The Boy Who Followed Ripley (26 page)

“Well, well, Tom—this is it. Or part of it. Our home.”

Tom gave a polite smile, because Frank wanted that. Tom strolled toward a mediocre oil above the fireplace—did the fireplace work?—of a woman Tom supposed was Frank’s mother: blonde, pretty, made-up, posed with hands not in lap but stretched out, as were the arms, along the back of a pale green sofa. She wore a black sleeveless dress with an orange-red flower in her belt. The mouth was gently smiling, but so worked over by the painter, Tom did not look for reality or character in it. What had John Pierson had to pay for this mess? Thurlow was on the telephone in the foyer, speaking perhaps to his office. Tom was not interested in what he might have to say. Now Tom saw Johnny in the hall looking at the letters, pocketing two, opening a third. Johnny looked cheerful.

In the living room two large brown leather sofas—Tom could just see the bottom part of the side of one under the white sheet—made a right angle, and there was a grand piano with a music score propped up. Tom moved closer to see what the music was, but two photographs atop the piano distracted him. One was of a dark-haired man holding a baby of perhaps two, the baby laughing and blond: Johnny, Tom supposed, and the man was John Pierson, looking hardly forty, smiling with friendly dark eyes in which Tom thought he saw a resemblance to Frank’s. The second picture of John looked equally attractive, John in white shirt with no tie, wearing no glasses, in the act of taking a pipe from his smiling mouth as a wraith of smoke drifted up. It was difficult to imagine John the elder a tyrant or even a tough businessman from these pictures. The sheet music on the piano had “Sweet Lorraine” written in scrolly letters on its cover. Did Lily play? Tom had always liked “Sweet Lorraine.”

Eugene arrived, and Thurlow came in just then from another room, carrying what looked like a scotch and soda. Eugene at once asked Tom if he would like some refreshment, tea or a drink, and Tom declined. Then Thurlow and Eugene discussed the next move. Thurlow was for taking a helicopter, and Eugene said of course that could be done, and were they all going? Tom looked at Frank, and would not have been surprised if Frank had said he preferred to stay in New York and with Tom, but Frank said:

“All right, yes. We’ll all go.”

Then Eugene made a telephone call.

Frank beckoned Tom into a hall. “Would you like to see my room?” The boy opened the second door on the right in the hall. Again venetian blinds had been drawn, but Frank pulled a cord so that they admitted light.

Tom saw a long trestle-based table, books neatly set in a row at the back against the wall, stacked spiral-backed school notebooks, and two pictures of the girl he recognized as Teresa. In one picture she was by herself with a tiara, a lei of flowers, white dress, pink lips smiling a mischievous smile, eyes bright. The belle of the ball that night, Tom supposed. The other picture, also in color, was smaller: Frank and Teresa standing in what looked like Washington Square, Frank holding her hand, Teresa in bell-bottomed beige jeans and blue denim shirt, with a little sack of something—peanuts maybe—in one hand. Frank looked handsome and happy, like a boy who was sure of his girl.

“My favorite picture,” said Frank. “Makes me look older. That was just—maybe two weeks before I went to Europe.”

Meaning about a week before he killed his father. Tom again had the disturbing, very strange doubt:
had
Frank killed his father? Or was it a fantasy? Adolescents did have fantasies and hung on to them. And might Frank? Frank had an intensity of a kind that Johnny showed not at all. It was going to take ages for Frank to recover from Teresa, for instance, and by ages Tom thought of perhaps two years. On the other hand, to fantasize about killing his father, and to have told Tom about it, would have been a way of calling attention to himself, and Frank was not the type to do that.

“What’re you thinking about?” Frank asked. “Teresa?”

“Are you telling me the truth about your father?” Tom asked softly.

Frank’s mouth became suddenly firm in a way that Tom knew well. “Why would I ever lie to you?” Then he shrugged as if ashamed of being so serious. “Let’s go out.”

He just might lie, Tom thought, because he believed more in fantasy than in reality. “Your brother doesn’t suspect at all?”

“My brother—he asked me and I said I didn’t—push—” Frank broke off. “Johnny believed me. I think he wouldn’t even want to believe the truth if I told him.”

Tom nodded, and also nodded toward the door of the room. Before he went out, Tom glanced at the hi-fi and the handsome three-tiered case of records near the door. Then Tom went back and pulled the venetian blinds’ cord the way it had been. The rug was dark purple, as was the cover of the bed. Tom found the color pleasing.

They all went down and got two taxis, and headed for the Midtown Heliport on West Thirtieth Street. Tom had heard of the heliport, but never been here. The Piersons had their own helicopter, with room for a dozen people, it seemed, though Tom didn’t count the seats. There was leg room, a bar, an electronic kitchen.

“I don’t know these people,” Frank said to Tom, referring to the pilot and the steward who was taking drink and food orders. “They’re employed by the heliport.”

Tom ordered a beer and a cheese sandwich on rye. It was now just after five, and the trip was going to take about three hours, someone had said. Thurlow sat beside Eugene in seats nearer the pilot. Tom looked out of his window and watched New York drop below them.

Chop-chop-chop
, as the comic strips said. Mountains of buildings sank below, as if being sucked downward, reminding Tom of a film being turned in reverse. Frank sat across the aisle from Tom. There was no one behind them. Now the steward and the pilot up front were telling jokes, or so it seemed from their laughter. On their left, an orange sun hung above the horizon.

Frank sank himself in another book, one he had taken from his room. Tom tried to snooze. It seemed the best thing to do, in view of the fact they all might be up late tonight. For Tom, Frank, and Thurlow, also Johnny, it was about two in the morning. Thurlow was already asleep, Tom saw.

A different pitch of the motor’s buzz awakened Tom. They were descending.

“We’re landing on the back lawn,” Frank said to Tom.

It was almost dark. Now Tom saw a big white house, impressive yet somehow friendly with its yellowish lights glowing under two porch roofs on two sides. And maybe mother would be standing on one porch, Tom thought, as if welcoming a son who came trudging home with a handkerchief of possessions on a stick over his shoulder. Tom realized that he was curious about the Pierson establishment here, not their only house, of course, but an important one. The sea lay on their right, and Tom could see a couple of lights out there, of buoys or of small craft. And there, suddenly,
was
Lily Pierson—Mama—on the porch, waving! She appeared to be wearing black slacks and blouse, in the semi-darkness Tom couldn’t tell, but her fair hair showed in the porch’s light. Beside her stood a thicker figure, a woman wearing mostly white.

The helicopter touched ground. They descended steps that had been flipped out.

“
Franky!
Welcome
home
!” called his mother.

The woman beside her was a black, smiling also, coming forward to help with the luggage which Eugene and the steward were taking from a side hatch.

“Hello, Mom,” said Frank. He put his arm nervously or a bit tensely around his mother’s shoulder, and did not quite kiss her cheek.

Tom watched from a distance, as he was still on the lawn. The boy was shy, but he did not dislike his mother, Tom thought.

“This is Evangelina,” Lily Pierson was saying to Frank, indicating the black woman walking toward them with somebody’s suitcase now. “My son Frank—and Johnny,” she said to Evangelina. “And how are you, Ralph?”

“Very fine, thank you. This is—”

Frank interrupted Thurlow. “Mom, this is Tom Ripley.”

“I’m so happy to meet you, Mr. Ripley!” Lily Pierson’s made-up eyes gave Tom a searching inspection, though her smile looked friendly enough.

They were ushered into the house, assured by Lily that they could leave their jackets and raincoats in the hall or anywhere. And had they had anything to eat, or were they exhausted? Evangelina had prepared a cold supper, if anyone wished to partake. Lily’s voice did not sound nervous, only hospitable. Her accent combined New York and California, Tom thought.

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?