Last Ditch

“Hullo, young Louis,” Ricky said.

He didn’t answer. His sloe eyes looked out of a pale face under a dark thatch of hair. He backed slowly away, turned, and suddenly ran off down the street.

“That’s Master Ferrant, that was,” said Ricky.

Neither of the Pharamonds seemed to have heard him. For a second or two they looked after the little boy and then Jasper said lightly: “Dear me! It seems only the other day that his Mum was a bouncing tweeny or parlormaid, or whatever it was she bounced at.”

“Before my time,” said Julia. “She’s a marvelous laundress and still operates for us. Darling, we’re keeping Ricky out here. Who can tell what golden phrase we may have aborted. Super that you can come on Saturday, Ricky.”

“Pick you up at eightish,” cried Jasper, bustling into the car. They were off, and Ricky went back to his room.

But not, at first, to work. He seemed to have taken the Pharamonds upstairs, and with them little Louis Ferrant, so that the room was quite crowded with white faces, black hair, and brilliant pitch-ball eyes.

iii

Montjoy might have been on another island from the cove and in a different sea. Once a predominantly French fishing village, it was now a fashionable plage with marinas, a yacht club, surfing, striped umbrellas, and, above all, the celebrated Hotel Montjoy itself with its Stardust Ballroom whose plate glass dome and multiple windows could be seen, airily glowing, from far out at sea. Here, one dined and danced expensively to a famous band, and here, on Saturday night, at a window table, sat the Pharamonds, Ricky, and a girl called Susie de Waite.

They ate lobster salad and drank champagne. Ricky talked to and danced with Susie de Waite as was expected of him and tried not to look too long and too often at Julia Pharamond.

Julia was in great form, every now and then letting off the spluttering firework of her laughter. As he had noticed at luncheon, she had uninhibited table ma

“Julia’s eating habits,” he remarked, “are those of a partially trained marmoset.”

“Darling,” said Julia, waggling the sucked fingers at him, “I love you better than life itself.”

“If only,” Ricky thought, “she would look at me like that,” and immediately she did, causing his unsophisticated heart to bang at his ribs and the blood to mount to the roots of his hair.

Ricky considered himself pretty well adjusted to the contemporary scene. But, he thought, every adventure that he had experienced so far had been like a bit of fill-in dialogue leading to the entry of the star. And here, beyond all question, she was.

She waltzed now with her cousin Louis. He was an accomplished dancer and Julia followed him effortlessly. They didn’t talk to each other, Ricky noticed. They just floated together — beautifully.

Ricky decided that he didn’t perhaps quite like Louis Pharamond. He was too smooth. And anyway, what had he been up to in the cove at one o’clock in the morning?

The lights were dimmed to a blackout. From somewhere in the dome, balloons, treated to respond to ultraviolet light, were released in hundreds and jostled unca

“May we?” Ricky asked Susie de Waite.

He had once heard his mother say that a great deal of his father’s success as an investigating officer stemmed from his gift for getting people to talk about themselves. “It’s surprising,” she had said, “how few of them can resist him.”

“Did you?” her son asked.

“Yes,” Troy said, and after a pause, “but not for long.”

So Ricky asked Susie de Waite about herself and it was indeed surprising how readily she responded. It was also surprising how unstimulating he found her self-revelations.

And then, abruptly, the evening was set on fire. They came alongside Julia and Louis and Julia called to Ricky.

“Ricky, if you don’t dance with me again at once I shall take umbrage.” And then to Louis. “Good-bye, darling. I’m off.”

And she was in Ricky’s arms. The stars in the sky had come reeling down into the ballroom and the sea had got into his eardrums and bliss had taken up its abode in him for the duration of a waltz.

They left at two o’clock in the large car that belonged, it seemed, to the Louis Pharamonds. Louis drove with Susie de Waite next to him and Bruno on her far side. Ricky found himself at the back between Julia and Carlotta and Jasper was on the tip-up seat facing them.

When they were clear of Montjoy on the straight road to the cove, Louis asked Susie if she’d like to steer and on her rapturously accepting, put his arm round her. She took the wheel.

“Is this all right?” Carlotta asked at large. “Is she safe?”

“It’s fantastic,” gabbled Susie. “Safe as houses. Promise! Ow! Is this right?”

“She really is rather an ass of a girl,” Ricky thought.

Julia picked up Ricky’s hand and then Carlotta’s. “Was it a pleasant party?” she asked, gently tapping their knuckles together. “Have you liked it?”

Ricky said he’d adored it. Julia’s hand was still in his. He wondered whether it would be all right to kiss it under, as it were, her husband’s nose but felt he lacked the style. She gave his hand a little squeeze, dropped it, leaned forward and kissed her husband.

“Sweetie,” Julia cried extravagantly, “you are such heaven! Do look, Ricky, that’s Leathers up there where Miss Harkness does her stuff. We really must all go riding with her before it’s too late.”

“What do you mean,” her husband asked, “by your ‘too late’?”

“Too late for Miss Harkness, of course. Unless, of course, she does it on purpose, but that would be very silly of her. Too silly for words,” said Julia severely.

Susie de Waite let out a scream that modulated into a giggle. The car shot across the road and back again.

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 goodnight 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 color 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 a

“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.