Dark on the Other Side (3 page)

With an effort Michael brought his mind back from one of
the peripheral, fascinating side tracks in which it was only too prone
to get lost. He was neglecting his duties as guest. With his withdrawal
from the conversation, a heavy silence had fallen. Gordon had turned to
look at his wife, and the expression on his face, momentarily
unguarded, was a graphic and pitiful example of what Michael had been
thinking about. He knew what Gordon Randolph’s hidden weakness was.
Linda was as unresponsive as a Sphinx. (That Egyptian motif again!) She
had withdrawn into her own thoughts (and what a hell that world must
be), and again Michael had the grisly impression that the far end of
the table was occupied by an empty gold-trimmed dress.

He stared blankly down at his empty plate. What the hell
had he been eating? The others were finished, except for Briggs, who
was methodically chasing down a last fragment of meat. What a pig the
man was. Not a fat, healthy, pink pig; a dead pig, already soft with
incipient corruption…

Michael made a voiceless movement of disgust and protest;
and Briggs, having captured and subdued the last bite, looked up.

“Dear me,” he said mildly. “I’m afraid I’m keeping you.
Gordon’s cook is marvelous. And gluttony is, I fear, my abiding sin.”

He passed the tip of his tongue over his pale lips, and
Michael forced a stiff smile. Taking his secretary’s words as a sign
that he had finished, Gordon pushed back his chair. Michael understood
his need for haste. The man wanted to get his wife into the drawing
room, and some coffee into his wife, while she could still walk. His
eyes on his hostess’s blank, perspiring face, Michael suspected that
Gordon had waited too long.

Briggs was closer; he reached Linda first, moving with a
scuttling speed that brought another unpleasant zoological comparison
to Michael’s mind. There was a sly violence in the way he jerked at her
chair; and the readiness with which his pudgy hands caught at her, as
she staggered, filled Michael with distaste. She turned on him like a
cat, her lips drawn back in a snarl, and struck at his hands. Briggs
retreated; and Gordon, reaching the foot of the table in two long
strides, caught his wife just as she toppled ungracefully forward
toward the plates and silverware. His face was a mask of controlled
tragedy; but even in that moment of supreme humiliation he had grace
enough left to throw a mechanical apology in Michael’s direction:

“…not feeling well.”

He carried his wife out; and Michael closed his hanging
jaw and looked at Briggs. The little man spread his hands and gave
Michael a wistful smile.

“She doesn’t like me. It hurts me so much. I have such
enormous admiration for the dear lady. And I do try to spare Mr.
Randolph all I can.”

“I’m sure you do,” Michael said.

“You can find your way to the drawing room, can’t you?
I’ll just run along and see if I can be of any help.”

Making his way down the interminable corridor, Michael
wondered whether Randolph really meant to reappear that evening, much
less sit and talk calmly about the projected story of his life. What a
life! Didn’t the poor devil have any friends, any associates who were
comparatively decent and normal? Michael found himself, on that first
evening of his visit, filled with a profound pity for the man who had
everything.

MICHAEL CAME DOWN LATE THE NEXT
MORNING TO
find the breakfast room unoccupied. Gordon had
explained that they followed English country-house habits in the
morning; he considered it a tyranny to demand that his guests appear at
a specified hour for a meal as trying as breakfast.

One of the servants, a well-stacked blonde with skirts so
short they took Michael’s mind off coffee for several minutes, had
shown him the way to the “small dining room.” It was a sunny, pleasant
room with a table in a circular bay window and silver chafing dishes
set out along a sideboard. Michael surveyed the effect approvingly. He
wished he knew more about furniture, and all that sort of thing. This
stuff was what they called Provincial, he supposed—light in design and
color, with flowered drapes and blue-and-white delft pots filled with
blooming branches standing around. It was very different from the
somber large dining room, with its heavy dark furniture and velvet
hangings and family portraits. He wondered how much Linda had had to do
with the decoration of the house, and which, if either, of the two
styles represented her taste.

He forgot Linda as he foraged happily among the chafing
dishes. The butler, bringing fresh coffee and toast, informed him that
Mr. Randolph and his secretary had already breakfasted and gone to
work; Randolph had said that they would meet for lunch, and suggested
that in the meantime Michael explore the grounds. Mrs. Randolph? The
butler’s face was impassive. Mrs. Randolph always breakfasted in her
room.

Along with one hell of a hangover, Michael thought. He
finished his coffee and decided he might as well follow Gordon’s
suggestion of a walk. The view from the window was beautiful; it
reminded him of Devon, where he had spent a memorable month slogging
through the mud and declaiming the inevitable lines of Browning with
the ardor of an eighteen-year-old. Illumined by sunshine, the spring
colors of flowers and new leaves were as bright as if they had been
freshly painted.

He had to ask directions again to get out of the house.
Finally he found his way onto the terrace, an immense flagstoned
expanse with half a dozen low steps leading down to a lawn like
apple-green velvet. Tulips, one of the few flowers Michael knew by
name, made swatches of crimson and yellow along a graveled path. There
were other flowers: pink ones and blue ones and spotted ones. The air
effervesced like champagne when he breathed it in; he felt dizzy with
it. Something smelled good. Must be the pink and blue flowers. As an
expert on tulips, he recalled that they didn’t smell.

Breathing in and out with self-conscious virtue, he went
down the steps, heading for a copse of trees that looked like a
pale-pink, low-hanging cloud. Cherry trees, maybe. Or apple. There had
been apple trees on his grandmother’s farm…how many years ago? He was
just old enough to revel in nostalgia, instead of finding it hurtful,
and his mood was pleasantly self-reproachful as he wandered along the
path. Something wrong with people who gave up this kind of life for a
foul den in a smoggy hive of sterile buildings and packed humanity.
Maybe he would buy himself a cottage someplace. If this book was a
success…

Midway along the path he turned for a backward look, and
stopped short. The night before, he had got only the vaguest impression
of the house, which was approached by a long drive through a grove of
pines. It had been twilight when he arrived; he had seen a vast, dark
bulk, which in the tricky dusk had loomed larger than it was. Or so he
had thought. The place
was
big. Built of gray
stone, it had three stories and a roof with dormers that might conceal
attics or servants’ quarters. The wings stretched out on either side of
the terrace and the garden. The tower…Something wrong with the tower.
Michael studied it, frowning. The same gray stone, a handsome slate
roof…The shape, that was what was wrong. It was too tall, too thin to
harmonize with the bulk of the house. And the stairway that wound up,
around the exterior, didn’t harmonize either. It looked like an
afterthought.

Still, the overall effect was impressive. It was a
good-looking house. But the impression foremost in his mind was not so
much aesthetic as financial. Money. What a hunk of dough this place
must have cost, even in the laissez-faire days of Randolph’s
grandfather. And what it must cost, now, to maintain.

He wandered on, while another long-forgotten memory
worked its way to the surface. His mother, in an enormous floppy straw
hat and a shapeless skirt—women didn’t wear slacks in those days, at
least his mother didn’t—kneeling on the ground, wielding a busy trowel.
She had been an enthusiastic gardener. Maybe, if she had lived longer,
she might have been able to impart knowledge about some other plants
than tulips. He had been eight when she died. He had hated her for
dying. But still there was that undefined feeling of pleasure and
content when he saw flowers pink and blue and sweet-smelling….

Rounding the end of the left wing, he saw a bank of
flowering bushes and struck off at a tangent to investigate them. With
the sunlight full upon them they blazed like fire—orange and purplish
red and pink—a brighter shade of pink than the fat flowers in the beds.
It was not until he got close that he saw the kneeling figure; and
because of his odd mood of reminiscence and receptivity he was struck
suddenly breathless. A familiar figure, in a big floppy straw hat,
kneeling, the bright flash of a trowel twinkling in its gloved hands…

But the straw hat was circled by a strip of figured
chiffon, and he had seen its like in shop windows along Fifth Avenue.
The kneeling figure wore tight slacks, not a shapeless cotton skirt;
and the face that looked up at him, shaded by the brim, had the wide
tilted eyes of an Egyptian court lady.

It was reassuring to know that he was not facing a
revenant, however fragrant her memory; but the girl who was digging in
the dirt was almost as much unlike his hostess of the previous night as
she was unlike his mother. If she had a hangover, it didn’t show. The
lock of hair hanging down over one cheek shone in the sunlight like a
black-bird’s wing; she brushed it back with a gloved hand and left a
smudge of dirt along the exquisite cheekbone.

“Good morning,” she said coolly. “I hope Haworth gave
you something decent for breakfast.”

“More than decent. How was yours?”

She dismissed the inanity with the shrug it deserved.

“Are you soaking up atmosphere or just taking a walk?”

“The latter,” Michael said shortly.

“Then allow me to be the perfect hostess. I’ll give you
the guided tour.”

“Don’t let me interrupt you.”

“This is therapy, not productive labor. There are four
gardeners, and they regard me as a necessary nuisance.”

She got to her feet, in a movement so smooth that
Michael’s incipient offer of a helping hand was left dangling. In her
flat shoes she came up to his chin. The brim of the hat brushed his
nose, and she swept it off, tilting her head back and laughing.

She wore a yellow sweater over her white blouse, with
dark-brown slacks. He had thought of her as thin, the night before; now
he searched for other adjectives. Slim; wiry; slender…No, not slender,
that suggested a delicacy, a yielding grace; and the alert tension of
her pose was the reverse of graceful. Michael damned his incurable
writer’s tendency to wallow in words, and smiled back at her.

“The place is beautiful. Are you the genius who planned
all this?”

“Heavens, no. It’s been like this for a hundred years.
Roughly.”

“But surely plants and flowers, even trees, need
replacing from time to time.”

“Gordon does that.” There was a slight pause; he had a
feeling that she was considering, not what she should say, but how to
say it. “His taste is impeccable,” she went on. “In everything.”

Hm, Michael thought. Probably true. And spoken, if not
with enthusiasm, at least with a courteous approval.

“I wish I knew more about these things,” he said,
indicating the bank of flowering bushes by which they stood.
Descriptions of inanimate objects—which, to him, included
landscape—were his weak point; he always had to labor over background.
But now he found himself searching for color words: Salmon? Fuchsia?
(What color was fuchsia, anyhow?) White, of course. That pink wasn’t
just pink, it was sort of rose-colored and sort of—

“They’re azaleas,” said his guide, with amusement. “Very
common plants.”

“Oh.” Michael stared blankly at the bushes. “Azaleas. It
does sound familiar. I’ve never seen so many colors.”

“Some of the varieties are rare. That group over there is
rhododendron.”

“Oh.”

“You don’t have to pretend to be interested.” She was
laughing, openly; the expression changed her face, robbed it of its
oriental elusiveness.

“I am, I am. Keep it up. I’ll work it into some book or
other and get gushing comments from lady reviewers.”

“More likely they’ll think you’re a woman in disguise—or
a bit odd. Men aren’t supposed to be interested in flowers.”

“Or cats,” Michael agreed. “Or birds?”

“Definitely not. You know the stereotype of the male bird
watcher.”

“Skinny, bespectacled, lisping…Interior decoration?”

“Effete,” she agreed gravely. “Fashions?”

“Times have changed. I’ve seen men’s boutiques.”

The tone of disgust made her laugh again, and after a
moment he joined in.

“Sorry, I guess I’m more conventional than I thought.
This last century is one of the few eras in history when men weren’t
concerned with looking like butterflies, when you come to think of it.”

“That’s right. And you can’t think that dandies like
Charles the Second and Francis the First weren’t one hundred percent
male.”

“Not if the historical novelists are accurate. Okay. When
I get back to town, I’ll buy myself a flowered tie and a velvet jacket.”

“And flaunt them publicly?”

“Certainly. When I take up a cause, I go all the way.”

She looked up at him, with the laughter fading from her
face.

“I think you would,” she said slowly.

Michael found himself looking, not at her mouth or her
chin or her nose, as people ordinarily do when they look at someone,
but directly into her eyes. They were extraordinary eyes—so dark that
they looked permanently dilated, with the pupils drowned and lost,
luminous, shining….

“But,” she added, “you wouldn’t be easy to convince.”

Michael knew he ought to say something, but he couldn’t
think what. He couldn’t even remember what they had been talking about.

Linda broke the spell by turning away.

“You get a good view of the house from here,” she said.

Michael shook himself, like a dog coming out of the
water, and turned. The view was impressive—and relaxing, after what he
had just been looking at. The gray stone of the house was mellowed by
sunlight, which sparkled off innumerable windows. Surrounded by a haze
of newly leafed trees, with a backdrop of darker green firs, the lovely
lines of the house had the appeal of a Constable painting. Except for
that damned tower…

“It’s beautiful,” he said.

Linda consulted her watch.

“We can walk down to the grove, and then we’d better turn
back. I think Gordon planned to work with you this afternoon, didn’t
he?”

“He said something about meeting at lunch.”

“We’ll make it a quick walk, then. You must see the
meadow. Gordon’s latest scheme, that is; he had it grass planted with
daffodils and narcissi, like the meadow at Hampton Court; it’s really
gorgeous. And the grove is all flowering trees—cherry and apple and
plum and almond.”

“Oh.”

“You’d better take notes,” she advised. “Or the lady
reviewers will scold you for your errors instead of gushing.”

“I have an excellent memory. What are those stout pink
and blue things?”

“Hyacinths.”

She went on chatting lightly about flowers, pointing out
different varieties, explaining that Gordon’s rose garden was one of
the sights of the neighborhood, and inviting him to come back in June,
when it was at its best. The initial mood of their meeting, which had
been shaken briefly by that odd exchange of words and glances, was back
in full force. Making light conversation, Michael felt bewildered. It
was impossible to reconcile this girl, composed and gracious, with the
bitter-tongued drunk of the night before. He began to wonder whether he
had misinterpreted the incident. Maybe something had happened the day
before, something that set her off into behavior that was not a
pattern, but an isolated outburst. Maybe he was starting to read too
much into looks and expressions. Maybe…

“There’s one thing I miss,” he said casually, as they
passed under the hanging boughs of white blossom.

“What’s that?”

“The dogs.”

He had gone several steps before he realized she was no
longer beside him. Turning, in surprise, he saw her framed in apple
blossoms, with a shaft of sunlight polishing the green leaves and
spotlighting a face gone whiter than the petals.

“What’s the matter? Are you ill?”

“Dogs,” she said, in a breathy whisper. “What…dogs?”

Michael was so shocked by her sudden pallor that it took
him a second or two to remember what she was talking about.

“Why—animals in general. Pets. I guess I mentioned dogs
because they’re always there in my mental pictures of country estates.
Those brown-and-white hunting dogs…You look terrible. Sit down for a
minute.”

He put his arm around her rigid shoulders. For a moment
they resisted, like rock; then her whole body sagged, so suddenly that
he fell back a step under the weight of it, and put his other arm
around her to steady her.

Over her bowed head he saw her husband come into sight,
at the end of the avenue of cherry trees.