Last Ditch. Ngaio Marsh

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СКАЧАТЬ Ricky had an upstairs front bedroom and the use of a suffocating parlour. He preferred to work in his bedroom. He sat at a table in the window, which commanded a view of the harbour, a strip of sand, a jetty and the little fishing fleet when it was at anchor. Seagulls mewed with the devoted persistence of their species in marine radio-drama.

      When he came into the passage he heard the thump of Mrs Ferrant’s iron in the kitchen and caught the smell of hot cloth. She came out, a handsome dark woman of about thirty-five with black hair drawn into a knot, black eyes and a full figure. In common with most of the islanders, she showed her Gallic heritage.

      ‘You’re back, then,’ she said. ‘Do you fancy a cup of tea?’

      ‘No, thank you very much, Mrs Ferrant. I had an awfully late luncheon.’

      ‘Up above at L’Esperance?’

      ‘That’s right.’

      ‘That would be a great spread, and grandly served?’

      There was no defining her style of speech. The choice of words had the positive character almost of the West Country but her accent carried the swallowed r’s of France. ‘They live well up there,’ she said.

      ‘It was all very nice,’ Ricky murmured. She passed her working-woman’s hand across her mouth. ‘And they would all be there. All the family?’

      ‘Well, I think so, but I’m not really sure what the whole family consists of.’

      ‘Mr and Mrs Jasper and the children. Young Bruno, when he’s not at his schooling.’

      ‘That’s right,’ he agreed. ‘He was there.’

      ‘Would that be all the company?’

      ‘No,’ Ricky said, feeling cornered, ‘there were Mr and Mrs Louis Pharamond, too.’

      ‘Ah,’ she said, after a pause. ‘Them.’

      Ricky started to move away but she said: ‘That would be all, then?’

      He found her insistence unpleasing.

      ‘Oh no,’ he said, over his shoulder, ‘there was another visitor,’ and he began to walk down the passage.

      ‘Who might that have been, then?’ she persisted.

      ‘A Miss Harkness,’ he said shortly.

      ‘What was she doing there?’ demanded Mrs Ferrant.

      ‘She was lunching,’ Ricky said very coldly, and ran upstairs two steps at a time. He heard her slam the kitchen door.

      He tried to settle down to work but was unable to do so. The afternoon was a bad time in any case and he’d had two glasses of beer. Julia Pharamond’s magnolia face stooped out of his thoughts and came close to him, talking about a pregnant young woman who might as well have been a horse. Louis Pharamond was making a pass at her and the little half-naked Selina pulled faces at all of them. And there, suddenly, like some bucolic fury was Mrs Ferrant: ‘You’re back, then,’ she mouthed. She’s going to scream, he thought, and before she could do it, woke up.

      He rose, shook himself and looked out of the window. The afternoon sun made sequined patterns on the harbour and enriched the colours of boats and the garments of such people as were abroad in the village. Among them, in a group near the jetty, he recognized his landlord, Mr Ferrant.

      Mr Ferrant was the local plumber and general handyman. He possessed a good-looking car and a little sailing-boat with an auxiliary engine in which, Ricky gathered, he was wont to putter round the harbour and occasionally venture quite far out to sea, fishing. Altogether the Ferrants seemed to be very comfortably off. He was a big fellow with a lusty, rather sly look about him but handsome enough with his high colour and clustering curls. Ricky thought that he was probably younger than his wife and wondered if she had to keep an eye on him.

      He was telling some story to the other men in the group. They listened with half-smiles, looking at each other out of the corners of their eyes. When he reached his point they broke into laughter and stamped about, doubled in two, with their hands in their trouser pockets. The group broke up. Mr Ferrant turned towards the house, saw Ricky in the window and gave him the slight, sideways jerk of the head which served as a greeting in the Cove. Ricky lifted his hand in return. He watched his landlord approach the house, heard the front door bang and boots going down the passage.

      Ricky thought he would now give himself the pleasure of writing a bread-and-butter letter to Julia Pharamond. He made several shots at it but they all looked either affected or laboured. In the end he wrote:

      Dear Mrs Pharamond,

      It was so kind of you to have me and I did enjoy myself so very much.

      With many thanks,

      Ricky.

      PS. I do hope your other visitor has settled in nicely.

      He decided to go out and post it. He had arrived only last evening in the village and had yet to explore it properly.

      There wasn’t a great deal to explore. The main street ran along the front, and steep little cobbled lanes led off it through ranks of cottages, of which the one on the corner, next door to the Ferrants’, turned out to be the local police station. The one shop there was, Mercer’s Drapery and General Suppliers, combined the functions of post office, grocery, hardware, clothing, stationery and toy shops. Outside hung ranks of duffle coats, pea-jackets, oilskins and sweaters, all strung above secretive windows beyond which one could make out further offerings set out in a dark interior. Ricky was filled with an urge to buy. He turned in at the door and sustained a sharp jab below the ribs.

      He swung round to find himself face to face with a wild luxuriance of hair, dark spectacles, a floral shirt, beads and fringes.

      ‘Yow!’ said Ricky, and clapped a hand to his waist. ‘What’s that for?’

      A voice behind the hair said something indistinguishable. A gesture was made, indicating a box slung from the shoulder, a box of a kind very familiar to Ricky.

      ‘I was turning round, wasn’t I,’ the voice mumbled.

      ‘OK,’ said Ricky. ‘No bones broken. I hope.’

      ‘Hurr,’ said the voice, laughing dismally.

      Its owner lurched past Ricky and slouched off down the street, the paintbox swinging from his shoulder.

      ‘Very careless, that was,’ said Mr Mercer, the solitary shopman, emerging from the shadows. ‘I don’t care for that type of behaviour. Can I interest you in anything?’

      Ricky, though still in pain, could be interested in a dark-blue polo-necked sweater that carried a label ‘Hand-knitted locally. Very special offer’.

      ‘That looks a good kind of sweater,’ he said.

      ‘Beautiful piece of work, sir. Mrs Ferrant is in a class by herself.’

      ‘Mrs Ferrant?’

      ‘Quite so, sir. You are accommodated there, I believe. The pullover,’ СКАЧАТЬ