Last Ditch

‘Is this all right?’ Carlotta asked at large. ‘Is she safe?’

‘It’s fantastic,’ gabbled Susie. ‘Safe as houses. Promise! Ow! Sorry!

She really is rather an ass of a girl, Ricky thought.

Julia picked up Ricky’s hand and then Carlotta’s. ‘Was it a pleasant party?’ she asked, gently tapping their knuckles together. ‘Have you liked it?’

Ricky said he’d adored it. Julia’s hand was still in his. He wondered whether it would be all right to kiss it under, as it were, her husband’s nose, but felt he lacked the style. She gave his hand a little squeeze, dropped it, leant forward and kissed her husband.

‘Sweetie,’ Julia cried extravagantly, ‘you are such heaven! Do look, Ricky, that’s Leathers up there where Miss Harkness does her stuff. We really must all go riding with her before it’s too late.’

‘What do you mean,’ her husband asked, ‘by your “too late”?’

‘Too late for Miss Harkness, of course. Unless, of course, she does it on purpose, but that would be very silly of her. Too silly for words,’ said Julia severely.

Susie de Waite let out a scream that modulated into a giggle. The car shot across the road and back again.

Carlotta said sharply: ‘Louis, do keep your techniques for another setting.’

Louis gave what Ricky thought of as a bedroom laugh, cuddled Susie up and closed his hand over hers on the wheel.

‘Behave,’ he said. ‘Bad girl.’

They arrived at the lane that descended precipitously into the Cove. Louis took charge, drove pretty rapidly down it and pulled up in front of the Ferrant cottage.

‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘Abode of the dark yet passing-fair Marie. Is she still dark and passing-fair, by the way?’

Nobody answered.

Louis said very loudly: ‘Any progeny? Oh, but of course. I forgot.’

‘Shut up,’ Jasper said, in a tone of voice that Ricky hadn’t heard from him before.

He and Julia and Carlotta together said good night to Ricky, who by this time was outside the car. He shut the door as quietly as he could and stood back. Louis reversed noisily and much too fast. He called out something that sounded like: ‘Give her my love.’ The car shot away in low gear and roared up the lane.

Upstairs on the dark landing Ricky could hear Ferrant snoring prodigiously and pictured him with his red hair and high colour and his mouth wide open. Evidently he had not gone fishing that night.

IV

In her studio in Chelsea, Troy shoved her son’s letter into the pocket of her painting smock and said:

‘He’s fallen for Julia Pharamond.’

‘Has he, now?’ said Alleyn. ‘Does he announce it in so many words?’

‘No, but he manages to drag her into every other sentence of his letter. Take a look.’

Alleyn read his son’s letter with a lifted eyebrow. ‘I see what you mean,’ he said presently.

‘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 clannish lot. The other two are there.’

‘The cousins that came on board at Acapulco?’

‘Yes,’ Alleyn said. ‘It was a sort of enclave of cousins.’

‘The Louis’s 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 colour, 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 colours 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 equestrienne.’