The Talented Mr Ripley / Талантливый мистер Рипли. Патриция Хайсмит

I spend my life. Thanks, anyway, Tom, for the message and the clothes. It was very nice of you.' Dickie offered his hand.

      Tom hesitated to take the hand. This was failure, failure with Mr Greenleaf's message, and failure with Dickie.

      'I think I should 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 last chance. Dickie might laugh at it or go out in disgust. But the smile was coming, the way Tom remembered Dickie's smile.

      'Paid your way! What do you know![21] He's very serious, isn't he?' Dickie closed the door again.

      'He came up to 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 here. I told him I'd try.'

      They laughed.

      'I don't want you to think I'm someone who tried to use your father,' Tom said. 'I expect to find a job somewhere in Europe soon, and I'll be able to pay him. He bought me a round-trip ticket.'

      'Oh, don't bother! It goes on the Greenleaf expense account.

      I can just see how Dad talks to you in a bar! '

      They had a drink downstairs in the hotel bar. They drank to Herbert Richard Greenleaf.

      'Oh, it's Sunday today,' Dickie remembered. 'Marge went to church. Could you 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 past Marge's house to see if she was still there. Her house was a one-storey building with a garden. Through an open window, Tom saw a table in disorder 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 that her bottle of gin was almost empty.

      'It doesn't matter, we're going to my house,' Dickie said. '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 didn't have anything funny to laugh at in years. 'When I saw him coming in Raoul's after me, I was ready to climb out of a back window!'

      His reputation was going up with Dickie and Marge. He could see it in their faces.

      The way up the hill to Dickie's house didn't seem so long as before. When they got there, they showered and then had a drink, just like the first time, but the atmosphere now was completely changed.

      Dickie sat down in a chair. 'Tell me more,' he said, smiling. 'What kind of work do you do? You said you might take a job.'

      'Why? Do you have a job for me?'

      'Can't say that I have.'

      'Oh, I can do a number of things – being a servant, baby-sitting, accounting – I've got an unfortunate talent for calculation. No matter how drunk I get, I can always tell when a waiter's cheating me on a bill. I can forge a signature, fly a helicopter, imitate practically anybody, cook – and do a one-man show in a nightclub. Shall I go on?'

      'What kind of a one-man show?' Dickie asked.

      'Well – ' Tom jumped up. 'This for example. This is a lady trying the American subway. She's never even been in the underground in London, but she wants to take back some American experiences.' Tom did it all in pantomime, – here Marge came out, and Dickie told her it was an Englishwoman in the subway, but Marge didn't seem to understand it and asked, 'What?'

      'Wonderful!' Dickie shouted, clapping.

      Marge wasn't laughing. She stood there looking a little confused. Neither of them bothered to explain it to her. She didn't look as if she had that kind of sense of humour, anyway, Tom thought.

      Dickie stood up. 'Come on in, Tom, I'll show you some of my paintings.' Dickie led the way into the big room.

      'This is one of Marge I'm working on now.' He pointed at one of the pictures.

      'Oh,' Tom said with interest. It wasn't good in his opinion, probably in anybody's opinion.

      'And these – a lot of landscapes,' Dickie said with an apologizing laugh, though obviously he wanted Tom to say something complimentary about them, because obviously he was proud of them.

      Tom felt almost a personal shame. 'Yes, I like that,' Tom said. Mr Greenleaf had been right. Yet it gave Dickie something to do, kept him out of trouble, Tom supposed. He was only sorry that Dickie fell into this category as a painter, because he wanted Dickie to be much more.

      'Yes,' Tom wanted to forget all about the paintings and forget that Dickie painted. 'Can I see the rest of the house?'

      'Absolutely! You haven't seen the salon, have you?'

      Dickie opened a door in the hall that led into a very large room with a fireplace, sofas, bookshelves, and three doors – to the terrace, to the land on the other side of the house, and to the front garden. Dickie said that in summer he did not use the room, because he liked to save it as a change of scene for the winter. It surprised him.

      'What's upstairs?' Tom asked.

      The upstairs was disappointing: Dickie's bedroom in the corner of the house above the terrace was almost empty – a bed, – a narrow bed, hardly wider than a single bed. There was certainly no sign of Marge anywhere, least of all in Dickie's bedroom.

      'How about going to Naples with me sometime?' Tom asked. 'I didn't have much of a chance to see it on my way down.'

      'All right,' Dickie said. 'Marge and I are going Saturday afternoon. We have dinner there nearly every Saturday night. Come along. I suppose we could go tomorrow, if you feel like it.'

      'Fine,' Tom said, hoping to avoid Marge in the trip. 'I had the idea she was in love with you.' He added as they went down the stairs.

      'With me? Don't be silly!'

      The dinner was ready when they went out on the terrace. Tom hoped Marge would leave after the coffee, but she didn't. When she left the terrace for a moment Tom said, 'Can I invite you for dinner at my hotel tonight?'

      'Thank you. At what time?'

      'Seven-thirty? So we'll have a little time for cocktails? – After all, it's your father's money,' Tom added with a smile.

      Dickie laughed. 'All right, cocktails and a good bottle of wine, Marge!' Marge was just coming back. 'We're dining tonight at the Miramare.

      So Marge was coming, too, and there was nothing Tom could do about it. After all, it was Dickie's father's money.

      The dinner that evening was pleasant, but Marge's presence kept Tom from talking easily.

      'How long are you going to be here?' Dickie asked.

      'Oh, at least a week, I'd say,' Tom replied.

      'Because – ' Dickie's face went red a little over the cheekbones. The wine had put him into a good mood. 'If you're going to be here a little longer, why don't you stay with me? There's no use staying in a hotel, unless you really prefer it.'

      'Thank you very much,' Tom said. 'I'm sure I'd like to. By the way, your father gave me six hundred dollars for expenses, and I've still got about five hundred of it. I think we both ought to have a little fun on it, don't you?'

      The next morning he moved in.

      'Are we still going to Naples?' Tom asked.

      'Certainly.' Dickie looked at his watch. 'It's only a quarter to twelve. We can make the twelve o'clock bus.'

      They took nothing with them but their jackets and Tom's book of traveller's cheques. The bus was just arriving as they reached the post office. Tom and Dickie stood by the door, then Dickie pulled himself up, right into the face of a young man with red hair and a sports shirt, an American.

      'Dickie!'

      'Freddie!' Dickie shouted. 'What're you doing here?'

      'Came

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