The Hair of Harold Roux (35 page)

“But what do you do here, Harold?” Mary asked.

Harold looked at her and then again away, flustered by her direct gaze. He half stuttered. “I … Fm sort of bookkeeper, clerk, errand boy, I guess. Also maybe an audience. I like them, I really do. They live as if they were very important. They are. I think I’ll stay on this summer.”

“Important?” Allard said.

“Their lives are formal. I don’t know. They live as if they were very glamorous people. Everything they do is important to them. It’s like they live every minute.”

“It sounds exhausting,” Allard said.

Harold disapproved of this tone. “They have the best of everything. Not the most expensive, but the best. Once the Colonel told me that life was too short not to have married the most beautiful lady in the world, and to take her for drives in a 1926 Bentley. You’ll have to see his car. It looks like it once belonged to a rajah or something.”

“But, Harold, the little lady is more or less ugly.”

“You’ll never understand. Never.” Harold was close to anger. He looked at Mary and then at Allard, shivering with disapproval, as though it were all too much to bear.

“Are they rich?” Mary said.

“I think they have some money, yes. This place is more like a hobby. I mean more than a hobby. They don’t advertise for customers, you know. There’s only the one little sign on the road. I think the Colonel wants people to be shocked—or maybe surprised is better. It all has to be unexpected. It’s such an out-of-the-way place. Anyway, he’s got his pension, too. They never seem to think about money at all.” Harold seemed breathless, nervous, as though he were giving away secrets, or being slightly disloyal.

The little falls at the end of the pool splashed quietly, the sun slanted down over the rocks. A little brook trout, as if he had just noticed them, sped from one dark crack to another, where he disappeared after his wild underwater flight. Allard lit a cigarette and put the burnt match in his pocket. Smoke
moved across the water without changing shape, then, still unchanging, moved like ectoplasm through the softwood needles. “I like it here,” he said.

The statement was more important to him than it must have seemed to them. Mary was here, undangerous, friendly, waiting for him to be the maker of events, yet somewhat frightened of him and of her feelings. And here was honest Harold Roux (honest except for that one unmentionable flaw) to keep him somewhat in line with reality. Suddenly he felt so much energy in his legs he had to run up the side of the ledge, jumping from one shelf to another in his slippery leather-soled shoes until he reached the top. All around were nothing but trees, the soft green of pines and hemlocks, the harsher sunlighted green of maples and birch.

“You could dive from here,” he said. They watched him, Mary smiling, Harold a little apprehensive. Instead of diving he came lightly stepping back down the ledge. He field-stripped his cigarette butt and put the little ball of paper in his shirt pocket with the match. “Tomorrow we’ll come out here and go swimming,” he announced. “Mary will wear her yellow bathing suit. When’s your next final?”

“Thursday at eight,” she said.

“All right, it’s settled. If it doesn’t rain. Two o’clock. All right, Harold?”

“Yes,” Harold said. “I’ve got a final tomorrow morning and my car’s supposed to be ready by noon, so I could bring Mary out with me.”

Harold was aware of the promise to her father about the motorcycle. Allard looked at Mary and spied her guilt. A flush, a warmth of skin there. He admired the curve of her cheek, her lips in tension with her skin. He was impatient to begin, but for the moment he watched her metabolism heighten because of his observing eyes.

At twenty minutes after six they left the pool and went down the rill path to Lilliputown, now more in shadow, its imaginary people all within their real houses.

The Colonel, who had changed into less informal clothes,
though not quite a dinner jacket, led them into the dining room, helping Morgana and Mary with their chairs. Mor-gana’s chair must have been raised, because once seated she seemed of normal height, though small in other dimensions. She wore a dark red brocaded dress now, with a yellow chiffon scarf to mask the softness of her neck. The table was lighted from above by a chandelier of bulbs no bigger or brighter than candle flames, and the soft glow was reflected by glass and silver, linen and china. Morgana’s dyed hair had a reddish sheen caught here and there by the light. Compared to Mary, who was smooth and golden, she shone and twinkled with an ancient glitter. The Colonel was so pleased to be their host, to serve them “from my limited vocabulary of French cuisine,
escalope de veau viennoise
” and a red wine he had decanted into small clear pitchers—”a California Burgundy I won’t bother to name, but we like it.” First each of them was served a small crab on a plate, its shell removed and the meat arranged again in the shape of a crab, with two sauces, one yellow and hot, the other red and sweet.

Harold was so satisfied and impressed by all this he could barely speak when spoken to. His novel must have come alive to him in these glamorous surroundings. When he looked at Mary his eyes grew misty and deep, as though he were creating story and dialogue. Allyson Turnbridge and Francis Ravendon, dining with the Colonel Imminghams. No Allard Benson with his crude and dangerous youth showing. How shyly Harold had presented his novel to Mary, one long romantic love letter she had found sad, resenting her desire to laugh at it. She still remembered with gratitude the real pleasure she used to get from reading novels not much better than
Glitter and Gold
by Harold Roux. And in one year at college under the tutelage of Allard Benson she had been alienated forever from those perfect people, their loves and fortunes.

But the Colonel did beam at his aging Lady with love and admiration. Though it was strange, Allard felt that it was real.
Trompe l’oeil
The old artificer had to understand reality before he could reproduce it. Did he ever suggest to his Lady
that those feverish blots of red might not be the perfect decorations for her little cheeks? Evidently he did not change people, only their images. Maybe one had to be fooled, to be a fool in order to fool.

His Lady, with the enthusiasm and equality of youth, was asking Mary about herself. “All about yourself! I’m ferociously inquisitive and I hope you’ll forgive me, but such a beautiful young woman must be strange and interesting.”

“But I’m not,” Mary said.

“Oh, pooh! And why then are there two swains so much aware of you? And I assume there must be many another who wonders what you are doing at this very moment!”

“For instance Hilary David Edward St. George,” Allard said.

Harold frowned.

“Is that one person or several?” Morgana said, laughing. “Surely, Mr. Benson, you must find Miss Tolliver fascinat-ing?”

“Indeed I do,” Allard said.

“She is talented. I know I’m right. I have ways of telling because I’m descended from a witch. The fleshy lobes of the little fingers say things, and just where the thumb bends is very, very important. And I suppose you don’t think I’ve noticed the small jewel in her pretty eye? That is tourmaline, Mr. Benson, a gem of great beauty, but it must be cut ever so carefully before it is transparent.”

“Morgana is never wrong,” the Colonel said.

Mary was pleased and embarrassed by this flattery. Harold was somber, perhaps sad that his daydreams and reality came so close together here, with the real Allyson Turnbridge sitting across from him, her beauty in his eyes so vivid it must have hurt. Allard was impressed by these judgments, too, and thought of her arms around him on the ride back to town. It would be a calm, clear night. Even the cold of the stars would not bleed away the warmth of the air.

After dinner the Colonel served small glasses of brandy which they took into the living room. He was telling them of
his affinity with others who had become enthralled by projects such as his—some magnificent, some absurd, some both. A man in a poor suburb of Los Angeles was constructing great colorful towers out of what was, simply, junk; yet the towers grew daily toward a statement of some magnificence. Another, near San Francisco, was carving an elaborate city in limestone, all beneath the surface of the earth—grottoes, shrines, staircases, rooms and underground vistas of somber and impressive beauty. Not far from here a retired farmer was filling his empty cow barn with murals upon plaster, frescoes almost terrifying in their primitive power. A man in Vermont, not nominally an artist, and never with the idea of selling his work, carved great humanlike figures from the boles of ancient pines. Another man, in Massachusetts, was constructing a gigantic machine out of old automobiles and farm machinery, washing machines and pumps, with gears and pulleys, revolving shafts and cams, all to no purpose except that it was a machine and ran only for its creator’s aesthetic purposes. Others filled their basements or attics with models of idealized countryside through which model trains busily rushed upon command.

“The Lilliputown Railroad is of slightly larger gauge, of course, but everyone has his scale. I’m condemned to have less trackage, I suppose, but it’s a matter, I’m convinced, of finding the right
scale
. I know a chap who prints books so small they’ll fit into your watch pocket and you have to read them with a magnifying glass. He makes and sets his own type and he has a library larger than mine in a cabinet no bigger than an orange crate. Amazing!”

The Colonel had trouble sitting down for long. He got up, leaned against the mantel, walked to the end of the room and back. His bristly gray hairs looked as stiff as wicker. He seemed wiry, in perfect shape except for the veins and wrinkles on his hands and face that gave away his age. For the first time in his life Allard thought he too would probably get that old, and it wouldn’t be so bad to look like Colonel Imming-ham at sixty, trim and spare in his lightweight summer suit,
his body quick with energy. When the Colonel stood for a moment beside his wife’s chair, she put out her small ringed hand and he took it between his wide brown ones, holding it as carefully as a tender young bird.

When the Colonel listened he stared, awed, totally un-selfconscious about his bugging eyes or the play of expression running in waves and counter-waves across his face. This made Allard speak slowly, thinking about each word before releasing it to such intensity of reception. The Colonel had asked him what he intended to do with his life.

“I’m not sure,” Allard answered, “but I want to make something.”

“What do you make now?” The wide eager eyes stared into his.

“I write things. Nothing I like very much yet,”

“But the time will come, eh? The time will come!”

“I hope so.”

“Harold tells me you do interesting things. If this is true it’s only a matter of persistence, a matter of persistence!”

“Hamilcar is the most persistent person I’ve ever known,” Morgana said.

“I had to be persistent in my pursuit of this lady! Let me tell you, every junior officer in the United States Army came under her spell!”

“That’s what you
thought
, Hamilcar, but you were always the one. Next to you most of the others seemed half alive.”

Bowing, he kissed her hand.

At ten-thirty the Colonel and Morgana went with them to the columned portico of the Town Hall to say good night and to ask them to return whenever they wanted to, that they would always be welcome. Mary’s enjoyment and excitement were so apparent in her thanks that they both seemed to gleam back at her. They held hands, the tall Colonel and his tiny lady who was almost in the scale of Lilliputown. After a final good night the Imminghams retired and Harold stayed out in the night air for a moment.

“Be careful on your way back, Allard,” he said.

“Harold, it was just absolutely fascinating,” Mary said. “I’m so grateful. I really had a wonderful time.”

“The Imminghams,” Harold said, and cleared his throat. “The Imminghams … are pearls of great price.” He said this in a ministerial voice meant to cloak his emotion, but he was so moved by his own statement he was actually close to tears.

Mary saw it, and said, “They’re charming people, Harold. I can see why you like them so much.”

“Yes,” Harold managed to say.

They left him there, pale and stern beneath the portico lights of Lilliputown Town Hall. The Indian Pony’s forever interesting surge of power took them out into the wavering yellow beam of its old headlight, Mary’s arms tight around Allard; her body, pressed against his back, sent needles of ice and molten metal through his nerves as he controlled his and his woman’s passage through the dark.

Aaron Benham, forgetting that he cannot release his clutch, stalls his Honda in his garage. He turns off the switch and puts the machine on its stand, hearing immediately from his knee in the form of hammerlike pain and the feeling that something alien, something similar to a bubble in the throat, teeters beneath his kneecap.

“Idiot,” he says to himself as he enters the kitchen. On the table is a pile of mail he now remembers putting there after his last trip to his office—familiar brown campus mail envelopes, shiny brochures from textbook publishers, various campus organization handouts, maybe even a legitimate letter or two. Since he seems to have little left in him but habit, he sits down (hello, knee!) and opens the first thing at hand, which turns out to be the announcement of a new freshman English text based upon “mass media” and intended to seduce recalcitrant minds by using materials as familiar as the television programs, comic strips, advertisements and movies they grew up on, thus enabling them to communicate without hang-ups. The next envelope contains the announcement of
a meeting of the senior members of the English department for—he looks again—four o’clock this very afternoon. An hour and ten minutes from now.

He doesn’t really have to go to this meeting because he is on leave. There are other reasons he might also find convincing: he doesn’t feel good; he has just had a motorcycle accident and finds it painful to walk; his only means of transportation is stalled in gear in the garage; he is depressed because he has been unkind to his family. And there is the sadness and guilt of an ancient passion, and who needs a senior members’ meeting when he is depressed already? But he knows that one of the items to be discussed in this meeting will be a possible extention of George Buck’s dissertation deadline. George is probably unaware of this, but he isn’t. What makes the whole thing intolerable is that in theory he is against such extensions. A man should never ask to be coddled unless sick or disabled in terrible and obvious ways. And even then he probably shouldn’t ask. But this concerns his friend’s livelihood, perhaps more than his livelihood. So, taking with him no definite attitude or plan, no comforting moral reserves whatever, Aaron must go to this meeting. His eyes ache, his pulse becomes audible in his ears, tangible in his wrist and knee. Maybe if he goes and soaks in a hot bath for a while he can let some of this anxiousness dissolve.