The Talented Mr Ripley

The Talented Mr Ripley sail began to climb. Behind them, to the left, the orange sun was sinking into the water. Tom could hear Marge's laugh, and a shout from Dickie in Italian toward the pier. Tom realised he was seeing them on a typical day--a siesta after the late lunch, probably, then the sail in Dickie's boat at sundown. Then apΓ©ritifs at one of the cafes on the beach. They were enjoying a perfectly ordinary day, as if he did not exist. Why should Dickie want to come back to subways and taxis and starched collars and a nine-to- five job? Or even a chauffeured car and vacations in Florida and Maine? It wasn't as much fun as sailing a boat in old clothes and being answerable to nobody for the way he spent his time, and having his own house with a good-natured maid who probably took care of everything for him. And money besides, to take trips if he wanted to. Tom envied him with a heartbreaking surge of envy and self-pity. Dickie's father had probably said in his letter the very things that would set Dickie against him, Tom thought. How much better it would have been if he had just sat down in one of the cafes down at the beach and struck up an acquaintance with Dickie out of the blue! He probably could have persuaded Dickie to come home eventually, if he had begun like that, but this way it was useless. Tom cursed himself for having been so heavy-handed and so humourless today. Nothing he took desperately seriously ever worked out. He'd found that out years ago. He'd let a few days go by, he thought. The first step, anyway, was to make Dickie like him. That he wanted more than anything else in the world. 9 Tom let three days go by. Then he went down to the beach on the fourth morning around noon, and found Dickie alone, in the same spot Tom had seen him first, in front of the grey rocks that extended across the beach from the land. 'Morning!' Tom called. 'Where's Marge?' The Talented Mr Ripley 'Good morning. She's probably working a little late. She'll be down.' 'Working?' 'She's a writer.' 'Oh.' Dickie puffed on the Italian cigarette in the corner of his mouth. 'Where've you been keeping yourself? I thought you'd gone.' 'Sick,' Tom said casually, tossing his rolled towel down on the sand, but not too near Dickie's towel. 'Oh, the usual upset stomach?' 'Hovering between life and the bathroom,' Tom said, smiling. 'But I'm all right now.' He actually had been too weak even to leave the hotel, but he had crawled around on the floor of his room, following the patches of sunlight that came through his windows, so that he wouldn't look so white the next time he came down to the beach. And he had spent the remainder of his feeble strength studying an Italian conversation book that he had bought in the hotel lobby. Tom went down to the water, went confidently up to his waist and stopped there, splashing the water over his shoulders. He lowered himself until the water reached his chin, floated around a little, then came slowly in. 'Can I invite you for a drink at the hotel before you go up to your house?' Tom asked Dickie. 'And Marge, too, if she comes. I wanted to give you your bathrobe and socks, you know.' 'Oh yes. Thanks very much. I'd like to have a drink.' He went back to his Italian newspaper. Tom stretched out on his towel. He heard the village clock strike one. 'Doesn't look as if Marge is coming down,' Dickie said. 'I think I'll be going along.' Tom got up. They walked up to the Miramare, saying practically nothing to each other, except that Tom invited Dickie to lunch with him, and Dickie declined because the maid had his lunch ready at the house, he said. They went up to Tom's room, and Dickie tried the bathrobe on and held the socks up to his bare feet. Both the bathrobe and the socks were the right size, and, as Tom had anticipated, Dickie was extremely pleased with the bathrobe. 'And this,' Tom said, taking a square package wrapped in drugstore paper from a bureau drawer. 'Your mother sent you some The Talented Mr Ripley nose-drops, too.' Dickie smiled. 'I don't need them any more. That was sinus. But I'll take them off your hands.' Now Dickie had everything, Tom thought, everything he had to offer. He was going to refuse the invitation for a drink, too, Tom knew. Tom followed him toward the door. 'You know, your father's very concerned about your coming home. He asked me to give you a good talking to, which of course I won't, but I'll still have to tell him something. I promised to write him.' Dickie turned with his hand on the doorknob. 'I don't know what my father thinks I'm doing over here--drinking myself to death or what. I'll probably fly home this winter for a few days, but I don't intend to stay over there. I'm happier here. If I went back there to live, my father would be after me to work in Burke-Greenleaf. I couldn't possibly paint. I happen to like painting, and I think it's my business how I spend my life.' 'I understand. But he said he wouldn't try to make you work in his firm if you come back, unless you wanted to work in the designing department, and he said you liked that.' 'Well--my father and I have been over that. Thanks, anyway, Tom, for delivering the message and the clothes. It was very nice of you.' Dickie held out his hand. Tom couldn't have made himself take the hand. This was the very edge of failure, failure as far as Mr Greenleaf was concerned, and failure with Dickie. 'I think I ought to tell you something else,' Tom said with a smile. 'Your father sent me over here especially to ask you to come home.' 'What do you mean?' Dickie frowned. 'Paid your way?' 'Yes.' It was his one last chance to amuse Dickie or to repel him, to make Dickie burst out laughing or go out and slam the door in disgust. But the smile was coming, the long corners of his mouth going up, the way Tom remembered Dickie's smile. 'Paid your way! What do you know! He's getting desperate, isn't he?' Dickie closed the door again. 'He approached me in a bar in New York,' Tom said. 'I told him I wasn't a close friend of yours, but he insisted I could help if I came over. I told him I'd try.' 'How did he ever meet you?' 'Through the Schrievers. I hardly know the Schrievers, but there it The Talented Mr Ripley was! I was your friend and I could do you a lot of good.' They laughed. 'I don't want you to think I'm someone who tried to take advantage of your father,' Tom said. 'I expect to find a job somewhere in Europe soon, and I'll be able to pay him back my passage money eventually. He bought me a round-trip ticket.' 'Oh, don't bother! It goes on the Burke-Greenleaf expense list. I can just see Dad approaching you in a bar! Whicb bar was it?' 'Kabul's. Matter of fact, he followed me from the Green Cage.' Tom watched Dickie's face for a sign of recognition of the Green Cage, a very popular bar, but there was no recognition. They had a drink downstairs in the hotel bar. They drank to Herbert Richard Greenleaf. 'I just realised today's Sunday,' Dickie said. 'Marge went to church. You'd better come up and have lunch with us. We always have chicken on Sunday. You know it's an old American custom, chicken on Sunday.' Dickie wanted to go by Marge's house to see if she was still there. They climbed some steps from the main road up the side of a stone wall, crossed part of somebody's garden, and climbed more steps. Marge's house was a rather sloppy-looking one-storey affair with a messy garden at one end, a couple of buckets and a garden hose cluttering the path to the door, and the feminine touch represented by her tomato-coloured bathing suit and a bra hanging over a window-sill. Through an open window, Tom had a glimpse of a disorderly table with a typewriter on it. 'Hi!' she said, opening the door. 'Hello, Tom! Where've you been all this time?' She offered them a drink, but discovered there was only half an inch of gin in her bottle of Gilbey's. 'It doesn't matter, we're going to my house,' Dickie said. He strolled around Marge's bedroom-living-room with an air of familiarity, as if he lived half the time here himself. He bent over a flower pot in which a tiny plant of some sort was growing, and touched its leaf delicately with his forefinger. 'Tom has something funny to tell you,' he said. 'Tell her, Tom.' Tom took a breath and began. He made it very funny and Marge laughed like someone who hadn't had anything funny to laugh at in years. 'When I saw him coming in Raoul's after me, I was ready to climb