Ripley's Game (23 page)

Reeves had said at the last that he had been ringing from a post office. That was at least safer than if he had rung from his hotel. Tom was thinking about Reeves’ first call. Hadn’t that been from the hotel called the Zuyder Zee? Tom thought so.

Harpsichord notes came purely from below stairs, a message from another century. Tom went down the stairs.

Heloise would want him to tell her about the funeral service, say something about it, though when he had asked her if she wanted to go with him, she had said that funeral services depressed her.

Jonathan stood in his living-room, gazing out the front window. It was just after 12 noon. He had turned on the portable radio for the noonday news, and now it was playing pop music. Simone was in the garden with Georges, who had stayed in the house alone while he and Simone went to the funeral service. On the radio a man’s voice sang ‘
runnin’ on along … runnin’ on along
…’ and Jonathan watched a young dog that looked like an Alsatian loping after two small boys on the opposite pavement. Jonathan had a sense of the temporariness of everything, of life of all kinds – not only of the dog and the two boys, but of the houses behind them, a sense that everything would perish, crumble finally, shapes destroyed and even forgotten. Jonathan thought of Gauthier in his coffin being lowered into the ground perhaps at this moment, and then he didn’t think about Gauthier again but about himself. He hadn’t the energy of the dog that had trotted past. If he’d had any prime, he felt past it. It was too late, and Jonathan felt that he hadn’t the energy to enjoy what was left of his life, now that he had a little wherewithal to enjoy it. He ought to close up his shop, sell it or give it away, what did it matter? Yet on second thought he couldn’t simply squander the money with Simone, because what would she and Georges have when he died? Forty thousand quid wasn’t a fortune. His ears were ringing. Calmly Jonathan took deep, slow breaths. He made an effort to raise the window in front of him, and found he hadn’t the strength. He turned to face the centre of the room, his legs heavy and nearly incontrollable. The ringing in his ears had completely drowned the music.

He came to, sweating and cool, on the living-room floor.
Simone was on her knees beside him, lightly passing a damp towel across his forehead, down his face.

‘Darling, I
just found
you! How are you? – Georges, it is all right. Papa is
all right?
But Simone sounded frightened.

Jonathan put his head down again on the carpet.

‘Some water?’

Jonathan managed to sip from the glass she held. He lay back again. ‘I think I might have to lie here all afternoon!’ His voice warred with the ringing in his ears.

‘Let me straighten this.’ Simone pulled at his jacket which was bunched under him.

Something slipped out of a pocket. He saw Simone pick up something, then she looked back at him with concern, and Jonathan kept his eyes open, focusing on the ceiling, because things were worse if he closed his eyes. Minutes passed, minutes of silence. Jonathan was not worried, because he knew he would hang on, that this wasn’t death, merely a faint. Maybe first cousin to death, but death wouldn’t come quite like this. Death would probably have a sweeter, more seductive pull, like a wave sweeping out from a shore, sucking hard at the legs of a swimmer who’d already ventured too far, and who mysteriously had lost his will to struggle. Simone went away, urging Georges out with her, then returned with a cup of hot tea.

‘This has a lot of sugar. It will do you good. Do you want me to telephone Dr Perrier?’

‘Oh no, darling. Thanks.’ After some sips of the tea, Jonathan got himself to the sofa and sat down.

‘Jon, what’s this?’ Simone asked, holding up the little blue book that was the Swiss bank’s passbook.

‘Oh – that —’Jonathan shook his head, trying to make himself more alert.

‘It’s a bankbook. Isn’t it?’

‘Well — yes.’ The sum was in six figures, more than four hundred thousand francs, which were indicated by an ‘f’ after them. He also knew that Simone had looked into the little book in all innocence, assuming it was a record of some
household purchase, some kind of record they had in common.

‘It says francs. French francs? – Where did you get it? What wit, Jon?’

The sum was in French francs, darling, that’s sort of an advance – from the German doctors.’

‘But —’ Simone looked at a loss. ‘It’s French
francs,
isn’t it? This sum!’ She laughed a little, nervously.

Jonathan’s face was suddenly warm. ‘I told you where I got it, Simone. Naturally – I know it’s a biggish sum. I didn’t want to tell you at once. I —’

Simone laid the little blue book carefully on top of his wallet on the low table in front of the sofa. Then she pulled the chair from in front of the writing-table and sat down on it, sideways, holding to its back with one hand. Jon —’

Georges suddenly appeared in the hall doorway, and Simone got up with determination and turned him by the shoulders. ‘Chou-chou, papa and I are talking. Now leave us alone for a minute.’ She came back and said quietly, ‘Jon, I don’t believe you.’

Jonathan heard a trembling in her voice. It wasn’t only the sum of money, startling though it was, but also his secrecy lately – the trips to Germany. ‘Well – you’ve got to believe me,’ Jonathan said. Some strength had returned. He stood up. ‘It’s an advance. They don’t think I’m going to be able to use it. I won’t have time. But you can.’

Simone did not respond to his laugh. ‘It’s in your name. – Jon, whatever you are doing, you are not telling me the truth.’ And she waited, just those few seconds when he might have told her the truth, but he didn’t speak.

Simone left the room.

And lunch was a sort of duty. They barely talked. Jonathan could see that Georges was puzzled. Jonathan could foresee the days ahead – Simone perhaps not questioning him again, just coolly waiting for him to tell the truth, or to explain – somehow. Long silences in the house, no more love-making, no more affection or laughter. He had to
come up with something else, something better. Even if he said he ran the risk of dying under the German doctors’ treatment, was it logical that they’d paid him this much? Not really. Jonathan realized that his life wasn’t worth as much as the lives of two Mafiosi.

16

F
RIDAY
morning was lovely with light rain alternating with sunlight every half-hour or so, just the thing for the garden, Tom thought. Heloise had driven up to Paris, because there was a dress sale at a certain boutique in the Faubourg St-Honoré, and Tom felt sure she would come back also with a scarf or something more important from Hermès as well. Tom sat at the harpsichord, playing the base of a Goldberg variation, trying to get the fingering in his head and in his hand. He had bought a few music books in Paris the same day he had acquired the harpsichord. Tom knew how the variation should sound, because he had Landowska’s recording. As he was going over it for the third or fourth time and feeling that he had made progress, the telephone jangled.

‘Hello?’ said Tom.

‘‘Ello – ah – to whom am I speaking, please?’ a man’s voice asked in French.

Tom, more slowly than usual, felt an unease. ‘You wished to speak to whom?’ he asked with equal politeness.

‘M. Anquetin?’

‘No, this is not his house,’ said Tom, and put the telephone back in its cradle.

The man’s accent had been perfect – hadn’t it? But then the Italians would get a Frenchman to make the call, or an Italian whose French accent was perfect. Or was he over anxious? Frowning, Tom turned to face the harpsichord and the windows, and shoved his hands into his back pockets. Had the Genotti family found Reeves in his hotel, and were they checking all the telephone numbers Reeves had called?
If so, this caller wouldn’t be satisfied with his answer. An ordinary person would have said, ‘You are mistaken, this is so-and-so’s residence.’ Sunlight came through the windows slowly, like something liquid pouring between the red curtains on to the rug. The sunlight was like an arpeggio that Tom could almost hear – this time Chopin, perhaps. Tom realized that he was afraid to ring Reeves in Amsterdam and ask what was happening. The call hadn’t sounded like a long-distance call, but it wasn’t always possible to tell. It could have come from Paris. Or Amsterdam. Or Milan. Tom had an unlisted number. The operator wouldn’t give his name or address, but from the exchange – 424 – it would be easy for the man who had the number to find the district, if he cared to. It was part of the Fontainebleau area. Tom knew it wouldn’t be impossible for the Mafia to find out that Tom Ripley lived in this area, in Villeperce even, because the Derwatt affair had been in the newspapers, Tom’s photograph also, just six months ago. Much depended, of course, on the second bodyguard, alive and uninjured, who had walked the train in search of his capo and his colleague. This one might remember Tom’s face from the restaurant car.

Tom was again on the Goldberg variation base when the telephone rang a second time. Ten minutes had passed, he thought, since the first call. This time he was going to say it was the house of Robert Wilson. There was no concealing his American accent.

‘Ota,’ Tom said in a bored tone.

‘Hello—’

‘Yes. Hello,’ Tom said, recognizing Jonathan Trevanny’s voice.

‘I’d like to see you,’ Jonathan said, ‘if you’ve got some tame.’

‘Yes, of course. – Today?’

‘If you could, yes. I can’t – I don’t want to make it around the lunch hour, if you don’t mind. Later today?’

‘Sevenish?’

‘Even six-thirty. Can you come to Fontainebleau?’

Tom agreed to meet Jonathan at the Salamandre Bar. Tom could guess what it was about: Jonathan couldn’t explain the money properly to his wife. Jonathan sounded worried, but not desperate.

At 6 p.m., Tom took the Renault, because Heloise was not back with the Alfa. Heloise had telephoned to say she was going to have cocktails with Noëlle, and might also have dinner with her. And she had bought a beautiful suitcase at Hermès, because it had been on sale. Heloise thought that the more she bought at sales, the more she was being economical, and positively virtuous.

Tom found Jonathan already in the Salamandre, standing at the counter drinking dark beer – probably good old Whitbread’s ale, Tom thought. The place was unusually busy and noisy this evening, and Tom supposed it would be all right to talk at the counter. Tom nodded and smiled in greeting, and ordered the same dark beer for himself.

Jonathan told him what had happened. Simone had seen the Swiss bankbook. Jonathan had told her it was an advance from the German doctors, and that he was running a risk in taking their drugs, and that this was a kind of payment for his life.

‘But she doesn’t really believe me.’ Jonathan smiled. ‘She’s even suggested I impersonated somebody in Germany to get an inheritance for a gang of crooks – something like that – and that this is my cut. Or that I’ve borne false witness for something.’ Jonathan gave a laugh. He actually had to shout to be heard, but he was sure no one was listening in the vicinity, or could understand if they did. Three barmen were working frantically behind the counter, pouring Pernods and red wine and drawing glasses of lager from the tap.

‘I can understand,’ Tom said, glancing at the noisy fray around him. He was still concerned about the telephone call he had got that morning, which hadn’t been repeated in the afternoon. He had even looked around Belle Ombre and
Villeperce, as he drove out at 6 p.m., for any strange figures on the streets. It was odd how one finally knew everybody in the village, by their figures, even at a distance, so that a newcomer at once caught the eye. Tom had even been afraid, a little, when he started the motor of the Renault. Fixing dynamite to the ignition was a favourite Mafia prank. ‘We’ll have to think !’ Tom shouted, earnestly.

Jonathan nodded and quaffed his beer. ‘Funny she’s suggested nearly everything I might’ve done short of murder!’

Tom put his foot on the rail and tried to think in all the din. He looked at a pocket of Jonathan’s old corduroy jacket where a rip had been neatly mended, no doubt by Simone. Tom said in sudden desperation, ‘I wonder what’s the matter with telling her the truth? After all, these Mafiosi, these
morpions
—’

Jonathan shook his head. ‘I’ve thought of that. Simone – she’s a Catholic.
That
—’ Being regularly on the pill was a kind of concession for Simone to have made. Jonathan saw the Catholic retreat as a slow one: they didn’t want to be seen to be routed, even if they gave in here and there. Georges was being raised as a Catholic, inevitable in this country, but Jonathan tried to make Georges see that it wasn’t the only religion in the world, tried to make him understand that he would be free to make his own choice when he grew a little older, and his efforts had so far not been opposed by Simone. ‘It’s so different for her,’ Jonathan shouted, now getting used to the noise and almost liking its protective wall. ‘It’d be really a shock – something she couldn’t forgive, you know. Human life and all that.’

‘Human! Ha-ha!’

‘The thing is,’ Jonathan said, serious again, ‘it’s almost like my whole marriage. I mean, as if my marriage itself was at stake.’ He looked at Tom, who was trying to follow him. ‘What a hell of a place to talk about something serious!’ Jonathan began again with determination, ‘Things are not the same between us, to put it mildly. And I don’t see how
they’re going to get any better. I was simply hoping you might have an idea – as to what I should do or say. On the other hand, I don’t know why you
should.
It’s my problem.’