Ripley Under Water (11 page)

And waiters were scarce.

“Should we make sure, Tome, the room for Noelle?”

“Yes, no harm in double-checking.” Tom smiled. He had, when registering, asked about the room for Mme Hassler, who was arriving tomorrow evening. The clerk had said that a room had been reserved. Tom signaled for the third time for a waiter, this one in white jacket and bearing a tray, and with no air of attention to anything. But this time he approached.

Tom was informed that wine and beer were unavailable.

They both ordered coffee. Deux cafes.

Tom’s mind was on Cynthia Gradnor, of all people to be thinking about in North Africa. Cynthia, the epitome of cool, blonde, English aloofness. Hadn’t she been cool to Bernard Tufts? Unsympathetic finally? Well, Tom couldn’t answer that, as it got into the realm of sexual relations, so different in privacy from what the pair might show the public. How far would she go in the direction of exposing him, Tom Ripley, without exposing herself and also Bernard Tufts? Curious that, though Cynthia and Bernard had never married, Tom considered them as one, spiritually. Surely they had been lovers, and for many a month—but that physical factor did not matter. Cynthia had respected Bernard, loved him profoundly, and Bernard in his tortured way had perhaps finally thought himself “unworthy” of even making love to Cynthia, because he had felt so guilty about forging Derwatts.

Tom sighed.

“What is the matter, Tome? You are tired?”

“No!” Tom wasn’t tired, and he smiled broadly again, with a real sense of freedom, based on the realization of where he was: hundreds of miles from his “enemies,” if he could call them enemies. He could call them hecklers, he supposed, and that included not only the Pritchards but Cynthia Gradnor.

For the moment—Tom couldn’t finish that thought, and his frown was back. He felt it, and rubbed his forehead. “Tomorrow—what’ll we do? The Forbes Museum, the toy soldiers? That’s up in the Casbah. Remember?”

“Yes!” said Heloise , her face alight suddenly. “Le Casbah! Then the Socco.”

She meant the Grand Socco, or grand market. They would buy things, bargain, argue about prices, which Tom didn’t like but knew he had to do or look like a fool, and pay a fool’s price.

On their way back to the hotel, Tom did not bother bargaining for some pale green figs and some darker ones, both varieties in a stage of ideal ripeness, plus some beautiful green grapes and a couple of oranges. Tom loaded the two plastic bags the pushcart vendor had given him.

“They’ll look pretty in our room,” Tom said. “And we’ll give Noelle some too.”

The water was back on, Tom discovered to his pleasure. Heloise took a shower, followed by Tom, then they relaxed in pajamas on the outsize bed, basking in the air-conditioned coolness.

“And there is television,” said Heloise .

Tom had seen it. He went and turned it on, or tried to. “Just out of curiosity,” he said to Heloise . It didn’t come on. He checked the plug, and it seemed to be connected properly, in the same outlet in which the standard lamp worked.

“Tomorrow,” Tom murmured, resigned, not caring. “I’ll ask somebody about it.”

The next morning they visited the Grand Socco before the Casbah, necessitating a meterless taxi ride back to the hotel with Heloise ‘s purchases: a brown leather handbag and a pair of red leather sandals, which neither of them wished to carry around all day. Tom had the taxi wait while he left the parcel at the front desk. Then they rode to the post office, where Tom sent off the mysterious item that looked like a typewriter ribbon. He had rewrapped it in France. Airmail but not registered, as Reeves desired. Tom did not write a return address, even an invented one.

Then on in another taxi to the Casbah, an upward drive through some narrow streets. York Castle was here—hadn’t he read that Samuel Pepys had been employed or stationed here for a while?—overlooking the harbor, its stone walls looking enormously strong and huge because of the smaller white houses on either side of it. Nearby was a mosque with a high green dome. As Tom gazed, a loud chant began. Five times a day, Tom had read, the muezzin’s call to prayer sounded forth, all done by recorded voice these days. People too lazy to get out of bed and climb the stairs, Tom thought, but merciless when it came to waking other people up at 4 a.m. He supposed that believers had to get out of bed and face Mecca, recite something, then get back into bed.

Tom enjoyed the Forbes Museum with its lead soldiers more than did Heloise , he supposed, but he was not sure. Heloise said little, but seemed fascinated, as was Tom, by the scenes of battle, the camps for the wounded with blood-stained bandages around their heads, the parade of this and that regiment, many on horseback—all displayed on long counters under glass. The soldiers and their officers all looked about four and a half inches high, cannon and wagons in proportion. Amazing! How thrilling it would be to be seven years old again—Tom’s thoughts stopped abruptly. His parents had been dead, drowned, by the time he would have been old enough to appreciate lead soldiers. He had been in the care of Aunt Dottie then, and she would never have understood the charm of lead soldiers, and also never have advanced the money to buy any.

“Isn’t it great to be so alone here!” Tom said to Heloise, because, oddly, not a soul was in any of the big rambling rooms through which they wandered.

There had been no admission charge. The caretaker was a youngish man in white djellaba in the big foyer, and he asked merely if they would be kind enough to sign his visitors’ book. Heloise obliged, and then Tom. It was a thick book with cream-colored pages.

“Merci et au revoir!” they all said.

“A taxi now?” Tom asked. “Look! Do you think that might be a taxi?”

They went down the front walk between big green lawns to what might be a taxi rank at the curb, where there was one dusty car at present. They were in luck. It was a taxi.

“Au Cafe de Paris, s’il vous plait,” Tom said through the window before they got in.

Now Noelle was on their minds—Noelle boarding the plane in a few hours at de Gaulle. They would put a plate of fresh fruit in her room (which was on the floor above theirs), and take a taxi to the airport to meet her. Tom sipped tomato juice with a lemon slice floating on top, and Heloise a mint tea, which she had heard about and never tried. It smelled lovely. Tom tried a sip. Heloise said she was boiling hot, and that the tea was supposed to help, but she could not imagine how.

Their hotel was just a few steps away. Tom paid, and was taking his white jacket from the back of his chair when he thought he recognized a familiar head and shoulders on the main boulevard to his left.

David Pritchard? The head in profile had looked like Pritchard. Tom raised himself on his toes, but so many people were walking back and forth that Pritchard, if it had been he, had vanished in the crowd. Not worth dashing to the corner and staring, Tom thought, much less running after him. More than likely he’d been mistaken. That dark-haired head with round-rimmed glasses: didn’t one see a type like that a couple of times a day?

“This way, Tome.”

“I know.” Tom espied a flower vendor en route. “Flowers! Let’s get some now!”

They bought bougainvillea fronds, several day lilies, and a shorter bouquet of camellias. These were for Noelle.

Any messages for the Ripleys? Non, m’sieur, Tom was told by the red-liveried clerk behind the desk.

A telephone call to the housekeeper resulted in two vases, one for Noelle’s room, one for Tom’s and Heloise’s. There were, after all, enough flowers. Then quick showers before going out to find a place for lunch.

They decided to look for The Pub, recommended by Noelle, “just off Boulevard Pasteur, middle of town,” Tom remembered her saying. Tom asked a pavement vendor of ties and belts if he knew where The Pub was. Second street and on the right, he would see it.

“Merci infiniment!” said Tom.

The Pub might or might not have been slightly air-conditioned, but at any rate it was comfortable and amusing. Even Heloise appreciated it, as she knew what some English pubs looked like. Here, the owner or owners had made an effort: brown rafters, an old pendulum clock fastened to the wall, along with photographs of sports teams, menu on a blackboard, and Heineken bottles in evidence. It was a smallish place and not too crowded. Tom ordered a cheddar sandwich, and Heloise a cheese plate of some kind, and also a beer, which she drank only under the warmest conditions.

“Should we telephone Madame Annette?” Heloise asked after their first sips of the beer.

Tom was mildly surprised. “No, darling. Why? You’re worried?”

“No, cheri, you are worried. No?” Heloise frowned, very slightly, but she so seldom frowned that it was as if she scowled.

“No, my sweet. About what?”

“About this Preekard, no?”

Tom put his hand over his eyes, and felt that he blushed. Or was it the heat? “Pritchard, dear. No,” Tom said firmly, as his cheese sandwich and cup of relish were set down before him. “What can he do?” Tom added. “Merci,” Tom said to the waiter, who was serving Heloise second, or maybe that was an accident. Tom felt that his “What can he do?” was a silly, empty question, uttered to soothe Heloise. Pritchard could do plenty, depending exactly on how much he could prove.

“How’s your cheese?” Tom asked, by way of posing another neutral question.

“Cheri, Prikshard was not the one who telephoned and pretended to be Graneleaf?” Heloise delicately spread a little mustard on some cheese.

The way she pronounced Greenleaf, omitting Dickie too, made Dickie and therefore his corpse seem miles away, even unreal. Tom said calmly, “Most unlikely, my dear. Pritchard’s got a deepish voice. Not young-sounding, anyway. You said the voice sounded young.”

“Yes.”

“Telephone calls,” Tom said musingly, as he spooned relish onto the edge of his plate. “I’m reminded of a silly joke. Want to hear it?”

“Yes,” said Heloise , with mild but steady interest showing in her lavender eyes now.

“Loony bin. Maison de fous. A doctor sees a patient writing something and asks what. A letter. A letter to whom, asks the doctor. To myself, says the patient. What’s in the letter, asks the doctor. The patient answers, I don’t know, I haven’t received it yet.”

Heloise did not greet this with a laugh, but at least she smiled. “I think it is silly.”

Tom took a deep breath. “My sweet—postcards. We must buy a fistful. Camels galloping, marketplaces, desert views, chickens upside down—”

“Chickens?”

“They’re often upside down on postcards. Mexico, for instance. On their way to market.” Tom didn’t want to add, to have their necks wrung.

Two more Heinekens to finish the lunch. The bottles were smallish. Back to El Minzah’s high-ceilinged elegance, and another shower, this time together. Then they found themselves in the mood for a siesta. There was ample time before leaving for the airport.

Tom at some time after four put on blue jeans and a shirt, and went down to buy postcards. He bought a dozen from the hotel desk. He had brought a ballpoint with him, and intended to begin a card that Heloise could add to, to the faithful Mme Annette. Ah, gone were the days—and had there ever been many?—when he had written a postcard from Europe to Aunt Dottie, Tom admitted to himself, with the purpose of keeping in her good graces in order to inherit something. She had bequeathed him ten thousand dollars but had given her house, which Tom had liked and had had some hopes of acquiring, to another person, whose name Tom had forgotten, perhaps because he wanted to forget.

He sat on a stool at the Hotel Minzah’s bar, because the light was rather good. A card to the Cleggs also would be friendly, Tom supposed, good old neighbors who lived near Melun, both English, he a retired lawyer. Tom wrote in French:

Dear Mme Annette,

Very hot here. We have seen a pair of goats walking on the pavement without a lead!

That was true, but the sandaled boy with them was doing a good job of control by grabbing their horns when necessary. And where had they been going? He continued:

Please tell Henri the little forsythia near the greenhouse needs water now.

A bientot,

“M’sieur?” said the barman.

“Merci, j’attends quelqu’un,” Tom replied. The red-jacketed barman knew he was staying here, Tom supposed. The Moroccans, like the Italians, had that look of observing and remembering strangers’ faces.

Tom hoped that Pritchard was not drifting around Belle Ombre, disturbing Mme Annette, who surely recognized him from a distance as well as Tom did now. The Cleggs’ address? Tom was not certain of their street number, but he could start the card anyway. Heloise was always delighted to be relieved as much as possible of the chore of postcards.

With pen poised again, Tom glanced to his right.

He need not have worried about Pritchard at Belle Ombre, for there he sat at the bar, his dark eyes on Tom, just four stools away. He had his round-rimmed glasses on, a blue short-sleeved shirt, a glass before him, but his eyes were steady on Tom.

“Afternoon,” said Pritchard.

Two or three people from the pool behind Pritchard came in from the door there, and strolled in sandals and bathrobes toward the bar.

“Good afternoon,” Tom replied calmly. His worst, most outre suspicions seemed to have come true: the goddamn Pritchards had espied him in Fontainebleau with airline tickets still in his hand or his pocket, when he, Tom, had been not far from the travel agency! Phuket! Tom thought, recalling the halcyon beach of that island on the travel-agency poster. Tom looked down again at his postcard, which was divided into four images: camel, a mosque, market girls in striped shawls, a blue and yellow beach. Dear Cleggs. Tom gripped his pen.

“How long are you here for, Mr. Ripley?” Pritchard asked, now venturing to approach Tom, glass in hand.

“Oh—I think we leave tomorrow. You’re here with your wife?”

“Yes. But we’re not at this hotel.” Pritchard’s tone was cold.

“By the way,” Tom said, “what do you intend to do with the pictures you took of my house? Sunday, remember?” Tom had asked Pritchard’s wife the same question, he recalled, and was still trusting, hoping, that Janice Pritchard hadn’t told her husband about her teatime rendezvous with Tom Ripley.