The Forgotten Room(22)

Not that she had memorized it, or any of the others. Not that she could picture his quick handwriting, or hear the sound of Harry Pratt’s voice as he ate with the family in the massive paneled dining room a few yards away from her, a world away from her.

Not that she remembered each time they had passed in the hallway: the flash of the electric light on his wheat-colored hair, the brightening of his face—like Mr. Jungmann, only lit by a thousand more watts—and the glimpse of his smile before she looked down at the rug and hurried on, and on, and on, usually forgetting where she was going.

Hoping he would touch her arm and stop her.

Praying to God that he would not.

He never did, and sometimes she wondered if she had imagined the whole thing: the quiet star-filled night in the room at the top of the stairs, the pencil that moved in eager little jerks, the expression on Harry’s face, the things he had said. The way he had looked at her, as if she were a goddess instead of a housemaid. An angel, instead of a bitter young woman contemplating a sordid revenge on the family under whose roof she lived.

But it was better this way, wasn’t it? Better that she pretended it hadn’t happened. Better that the door to the room upstairs remained shut, because what beckoned beyond it—she had a vague impression of colors and vibrancy and imagination and laughter, something extraordinary and never ending—was nothing more than a fairy tale. Medieval allegory, that was what Harry called it, but what was medieval allegory except a fairy tale?

The kind of fairy tale her father used to read to her at night, before he died.

Olive crossed Fifth Avenue, dodging a pair of clattering half-empty omnibuses, and turned to walk northward with the park at her side. The basket was heavy now, but she didn’t care. She gazed over the wall and across the brown thicket of winter trees, the distant towers of Belvedere Castle. Above them, the sky was gray, contemplating snow. For a moment, she imagined walking through that empty demi-wilderness next to Harry, not saying anything, simply existing in a tender equilibrium in which there were no such things as housemaids and mansions and—

“Olive.”

A figure rose from the bench ahead, and Olive had just enough time to gasp before Harry Pratt appeared before her under a peaked wool cap, smiling and woeful at once, his jaw square against the folds of his India cashmere scarf, looking so much like he had in her imagination that she hovered, for an instant, in a kind of delicious netherworld of hope. A medieval allegory.

“Mr. Pratt! What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you. Freezing to death.”

“But that’s ridiculous.”

“Yes, it is, isn’t it? You haven’t left me any choice, however.” He slapped his gloved hands together. “Haven’t you read my notes?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I’m going to be late.”

He laid his hand on her elbow. “Please, Olive. Only a moment. We’ll go into the park, if you like.”

She glanced at the world to her left, and back at Harry’s pleading face.

“Say yes,” he whispered, lifting the basket from the crook of her elbow.

She heard herself break in two. “Just for a minute.”

What a smile he gave her, what a reward for giving in. He held her basket with one hand and took her arm with the other, and they slipped through the gap in the wall and into the artificial urban forest, all by themselves, and Olive thought, This is so foolish. What am I doing?

Harry said, “You’re going to model for me again.”

“What?”

“You must. I can’t sleep. I’ve never had so many ideas, never been so ready to work. Do you know what that’s like? As if my fingers and my brain are going to burst. Every time I see you, it all spreads in front of me with so much clarity, this perfect vision of what I have to paint. What I was meant to paint, what I was put on this earth to create. And then you disappear, and it’s gone. No, worse. It’s there, like a dream when you’ve just woken up, and you can’t quite touch it.”

He stopped to catch his breath, as if he’d been keeping the words at bay for too long, and they had come out of him too quickly. His arm was snug around her elbow. He smelled a little bit like the house itself, of wood and smoke but also soap, that same intimate scent that had drawn her in a week ago. She turned her face away, but it was too late. Her ribs hurt. Of all the stupid things, to be in love with the smell of soap.

“This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Go ahead and pretend you don’t feel it.”

“I don’t feel anything at all, except a big heap of admiration for your technique. Tell me, how many housemaids have you lured in this way?”

He stopped in the path and set down the basket and turned toward her. His white breath curled around hers, and his cheekbones were stained the most edible shade of apple pink. “None.”

“Well, you sound like an expert.”

Harry was frowning down at her, in such a way that even the most cynical and sensible girl in the world would want to smooth away the furrow in his brow, to push back the lock of hair on his forehead and tuck it under his cap. To let him do whatever he wanted to her.

Until the next girl turned up.

“All right,” he said. “Fair enough. I know I sound like an idiot. I’ll take you back to the house, and we can pretend we’ve never met before. If that’s what makes you feel better, Olive. If that’s what will make you happy. I guess, if we do, I’m only back where I was a week ago, all restless and frustrated, wanting to just get drunk and forget about everything. Thinking there was no point in anything, that I was all by myself in the middle of a wilderness. But just tell me one thing, Olive. Give me one little word.”