Last Ditch

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 passing 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 paint box 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 tube of vermillion 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 that 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, around 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 around 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 fu

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 place in Battersea. Jerome et Cie had expressed the wish that he would 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 reappeared on deck wearing his awful raincoat, with his paint box 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.

3: The Gap

i

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?”

“Sometime 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 fu

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 Pe

“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, treated with delicate and detailed realism. But this tree was at the core of its own diffusion into 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 center. He had begged her to stop before she went too far.