Ngaio Marsh - Last Ditch

Another lurch from the Island Belle coincided with a final piece of obscene advice.

“You unspeakable—” Ricky shouted and pulled himself up. “I was wrong,” he said. “You can insult me, can’t you, or have a bloody good try, and if I thought you meant what you said I’d knock your bloody little block off. ‘Crawl round after you ,’ ” quoted Ricky, failing to control a belch. “I’d rather crawl after a caterpillar. You make me sick,” he said. He attempted a dismissive gesture and, impelled by the ship’s motion, broke into an involuntary canter down the sloping deck. He fetched up clinging to the taffrail where, to his fury, he was indeed very sick. When it was over, he looked back at Syd. He too, had retired to the taffrail where he was similarly engaged.

Ricky moved as far aft as he was able and for the remainder of the short voyage divided his time between a bench and the side.

Saint Pierre-des-Roches lay in a shallow bay between two nondescript headlands. Rows of white houses stared out to sea through blank windows. A church spire stood over them, and behind it on a hillside appeared buildings of a commercial character.

As the ship drew nearer some half-dozen small hotels sorted themselves out along the front. Little streets appeared and shop fronts with titles that became readable: “Dupont Frères.” “Occasions.” “Chatte Noire,” and then, giving Ricky — wan and shaky but improving — quite a little thrill: “Jerome et Cie” above a long roof on the hillside.

Determined to avoid another encounter, Ricky watched Syd Jones go ashore, gave him a five-minute start, and then himself went down the gangway. He passed through the duanes and a bureau-de-change and presently was walking up a cobbled street in Saint Pierre-des-Roches.

Into one of the best smells in all the world: the smell of fresh-brewed coffee and fresh-baked brioches and croissants. His seasickness was as if it had never been. There was “La Chatte Noire” with an open door through which a gust of warm air conveyed these delectable aromas, and inside were workpeople having their breakfasts; perhaps coming off night shift. Suddenly Ricky was ravenous.

The little bistro was rather dark. Its lamps were out and the early morning light was still tentative. A blue drift of tobacco smoke hung on the air. Although the room was almost full of customers, there was not much conversation.

Ricky went to the counter and gave his order in careful French to the patronne , a large lady with an implacable bosom. He was vaguely conscious, as he did so, that another customer had come in behind him.

He took the only remaining single seat, facing the street door, and was given his petit déjeuner . No coffee is ever quite as good as it smells, but this came close to it. The butter and confitures in little pots were exquisite and he slapped sumptuous dollops of them on his warm brioches. This was adventure.

He had almost finished when there was a grand exodus from the bistro, with much scraping of chair legs, clearing of throats, and exchanging of pleasantries with the patronne . Ricky was left with only three other customers in view.

Or were there only three? Was there perhaps not someone still there in the corner of the room behind his back? He had the feeling that there was and that it would be better not to turn around and look.

Instead he raised his eyes to the wall facing him and looked straight into the disembodied face of Sydney Jones.

The shock was so disconcerting that seconds passed before he realized that what he saw was Syd’s reflection, dark glasses and all, in a shabby looking glass, and that it was Syd who sat in the corner behind his back and had been watching him.

There is always something a little odd, a little uncomfortable, about meeting another person’s eyes in a glass: it is as if the watchers had simultaneously caught each other out in a furtive exercise. In this case the sensation was much exaggerated. For a moment Ricky and Syd stared at each other’s image with something like horror and then Ricky scrambled to his feet, paid his bill, and left in a hurry.

As he walked up the street with his rucksack on his back, he wondered if Syd was going to ruin his visit to Saint Pierre-des-Roches by cropping up like a malignant being in a Hans Christian Andersen tale. Since Dulcie Harkness’s death he hadn’t thought much about Syd’s peculiar behavior, being preoccupied with misgivings of another kind concerning freshly cut wire scars on wooden posts and a gash on a sorrel mare’s leg. He thought how boring it was of Syd to be like that. If they were on friendly terms he could have asked him about the wire. And then he thought, with a nasty jolt, that perhaps it mightn’t be a good idea to ask Syd about the wire.

He passed several shops and an estaminet and arrived at a square with an hôtel-de-ville, central gardens, a frock-coated statue of a portentous gentleman with whiskers, a public lavatory, a cylindrical billboard, and a newsagent. There were also several blocks of offices, a consequential house or two, and L’Hôtel des Roches, which Ricky liked the look of.

The morning was now well established, the sun shone prettily on the Place Centrale, as the little square was called, and Ricky thought it would be fun to stay overnight in Saint Pierre and perhaps not too extravagant to put up at L’Hôtel des Roches. He went in and found it to be a decorous hostelry, very provincial in tone and smelling of beeswax. In a parlor opening off the entrance hall, a bourgeois family sat like caricatures of themselves and read their morning papers. A dim clerk said they could accommodate Monsieur and an elderly porter escorted him by way of a cautious old lift to a room with a double bed, a wash-hand-stand, an armchair, a huge wardrobe, and not much else. Left alone he took the opportunity to wash the legacy of the fish crate from his hands and then looked down from his lattice window at a scene that might have been painted by a French Grandmère Moses. Figures, dressed mostly in black, walked briskly about the Place Centrale, gentlemen removed hats, ladies inclined their heads, children in smocks, bow ties, and berets skittered in the central gardens, housewives in shawls marched steadfastly to market. And behind all this activity was the harbor with the Island Belle at her moorings.

This didn’t look like Syd Jones’s scene, Ricky thought, still less like Mr. Ferrant’s, with his camel’s hair coat and porkpie hat. Days rather than hours might have passed since he sailed away from the Cove: it was a new world.

He changed into jeans and a T-shirt, left his rucksack in his room, and went out to explore. First, he would go uphill. The little town soon petered out. Some precipitous gardens, a flight of steps and a road to a cemetery led to the church, not surprisingly dedicated to Saint Pierre-des-Roches. It turned out to be rather commonplace except perhaps for a statue of the saint himself in pastel colors, wearing his custodial keys and stationed precariously on an unconvincing rock. “ Tu es Pierre ,” said a legend, “ et sur cette pierre Je bâtirai Mon église .”

One could, for a small sum, climb the tower. Ricky did so and was rewarded by a panorama of the town, its environs, the sparkling sea, and a fragile shadow that was his own island out there in the Channel.

And, quite near at hand, were the premises of Jerome et Cie with their own legend in electric lights garnished with the image of a tube from which erupted a sausage of paint. At night, by a quaint device this would seem to gush busily. It reminded Ricky of the morning when he trod on Syd’s vermillion. Perhaps Syd had come over to Saint Pierre to renew his stock of samples and to this end would be calling on Messrs. Jerome et Cie. Ricky rested his arms on the balustrade and watched the humanoids moving about in the street below: all heads and shoulders. A funeral crawled up the road. He looked down into a wreath of lilies on top of the hearse. The cortège turned into the cemetery and presently there was a procession with a priest, a boy swinging a censer, and a following of black midgets. He imagined he could catch a whiff of incense. The cortège disappeared behind a large monument.