The Boy Who Followed Ripley

  “You’ve had some experience with the underworld before, haven’t you, Mr. Ripley?” Thurlow asked this in a genial way.

  “Haven’t we all,” Tom said, “anyone who’s ever bought an oriental rug.— Well, Frank, with your passport, you seem all set.”

  “I’m not going to stay here tonight,” Frank said, getting up.

  Thurlow looked at the boy. “What do you mean, Frank?—Where’s your suitcase? You have no suitcase?”

  “Downstairs with Tom’s,” Frank replied. “I want to go home with Tom now. And tonight. We’re not leaving for the States today, are we? I’m not.” Frank looked determined.

  Tom gave a twitch of a smile and waited. He had expected something like this.

  “I thought we’d leave tomorrow.” With equal determination and a little puzzlement, Thurlow folded his arms. “Do you want to phone your mother now, Frank? She’s expecting a call from you.”

  Frank shook his head quickly. “Just tell her I’m okay if she calls up.”

  Thurlow said, “I wish you’d stay here, Frank. It’s just one night here, and I want you in sight.”

  “Come on, Franky,” Johnny said. “Stay with us! Natch!”

  Frank gave his brother a look, as if he objected to being called Franky, made a kicking movement with his right foot, though there was nothing to kick. He walked nearer to Tom. “I want to leave.”

  “Now look,” said Thurlow. “One night—”

  “Can I go to Belle Ombre with you?” Frank asked Tom. “I can, can’t I?”

  In the next seconds, everyone but Tom talked at the same time. Tom wrote his telephone number on a pad by the telephone, and added his name below.

  “If we just tell my mother, it’s all right,” Johnny was saying to Thurlow. “I know Frank.”

  Did he, Tom wondered. Evidently Johnny trusted his brother usually.

  “—cause a delay,” Thurlow was saying with irritation. “Use your influence, Johnny.”

  “I haven’t any!” said Johnny.

  “I’m leaving.” Frank stood as tall as Tom or anyone else could have wished. “Tom wrote his phone number. I just saw it. Good-bye, Mr. Thurlow. See you soon, Johnny.”

  “Tomorrow morning, yes?” asked Johnny, following Tom and Frank out of the room. “Mr. Ripley—”

  “You can call me Tom.” They were now in the hall, walking toward the elevators.

  “Not much of a meeting,” Johnny said with a serious air to Tom. “This has been a crazy time. I know you’ve taken care of my brother, really saved him.”

  “Well—” Tom could see freckles on Johnny’s nose, eyes that were shaped like Frank’s, yet looked so much happier.

  “Ralph’s rather abrupt—the way he speaks,” Johnny went on.

  Now Thurlow was joining them. “We want to leave tomorrow, Mr. Ripley. Can I phone you tomorrow morning around nine? I’ll have our reservations by then.”

  Tom nodded calmly. Frank had pushed the elevator button. “Yes, Mr. Thurlow.”

  Johnny extended his hand. “Thank you, Mr. R— Tom. My mother kept thinking—”

  Thurlow made a gesture as if he preferred that Johnny keep silent.

  Johnny went on. “She didn’t know what to think about you, I know.”

  “Oh, can it!” said Frank, squirming with embarrassment.

  The elevator doors slid open like a pair of arms saying, “Welcome!” and Tom was delighted to step in. Frank followed at once, Tom pressed the button, and down they went.

  “Whew!” said Frank, hitting himself in the forehead with his palm.

  Tom laughed, and leaned against the Wagnerian interior. Two floors down, a man and woman got on, the woman with a perfume that made Tom cringe, though perhaps it was expensive. Her yellow-and-blue striped dress certainly looked expensive, and her black patent leather pumps reminded Tom of the one, or maybe two, that he had left in the kidnappers’ flat in Berlin. A surprising find for the neighbors or the police, Tom supposed. In the lobby, Tom reclaimed their suitcases, but felt that he didn’t breathe until he was standing on the pavement, waiting for the doorman to get a taxi. One came almost at once, letting off two women, and Tom and Frank took it, bound for the Gare de Lyon. They could make the 14:18 with a few minutes to spare, which was nice, as it avoided the awful wait for the next train at 5 p.m. or so. Frank was gazing out the window with eyes at once intense and dreaming, his body stiff as a statue. In fact, Tom thought of a statue of an angel, one of the dazed but supportive figures at the sides of church doors. At the station, Tom bought first-class tickets, and a copy of Le Monde from the newsstand by the trains.

  Once the train started moving, Frank pulled out a paperback that he had bought at a bookshop in Hamburg, Tom remembered. The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady, of all things. Tom glanced at Le Monde, read a column about gauchistes which seemed to have nothing new in it, put Le Monde on the seat beside Frank, and stuck his feet up on it. Frank did not look at him. Was Frank pretending his absorption?

  “Is there any reason why . . .” Frank said.

  Tom leaned forward, not having heard the rest in the train’s roar. “Reason why what?”

  Frank asked earnestly, “Is there any simple reason why Communism doesn’t work?”

  Tom thought the train was just then roaring toward its next stop, hadn’t begun to put on the brakes, which would be even louder. Across the aisle, a small child had begun to wail, and his father smacked him gently. “What made you think of that? That book?”

  “No, no. Berlin,” said Frank, frowning.

  Tom took a breath, hating talking over the train’s noise. “It does work. Socialism works. It’s individual initiative that’s lacking—they say. The Russian form just now doesn’t allow enough initiative—so everyone becomes discouraged.” Tom glanced around, glad to see that no one was listening to his unprepared lecture. “There’s a difference—”

  “A year ago I thought I was a Communist. You know, Moscow even. Depends on what you read. If you read the right things . . .”

  What did Frank mean by the right things? “If you read—”

  “Why do the Russians need the Wall?” Frank asked with frowning brows.

  “Well, that’s it. If it comes to freedom of choice— Even now people can ask for citizenship in Communist countries and probably get it. But if you’re in a Communist country, try and get out!”

  “That’s what’s so—uh—unfair!”

  Tom shook his head. The train roared on, as if they had passed Melun even, but that was impossible. He was glad the boy was asking naïve questions. How else could a boy learn anything? Tom leaned forward again. “You saw the Wall. The barriers are on their side, yet they claim they built it to keep capitalists out.— But it could’ve been marvelous, sure. Russia became more and more a police state. They seem to think they need all that control over people.” How to finish, Tom wondered. Jesus Christ was an early Communist. “But of course the idea is great!” Tom yelled. Was this the way to instruct the young? By screaming platitudes?

  Melun. The boy returned to his book, and minutes later pointed out a sentence to Tom. “We’ve got these in our garden in Maine. My father ordered them from England.”

  Tom read a sentence about an English wildflower he had never heard of: yellow, sometimes purple, blooming in early spring. Tom nodded. He was worried, thinking of a lot of things, therefore of nothing, he realized, nothing that was profitable or conclusive, anyway.

  At Moret, they got off, and Tom engaged one of the two waiting taxis. Then he began to feel better. This was home, familiar houses, familiar trees even, the towered bridge over the Loing. He remembered the first time he had brought the boy back to Mme. Boutin’s here, remembered his suspicion of the boy’s story, his wondering why the boy had looked him up. The taxi rolled through the open gates of Belle Ombre onto the gravel, and stopped near the front steps. Tom smiled at the sight of the red Mercedes in the garage, and since the door of the second garage was closed, Tom supposed the Renault was the
re too, and Heloise was home. Tom paid the driver.

  “Bonjour, Monsieur Tome!” Mme. Annette called from the front steps. “And Monsieur Billy! Welcome!”

  She seemed not much surprised by Billy, Tom saw. “And how goes everything?” He gave Mme. Annette a peck on the cheek.

  “All very well, but Madame Heloise was so worried—for a day or so. Come in.”

  Heloise walked toward him in the living room, and then she was in his arms. “Finally, Tome!”

  “Was I gone so long?— And Billy’s here.”

  “Hello, Heloise. I am intruding on you again,” the boy said in French. “But just for the night—if I may.”

  “Not intruding. Hello.” She blinked her eyes and extended a hand.

  In that blink of her eyes, Tom realized that she knew who the boy was. “Lots to talk about,” Tom said cheerfully, “but I want to get our suitcases up first. S-so—” He motioned to Frank, not knowing for the moment what to call him, and they both went upstairs with their luggage.

  Mme. Annette was in process of baking something, Tom judged from the aroma of orange and vanilla, otherwise she would have seized upon the suitcases and have been relieved of them by Tom, because he still disliked seeing women carrying men’s suitcases.

  “Christ, is it good to get home!” Tom said in the upstairs hall. “Take the spare room, Frank, unless—” A peek into the room assured Tom that no one else was using the guest room at the moment. “But use my john. I’d like to speak with you, so come in in a minute.” Tom went to his room, and took some things out of his suitcase to hang up or to be washed.

  The boy came in with a troubled face, and Tom knew that he had noticed Heloise’s manner.

  “Well, Heloise knows,” Tom said, “but what’s there to worry about?”

  “As long as she doesn’t think I’m a hundred percent phony.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that either.— I wonder if that delicious-smelling cake or whatever is for tea or dinner?”

  “And what about Madame Annette?” Frank asked.

  Tom laughed. “She seems to want to call you Billy. But she probably knew who you were before Heloise did. Madame Annette reads gossip sheets. It’ll be out in the open tomorrow anyway, when you show your passport.— What’s the matter? Are you ashamed of yourself?— Let’s go down. Throw your stuff to be washed here on the floor. I’ll tell Madame Annette, and everything will be ready by tomorrow morning.”

  Frank went back to his room, and Tom down to the living room. The day was lovely, and the French windows stood open on the garden.

  “I knew, of course, from the photographs. I saw two,” Heloise said. “Madame Annette showed me the first.— Why did he run away?”

  Mme. Annette just then came in with a tea tray.

  “He wanted to get away from home for a while. He took his older brother’s passport when he left America. But he’s going back home tomorrow, back to the States.”

  “Oh?” said Heloise, surprised. “Is he?”

  “I just met his brother Johnny—and the detective his family hired. They’re at the Hôtel Lutetia in Paris. I’ve been in touch with them from Berlin.”

  “Berlin? I thought you were in Hamburg—mostly.”

  The boy was coming down the stairs.

  Heloise poured tea. Mme. Annette had gone back to the kitchen.

  “Eric lives in Berlin, you know,” Tom went on. “Eric Lanz who was here last week. Sit down, Frank.”

  “What were you doing in Berlin?” Heloise asked, as if it were a military outpost, or a place anyone on vacation would never dream of visiting.

  “Oh—just looking around.”

  “You will be happy to get home, Frank?” Heloise asked as she served him orange cake.

  The boy was going through a bad moment, and Tom pretended not to notice. Tom got up from the sofa and went to look at the letters stacked where Mme. Annette often put them, by the telephone. There were only six or eight, and a couple looked like bills. One was from Jeff Constant, and Tom was curious about that, but he did not open it.

  “Did you speak with your mother when you were in Berlin?” Heloise was asking Frank.

  “No,” said Frank, swallowing cake as if it were dry as dust.

  “How was Berlin?” Heloise looked at Tom now.

  “Nothing in the world like it. As they say of Venice,” Tom said. “Everyone can do his own thing. Isn’t that right, Frank?”

  Frank rubbed a knuckle into his left eye, and writhed.

  Tom gave up. “Hey—Frank. Go up and take a nap. I insist.” He said to Heloise, “Reeves kept us up late last night in Hamburg.—I’ll call you at dinnertime, Frank.”

  Frank got up and bowed slightly to Heloise, evidently with his throat too tight for him to get a word out.

  “Something the matter?” Heloise whispered. “Hambourg—last night?”

  The boy had by now gone up the stairs.

  “Well—never mind Hamburg. Frank was kidnapped last Sunday in Berlin. I couldn’t get to him till early Tuesday morning. They gave him—”

  “Kidnapped?”

  “I know it wasn’t in the papers. The kidnappers gave him a lot of sedatives, and I know he’s still feeling the effect.”

  Heloise was wide-eyed, blinking again but in a different manner, her eyes so wide that Tom could see the little dark blue lines that radiated from the pupils and crossed the blue irises. “No, I didn’t hear a thing about a kidnapping. His family paid a ransom?”

  “No. Well, yes, but it wasn’t paid. I’ll tell you some time when we’re alone. You suddenly remind me of the Druckfisch in the Berlin aquarium. Most amazing little fish! I bought some postcards of it, I’ll show you! Eyelashes—as if someone had drawn them around its eyes. Long black ones!”

  “I haven’t got long black eyelashes!— Tom, this kidnapping. You could not get to him, what do you mean?”

  “Some other time, the details. We’re not hurt, you can see that.”

  “And his mother, she knows about this?”

  “She had to, because the money had to be put up. I only—began telling you this to explain why the boy seems a bit strange tonight. He’s—”

  “He’s very strange. Why should he run away from home in the first place? Do you know?”

  “No. Not really.” Tom knew he never would tell Heloise what the boy had told him. There was a limit to what Heloise should know, and Tom knew it as if it were a mark on a scale.

  19

  Tom read Jeff Constant’s letter, and was reassured because Jeff promised firmly to see that the half-finished or downright unsuccessful sketches done by the successor to Bernard Tufts in imitation of Derwatt were “torn up.” These efforts, by some hack, seemed inexhaustible. Tom had checked his greenhouse, plucked a ripe tomato that must have escaped Mme. Annette’s attention, had taken a shower and put on clean blue jeans. He had also helped Heloise polish a clothes tree she had just bought somewhere. From the top of the clothes tree curved wooden hooks sprang out, tipped with brass, reminding Tom of western American cowhorns. To Tom’s surprise the thing really had come from America, Heloise told him, and this must have added to its price, which Tom did not ask. Heloise liked it because it was comical in their house, being style rustique of the America variety.

  Around eight, Tom called Frank down for dinner, and opened two beers for them. Frank had not been asleep, but Tom hoped he had had a nap. Tom caught up on Heloise’s family news: her mother was quite all right now, no operation necessary, but the doctor had put her on a regime of no salt and no fats, the time-honored French prescription, Tom thought, when the doctor didn’t know what else to say or do. Heloise said she had rung up her family that afternoon to say she would not have her usual date with them tonight, because Tom had just come back.

  They had coffee in the living room.

  “I’ll play the record you like,” said Heloise to Frank, and she started the Lou Reed Transformer. “Makeup” was the first song on the second side.

  Your
face when sleeping is sublime,

  And then you open up your eyes . . .

  Then comes pancake Factor Number One,

  Eyeliner, rose lips, oh, it’s such fun!

  You’re a slick little girl . . .

  Frank ducked his head over his coffee.

  Tom looked for a box of cigars on the telephone table, and it wasn’t there. Maybe that box was finished. And the new ones he had bought were up in his room. Tom didn’t want one badly enough to go up. Tom was sorry Heloise had put the record on, because he knew it reminded the boy of Teresa. Frank seemed to be suffering inwardly, and Tom wondered if he wanted to be “excused,” or did he prefer their company in spite of the music? Maybe the second song was easier on him.

  Sa—tel—lite . . .

  Gone way up to Mars . . .

  I’ve been told that you’ve been bold

  With Harry, Mark, and John . . .

  Things like that drive me out of my mind . . .

  I watched it for a little while . . .

  I love to watch things on TV . . .

  The easy American voice went on, the words light and simple, yet—if one chose to take them that way—the words could be about an individual’s crisis. Tom made a sign to Heloise, meaning, “Please turn it off,” and Tom got up from an armchair. “I like it but— How about a bit of the classics? Maybe the Albeniz? I’d like that.” They had a new recording of Iberia played on the piano by Michel Block, whose performance topped all contemporaries in this work, according to the most respected reviewers. Heloise put it on. This was better! This was musical poetry by comparison, unfettered by human words with a message. Frank’s eyes met Tom’s for an instant, and Tom saw a flicker of gratitude.

  “I shall be going upstairs,” said Heloise. “Good night, Frank. I shall see you tomorrow morning, I hope.”

  Frank stood up. “Yes. Good night, Heloise.”

  She went up the stairs.

  Tom sensed that Heloise’s early departure was a hint for him to come upstairs early too. She wanted to ask him some more questions, of course.