The Boy Who Followed Ripley

by Patricia Highsmith

  This was the friend Lily liked, according to Frank. Lily was saying that Tal had work this afternoon, so probably couldn’t arrive until six. “And I have to see about taking off,” Tom said. “I thought of staying a day or so in New York.”

  “But you’re not leaving today, I hope. Phone your wife in France and tell her. That’s the thing to do!— Frank says you have such a pretty house there. He was telling me about your greenhouse and—the two Derwatts you have in your living room and also about your harpsichord.”

  “Was he?” His and Heloise’s French harpsichord amid helicopters, Maine lobsters, and an American black named Evangelina! It struck a surrealist note to Tom. “With your permission,” Tom said, “I will make a phone call or two.”

  “Make yourself at home here, Tom!”

  From his room Tom telephoned the Hotel Chelsea in Manhattan, and asked if they had a single room for that night. A friendly voice said they could probably manage it with a little bit of Irish luck. That was good enough. Tom thought he should take his leave after lunch. Some neighbors called the Hunters were coming at four, Lily had said, because they were very fond of Frank and wanted to see him. Tom supposed that the Pierson household could get him some kind of transportation to Bangor, whence he could take a plane to New York.

  Maine lobster was exactly what they had for lunch, as if Tom had received a premonition. Before lunch, he and Frank had driven to the town of Kennebunkport with Eugene at the wheel of a station wagon, and picked up the commanded lobsters. The town had sent a wave of nostalgia over Tom that had almost brought tears to his eyes: white house fronts and store fronts, a freshness in the sea air, sunlight, and American sparrows in trees still heavy with summer foliage—all of which had made Tom think he had made a mistake in leaving America. But this he had put out of his head at once, since it was a depressing and baffling feeling, and he had reminded himself that he was going to bring Heloise to America in late October, or whenever she got back and recovered from her Adventure Cruise, which as Tom recollected was to the Antarctic.

  Though Frank had looked surprised and disappointed when Tom said he was leaving that afternoon, the boy appeared cheerful at lunch. Was Frank pretending good humor, Tom wondered? Frank had put on a handsome pale-blue linen jacket, though he still wore his blue jeans. “The same wine we drank at Tom’s,” he said to his mother, lifting his stemmed glass with a flourish. “Sancerre. I asked Eugene to find it. In fact I went to the cellar with him to get it.”

  “It is delicious,” said Lily, smiling at Tom, as if it were Tom’s wine and not hers.

  “Heloise is very pretty, Mom,” Frank said, and dipped a fork with lobster into his melted butter.

  “You think so? I’ll tell her,” said Tom.

  Frank placed a hand over his stomach and pretended to belch, a silent performance that was also half a bow, for Tom’s benefit.

  Johnny devoted himself to his food, and said only something to his mother about a girl called Christine possibly coming at seven, and he didn’t know whether they would go somewhere for dinner or stay in.

  “Girls, girls, girls,” Frank said contemptuously.

  “Shuddup, you little twit,” murmured Johnny. “Are you jealous maybe?”

  “Now stop it, both of you,” said Lily.

  It sounded like a usual family lunch.

  By three, Tom had made his arrangements, reserved a place on an early evening flight from Bangor to Kennedy Airport, and Eugene would drive him to Bangor. Tom packed his suitcase but did not close it. He went into the hall and tapped on Frank’s slightly open door. There was no answer. Tom pushed the door wider and went in. The room was empty and tidy, the bed probably having been made by Evangelina. On Frank’s desk sat the Berlin bear, some twelve inches high, its beady brown eyes ringed with yellow, its mouth jolly though closed. Tom remembered Frank’s amusement at the handwritten sign: 3 WÜRFE 1 MARK. Frank had thought Würfe a funny word for throws, because it sounded like something to eat, or maybe a dog’s bark. How had the little bear survived a kidnapping, a murder, a couple of airplane trips, and come out looking as fluffy and cheerful as ever? Tom had wanted to ask Frank to join him for another walk to the cliff. Tom had the feeling that if he could get the boy used to the cliff, though “used” wasn’t quite the right word for it, Frank’s guilt might be diminished.

  “I think Frank went off with Johnny to get his bicycle tires pumped up,” Lily said to Tom downstairs.

  “I thought he might come for a little walk, since I’ve got about an hour,” Tom said.

  “They should be back any minute, and I’m sure Frank would. He thinks you hung the moon, Tom.”

  Tom hadn’t heard this complimentary term since he had been a teenager in Boston. He went out onto the lawn, onto the flagstone path. He wanted to see the cliff by daylight. Somehow the path seemed longer, then suddenly he was beyond the trees, with the beautiful view of blue water before him, perhaps not as blue as the Pacific, but still very blue and clean now. Seagulls let themselves be borne on the wind, and three or four little boats, one a sailboat, moved slowly on the wide surface. And then the cliff. It was a sudden ugliness to Tom. He walked closer to its edge, looking down at the grass that merged with stones then rock, and finally stopped with his feet eight or ten inches from the drop. Below, just as he had imagined, boulder-sized beige and white rocks lay tumbled as if by some landfall or rockfall in the not too distant past. Down where the water began, he could see little white waves lapping against the smaller rocks. He looked, stupidly, for some sign of the John Pierson catastrophe, such as a piece of chrome from the chair. He saw nothing manmade down there. John Pierson, if he had merely toppled his chair over at not much speed, would have hit jagged rocks thirty feet below, and would possibly have tumbled another couple of yards downward. Not even any bloodstains on the rocks now, Tom saw, and shuddered. He backed from the edge and turned.

  He glanced toward the house, which was hardly visible through the trees, just its dark gray roof ridge showing, and then he saw Frank on the path coming toward him, still in his blue jacket. Was the boy looking for him? Without thinking, Tom stepped to his right into a cluster of trees and behind some bushes. Would the boy look around? Call his name, if Frank thought he might have walked here? Tom realized that he was curious—maybe just to see the expression on the boy’s face as he approached the cliff. Now Frank was so close, Tom could see his straight brown hair bobbing a little with his steps.

  Frank’s eyes looked to left and right, at the trees, but Tom was well hidden.

  And also, Tom thought, probably his mother hadn’t told Frank that he had gone to the cliff, because Tom hadn’t said that. At any rate, Frank did not call Tom’s name, and did not look around again. Frank had his thumbs hooked in the front pockets of his Levi’s, and he strode slowly toward the cliff’s edge, a little arrogantly, swinging his feet. Now the boy’s whole figure was silhouetted against the beautiful blue sky, just perhaps twenty feet from Tom. The boy looked down. But mostly he looked at the sea, and he seemed, to Tom, to take a deep breath and to relax. Then he stepped backward, as Tom had done, looking down at his sneakered feet. He kicked his right foot backward, scattering a few pebbles, and took his thumbs from his pockets. He bent forward and at once ran.

  “Hey!” Tom shouted, and drove forward himself. Somehow he tripped, or perhaps had merely launched himself horizontally, but his hands had been extended, and he had Frank by one ankle.

  Frank was flat down, gasping, and his right arm hung over the cliff’s edge.

  “God’s sake!” Tom said, and gave Frank’s ankle a nervous tug toward him. Tom got to his feet, and hauled Frank up by one arm.

  The breath was knocked out of the boy, and his eyes looked glazed and unfocused.

  “What the hell were you doing?” Tom realized that his voice had gone hoarse suddenly. “Wake up!” Tom steadied Frank, felt in a state of shock himself, and pulled the boy by his arm toward the woods, the path. A bird cried just then, an odd squeak, as i
f the bird also was shocked. Tom stood up straighter and said, “All right, Frank. You almost did it. Same as doing it, isn’t it?— Quick reflex from hearing my voice? You flopped down like a football player!” Or had he? Had Tom stopped him by catching one ankle? Tom slapped the boy nervously on the back. “You’ve done it once now, okay. All right?”

  “Yep,” said Frank.

  “You mean it,” Tom said, as if asking him. “Don’t just say ‘Yep’ to me. You proved what you wanted to prove. Okay?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They were walking back toward the house. The wobbliness slowly left Tom’s legs, and he deliberately breathed deeply. “I won’t mention this. Let’s not mention this to anybody. All right, Frank?” He glanced at the boy who seemed as tall as himself suddenly.

  Frank was looking straight ahead, not at the house but beyond. “Right, Tom, sure.”

  22

  When Tom and Frank got back to the house, the Hunters had arrived. Tom would not have known this, if Frank had not pointed out a green car in the driveway. Tom would have thought it one of the Piersons’ cars.

  “I’m sure they’re up in the ocean view room,” Frank said, as if putting “ocean view” in quotes. “Mom always serves tea up there.” He looked at Tom’s suitcase, which someone had taken down and set near the front door.

  “Let’s have a drink of something. I could use one,” Tom said, and went to the sideboard or bar table which was nearly three yards long. “Any Drambuie, I wonder?”

  “Drambuie? I’m sure there is.”

  Tom watched him bend over the double row of bottles, index finger extended to the left, then the right, and he found it and hauled it up, smiling.

  “I remember this from your house.” Frank poured some into two brandy glasses.

  Frank’s hand was steady, Tom saw, but his face looked still pale as he lifted his glass. Tom joined him, and touched the boy’s glass. “This will do you good.”

  They drank. Tom noticed that the bottom button of his jacket front was hanging by a couple of threads, so he pulled it off and pocketed it, and brushed some dust away. The boy’s jacket had a rent about an inch long on the right breast.

  Frank swung on one heel of his sneaker, made a complete turn, and asked, “What time do you have to leave?”

  “Around five.” Tom saw by his wristwatch that it was a quarter past four. “I don’t feel like saying good-bye to Susie,” Tom said.

  “Oh, let it go!”

  “But your mom—”

  They went upstairs. Some color had returned to Frank’s cheeks, and his step was springy. Frank rapped on a white, half-open door, and he and Tom went in. This was a large room with wall-to-wall carpeting and three broad windows which took up the whole opposite wall and gave a view on the sea. Lily Pierson sat near a round low table, and a middle-aged couple who Tom supposed were the Hunters sat in armchairs. Johnny was standing up with a handful of photographs.

  “Where have you been?” asked Lily. “Come in, both of you. Betsy, this is Tom Ripley—who I’ve been talking so much about. Wally—finally Frank is back.”

  “Frank!” said the Hunters almost simultaneously, as the boy strolled forward, bowed a little, and shook Wally’s hand. “Are you boring these people with your junk again?” Frank asked his brother.

  “Finally I’ve met you,” said Wally Hunter, shaking Tom’s hand and looking into Tom’s eyes as if he, Tom, might be a miracle worker—or someone who might not really have existed—but Tom’s hand hurt.

  The Hunters, he in a tan cotton suit and his wife in a mauve cotton dress, looked the picture of Maine summer chic.

  “Tea, Frank?” asked his mother.

  “Yes, please.” Frank had not yet sat down.

  Tom declined tea. “I should be taking off, Lily.” She had asked him to call her Lily. “Eugene said he could drive me to Bangor.”

  Both Johnny and his mother spoke at once. Of course Eugene would drive him to Bangor. “Or I can,” Johnny said. They informed Tom that there were at least ten minutes to spare before he had to leave. Tom did not want to talk about the events in Europe, and Lily managed to steer Wally Hunter off, promising to tell him about France and Berlin at some other time. Betsy Hunter kept rather cool gray eyes on Tom, but Tom felt indifferent to what she might be thinking about him. Tom also felt indifferent to the arrival of Talmadge Stevens, earlier than expected. The Hunters seemed to know him and like him, judging from their greetings.

  Lily introduced him to Tom. He was a bit taller than Tom, looked in his mid-forties, and was the rugged type who perhaps jogged. Tom at once sensed that Lily and Tal had an affair going. And so what? Where was Frank? He had slipped out of the room. Tom slipped out too. Tom thought he had heard music—maybe one of Frank’s records—a minute ago.

  Frank’s room was across the hall and more toward the back of the house. His door was closed. Tom knocked and got no answer. He opened the door a little. “Frank?”

  Frank was not in the room. The gramophone cover was off, with a record on it, but the machine was not turning. Tom saw that it was the Lou Reed Transformer, the second side, which Heloise had put on at Belle Ombre. Tom glanced at his watch: nearly five, and he and Eugene were supposed to leave at five. Probably Eugene was downstairs at the back of the house where the servants’ quarters seemed to be.

  Tom went downstairs to the empty living room, and just then heard a clap of laughter from upstairs in the ocean view room. Tom made his way across another central living room with windows on the garden, found the hall again, and continued toward the back of the house, where he thought the kitchen was. The kitchen doors stood open, and the walls glowed with copper-bottomed pans and skillets. Eugene stood drinking a cup of something, rosy-cheeked, talking with Evengelina, and jumped to attention at the sight of Tom. Tom had somehow expected to see Frank here.

  “Excuse me,” Tom said. “Have you—”

  “I’m watching the time, sir, for five o’clock. I have seven to. May I help you with your luggage?” Eugene had set his cup and saucer down.

  “Thanks, no, it’s down. Where’s Frank? Do you know?”

  “I think he’s upstairs, sir, having tea,” Eugene said.

  No, he’s not, Tom started to say, and didn’t. Tom felt suddenly alarmed. “Thanks,” he said to Eugene, and hurried through the house to the nearest exit, which was what Tom thought of as the front door, onto a porch, then around to the right to the lawn. Maybe Frank was upstairs, again, in the room where people were having tea, but Tom wanted to go to the cliff first. He imagined seeing the boy standing at the edge again, contemplating—what? Tom ran all the way. Frank was not there. Tom slowed, gasping, not from lack of breath but from relief. As he walked closer to the edge, he became again afraid. He kept going.

  There below was the blue jacket, the darker blue of the Levi’s, the dark head of hair with an outline of red—flower-like, unreal, yet real against nearly white rocks. Tom opened his mouth, as if he were about to yell something, but he did not. He did not even breathe for several seconds, until he realized that he was shaking, and in danger of falling over the edge himself. The boy was dead, and there was no use of anything, of trying anything by way of saving him.

  Tell his mother, Tom thought, as he started back toward the house. Good Christ, all the people up there!

  When Tom entered the house, he encountered Eugene, pink and alert. “Something the matter, sir? It’s just two to five now, so we—”

  “I think we have to call the police now—an ambulance or something.”

  Eugene looked Tom up and down as if for injuries.

  “It’s Frank! He’s on the cliff there,” Tom said.

  Eugene suddenly understood. “He’s fallen?” He was ready to run out.

  “I’m sure he’s dead. Can you telephone the hospital or whatever you’re supposed to do? I’ll tell Mrs. Pierson.— Hospital first!” Tom said, when Eugene showed a sign of wanting to dash out of the French windows.

  Tom braced himself
for the upstairs, and went on. He knocked on the tea party door, and entered. They all looked comfortable now, Tal leaning on the end of the sofa near Lily, Johnny still standing, talking to Mrs. Hunter. “Can I speak with you for a minute?” Tom said to Lily.

  She got up. “Something the matter, Tom?” she asked, as if she thought he might only have changed his travel plans, which would not have inconvenienced anyone.

  Tom spoke with her in the hall, after he had closed the door. “Frank just jumped off the cliff there.”

  “Wha-at? Oh, no!”

  “I went to look for him. And I saw him below. Eugene’s phoning the hospital—but I think he’s dead.”

  Tal suddenly opened the door, and his expression at once changed. “What’s up?”

  Lily Pierson could not speak, so Tom said, “Frank just jumped off the cliff.”

  “That cliff?” Tal was about to run down the hall, but Tom made a gesture, as if to say it’s done.

  “What’s the trouble?” Johnny came through the door, and behind him the two Hunters.

  Tom heard Eugene pounding up the stairs, and went down the hall to meet him.

  “Ambulance and the police should be here in a few minutes, sir,” Eugene said quickly, and went past Tom.

  Tom looked farther up the hall, and saw a white figure—no, pale blue, paler than Frank’s jacket—Susie. Eugene, who had passed the others, said a word to Susie. Susie nodded, and gave even a faint smile, Tom thought. Johnny just then ran past Tom, on his way to the stairs.

  Two ambulances came, one bearing reviving apparatus, from what Tom could see as two white-clad men hurried across the lawn, guided by Eugene. Then came a folding ladder. Had Eugene instructed them, or did they remember the cliff from John Pierson’s mishap? Tom hung back near the house. He emphatically did not want to see the boy’s smashed face, wanted to leave at once, in fact, though knew that he couldn’t. He would have to wait until the boy was up to the lawn level, until he had said a few more words to Lily. Tom went back into the house, glanced at his suitcase, which was still by the front door, then he went up the stairs. He had an impulse to go into Frank’s room again, for the last time.