace failed to mark the moment that he disappeared from sight.