The Velvet Room (8 page)

When Robin finished, Gwen sighed. “It sounds great when you tell it, but it took me all month to read those ten pages. I guess it’s because I
have
to read it.”

“Why do you have to read it?” Robin asked. “You don’t go to school in the summertime, do you?”

“
No, but I was awful in English last year, and Mother wants me to get good grades so I can go to a boarding school back East, where she used to go. So she said I had to read all these Junior Classics things this summer. When I say I’ve read one, she makes me tell her all about it. So now I can tell her all about
Ivanhoe.”

“That isn’t exactly honest,” Robin said, but she couldn’t help smiling.

“
Don’t worry about it. You didn’t keep me from reading it, because I wouldn’t have read it anyhow. And I won’t lie about it. I’ll just say, ‘I’m ready to tell you about
Ivanhoe
now,’ and everyone will be happy.”

They both laughed. Then Gwen puckered up her forehead and looked at Robin intently. “You don’t have any accent,” she said. It wasn’t a question, but it sounded like one.

Robin had almost forgotten about being careful and was just having fun the way you have fun with anyone, but now she felt herself stiffen. “Accent?” she asked. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you don’t talk like an — like you were from Oklahoma. Didn’t you come from the dust bowl?”

Robin got up. “No,” she said, “I didn’t live in the dust bowl. But I’ve lived in a Model T for three years. I have to go home now.” She started for the door.

“Look, don’t go getting mad. It’s just that most of the people who travel around after harvest jobs haven’t been in California very long. I just wondered, that’s all.”

Robin stopped. She knew that people asked questions for all sorts of reasons, but something made her feel that Gwen really was just curious — and interested. The first thing Robin knew she was sitting on the bed telling Gwen all about her family and how things used to be in Fresno. How Dad had studied to be a musician, but his father had died and he had had to come back home to run the dairy for his mother. How he met Mama, who was very young and pretty and worked as an usherette in a movie theater in Fresno, and they were married. Then Dad’s mother died too, but he couldn’t go back to studying because babies started coming along: Rudy and Theda and Robin and Cary. Then there was the depression, and Dad had pneumonia, and the house and dairy and everything had had to be sold. Dad had held another job for a little while, but he got sick again; and Shirley was born, and she was sick all the time too. Finally there wasn’t any money to pay the rent, and they’d heard about jobs in the crops in the Sacramento Valley. So they’d packed everything in the Model T and headed north. And that’s the way it had been ever since.

“Gee!” Gwen said. “That’s too bad. But some of it sounds like fun. I mean camping out and all.”

Robin didn’t really agree, but she said, “Well, maybe. But not as much fun as when you do it because you want to.”

“
I guess not. Nothing’s much fun if you
have
to do it. It’s the same way with reading.” Gwen rolled over and propped her feet on their white sandals on the head of the bed. “And I’ll bet your mother hated the camping. Mine would. She wouldn’t stand for it a minute.”

Robin was surprised to see that Gwen was serious. She didn’t seem to see that what she’d said was funny. It was like saying that her mother wouldn’t stand for earthquakes. “I don’t know whether Mama hates it or not,” Robin said. “I don’t think she believes it, really. Mama thinks everything turns out the way it does in the movies. She always thinks everything’s going to be all right in a day or two.”

There was the sound of footsteps in the hall, and the door was opened by a tall woman with short blond hair. She was wearing white gloves and a big round hat. Gwen said, “Hi, Mom,” without even looking around. The woman said hello and smiled at Robin, but it was a rather short smile.

“Gwen,” she said. “I’ve asked you not to sit on your bed.”

Robin stood up quickly. Gwen said, “I’m not sitting on it. I’m lying on it,” but she got up and sat down in a chair.

Mrs. McCurdv smoothed the wrinkles out of the white spread and then stooped to look in the mirror of Gwen’s vanity table. She patted her hair and adjusted the big hat. Then she stood up and just looked at Gwen and Robin. “Well,” she said at last, “I don’t believe we’ve met. Gwen, I think an introduction is in order.”

Gwen sighed and stood up. “Mom, this is Robin Williams. Robin, I’d like you to meet my mom.”

“How do you do, Robin,” Mrs. McCurdy said. “It’s nice of you to visit us.” Her smile was cool and beautiful. “Gwen,” she said, “would you come with me. I’d like to see you for a moment.”

Robin stood in the middle of the room, feeling awkward and listening to the sound of voices from just outside the bedroom door. After a while Gwen came back in the room. She grinned and shrugged.

“I guess I’ll go now.” Robin said.

“Oh, wait a while,” Gwen said. “I want to talk some more. You don’t have to go right now.” But just at that moment the phone rang. Gwen sat down on the bed again to answer it. “Oh, hi, Bob,” she said. “Nothing much…sure I would…swell, I’ll be right over.”

Gwen hung up the phone. “That was Bob Walters. He lives in the brick house up the highway toward Santa Luisa. We’re teaching Mirlo to be a jumper. The Walters have a practice ring and some jumps. I guess we can talk some other time. O.K.?”

Five minutes later Robin was once more on her way down the gravel road toward the Village. She stopped once and looked at the McCurdy’s house. With its smooth curved lines and gleaming glass it looked like a huge hot igloo. Closing her eyes, she pictured cool gray walls under sheltering oaks. Then she turned around and began to run again, limping a little on the leg with the skinned knee.

A
LL THROUGH THE LONG HOT AFTERNOON
Robin looked for a chance to slip away to the stone house. She found an old broken candle in one of Mama’s kitchen boxes and managed to hide it with a box of matches under the bottom step. It would be handy there in case she had to leave quickly. But then, before she could get away, Mama asked her to take Shirley for a walk under the eucalyptus trees to get her out of the heat of the cabin. Shirley wouldn’t go outdoors alone to play. Not even today when her hair was hanging around her face in soggy little wisps and her skin looked like wet tissue paper. Of all the things Robin didn’t want to do that afternoon, walking with a whiny baby just about topped the list. So she started off fast and silently with her head down, hoping that Shirley would get bored and want to go home. But after a while Shirley took hold of Robin’s hand and smiled a hopeful, worried smile. It really
was
too late to get to the stone house and back before dinner, anyway. So Robin began making little houses out of eucalyptus bark, and she and Shirley played with them till dinnertime.

That night Robin decided to go to bed early so morning would come more quickly, but it was hard to get to sleep. It was a bright moonlit night, and it stayed warm much later than usual. Most of the Village kids were up late playing hide-and-go-seek and run-sheep-run. Mama and Dad were sitting out in front of the cabin next door, talking to the neighbors, Jim and Mabel Brown. Robin was alone in the cabin, except for Shirley, who was asleep in the other room.

After a while she gave up trying to go to sleep and pulled her cot over against the window. Everything was strangely beautiful. The dusty yard with its pile of auto parts looked different. And the rest of the Village, too, seemed less ugly and makeshift. It was as if the whole world had been slip-covered in the strange, soft fabric of moonlight. Robin had never liked nighttime much. She wasn’t too brave about the dark, and then, too, things had a way of growing from bad to worse if you thought about them in the night. But suddenly she saw things quite differently. How wonderful it was that day ended — that there would always be hours that were soft and secret and dim, to hide things for a while from the hard brightness of day. She sat and watched until it was quite late; then a cool breeze began to blow in through the open window and she went to sleep.

As soon as breakfast was over the next morning, Robin was on her way to Bridget’s. She stopped at the stone house and hid the candle and matches under some dry leaves in the old fountain. Bridget was out tending her garden, but she seemed to know that Robin was in a hurry and didn’t stop to chat. So it was still very early on a warm June morning when Robin finally climbed down the ladder in the dry well, carrying her candle and matches.

She was partway down when she noticed a metal handle on the underside of the well cover. It looked as if it would be possible to use it to slide the cover back over the opening. That seemed like a good idea. Then, if someone did happen to come along, the well wouldn’t be standing open.

Robin climbed down to the bottom, lit the candle, and propped it up against the wall. Then she went back up the ladder and, by tugging with both hands, managed to slide the well lid back over the opening. Now the only light in the dry well came from the flickering candle.

As Robin stood facing the tunnel door, the beat of her heart grew louder and louder. She reached for the door pull and then stopped, remembering how black it was inside. Clenching her teeth and holding her breath, Robin inched the door open, keeping her eyes on the tiny flame. She smelled the dampness and felt cold air moving around her. The flame wavered and she caught her breath in a sharp gasp; but it straightened again and went on burning. The tiny light trembled into the blackness, and it became apparent that the tunnel was lined with stone. The moving flame made hundreds of wiggling shadows on the rough walls. Robin bit her lip and stepped forward.

The old well was not very far from the adobe portion of the big house; but to Robin, inching her way forward fearfully, the passage seemed at least a block long. She began to think that she must have passed right under the house and that she was now heading off into nothingness. But just as she was beginning to despair, the tunnel ended in a flight of stone stairs.

The stairs led up and up until they came to what seemed to be a tinv room with no doors or windows. But the walls of this room were not the same as the cold damp walls in the tunnel. They were warm and had a chalky feeling. Holding the candle closer, Robin recognized the rough surface of adobe bricks. For the first time since she had entered the tunnel, she took a real breath. She must be inside the adobe wing of Palmeras House.

Three of the walls of the tiny room were the same: adobe bricks. But the fourth wall was different. It was made of wood, and there was a metal handle just like the one on the well door. Robin took hold of the handle and pulled gently. Nothing happened! She pulled harder, but still there was not the slightest movement. It felt as if she were pulling on a solid wall. Suddenly she was frightened again, and grabbing the door, she pulled with all her might. Still nothing moved. There was no way out! For an awful moment she could think of nothing but getting out of the tunnel.

She was halfway down the flight of stairs before she came to a halt. If she left now, would she ever be able to make herself come back? It was awful to give up when she had come so far. Robin clenched her teeth, and even though the candle was shaking in her hand, she turned and climbed slowly back up the stairs.

Back in the tiny stuffy room, she forced herself to stop and think. There must be an answer, if only she weren’t too scared to reason it out. There must be some way…She put out her hand, and taking hold of the handle, she — pushed! And the door swung open so easily that she almost fell forward. It was as simple as that.

Robin found herself in a large empty room. By the dim light that entered between the boards over the windows, she could see that the room was long and narrow and the ceiling was crossed by heavy beams. A few feet to her left was an immense fireplace. The only furniture in the room was a beautifully carved set of shelves, like a bookcase, that was built into a recess on the other side of the fireplace. Looking behind herself, Robin found that she had entered the room through a similar recess, and that the door that had swung open to admit her was the back of a matching bookcase. She pushed the bookcase back in place, and there seemed to be no door at all — only two built-in bookcases, one on each side of the hearth.

The candle wasn’t necessary any more, so she blew it out and put it in her pocket. She started across the room on tiptoe. There probably wasn’t any need to be so quiet, but she couldn’t seem to help it. Not that she was frightened, because she wasn’t — only terribly excited. But her pulse was still pounding a little in the hollow at the base of her throat.

At one end of the big room there was a narrow staircase with ornately carved posts and banisters, but Robin decided to explore the bottom floor first. The next room was very much like the first, except that there was no staircase, and the only piece of furniture was a gigantic table with carved legs as big around as Robin’s body. Another room, with a red tile floor and a huge fireplace with a dome-shaped oven built right into the hearth, had unmistakably been the kitchen. Those three rooms made up the adobe part of the house downstairs.

The upstairs rooms were smaller. They had long windows that opened like doors to the balcony, which ran all along the adobe wing. That is, they had once opened onto the balcony before they too had been boarded up. Except for a huge, heavy chest of drawers in one room and a bare bed frame in another, the rooms were entirely empty. The floors were bare, and there were no pictures on the walls or curtains on the windows. In the empty rooms, careful tiptoeing steps echoed hollowly with frightening loudness.

Back in the room with the two bookcases, Robin turned toward the stone portion of the house. At one end of the room there was a large set of double doors. The wood of these doors was not the same as the wood in the Spanish part of the house. It was so shiny and smooth that it felt almost like glass. Beyond those doors the stone part of the house must begin, the beautiful stone house with its tower, its arches, and its stone walls.