Last Ditch

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,’ Mr Mercer continued, ‘would be your size, I’m sure. Would you care to try?’

Ricky did try and not only bought the sweater but also a short blue coat of a nautical cut that went very well with it. He decided to wear his purchases.

He walked along the main street, which stopped abruptly at a flight of steps leading down to the strand. At the foot of these steps, with an easel set up before him, a palette on his arm and his paintbox open at his feet, stood the man he had encountered in the shop.

He had his back towards Ricky and was laying swathes of colour across a large canvas. These did not appear to bear any relation to the prospect before him. As Ricky watched, the painter began to superimpose in heavy black outline, a female nude with minuscule legs, a vast rump and no head. Having done this he fell back a step or two, paused, and then made a dart at his canvas and slashed down a giant fowl taking a peck at the nude. Leda, Ricky decided, and, therefore, the swan.

He was vividly reminded of the sketches pinned to the drawing-room wall at L’Esperance. He wondered what his mother, whose work was very far from being academic, would have had to say about this picture. He decided that it lacked integrity.

The painter seemed to think it was completed. He scraped his palette and returned it and his brushes to the box. He then fished out a packet of cigarettes and a matchbox, turned his back to the sea-breeze and saw Ricky.

For a second or two he seemed to lower menacingly, but the growth of facial hair was so luxuriant that it hid all expression. Dark glasses gave him a look of some dubious character on the Côte d’Azur.

Ricky said: ‘Hullo, again. I hope you don’t mind my looking on for a moment.’

There was movement in the beard and whiskers and a dull sound. The painter had opened his matchbox and found it empty.

‘Got a light?’ Ricky thought must have been said.

He descended the steps and offered his lighter. The painter used it and returned to packing up his gear.

‘Do you find,’ Ricky asked, fishing for something to say that wouldn’t be utterly despised, ‘do you find this place stimulating? For painting, I mean.’

‘At least,’ the voice said, ‘it isn’t bloody picturesque. I get power from it. It works for me.’

‘Could I have seen some of your things up at L’Esperance – the Pharamonds’ house?’

He seemed to take another long stare at Ricky and then said: ‘I sold a few things to some woman the other day. Street show in Montjoy. A white sort of woman with black hair. Talked a lot of balls, of course. They always do. But she wasn’t bad, figuratively speaking. Worth the odd grope.’

Ricky suddenly felt inclined to kick him.

‘Oh, well,’ he said. ‘I’ll be moving on.’

‘You staying here?’

‘Yes.’

‘For long?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, turning away.

The painter seemed to be one of those people whose friendliness increases in inverse ratio to the warmth of its reception.

‘What’s your hurry?’ he asked.

‘I’ve got some work to do,’ Ricky said.

‘Work?’

‘That’s right. Good evening to you.’

‘You write, don’t you?’

‘Try to,’ he said over his shoulder.