The Dark on the Other Side Page 2

  “I covet your library,” Michael said, looking appreciatively around the room. “When I was an impractical college student I dreamed of having a place like this.”

  “It’s copied from a library in an English country house,” Linda said. She smiled sweetly at Gordon. “Volume for volume.”

  She finished her drink, and Briggs waddled over to take the empty glass.

  “I don’t think we have time for another, do we?”

  The pause, before Gordon spoke, was just long enough to underline the fact that the mistress of the house should have made this comment. “Didn’t you order dinner at eight, darling? Ah, yes-here’s Haworth.”

  The butler’s quiet “Dinner is served” brought the men to their feet. Linda rose more slowly.

  “I’ll take my drink with me-darling,” she said.

  Taking the glass Briggs handed her, she led the way to the dining room.

  III

  It was a good many years before Michael could think of his first dinner with the Randolphs without a reminiscent shudder. His host was too nervous to eat, his hostess steadily drank herself, not into a coma but into sharp-tongued virulence, and the pallid secretary stealthily gobbled enormous quantities of food.

  When Linda Randolph first entered the library, he realized that she had been drinking; but that fact seemed irrelevant in the presence of such unusual beauty. Her hair was the rare, true black, with a sheen like that of silk; its heavy masses framed a face modeled with a precise delicacy that he had, up till now, seen only in a few masterpieces of sculpture. It was not a conventional type of beauty; many people would think it flawed by the character which gave the features their final definition-a character too strong, too individual for a woman’s face. She would never get past the semifinals in a Miss Wheat Cereal contest. But the Wheat Cereal queens didn’t have the kind of face that launched ships or burned towers. Linda Randolph did. Helen and Cleopatra probably hadn’t been conventional beauties either.

  He knew why he had thought of Cleopatra. Linda…what an insipid name for that dark, exotic girl. The heavy, gold-trimmed dress emphasized the Egyptian look, but it didn’t suit her; stiff with embroidery and gold thread, it stood away from her body and made her look like a well-dressed doll. Her shoulders seemed bowed under the weight of it. She was too thin.

  How thin he didn’t realize until she came nearer and sat down in a chair only a few feet away. The contrast between the splendid, remote figure in the doorway and the same woman at close range was a little shocking. Michael assumed she was painted and powdered, as all women were, but the best cosmetics in the world could not conceal the underlying pallor and tension of her face. Her hands, dwarfed by the wide sleeves of the robe, looked like little white claws.

  He had known a lot of people who drank too much, and some who were genuine alcoholics. Linda Randolph wasn’t an alcoholic yet. Not quite.

  She held her liquor well, he had to admit that. She’d probably had a few before she came down, but her conversation in the library had been reasonably coherent, even bright. Those digs at her husband…Well, married couples did that, especially after a few drinks. In vino veritas-and, apparently, the closer the relationship, the nastier the truth. Parents and children, husbands and wives…Maybe that was why he’d chosen to remain a bachelor.

  During the meal she finished her drink and then started on the wine-a superb Montrachet, too good to be swallowed down like water. The silent butler kept her glass filled. Well, Michael thought, what else can he do? She spoke to the man sharply once, when he was a little slow. Gordon, who would probably behave like a gentleman on his way to be hanged, couldn’t object without risking a scene. But his conversational abilities declined noticeably. Finally, in desperation, Michael broke the rule he had made, about discussing business during social hours, and started asking questions.

  “Athletic career?” Gordon smiled, and shrugged. “I quit while I was ahead. Never had the necessary motivation to become a professional. That takes concentration. I was interested in too many other things.”

  He broke off, to sample the wine that was being served with the next course, and Michael brooded. Motivation? Lack of interest? That was the obvious answer to the enigma of Gordon Randolph-athlete, writer, politician, teacher-who had abandoned, of his own choice, each of the professions in which he was expected to excel. The man who had everything-and who wanted nothing. But lack of ambition was too facile an answer.

  “Anyhow,” Randolph went on, with a nod at the butler, “I was never an all-round athletic type.”

  “Tennis and swimming,” Michael said. “You know, I’d have thought you’d be a good quarterback. You have the build for it, and the coordination.”

  Gordon grinned.

  “I’m a coward,” he said amiably. “Didn’t care for the prospect of being jumped on by all those big, booted feet.”

  “No contact sports,” Michael said thoughtfully. “And no team sports.”

  “That’s rather perceptive. Even if it does make me sound like a cowardly snob. Or a snobbish coward.”

  “Maybe just a man of sense,” Michael said, smiling. “I can see why those activities might have bored you eventually. What a lot of people hold against you is your failure to write another book.”

  “Again, I stopped while I was ahead. They say, don’t they, that everyone has one good book in him? But how many people have two?”

  “Most people don’t even have one. And very few have a book as good as The Smoke of Her Burning. It’s a good title.”

  “Rather unsubtle, I’m afraid.”

  “The allusion is to Revelations?”

  “Yes. The destruction of the whore of Babylon. Very theatrical.”

  The conversation had degenerated into a dialogue. Michael preferred it that way. Briggs never had his mouth empty long enough to frame an intelligible comment, and Linda had relapsed into a silence so profound that she might not have been there at all. Only the dress, holding its own shape, sitting empty at the foot of the table…It was a gruesomely vivid image, and when his hostess spoke, Michael flinched.

  “You haven’t read Gordon’s masterpiece?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Dear, dear. How inefficient of you.” Her voice wasn’t slurred; only the extra precision of her enunciation betrayed her condition.

  “Well, you see, I have a theory. This is the first time I’ve tried a biography of a living person. I thought I’d get a personal, over-all impression first, like a quick outline sketch. Then I’ll start filling in details.”

  “But you already knew some of the details. Like the tennis.”

  “Unfortunately, I can’t start with a clean slate in the case of a man like Gordon. I knew most of the basic facts; a lot of people know them. He is a well-known figure.”

  “Was,” Gordon corrected.

  At the same moment, his wife said, “The famous, brilliant Gordon Randolph.”

  Most wives could have said that, in the right tone and with the right kind of smile, and made it sound like an affectionate little joke. Michael thought he had never heard an obscenity that sounded quite as vicious. He said quickly, “That’s quite true. Of course I have a certain personal interest. You were one of my father’s students in college, weren’t you, Gordon?”

  “Yes. And going back to that word ‘brilliant,’ which we use so freely these days, your father was one of the few teachers who really merited the adjective.”

  “Thank you. I was an uncouth high school brat at that time, but I seem to recall his speaking of you.”

  “Then you can’t claim to have approached me without prejudice,” Gordon said pleasantly.

  “Yes, I can. I was only interested in two things then-one of them was basketball-and I’m afraid I didn’t pay much attention to the conversation of the over-thirty crowd.”

  “Over thirty or under thirty, they were all the same,” Linda said. Her voice had become a little thick. “Members of the fan club. The St. Gordon fan club.”

/>   Gordon gave his wife an anguished look, and Michael burst into speech.

  “Speaking of my father reminds me of something I’ve been wondering about. Call it idle curiosity. But I know you haven’t permitted an interview for many years. What I wondered was-why me? Sam Cohen, my agent, said you’d specifically mentioned my name. I’m not the most modest member of the Author’s Guild, but neither am I the most famous. Was it because of Dad?”

  He had meant to insinuate that question at some point, but it came out sounding a good deal more gauche than it might have under other circumstances. He could feel his face getting red as Gordon’s quizzical eyes studied him, and he was painfully aware of Linda’s unconcealed amusement. She wasn’t too drunk to be unaware of his embarrassment.

  “What are you doing, fishing for an insult?” Gordon asked with a smile. “Naturally I followed your career with more interest than I would have done, because of your father. But that career itself impressed me with your ability. I like the way you approach your subjects; Linda summed up my feelings exactly. There’s warmth and sympathy in your interpretations, and you always see both sides. And, lest your vanity get too swollen, I might add that I mentioned several names. Yours was one.”

  Michael hadn’t gotten that impression; but then, he thought, a good agent-and Sam was one of the best-automatically administered periodic doses of ego booster. Writers needed compliments. The ones who said they welcomed criticism were liars; what they wanted was praise-the more effusive, the better. But then, he thought, who didn’t? Probe deeply enough, under the slickest façade of confidence, and you tapped a vein of self-doubt or a hidden fear. Irrational fears and baseless doubts, many of them, but that was precisely why constant reassurance was necessary to the human animal. Maybe, if you reduced the thing to its simplest terms, that was the secret of his success as a biographer. Find the Hidden Fear. Well, at least he didn’t sneer at other people’s weaknesses, even if they were not his own.

  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.

  Chapter 2

  I

  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 wro
ng 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…