The Hair of Harold Roux (16 page)

“Okay.”

“I’m writing a novel,” Harold said shyly.

The voices and laughter from the hall had increased, then moved like a rattling train along the hall to the stairs and down, muted, finally, by distance.

“That’s ambitious,” Allard said, knowing Harold would like that word. He had been making notes for a novel himself, but Harold’s sounded much more possible, more concrete than his own vague jottings and cravings, because Harold always did what he said he would.

“I just wondered if you’d read the first chapter sometime, Allard, when you get the chance.”

“Sure. How about right now?”

“Now? Oh, I don’t know.” Harold was startled by the immediacy. “Right now?” Startled and shy. “Well, I guess, if you want to.” He was for the moment flustered and shaky, but then he composed himself and handed Allard a sheaf of typed pages so evenly stacked they might have just come out of the original box.

Glitter and Gold
Harold’s novel was titled, and it opened
high in the towers of Manhattan in a richly decorated modern penthouse suite. Across the crowded living room, where all the clever, scintillating talk and noise of a cocktail party seem nervous and inane, a boy and a girl suddenly see each other. Both, their look seems to say, are rather bored by the glitter and the triviality of their glamorous surroundings. He crosses to her and offers her a cigarette and an ironic comment, to which she replies with modest but delightful wit. Her hair is the color of honey, her complexion creamy, her eyes deep brown except for a fascinating green glint in the iris of one, her arms and hands aristocratically tapered; he thinks he might fall in love with this girl, just as she thinks somehow that she might fall in love with this man. He is well built, of middle height, with thick dark hair and a strong jaw—a face of dark secrets, rugged, yet with the flash of humor about the eyes. He is dressed in dark slacks and a casual Harris tweed jacket of ancient lineage. His name is Francis Ravendon, hers Allyson Turnbridge. She wears a plaid skirt—her mother’s family (Ferguson) hunting plaid, closed at the thigh with a solid gold safety pin—and a white silken blouse that reveals the warm roundness yet proud uptilt of her nubile breasts. He lights her cigarette with a gold lighter decorated with a strange device. Curious, she lightly holds his wrist as he explains that the device is the Ravendon crest—nonsense, of course, in these enlightened days, but his Uncle Alfred gave the lighter to him, and, after all, it is useful. After some more light conversation—yet strangely intimate, as though they have known each other since childhood—he suggests, since they can hardly hear each other over the babble, that they get out of here. It’s a beautiful afternoon and he has his open car. Why not drive out of the city to Long Island and perhaps have dinner in an excellent little French restaurant he knows? She hesitates; she really doesn’t know him at all, and he seems so masculine, so sure of himself. In spite of his charm there is something dark and dangerous in this handsome man. But he is so kind, gentle, humorous and reassuring, she finally relents. Without bidding their hosts goodbye (host and hostess
seem so involved in conversation and, well, so rather drunk), Allyson and Francis descend in the elevator to the street, where they find Francis’ Lincoln Continental phaeton gleaming in the slanting light amid the hectic hustle and bustle of Manhattan. Soon the phaeton’s smooth power has taken them away, across the long bridges, past the teeming tenements of the poor, and at dusk they are on a country road lined with beautiful tall trees, the muted lights of great estates shining down across wide landscaped greenswards.

“You seem so, somehow,
right
sitting here beside me,” he says. She can think of no answer. The car hums steadily along the smooth, winding old road. He is an excellent driver. “But we know absolutely nothing about each other,” he muses. Then, after a pause, in a low, almost startled voice, as though he speaks to himself, “Except, perhaps, the most important things of all.” He turns his head and smiles at her in the warm light of the dusk and the dashboard instruments, and even as she smiles back she cannot help but feel a warning of danger, for never has she felt this way about a man. Though she works as a junior editor for a sophisticated national magazine, she has never, among all that cleverness and affluence, known a man who gave the impression of such depth and, yes, even sadness, behind his surface charm. She wants terribly to know all about him, but something keeps her from asking.

The little French restaurant is quaint and charming; the proprietor himself comes to wait upon them
(Ah, Monsieur Ravendon! C’est… depuis quand? Un an? Mais c’est merveilleux!)
. They go on, Allyson’s high school and one year of college French not quite up to the occasion. They both consult her in English. And the meal is delicious, the wine light and clean on the tongue. At their intimate, candlelit table they do speak of each other’s past and present. She tells him of her upbringing in a small Vermont town of white houses and towering green elms—her father a scholar and teacher of modest means, her mother having died when she was a little girl. They are both editors, it seems, he an associate editor in a famous publishing house in Manhattan. He is twenty-six, and
(his face darkens, he speaks slowly, painfully) a widower, his wife of two years’ marriage having been killed in an airplane accident a year ago, in Switzerland. There were no children. “I’ve never talked to anyone about it before,” he says wonderingly. “That’s strange. In fact I haven’t talked to anyone very much, except on business, for nearly a year—until tonight.” Suddenly he seems shy, then looks up into her eyes with a grave, considering expression. “When we finish our brandy I’d like to take you to meet my father. He lives just down the road. Will you … Allyson?” It is the first time he has used her name. “Allyson,” he says again, softly, as if trying out her name to see how it sounds.

She agrees, though she is hesitant. She has only known him for a few hours! Somehow it seems much longer, even though the time has passed so swiftly. And there are depths to this handsome, square-chinned, yet so sensitive man that she cannot plumb.

They drive a mile or so down a country road and enter, between old, ivy-grown stone portals, a long winding driveway. Finally they come to a huge stone mansion set into its trees. The moonlight glimmers upon formal hedges and gardens. At the massive front door they are greeted by a tall, imperious-looking butler.

“Master Francis!” he says, in spite of himself letting his pleasure show through.

“Clifford, this is Miss Turnbridge. Is my father home?”

Clifford’s eyes widen a little and he bows slightly toward Allyson, his face cold. In his clipped British accent he says, “Your father is in the library, Master Francis.”

As they pass beneath the high, ornate ceiling of a long hall lined with family portraits, Francis smiles and says that to Clifford he is still, evidently, the little boy he once was.

The library is a high, wide room of dark wainscoting. Books rise in tiers to the ceiling, and at one end of the room beside a cheery fire, beneath one of the softly glowing table lamps that make cozy islands in the room, sits a silver-haired man. “Father,” Francis says, and the man, Horace Ravendon,
gets quickly to his feet and removes his reading glasses. Beaming his welcome, he strides toward them on long, patrician legs.

“Francis! How wonderful!” He spies Allyson, and his bushy silver eyebrows rise over his kindly blue eyes. “And my! How doubly wonderful!”

Francis introduces them.

“My dear, you are lovely, lovely! You have no idea how happy it makes me to see Francis with a lovely girl. He’s been …” Horace Ravendon stops, thinking he’s said too much, but Francis smiles and reassures him.

“It’s all right, Father, I’ve told her about Sheila.”

“Oh, well. That’s a sad subject, my dear. But my, you are …” He looks for a second or two into Allyson’s face, and seems a little confused. “Smashing, really! Now, how about some sherry or something? And come and sit down by the fire!”

While Horace Ravendon pours sherry into crystal glasses, Allyson looks around the room. Above the mantel is an oil portrait of a dashing young officer in Air Force uniform, his silver wings shining above his colorful ribbons, two silver bars on each shoulder. Then she realizes that it is a portrait of Francis. She looks to him in surprise, and, having been watching her, he nods, smiling. “Yes, Father insists upon celebrating my late, unpleasant occupation.”

“But,” she says hesitantly, “I mean, my uncle is an army officer, and so I think I know … Isn’t that a Purple Heart, and that one … the Distinguished Flying Cross?”

“Yes, Father made certain the artist got all the fruit salad into the picture,” Francis says, smiling fondly at the old man.

Horace Ravendon hands them sparkling crystal glasses of sherry. “Never used to wear his decorations. Never could understand it. Distinguished record in the war. Well, I’m proud of it and I’m not going to let it be forgotten in this house!”

As they sip their sherry, Allyson sees on the end table near her a novel in its bright dust jacket.
Never the Sad March
is its title, by F. H. Ravendon. She has read it and was greatly moved by this dark, powerful story of war and love … and suddenly the name, Ravendon. “Are you related to this Ravendon?” she asks, picking up the book. “I’ve read it and I was … still am! … deeply moved by it.”

“Well, yes, my dear,” Horace Ravendon says, smiling an enigmatic smile. “You might say that, yes!” He is trying to keep from laughing, she can see. And then she reads the name again. F. H. Ravendon.
Francis
? She looks at him, knowing how her admiration must be shining in her eyes.

“Yes, I admit to that novel,” Francis says.

“How I’ve wanted to talk to the author!” she says. “How wonderful! I’m afraid I’m gushing or something, and I’m sorry but I can’t help it!”

“That is my reward for writing it,” Francis says. She looks at him, and he is quite serious.

And they do talk, long into the evening, later still after Horace Ravendon bids them good night, saying, “You must stay over, my dear children. Clifford will fix you up, Allyson, in the blue guest room. No, I won’t hear about you two driving into the city at this highly improbable hour. Dangerous. Tiring. Now! I’ll see you in the morning. Good night.”

It is one in the morning before they know it, the hours having flown by as if they were minutes, seconds. They both have to work in the morning, so Francis takes her up to her room off the balcony, and at the door he looks steadily down into her eyes. “Allyson, you don’t know how much this evening—all of it—has meant to me. At that silly party I was so tense, so … But I won’t go on as if I really were one of the spoiled
jeunesse doree
my father would turn me into. Yet I am so grateful. You’ve been a spring breeze. Promising …” He stops, perhaps embarrassed. “Sleep well, Allyson … my dear!” He kisses her quickly on the forehead. “Sleep well!” And he is gone.

It is later, hours later, when she wakes in the strange room. The moon is down and the tall windows are pitch-black. Has she heard a noise—a scraping noise? Her heart
pounding, she reaches for the bedside lamp, finally finds it and turns it on. No one is in the room. But she
did
hear a noise. Quietly she dons the old-fashioned dressing gown Clifford laid out for her and goes to the door, opens it a crack and listens intently. Yes, there is a sound. Is it a deep breath from somewhere down the curving staircase, or a quickly stifled sob? Curious beyond fear, she goes out into the hall and down the thickly carpeted stairs, her hand on the railing of the cold marble banister. There is a light from a room on the left, a door that had been closed when she first came into the hall, and she creeps softly to the open door. A man stands, his back to her, looking up at an oil portrait of a young woman with raven-black hair and blue eyes. Allyson has never seen such graceful, bewitching beauty, such a glowing face of wit and intelligence, yet with a hint of patrician superiority. Such glowing irrepressible life! The young woman seems to be looking straight at her, her half-smile knowing all, her ice-blue eyes staring into her very soul.

Involuntarily she gasps, and the man quickly turns. It is Francis, and his eyes are cold, remote. “Well. And do you see the resemblance? Father did. Clifford did.”

“Resemblance?” she manages to say. She is frightened by his coldness, his terse statement, his cruel voice.

“Look into the mirror. Dark and light. Raven and gold. The other side of the coin.”

And suddenly, with terror and anguish in her heart, she does see that but for the raven hair and blue eyes her own likeness stares icily down at her from the wall.

Allard put down the manuscript and reached for his glass of sherry. “Hmmm,” he said. “Well, you’ve got some good details in there, Harold.” Now, was this the time for honesty, or not? No doubt, in spite of everything Harold had ever read, to him the purposes of this story were the very purposes of literature. And there was energy and emotion in this wishful fantasy. Work had gone into it. The pages were neatly typed,
the paper crisp, expensive, rag-content watermarked bond; other drafts had been agonized over, words no doubt looked up in the dictionary and thesaurus. Was it the same faith in magic, the same mistaken sort of effort that had led Harold into the clutches of the hair people? Why not say so? How important was this creation to Harold? Why not tell him to take off the goddamn toupee, throw it in the garbage and take his medicine, because if he wanted Mary, or whatever it was he wanted, he must learn the difference between fantasy and reality. Suppose Allard were to tell him all this, to say right out, “Look, Harold, this is jerking off, buddy. This stuff is like being alone in your room at two in the afternoon with the door locked, beating your meat. Wouldn’t you rather be involved in what’s real? Why not write about Berlin, New Hampshire, about growing up above a poor grocery store as a French-Canadian kid in a New Hampshire slum with a drunken father and a retarded half sister and a mother who saw you as a priest? How about all that? And the army, and growing bald at twenty-three in a civilization that worships its follicles …”