Last Ditch

“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 cla

“The cousins that came on board at Acapulco?”

“Yes,” Alleyn said. “It was a sort of enclave of cousins.”

“The Louises 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 color, 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 colors 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 equestrie

“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 around 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 ma

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, pedaled along the road to Montjoy, and at a point not far from L’Espérance had left his machine by the wayside and walked toward the cliff edge.

The evening was brilliant and the Cha

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

Ricky didn’t want to encounter Louis. He shuffled quickly around 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 behavior.

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 whom 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 around. 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 now 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 favorite pose, looked her over. He said something that Ricky couldn’t hear that 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 fellow passenger. Here he came, hunched up in a dismal mackintosh with his paint box 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 afraid I don’t fall about at upper-middle-class humor.”

“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 paint box, 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, then?”

“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 paint box, 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 of oaths from Bill, Syd, and, predominantly, Miss Harkness.