Patricia Highsmith - The Boy Who Followed Ripley

ADDITIONAL BOOKS BY PATRICIA HIGHSMITH
PUBLISHED BY W. W. NORTON

The Talented Mr. Ripley

Ripley Under Ground

Ripley's Game

Ripley Under Water

Strangers on a Train

The Price of Salt (as Claire Morgan)

The Blunderer

Deep Water

This Sweet Sickness

The Glass Cell

A Suspension of Mercy

A Dogs Ransom

Little Tales of Misogyny

The Animal-Lovers Book of Beastly Murder

Slowly, Slowly in the Wind

The Black House

People Who Knock on the Door

Mermaids on the Golf Course

Small g: A Summer Idyll

Nothing That Meets the Eye: The Uncollected Stories of Patricia Highsmith

ADDITIONAL TITLES FROM OTHER PUBLISHERS

Miranda the Panda Is on the Veranda (with Doris Sanders)

A Game for the Living

The Cry of the Owl

The Two Faces of January

Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction

Those Who Walk Away

The Tremor of Forgery

The Snail-Watcher and Other Stories

Ediths Diary

Found in the Street

Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes

The Boy Who
Followed Ripley

Patricia Highsmith

W. W. N ORTON & C OMPANY
N EW Y ORK L ONDON

To Monique Buffet

Contents

T om crept forward as silently as possible on his parquet floor, crossed the threshold of his bathroom, and paused and listened.

Zz-zzzzz-zzzzz-zzz .

The industrious little beasts were at it again, though Tom could still smell the Rentokill he had painstakingly injected into their exit holes, or whatever they were, that afternoon. The sawing went on and on, as if his efforts had been for nothing. He glanced at a folded pink hand towel below one of the wooden shelves and sawalreadya minuscule heap of fine, tan sawdust.

Shut up ! Tom said, and slammed the cabinet with the side of his fist.

They did shut up. Silence. Tom imagined the little bugheads with saws in their hands pausing, looking at each other with apprehension, but maybe nodding also as if to say, Weve had this before. Its the master again, but hell be gone in a minute. Tom had had it before too: if he walked into his bathroom with a normal tread, not even thinking of carpenter ants, he could sometimes detect their diligent buzz before they detected him, yet one more step of his, or the turning on of a tap would shut them up for a few minutes.

Heloise thought he took it too seriously. It will be years before they make the cabinet fall .

But Tom disliked the fact that he had been defeated by the ants, that they caused him to blow their dust off clean folded pajamas when he took a pair off a shelf, that his purchase and application of a French product called Xylophene (fancy name for kerosene), and his consulting two encyclopedias at the house had been futile. Camponotus gnaws galleries in wood and constructs its nest. See Campodea. Wingless, blind, but serpentine, fleeing light, lives under rocks. Tom couldnt imagine his pests serpentine, and they were not living under rocks. He had made a special trip to Fontainebleau for good old Rentokill yesterday. Yes, yesterday hed launched his Blitzkrieg, second attack today, and he was still defeated. Difficult of course to fire Rentokill upward, as one had to do, because the holes were on the underside of the shelves.

The zz-zz-zz resumed, just as the music of Swan Lake from the gramophone below stairs swung gracefully into another gear too, an elegant waltz as if to mock him, as the insects were doing.

All right, give it up , Tom told himself, for today anyway . But he had wanted today and yesterday to be constructive: he had cleaned out his desk, thrown papers away, swept the greenhouse, written business letters, one an important one to Jeff Constant at Jeffs private address in London. Tom had been putting that letter off, but today he had written a letter which he asked Jeff to destroy at once: Tom advised absolutely no more pretended discoveries of Derwatt canvases or sketches, and Tom had asked rhetorically werent the profits from the still flourishing art materials company and the art school in Perugia sufficient? The Buckmaster Gallery, specifically Jeff Constant, a professional photographer but now a part owner of the Buckmaster Gallery along with Edmund Banbury, journalist, had been toying with the idea of selling more of Bernard Tuftss failures, or not-so-good imitations of Derwatts work. They had succeeded up to now in this, but Tom wanted it stopped for safety reasons.

Tom decided to take a walk, have a coffee at Georges and change his thoughts. It was only half past 9 p.m. Heloise was in the living room, talking away with her friend Nolle in French. Nolle, a married woman who lived in Paris, was staying the night, but without her husband.

Succs, chri? Heloise asked brightly, sitting up on the yellow sofa.

Tom had to laugh, a little wryly. Non! He went on in French. I admit defeat. I am vanquished by carpenter ants!

A-a-aaaaah, Nolle groaned sympathetically, then laughter bubbled out of her.

She was no doubt thinking about something else, dying to get back to her conversation with Heloise. Tom knew they were planning an Adventure Cruise in late September or early October together, maybe to the Antarctic, and they wanted Tom to come too. Nolles husband had already firmly declined: business reasons.

Im going to take a little walk. Back in half an hour or so. Need any cigarettes? he asked both of them.

Ah, oui! said Heloise. She meant a pack of Marlboros.

I stopped! said Nolle.

For at least the third time that Tom could remember. Tom nodded, and went out the front door.

Mme. Annette had not closed the front gates as yet. He would do it on his return, Tom thought. He turned left and walked toward the center of Villeperce. It was coolish, for mid-August. Roses bloomed in profusion in his neighbors front gardens, visible behind wire fences. Daylight Saving Time made it lighter than normal, but Tom suddenly wished he had brought a flashlight for the walk home. There were no proper sidewalks on this road. Tom breathed deeply. Think of Scarlatti tomorrow, of the harpsichord instead of carpenter ants. Think of taking Heloise to America in late October, maybe. It would be her second trip. She had loved New York, and found San Francisco beautiful. And the blue Pacific.

Yellowish lights had come on in some of the small houses in the village. There was Georges slanting red tabac talisman above the door, with a glow of light below it.

Marie, Tom said with a nod as he walked in, greeting the proprietress who was just then slamming a beer down on the counter for a customer. This was a working-class bar, nearer to Toms house than the other bar in the village, and often more amusing.

Monsieur Tome! Ca va? Marie tossed her curly black hair with a trace of coquetry, and her big mouth, bright with lipstick, gave Tom a reckless smile. She was fifty-five if she was a day. Dis-donc! she yelled, plunging back into conversation with two male customers who were hunched over pastis at the counter. That assholethat asshole ! she shouted as if to gain an ear by this word which was bandied about many times a day in the establishment. With no attention from the roaring men who were now talking simultaneously she continued, That asshole spreads himself like a whore who takes on too much work! He deserves what he got!

Was she talking about Giscard, Tom wondered, or a local mason? Caf, Tom put in, when he got a split second of Maries attention, and a packet of Marlboros! He knew Georges and Marie were pro-Chirac, the so-called Fascist.

Eh, Marie! Georges boomed in baritone from Toms left, trying to quiet his wife down. Georges, a tub of a man with fat hands, was polishing stemmed glasses, putting them back daintily on the shelf to the right of the cash register. Behind Tom a noisy table football game was in progress: four adolescent boys whirled rods, and little lead men in lead shorts kicked a marble-sized ball as they spun backward and forward. Tom suddenly noticed, on his extreme left round the curve of the bar, a teenaged boy whom he had seen on the road near his house a few days ago. The boy had brown hair and wore a workmans jacket of the usual French blue, blue jeans too, as Tom recalled. When Tom had first seen himTom had been opening his gates one afternoon for an expected visitorthe boy had moved from his position under a big chestnut tree across the road and walked off, away from Villeperce. Had he been casing Belle Ombre, watching the familys habits? Another minor worry, Tom thought, like the carpenter ants. Think about something else. Tom stirred his coffee, sipped it, glanced at the boy again and found the boy looking at him. The boy at once lowered his eyes and picked up his beer glass.