Then they all sat down in the large living room. Eugene disappeared in the same direction as Evangelina, perhaps to the kitchen where the helicopter crew probably was. And there was the painting, the Derwatt that Frank had mentioned on his second visit to Belle Ombre. This was “The Rainbow,” a Bernard Tufts forgery. Tom had never seen the painting, simply remembered its title from a Buckmaster Gallery report to him on sales maybe four years ago. Tom recalled also Frank’s description of it: beige below, being the tops of a city’s buildings, and a mostly dark-reddish rainbow above with a little pale green in it. All fuzzy and jagged, Frank had said. You can’t tell what city it is, Mexico or New York. And so it was, and well pulled off by Bernard, with dash and assurance in that rainbow, and Tom took his eyes away with reluctance, not wanting to be asked by Mrs. Pierson if he was especially fond of Derwatts. Thurlow and Lily Pierson were talking now, Thurlow telling the Paris events (telephone calls), and about Frank and Mr. Ripley spending a couple of nights in Hamburg after Berlin, which of course Lily Pierson must already have known. It was strange, Tom thought, to be sitting on a sofa much bigger than his own, in front of a fireplace also bigger than his own, over which hung a phony Derwatt, just as “Man in Chair” at his own house was phony.
“Mr. Ripley, I’ve heard through Ralph about your fantastic help to us,” said Lily, blinking her eyelids. She sat on an oversized green hassock between Tom and the fireplace.
To Tom “fantastic” was an adolescent’s word. He realized that he used the word “fantastic” in his thoughts, but not in his speech. “A little realistic help, maybe,” Tom said modestly. Frank had left the living room, and so had Johnny.
“I do want to thank you. I can’t put it into words because—I know for one thing you risked your life. That’s what Ralph said.” She had the clear diction of an actress.
Had Ralph Thurlow been so kind?
“Ralph says you didn’t even use the police in Berlin.”
“I thought it best to do without the police, if I could,” said Tom. “Sometimes kidnappers panic.— As I said to Thurlow, I think the kidnappers were amateurs in Berlin. Rather young and not well organized.”
Lily Pierson was observing him closely. She looked hardly forty, but was probably a bit more, slender and fit, with the blue eyes that Tom had seen in the oil painting in New York, suggesting that her blonde hair was real. “And Frank was not hurt at all,” she said, as if she marveled at the fact.
“No,” said Tom.
Lily sighed, glanced at Ralph Thurlow, then back at Tom. “How did you and Frank meet?”
Frank came back into the living room just then. The corners of his mouth looked tighter. Tom supposed that he had looked for a letter or a message here from Teresa, and again found none. The boy had changed his clothes, and now wore blue jeans, sneakers, and a yellowish Viyella shirt. He had heard the last question, and said to his mother, “I looked Tom up in the town where he lives. I had a part-time job in a town nearby—gardening.”
“Really? Well—you always wanted to be that—do that.” His mother looked a bit stunned, and blinked her eyes again. “And where are these towns?”
“Moret,” Frank said. “That’s where I was working. Tom lives about five miles away. His town is called Villeperce.”
“Villeperce,” his mother repeated.
Her accent made Tom smile, and he stared at “The Rainbow,” loving it.
“Not far south of Paris,” said Frank, standing straight, and speaking with what Tom thought was unusual preciseness. “I knew Tom’s name, because Dad mentioned Tom Ripley a couple of times—in connection with our Derwatt painting. Remember, Mom?”
“No, I frankly don’t,” said Lily.
“Tom knows the people at the gallery in London. Isn’t that true, Tom?”
“Yes, I do,” said Tom, calmly. Frank was in a way boasting about him as an important friend and—maybe, Tom thought—deliberately creating an opening for either his mother or Thurlow to bring up the matter of the authenticity of some pictures signed Derwatt. Was Frank going to defend Derwatt and all the Derwatts, even the possible phonies? They didn’t get that far.
Evangelina slowly and surely brought platters and wine to a long table in a room behind Tom, and she was aided by Eugene. While this was going on, Lily proposed showing Tom his room.
“I’m so pleased you can stay at least a night with us,” said Lily, leading Tom up some stairs.
Tom was taken into a large square room with two windows, which Lily said looked onto the sea, though the sea was not visible now, only blackness. The furniture was white and gold, and there was a bathroom adjoining, also in white and gold, and even the towels were yellow, and some of the fixtures including a small chest of drawers were adorned with gold scrolls in imitation of the room’s furniture, which was Louis Quinze véritable.
“How is Frank really?” asked Lily with a frown that put three anxious lines across her forehead.
Tom took his time. “I think he’s in love with a girl called Teresa. Do you know anything about Teresa?”
“Oh—Teresa—” The room door was ajar, and Lily glanced at it. “Well, she’s the third or fourth girl that I’ve heard of. Not that Frank talks to me at all about his girlfriends—or even much else—but Johnny finds out somehow.— What do you mean about Teresa? Frank’s been talking a lot about her?”
“Oh, no, not a lot. But it seems he’s in love with her now. She’s been to the house here, hasn’t she? You’ve met her?”
“Yes, sure. Very nice girl. But she’s only sixteen. So is Frank.” Lily Pierson looked at Tom as if to say, of what importance can this be?
“Johnny told me in Paris that Teresa has another interest. An older man, shall we say. I think that upset Frank.”
“Oh, probably. Teresa’s so pretty, she’s awfully popular. A girl sixteen—she’ll prefer somebody twenty or even older.” Lily smiled, as if the subject were finished.
Tom had been hoping to draw from Lily some remark on Frank’s character.
“Frank’ll get over Teresa,” Lily added cheerfully, but in a soft voice, as if Frank might be in the hall and able to listen.
“One more question, Mrs. Pierson, while I have the chance. I think Frank ran away from home because he was upset about his father’s death.— Isn’t that the main reason? More than because of Teresa, I mean, because at that time from what Frank told me, Teresa hadn’t cooled off.”
Lily seemed to be choosing her words before she spoke. “Frank was upset about John’s death, more than Johnny was, I know. Johnny’s sometimes in the clouds with his photography and his girls.”
Tom looked at Lily’s twisted face, and wondered if he dared ask her if she thought her husband had killed himself? “Your husband’s death was called an accident, I read in the newspapers. His wheelchair went over that cliff.”
Lily gave a shrug, like a twitch. “I really don’t know.”
The room door was still ajar, and Tom thought of closing it, of suggesting that Lily sit down, but would that interrupt the flow of truth, if she knew it? “But you think it was an accident rather than a suicide?”
“I don’t know. The ground slopes up a little there, and John never sat at the very edge. That would’ve been stupid. And his chair had a brake, of course. Frank said he just zoomed over suddenly—and why should he have put the power on unless he wanted to?” Again the troubled frown, and she glanced at Tom. “Frank came running toward the house—” She did not go on.
“Frank told me your husband was disappointed because neither of the boys wanted to— They didn’t take much interest in his work. The Pierson business, I mean.”
“Oh, that, true. I think the boys are terrified of the business. They consider it too complicated or they just don’t like it.” Lily glanced toward the windows as if the business might have been a big black storm coming up outside. “It was a disappointment to John, certainly. You know how a father wants one of his sons anyway to take over. But there’re other people in John?
??s family—he always called his office people his family too—who can take over. Nicholas Burgess, for instance, John’s right-hand man and only forty now. It’s hard for me to believe a disappointment in the boys could’ve made John want to kill himself, but I think he could’ve done it because he really felt—ashamed of being in a chair. Tired of it, I know that. And then at sunset— He always got emotional about sunsets. Not emotional, but affected. Happy and sad, like the end of something. Not even the sun there, but dusk falling over the water in front of him.”
So Frank had come running toward the house. Lily had spoken as if she had seen him. “Frank often went out with his father? On the cliff?”
“No.” Lily smiled. “Bored Frank. He said John wanted him to go with him that afternoon. John often did ask Frank. John was always counting on Frank more than on Johnny—between you and me.” She laughed a little, mischievously. “John said, “There’s something more solid in Frank, if I can just bring it out. Shows in his face.” He meant compared to Johnny, who’s more of a—I don’t know—a dreamer type.”
“I was reminded of George Wallace’s case, when I read about your husband. John perhaps had periods of depression.”
“Oh-h, not really,” said Lily with a smile now. “He could be serious and grim about his work, pull a long face one day if something went wrong, but that’s not the same as being depressed. Pierson Incorporated, business, whatever he called it, was like a big chess game to John. That’s what a lot of people said. You win a little one day and lose a little the next, and the game is never over—not even now that John’s gone. No, I think John was an optimist by nature. He could always smile—nearly always. Even in the years when he was in his chair. We always called it his chair, not a wheelchair. But it was sad for the boys, so far as having a father went, because that’s all the boys have known of him for such a long time in their lives—a businessman in a chair, talking about markets and money and people—everything invisible somehow. Not able to go out for walks or teach the boys judo or whatever fathers usually do.”
Tom smiled. “Judo?”
“John used to do judo in this very room! It wasn’t always a guest room, this room.”
They were moving toward the door. Tom glanced at the high ceiling, the wide floor that would have provided space for mats and somersaults. Downstairs the others were in the living room buffeting themselves, as Tom always thought when he encountered the word “buffet,” but in this case there was plenty of room and no elbowing crowd. Frank was drinking a Coca-Cola from the bottle. Thurlow stood by the table with Johnny, holding a scotch highball and a plate of food.
“Let’s go out,” Tom said to Frank.
Frank set his bottle down at once. “Out where?”
“Out on the lawn.” Lily had joined Johnny and Thurlow, Tom saw. “Did you ask about Susie? How is she?”
“Oh, conked out asleep,” said Frank. “I asked Evangelina. What a name! She belongs to some nutty soul group. Been here just a week, she says.”
“Susie’s here?”
“Yes, she has a room in the back wing upstairs. We can go out this way.”
Frank was opening a large French window in what must be their main dining room, Tom thought. There was a long table with chairs around it, and smaller tables with chairs near the walls, sideboards, and some bookcases also. There were platters and a cake on the table now. Frank had put on an outside light, so they could see their way across a terrace and down four or five steps to the lawn. To the left of the steps sloped the ramp that Frank had told him about. After that, it was dark, but Frank said he knew the way. A stone path was palely visible, extending across the lawn, then curving to the right. As Tom’s eyes became more adjusted to the darkness, he could see tall trees, pine or poplar, ahead.
“This is where your father used to walk?” Tom asked.
“Yes, well—not walk. He had his chair.” Frank slowed and stuck his hands into his pockets. “No moon tonight.”
The boy had stopped and was ready to go back to the house, Tom saw. Tom took a couple of deep breaths and looked back at the two-story white house with its yellowish lights. The house had a peaked roof, the porches’ roofs projected to left and right. Tom didn’t like the house. It looked newish, and of no definable style. It was not like an American southern house or a New England colonial house. John Pierson had probably had it built to order, but at any rate Tom didn’t care for the architect. “I wanted to see the cliff,” Tom said. Didn’t Frank know that?
“All right, it’s this way,” Frank said, and they walked on along the flagstone path into deeper darkness.
The flagstones were still visible, and Frank walked as if he were sure of every inch of it. The poplars closed in, then parted, and they were on the cliff, and Tom could see its edge, defined by light colored stones or pebbles.
“The sea’s out there,” said Frank, gesturing. He hung back from the edge.
“I assumed that.” Tom could hear waves below, gentle, not pounding and not rhythmic, but rather lapping. And far out in the blackness, Tom saw a boat prow’s white light, and imagined he saw a pinkish port light. Something like a bat whizzed by overhead, but Frank seemed not to have noticed it. So here is where it happened, Tom thought, then he saw Frank walking past him, hands in the back pockets of his jeans, to the edge of the cliff, and he saw the boy look down. Tom had an instant’s fear for Frank, because it was so dark, and the boy seemed so near the edge, even though the edge did slope up a little, Tom could now see. Frank turned back suddenly and said:
“You were talking with Mom tonight?”
“Oh, yes, a bit. I asked her about Teresa. I know Teresa’s been here.— I suppose she didn’t write you?” Tom thought it better to ask him outright than not to say anything about a letter.
“No,” Frank said.
Tom went closer to him, until they were only four or five feet apart. The boy stood straight. “I’m sorry,” Tom said. He was thinking that the girl had troubled to telephone Thurlow in Paris, once, days ago, and now that Frank was found, and safe, she was simply dropping out, with no explanation.
“Is that all you talked about? Teresa?” Frank asked in a light tone that might have implied that that was not very much to talk about.
“No, I asked her if she thought your father’s death was a suicide or an accident.”
“And what did she say?”
“That she didn’t know. You know, Frank—” Now Tom spoke softly. “She doesn’t suspect you at all—and you’d better let this thing blow over. Just that. Maybe it has. It’s done. Your mother said, ‘Suicide or accident, it’s done.’ Something like that. So you must pick yourself up, Frank, and get rid of—I wish you wouldn’t stand so near the edge.” The boy was facing the sea, raising and lowering himself on his toes, whether aggressively or absentmindedly, Tom couldn’t tell.
Then Frank turned and walked toward Tom, and passed Tom on the left. The boy turned again and said, “But you know I did send that chair over. I know you were talking to my Mom about what she might think or believe, but I told you.— I mean, I said to my mother my father did it himself, and she believed me, but that’s not true.”
“All right, all right,” Tom said gently.
“When I sent my father’s chair over, I even thought I was with Teresa—that she—liked me, I mean.”
“All right, I understand,” Tom said.
“I thought, I’ll get my father out of my life, out of our lives, for me and Teresa. I felt my father was spoiling—life. It’s funny that Teresa gave me courage then. And now she’s gone. Now there’s nothing but silence—nothing!” His voice cracked.
Odd, Tom thought, that some girls meant sadness and death. Some girls looked like sunlight, creativity, joy, but they really meant death, and not even because the girls were enticing their victims, in fact one might blame the boys for being deceived by—nothing at all, simply imagination. Tom laughed suddenly. “Frank, you have to realize that there are other girls in the world! You must see
it by now that Teresa— She’s turned loose of you. So you must turn loose of her.”
“I have. I did that in Berlin, I think. The real crisis was there, when I heard what Johnny said.” Frank gave a shrug, but was not looking at Tom. “Sure, I looked for a letter from her, I admit that.”
“So you go on from here. Things look rotten now, but there are a lot of weeks and years ahead for you. Come on!” Tom slapped the boy on the shoulder. “We’ll go back to the house in a minute. Wait.”
Tom wanted to see the edge, and moved forward toward the lighter colored rocks. He could feel pebbles and a bit of grass under his shoes. He could feel also the emptiness below, now black, but giving out something like a sound of hollow space. And there, unable to be seen now, were the jagged rocks that Frank’s father had fallen onto. Tom turned at the sound of the boy’s steps toward him, and at once moved away from the edge. Tom had had a sudden feeling that the boy might rush him and push him over. Was that insane on his part, Tom wondered. The boy adored him, Tom knew that. But love was strange too.
“Ready to go back?” Frank asked.
“Sure.” Tom felt the coolness of sweat on his forehead. He knew he was more tired than he thought, and that he had lost track of time because of the airplane trip.
21
Tom fell asleep almost before he got into bed. Some time later, he awakened with a violent twitch of his entire body. A bad dream? If so, he didn’t remember a dream. How long had he been asleep? An hour?
“No!” That had been a whisper or a soft voice outside his room in the hall.
Tom got out of bed. The voices outside went on, a cooing, pigeon-like female voice mingling with Frank’s. Tom knew Frank’s room was next to his on the right. Only a few words came through, said by the woman: “. . . so impatient . . . I know . . . what, what will you do . . . not matter to me!”
That had to be Susie, and she sounded angry. Tom could detect her German accent. And in fact he could have put his ear to the door and heard more, but Tom had an aversion to eavesdropping. He turned his back to the door, groped forward toward his bed, and found his night table, on which lay cigarettes and matches. Tom struck a match, put on his reading lamp, lit a cigarette, and sat down on his bed. That was better.