Last Ditch

The young man raised his voice. ‘That’s what Gil Ferrant makes out, anyway. He reckons you write.’

Ricky walked on without further comment.

On the way back he reflected that it was highly possible every person in the village knew by this time that he lodged with the Ferrants – and tried to write.

So he returned to the cottage and tried.

He had his group of characters. He knew how to involve them, one with the other, but so far he didn’t know where to put them: they hovered, they floated. He found himself moved to introduce among them a woman with a white magnolia face, black hair and eyes and a spluttering laugh.

Mrs Ferrant gave him his evening meal on a tray in the parlour. He asked her about the painter and she replied in an off-hand, slighting manner that he was called Sydney Jones and had a ‘terrible old place up to back of Fisherman’s Steps’.

‘He lives here, then?’ said Ricky.

‘He’s a foreigner,’ she said, dismissing him, ‘but he’s been in the Cove a while.’

‘Do you like his painting?’

‘My Louis can do better.’ Her Louis was a threatening child of about ten.

As she walked out with his tray she said: ‘That’s a queer old sweater you’re wearing.’

‘I think it’s a jolly good one,’ he called after her. He heard her give a little grunt and thought she added something in French.

Visited by a sense of well-being, he lit his pipe and strolled down to the Cod-and-Bottle.

Nobody had ever tried to tart up the Cod-and-Bottle. It was unadulterated pub. In the bar the only decor was a series of faded photographs of local worthies and a map of the island. A heavily-pocked dartboard hung on the wall and there was a shove-ha’penny at the far end of the bar. In an enormous fireplace, a pile of driftwood blazed a good-smelling welcome.

The bar was full of men, tobacco smoke and the fumes of beer. A conglomerate of male voices, with their overtones of local dialect, engulfed Ricky as he walked in. Ferrant was there, his back propped against the bar, one elbow resting on it, his body curved in a classic pose that was sexually explicit, and, Ricky felt, deliberately contrived. When he saw Ricky he raised his pint-pot and gave him that sidelong wag of his head. He had a coterie of friends about him.

The barman who, as Ricky was to learn, was called Bob Maistre, was the landlord of the Cod-and-Bottle. He served Ricky’s pint of bitter with a flourish.

There was an empty chair in the corner and Ricky made his way to it. From here he was able to maintain the sensation of being an onlooker.

A group of dart players finished their game and moved over to the bar, revealing, to Ricky’s unenthusiastic gaze, Sydney Jones, the painter, slumped at a table in a far corner of the room with his drink before him. Ricky looked away quickly, hoping that he had not been spotted.

A group of fresh arrivals came between them: fishermen, by their conversation. Ferrant detached himself from the bar and lounged over to them. There followed a jumble of conversation, most of it incomprehensible. Ricky was to learn that the remnants of a patois that had grown out of a Norman dialect, itself long vanished, could still be heard among the older islanders.

Ferrant left the group and strolled over to Ricky.

‘Evening, Mr Alleyn,’ he said. ‘Getting to know us?’

‘Hoping to, Mr Ferrant,’ Ricky said.

‘Quiet enough for you?’

‘That’s what I like.’

‘Fancy that now, what you like, eh?’

His manner was half bantering, half indifferent. He stayed a minute or so longer, took one or two showy pulls at his beer, said: ‘Enjoy yourself, then,’ turned and came face to face with Mr Sydney Jones.

‘Look what’s come up in my catch,’ he said. He fetched Mr Jones a shattering clap on the back and returned to his friends.

Mr Jones evidently eschewed all conventional civilities. He sat down at the table, extended his legs and seemed to gaze at nothing in particular. A shout of laughter greeted Ferrant’s return to the bar and drowned any observation that, by a movement of his head, Mr Jones would seem to have offered.

‘Sorry,’ Ricky said. ‘I can’t hear you.’

He slouched across the table and the voice came through.

‘Care to come up to my pad?’ it invited.

There was nothing, at the moment, that Ricky fancied less.

‘That’s very kind of you,’ he said. ‘One of these days I’d like to see some of your work, if I may.’

The voice said, with what seemed to be an imitation of Ricky’s accent, ‘Not “one of these days”. Now.’

‘Oh,’ Ricky said, temporizing, ‘now? Well – ‘

‘You won’t catch anything,’ Mr Jones sneered loudly. ‘If that’s what you’re afraid of.’

‘Oh God!’ Ricky thought. ‘Now he’s insulted. What a bloody bore.’

He said: ‘My dear man, I don’t for a moment suppose anything of the sort.’

Jones emptied his pint-pot and got to his feet.

‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘We’ll push off, then.’

And without another glance at Ricky he walked out of the bar.

It was dark outside and chilly, with a sea-nip in the air and misty haloes round the few street lamps along the front. The high tide slapped against the sea-wall.

They walked in silence as far as the place where Ricky had seen Mr Jones painting in the afternoon. Here they turned left into deep shadow and began to climb what seemed to be an interminable flight of wet, broken-down steps, between cottages that grew farther apart and finally petered out altogether.

Ricky’s right foot slid under him, he lurched forward and snatched at wet grass on a muddy bank.

‘Too rough for you?’ sneered – or seemed to sneer – Mr Jones.

‘Not a bit of it,’ Ricky jauntily replied.

‘Watch it. I’ll go first.’

They were on some kind of very wet and very rough path. Ricky could only just see his host, outlined against the dim glow of what seemed to be dirty windows.

He was startled by a prodigious snort followed by squelching footsteps close at hand.

‘What the hell’s that?’ Ricky exclaimed.