Last Ditch

by Ngaio Marsh

  Carlotta said sharply: ‘Louis, do keep your techniques for another setting.’

  Louis gave what Ricky thought of as a bedroom laugh, cuddled Susie up and closed his hand over hers on the wheel.

  ‘Behave,’ he said. ‘Bad girl.’

  They arrived at the lane that descended precipitously into the Cove. Louis took charge, drove pretty rapidly down it and pulled up in front of the Ferrant cottage.

  ‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘Abode of the dark yet passing-fair Marie. Is she still dark and passing-fair, by the way?’

  Nobody answered.

  Louis said very loudly: ‘Any progeny? Oh, but of course. I forgot.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Jasper said, in a tone of voice that Ricky hadn’t heard from him before.

  He and Julia and Carlotta together said good night to Ricky, who by this time was outside the car. He shut the door as quietly as he could and stood back. Louis reversed noisily and much too fast. He called out something that sounded like: ‘Give her my love.’ The car shot away in low gear and roared up the lane.

  Upstairs on the dark landing Ricky could hear Ferrant snoring prodigiously and pictured him with his red hair and high colour and his mouth wide open. Evidently he had not gone fishing that night.

  IV

  In her studio in Chelsea, Troy shoved her son’s letter into the pocket

  of her painting smock and said:

  ‘He’s fallen for Julia Pharamond.’

  ‘Has he, now?’ said Alleyn. ‘Does he announce it in so many words?’

  ‘No, but he manages to drag her into every other sentence of his letter. Take a look.’

  Alleyn read his son’s letter with a lifted eyebrow. ‘I see what you mean,’ he said presently.

  ‘Oh well,’ Troy muttered. ‘It’ll be one girl and then another, I suppose, and then, with any luck, just one and that a nice one. In the meantime, she’s very attractive. Isn’t she?’

  ‘A change from dirty feet, jeans, and beads in the soup, at least.’

  ‘She’s beautiful,’ said Troy.

  ‘He may tire of her heavenly inconsequence.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Well, I would. They seem to be taking quite a lot of trouble over him. Kind of them.’

  ‘He’s a jolly nice young man,’ Troy said firmly.

  Alleyn chuckled and read on in silence.

  ‘Why,’ Troy asked presently, ‘do you suppose they live on that island?’

  ‘Dodging taxation. They’re clearly a very clannish lot. The other two are there.’

  ‘The cousins that came on board at Acapulco?’

  ‘Yes,’ Alleyn said. ‘It was a sort of enclave of cousins.’

  ‘The Louis’s seem to live with the Jaspers, don’t they?’

  ‘Looks like it.’ Alleyn turned a page of the letter. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘besotted or not, he seems to be writing quite steadily.’

  ‘I wonder if his stuff’s any good, Rory? Do you wonder?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ he said, and went to her.

  ‘It can be tough going, though, can’t it?’

  ‘Didn’t you swan through a similar stage?’

  ‘Now I come to think of it,’ Troy said, squeezing a dollop of flake white on her palette, ‘I did. I wouldn’t tell my parents anything about my young men and I wouldn’t show them anything I painted. I can’t imagine why.’

  ‘You gave me the full treatment when I first saw you, didn’t you? About your painting?’

  ‘Did I? No, I didn’t. Shut up,’ said Troy, laughing. She began to paint.

  ‘That’s the new brand of colour, isn’t it? Jerome et Cie?’ said Alleyn, and picked up a tube.

  ‘They sent it for free. Hoping I’d talk about it, I suppose. The white and the earth colours are all right but the primaries aren’t too hot. Rather odd, isn’t it, that Rick should mention them?’ ‘Rick? Where?’

  ‘You haven’t got to the bit about his new painting chum and the pregnant equestrienne.’

  ‘For the love of Mike!’ Alleyn grunted and read on. ‘I must say,’ he said, when he’d finished, ‘he can write, you know, darling. He can indeed.’

  Troy put down her palette, flung her arm round him and pushed her head into his shoulder. ‘He’ll do us nicely,’ she said, ‘won’t he? But it was quite a coincidence, wasn’t it? About Jerome et Cie and their paint?’

  ‘In a way,’ said Alleyn, ‘I suppose it was.’

  V

  On the morning after the party, Ricky apologized to Mrs Ferrant for the noisy return in the small hours, and although Mr Ferrant’s snores were loud in his memory, said he was afraid he had been disturbed.

  ‘It’d take more than that to rouse him,’ she said. She never referred to her husband by name. ‘I heard you. Not you but him. Pharamond. The older one.’

  She gave Ricky a sideways look that he couldn’t fathom. Derisive? Defiant? Sly? Whatever lay behind her manner, it was certainly not that of an ex-domestic cook, however emancipated. She left him with the feeling that the corner of a curtain had been lifted and dropped before he could see what lay beyond it.

  During the week he saw nothing of the Pharamonds except in one rather curious incident on the Thursday evening. Feeling the need of a change of scene, he had wheeled his bicycle up the steep lane, pedalled along the road to Montjoy and at a point not far from L’Esperance had left his machine by the wayside and walked towards the cliff-edge.

  The evening was brilliant and the Channel, for once, blue with patches of bedazzlement. He sat down with his back to a warm rock at a place where the cliff opened into a ravine through which a rough path led between clumps of wild broom, down to the sea. The air was heady and a salt breeze felt for his lips. A lark sang and Ricky would have liked a girl – any girl – to come up through the broom from the sea with a reckless face and the sun in her eyes.

  Instead, Louis Pharamond came up the path. He was below Ricky, who looked at the top of his head. He leant forward, climbing, swinging his arms, his chin down.

  Ricky didn’t want to encounter Louis. He shuffled quickly round the rock and lay on his face. He heard Louis pass by on the other side. Ricky waited until the footsteps died away, wondering at his own behaviour.

  He was about to get up when he heard a displaced stone roll down the path. The crown of a head and the top of a pair of shoulders appeared below him. Grossly foreshortened though they were, there was no mistaking who they belonged to. Ricky sank down behind his rock and let Miss Harkness, in her turn, pass him by.

  He rode back to the cottage.

  He was gradually becoming persona grata at the pub. He was given a ‘good evening’ when he came in and warmed up to when, his work having prospered that day, he celebrated by standing drinks all round. Bill Prentice, the fish-truck driver, offered to give him a lift into Montjoy if ever he fancied it. They settled for the coming morning. It was then that Miss Harkness came into the bar alone.

  Her entrance was followed by a shuffling of feet and by the exchange of furtive smiles. She ordered a glass of port. Ferrant, leaning back against the bar in his favourite pose, looked her over. He said something that Ricky couldn’t hear and raised a guffaw. She smiled slightly. Ricky realized that with her entrance the atmosphere in the Cod-and-Bottle had become that of the stud. And that not a man there was unaware of it. So this, he thought, is what Miss Harkness is about.

  The next morning, very early, Ricky tied his bicycle to the roof of the fish-truck and himself climbed into the front seat.

  He was taken aback to find that Syd Jones was to be a fellowpassenger. Here he came, hunched up in a dismal mackintosh, with his paintbox slung over his shoulder, a plastic carrier-bag and a large and superior suitcase which seemed to be unconscionably heavy.

  ‘Hullo,’ Ricky said. ‘Are you moving into the Hotel Montjoy, with your grand suitcase?’

  ‘Why the hell would I do that?’

  ‘All right, all right, let it pass. Sorry.’

  ‘I’m af
raid I don’t fall about at upper-middle-class humour.’

  ‘My mistake,’ said Ricky. ‘I do better in the evenings.’

  ‘I haven’t noticed it.’

  ‘You may be right. Here comes Bill. Where are you going to put your case? On the roof with my upper-middle-class bike?’

  ‘In front. Shift your feet. Watch it.’

  He heaved the case up, obviously with an effort, pushed it along the floor under Ricky’s legs and climbed up. Bill Prentice, redolent of fish, mounted the driver’s seat, Syd nursed his paintbox and Ricky was crammed in between them.

  It was a sparkling morning. The truck rattled up the steep lane, they came out into sunshine at the top and banged along the main road to Montjoy. Ricky was in good spirits.

  They passed the entry into Leathers with its signboard: ‘Riding Stables. Hacks and Ponies for hire. Qualified Instructors.’ He wondered if Miss Harkness was up and about. He shouted above the engine to Syd: ‘You don’t go there every day, do you?’

  ‘Definitely bloody not,’ Syd shouted back. It was the first time Ricky had heard him raise his voice.

  The road made a blind turn round a dense copse. Bill took it on the wrong side at forty miles an hour.

  The windscreen was filled with Miss Harkness on a plunging bay horse, all teeth and eyes and flying hooves. An underbelly and straining girth reared into sight. The brakes shrieked, the truck skidded, the world turned sideways, and the passenger’s door flew open. Syd Jones, his paintbox and his suitcase shot out. The van rocked and sickeningly righted itself on the verge in a cloud of dust. The horse could be seen struggling on the ground and its rider on her feet with the reins still in her hands. The engine had stopped and the air was shattered by imprecations – a three-part disharmony from Bill, Syd and, predominantly, Miss Harkness.

  Bill turned off the ignition, dragged his hand-brake on, got out and approached Miss Harkness, who told him with oaths to keep off. Without a pause in her stream of abuse she encouraged her mount to clamber to its feet, checked its impulse to bolt and began gently to examine it; her great horny hand passed with infinite delicacy down its trembling legs and heaving barrel. It was, Ricky saw, a wall-eyed horse.

  ‘Keep the hell out of it,’ she said softly. ‘You’ll hear about this.’

  She led the horse along the far side of the road and past the truck. It snorted and plunged but she calmed it. When they had gone some distance, she mounted. The sound of its hooves, walking, diminished. Bill began to swear again.

  Ricky slid out of the truck on the passenger’s side. The paintbox had burst open and its contents were scattered about the grass. The catches on the suitcase had been sprung and the lid had flown back. Ricky saw that it was full of unopened cartons of Jerome et Cie’s paints. Syd Jones squatted on the verge, collecting tubes and fitting them back into their compartments.

  Ricky stooped to help him.

  ‘Cut that out!’ he snarled.

  ‘Very well, you dear little man,’ Ricky said, with a strong inclination to throw one at his head. He took a step backwards, felt something give under his heel and looked down. He had trodden on a large tube of vermilion and burst the end open. Paint had spurted over his shoe.

  ‘Oh damn, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m most awfully sorry.’

  He reached for the depleted tube. It was snatched from under his hand. Syd, on his knees, the tube in his grasp and his fingers reddened, mouthed at him. What he said was short and unprintable.

  ‘Look,’ Ricky said. ‘I’ve said I’m sorry. I’ll pay for the paint and if you feel like a fight you’ve only to say so and we’ll shape up and make fools of ourselves here and now. How about it?’

  Syd was crouched over his task. He mumbled something that might have been ‘Forget it.’ Ricky, feeling silly, walked round to the other side of the truck. It was being inspected by Bill Prentice with much the same intensity as Miss Harkness had displayed when she examined her horse. The smell of petrol now mingled with the smell of fish.

  ‘She’s OK,’ Bill said at last and climbed into the driver’s seat. ‘Silly bitch,’ he added, referring to Miss Harkness, and started up the engine.

  Syd loomed up on the far side with his suitcase, round which he had buckled his belt. His jeans drooped from his hip-bones as if from a coat-hanger.

  ‘Hang on a sec,’ Bill shouted.

  He engaged his gear and the truck lurched back on the road. Syd waited. Ricky walked round to the passenger’s side. To his astonishment, Syd observed on what sounded like a placatory note: ‘Bike’s OK, then?’

  They climbed on board and the journey continued. Bill’s strictures upon Miss Harkness were severe and modified only, Ricky felt, out of consideration for Syd’s supposed feelings. The burden of his plaint was that horse-traffic should be forbidden on the roads.

  ‘What was she on about?’ he complained. ‘The horse was OK.’

  ‘It was Mungo,’ Syd offered. ‘She’s crazy about it. Savage brute of a thing.’

  ‘That so?’

  ‘Bit me. Kicked the old man. He wants to have it destroyed.’

  ‘Is it all right with her?’ asked Ricky.

  ‘So she reckons. It’s an outlaw with everyone else.’

  They arrived at the only petrol station between the Cove and Montjoy. Bill pulled into it for fuel and oil and held the attendant rapt with an exhaustive coverage of the incident.

  Syd complained in his dull voice: ‘I’ve got a bloody boat to catch, haven’t I?’

  Ricky, who was determined not to make advances, looked at his watch and said that there was time in hand.

  After an uncomfortable silence Syd said, ‘I’m funny about my painting gear. You know? I can’t do with anyone else handling it. You know? If anyone else scrounges my paint, you know, borrows some, I can’t use that tube again. It’s kind of contaminated. Get what I mean?’

  Ricky thought that what he seemed to mean was a load of highfalutin’ balls, but he gave a tolerant grunt and after a moment or two Syd began to talk. Ricky could only suppose that he was trying to make amends. His discourse was obscure but it transpired that he had been given some kind of agency by Jerome et Cie. He was to leave free samples of their paints at certain shops and with a number of well-known painters, in return for which he was given his fare, as much of their products for his own use as he cared to ask for and a small commission on sales. He produced their business card with a note, ‘Introducing Mr Sydney Jones’, written on it. He showed Ricky the list of painters they had given him. Ricky was not altogether surprised to find his mother’s name at the top.

  With as ill a grace as could be imagined, he said he supposed Ricky ‘wouldn’t come at putting the arm on her’, which Ricky interpreted as a suggestion that he should give Syd an introduction to his mother.

  ‘When are you going to pay your calls?’ Ricky asked.

  The next day, it seemed. And it turned out that Syd was spending the night with friends who shared a pad in Battersea. Jerome et Cie had expressed the wish that he should modify his personal appearance.

  ‘Bloody commercial shit,’ he said violently. ‘Make you vomit, wouldn’t it?’

  They arrived at the wharves in Montjoy at half past eight. Ricky watched the crates of fish being loaded into the ferry and saw Syd Jones go up the gangplank. He waited until the ferry sailed. Syd had vanished, but at the last moment he re-appeared on deck wearing his awful raincoat and with his paintbox still slung over his shoulder.

  Ricky spent a pleasant day in Montjoy and bicycled back to the Cove in the late afternoon.

  Rather surprisingly, the Ferrants had a telephone. That evening Ricky put a call through to his parents advising them of the approach of Sydney Jones.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Gap

  ‘As far as I can see,’ Alleyn said, ‘he’s landing us with a sort of monster.’

  ‘He thinks it might amuse us to meet him after all we’ve heard.’

  ‘It had better,’ Alleyn said mildly. />
  ‘It’s only for a minute or two.’

  ‘When do you expect him?’

  ‘Some time in the morning, I imagine.’

  ‘What’s the betting he stays for luncheon?’

  Troy stood before her husband in the attitude that he particularly enjoyed, with her back straight, her hands in the pockets of her painting smock and her chin down rather like a chidden little boy.

  ‘And what’s the betting,’ he went on, ‘my own true love, that before you can say Flake White, he’s showing you a little something he’s done himself.’

  ‘That,’ said Troy grandly, ‘would be altogether another pair of boots and I should know how to deal with them. And anyway he told Rick he thinks I’ve painted myself out.’

  ‘He grows more attractive every second.’

  ‘It was funny about the way he behaved when Rick trod on his vermilion.’

  Alleyn didn’t answer at once. ‘It was, rather,’ he said at last. ‘Considering he gets the stuff free.’

  ‘Trembling with rage, Rick said, and his beard twitching.’

  ‘Delicious.’

  ‘Oh well,’ said Troy, suddenly brisk. ‘We can but see.’

  ‘That’s the stuff. I must be off.’ He kissed her. ‘Don’t let this Jones fellow make a nuisance of himself,’ he said. ‘As usual, my patient Penny-lope, there’s no telling when I’ll be home. Perhaps for lunch or perhaps I’ll be in Paris. It’s that narcotics case. I’ll get them to telephone. Bless you.’

  ‘And you,’ said Troy cheerfully.

  She was painting a tree in their garden from within the studio. At the heart of her picture was an exquisite little silver birch just starting to burgeon and treated with delicate and detailed realism. But this tree was at the core of its own diffusion a larger and much more stylized version of itself and that, in turn, melted into an abstract of the two trees it enclosed. Alleyn said it was like the unwinding of a difficult case with the abstractions on the outside and the implacable ‘thing itself’ at the hard centre. He had begged her to stop before she went too far.