AT sundown, just the hour when the Italians and everybody else in the village had gathered at the sidewalk tables of the cafes, freshly showered and dressed, staring at everybody and everything that passed by, eager for whatever entertainment the town could offer, Tom walked into the village wearing only his swimming shorts and sandals and Dickie's corduroy jacket, and carrying his slightly bloodstained trousers and jacket under his arm. He walked with a languid casualness because he was exhausted, though he kept his head up for the benefit of the hundreds of people who stared at him as he walked past the cafés, the only route to his beachfront hotel. He had fortified himself with five espressos full of sugar and three brandies at a bar on the road just outside San Remo. Now he was playing the role of an athletic young man who had spent the afternoon in and out of the water because it was his peculiar taste, being a good swimmer and impervious to cold, to swim until late afternoon on a chilly day. He made it to the hotel, collected the key at the desk, went up to his room and collapsed on the bed. He would allow himself an hour to rest, he thought, but he must not fall asleep lest he sleep longer. He rested, and when he felt himself falling asleep, got up and went to the basin and wet his face, took a wet towel back to his bed to waggle in his hand to keep from falling asleep.
Finally he got up and went to work on the blood smear on one leg of his corduroy trousers. He scrubbed it over and over with soap and a nailbrush, got tired and stopped for a while to pack the suitcase. He packed Dickie's things just as Dickie had always packed them, toothpaste and toothbrush in the back left pocket. Then he went back to finish the trouser leg. His own jacket had too much blood on it ever to be worn again, and he would have to get rid of it, but he could wear Dickie's jacket, because it was the same beige colour and almost identical in size.
Tom had had his suit copied from Dickie's, and it had been made by the same tailor in Mongibello. He put his own jacket into the suitcase. Then he went down with the suitcase and asked for his bill.
The man behind the desk asked where his friend was, and Tom said he was meeting him at the railroad station. The clerk was pleasant and smiling, and wished Tom 'Buon' viaggio".
Tom stopped in at a restaurant two streets away and forced himself to eat a bowl of minestrone for the strength it would give him. He kept an eye out for the Italian who owned the boats. The main thing, he thought, was to leave San Remo tonight, take a taxi to the next town, if there was no train or bus.
There was a train south at ten twenty-four, Tom learned at the railroad station. A sleeper. Wake up tomorrow in Rome, and change trains for Naples. It seemed absurdly simple and easy suddenly, and in a burst of self-assurance he thought of going to 'Paris for a few days.
'Spetta un momento,' he said to the clerk who was ready to hand him his ticket. Tom walked around his suitcase, thinking of Paris. Overnight. Just to see it, for two days, for instance. It wouldn't matter whether he told Marge or not. He decided abruptly against Paris. He wouldn't be able to relax. He was too eager to get to Mongibello and see about Dickie's belongings.
The white, taut sheets of his berth on the train seemed the most wonderful luxury he had ever known. He caressed them with his hands before he turned the light out. And the clean blue-grey blankets, the spanking efficiency of the little black net over his head—Tom had an esctatic moment when he thought of all the pleasures that lay before him now with Dickie's money, other beds, tables, seas, ships, suitcases, shirts, years of freedom, years of pleasure. Then he turned the light out and put his head down and almost at once fell asleep, happy, content, and utterly confident, as he had never been before in his life.
In Naples he stopped in the men's room of the railway station and removed Dickie's toothbrush and hairbrush from the suitcase, and rolled them up in Dickie's raincoat together with his own corduroy jacket and Dickie's blood spotted trousers. He took the bundle across the street from the station and pressed it into a huge burlap of garbage that leaned against an alley wall. Then he breakfasted on caffe latte and a sweet roll at a café on the bus-spot square, and boarded the old eleven o'clock bus for Mongibello.
He stepped off the bus almost squarely in front of Marge, who was in her bathing suit and the loose white jacket she always wore to the beach.
'Where's Dickie?' she asked.
'He's in Rome.' Tom smiled easily, absolutely prepared. 'He's staying up there for a few days. I came down to get some of his stuff to take up to him.'
'Is he staying with somebody?'
'No, just in a hotel.' With another smile that was half a goodbye, Tom started up the hill with his suitcase. A moment later he heard Marge's cork-soled sandals trotting after him. Tom waited. 'How's everything been in our home sweet home?' he asked.
'Oh, dull. As usual.' Marge smiled. She was ill at ease with him. But she followed him into the house—the gate was unlocked, and Tom got the big iron key to the terrace door from its usual place, back of a rotting wooden tub that held earth and a half-dead shrub—and they went on to the terrace together. The table had been moved a little. There was a book on the glider. Marge had been here since they left, Tom thought. He had been gone only three days and nights: It seemed to him that he had been away for a month.
'How's Skippy?' Tom asked brightly, opening the refrigerator, getting out an ice tray. Skippy was a stray dog Marge had acquired a few days ago, an ugly black-and-white bastard that Marge pampered and fed like a doting old maid.
'He went off. I didn't expect him to stay.'
'Oh.'
'You look like you've had a good time,' Marge said, a little wistfully. 'We did.' Tom smiled. 'Can I fix you a drink?'
'No, thanks. How long do you think Dickie's going to be away?'
'Well -' Tom frowned thoughtfully. 'I don't really know. He says he wants to see a lot of art shows up there. I think he's just enjoying a change of scene.' Tom poured himself a generous gin and added soda and a lemon slice. 'I suppose he'll be back in a week. By the way!' Tom reached for the suitcase, and took out the box of cologne. He had removed the shop's wrapping paper, because it had had blood smears on it. 'Your Stradivari. We got it in San Remo.'
'Oh, thanks—very much.' Marge took it, smiling, and began to open it, carefully, dreamily.
Tom strolled tensely around the terrace with his drink, not saying a word to Marge, waiting for her to go.
'Well—' Marge said finally, coming out on the terrace. 'How long are you staying?'
'Where.'
'Here.'
'Just overnight. I'll be going up to Rome tomorrow. Probably in the afternoon,' he added, because he couldn't get the mail tomorrow until perhaps after two.
'I don't suppose I'll see you again, unless you're at the beach,' Marge said with an effort at friendliness. 'Have a good time in case I don't see you. And tell Dickie to write a postcard. What hotel is he staying at?'
'Oh—uh—what's the name of it? Near the Piazza di Spagna?'
'The lnghilterra?'
'That's it. But I think he said to use the American Express as a mailing address.' She wouldn't try to telephone Dickie, Tom thought. And he could be at the hotel tomorrow to pick up a letter if she wrote. 'I'll probably go down to the beach tomorrow morning,' Tom said.
'All right. Thanks for the cologne.'
'Don't mention it!'
She walked down the path to the iron gate, and out.
Tom picked up the suitcase and ran upstairs to Dickie's bedroom. He slid Dickie's top drawer out: letters, two address books, a couple of little notebooks, a watchchain, loose keys, and some kind of insurance policy. He slid the other drawers out, one by one, and left them open. Shirts, shorts, folded sweaters and disordered socks. In the corner of the room a sloppy mountain of portfolios and old drawing pads. There was a lot to be done. Tom took off all his clothes, ran downstairs naked and took a quick, cool shower, then put on Dickie's old white duck trousers that were hanging on a nail in the closet.
He started with the top drawer, for two reasons: the recent letters were important in case there were current situations that had to be taken care of immediately and also because, in case Marge happened to come back this afternoon, it wouldn't look as if he were dismantling the entire house so soon. But at least he could begin, even this afternoon, packing Dickie's biggest suitcase with his best clothes, Tom thought.
Tom was still pottering about the house at midnight. Dickie's suitcases were packed, and now he was assessing how much the house furnishings were worth, what he would bequeath to Marge, and how he would dispose of the rest. Marge could have the damned refrigerator. That ought to please her. The heavy carved chest in the foyer, which Dickie used for his linens, ought to be worth several hundred dollars, Tom thought. Dickie had said it was four hundred years old, when Tom had asked him about it. Cinquencento. He intended to speak to Signor Pucci, the assistant manager of the Miramare, and ask him to act as agent for the sale of the house and the furniture. And the boat, too. Dickie had told him that Signor Pucci did jobs like that for residents of the village.
He had wanted to take all of Dickie's possessions straight away to Rome, but in view of what Marge might think about his taking so much for presumably such a short time, he decided it would be better to pretend that Dickie had later made a decision to move to Rome.
Accordingly, Tom went down to the post office around three the next afternoon, claimed one interesting letter for Dickie from a friend in America and nothing for himself, but as he walked slowly back to the house again he imagined that he was reading a letter from Dickie. He imagined the exact words, so that he could quote them to Marge, if he had to, and he even made himself feel the slight surprise he would have felt at Dickie's change of mind.
As soon as he got home he began packing Dickie's best drawings and best linens into the big cardboard box he had gotten from Aldo at the grocery store on the way up the hill. He worked calmly and methodically, expecting Marge to drop in at any minute, but it was after four before she came.
'Still here?' she asked as she came into Dickie's room.
'Yes. I had a letter from Dickie today. He's decided he's going to move to Rome.' Tom straightened up and smiled a little, as if it were a surprise to him, too. 'He wants me to pick up all his things, all I can handle.'
'Move to Rome? For how long?'
'I don't know. The rest of the winter apparently, anyway. Tim went on tying canvasses.
'He's not coming back all winter?' Marge's voice sounded lost already.
'No. He said he might even sell the house. He said he hadn't decided yet.'
'Gosh!—What happened?'
Tom shrugged. 'He apparently wants to spend the winter in Rome. He said he was going to write to you. I thought you might have got a letter this afternoon, too.'
'No.'
Silence. Tom kept on working. It occurred to him that he hadn't packed up his own things at all. He hadn't even been into his room.
'He's still going to Cortina, isn't he?' Marge asked.
'No, he's not. He said he was going to write to Freddie and cancel it. But that shouldn't prevent your going.' Tom watched her. 'By the way, Dickie said he wants you to take the refrigerator. You can probably get somebody to help you move it.'
The present of the refrigerator had no effect at all on Marge's stunned face. Tom knew she was wondering whether he was going to live with Dickie or not, and that she was probably concluding, because of his cheerful manner, that he was going to live with him. Tom felt the question creeping up to her lips—she was as transparent as a child to him—then she asked: 'Are you going to stay with him in Rome?'
'Maybe for a while. I'll help him get settled. I want to go to Paris this month, then I suppose around the middle of December I'll be going back to the States.'
Marge looked crestfallen. Tom knew she was imagining the lonely weeks ahead -even if Dickie did make periodic little visits to Mongibello to see her—the empty Sunday mornings, the lonely dinners. 'What's he going to do about Christmas? Do you think he wants to have it here or in Rome?'
Tom said with a trace of irritation, 'Well, I don't think here. I have the feeling he wants to be alone.'
Now she was shocked to silence, shocked and hurt. Wait till she got the letter he was going to write from Rome, Tom thought. He'd be gentle with her, of course, as gentle as Dickie, but there would be no mistaking that Dickie didn't want to see her again.
A few minutes later, Marge stood up and said good-bye in an absent-minded way. Tom suddenly felt that she might be going to telephone Dickie today. Or maybe even go up to Rome. But what if she did? Dickie could have changed his hotel. And there were enough hotels in Rome to keep her busy for days, even if she came to Rome to find him. When she didn't find him, by telephone or by coming to Rome, she would suppose that he had gone to Paris or to some other city with Tom Ripley.
Tom glanced over the newspapers from Naples for an item about a scuttled boat's having been found near San Remo. Barca affondata vicino San Remo, the caption would probably say. And they would make a great to-do over the bloodstains in the boat, if the bloodstains were still there. It was the kind of thing the Italian newspapers loved to write up in their melodramatic journalese: 'Giorgio di Stefani, a young fisherman of San Remo, yesterday at three o'clock in the afternoon made a most terrible discovery in two metres of water. A little motor-boat, its interior covered with horrible bloodstains...' But Tom did not see anything in the paper. Nor had there been anything yesterday. It might take months for the boat to be found, he thought. It might never be found. And if they did find it, how could they know that Dickie Greenleaf and Tom Ripley had taken the boat out together? They had not told their names to the Italian boat-keeper at San Remo. The boat-keeper had given them only a little orange ticket which Tom had had in his pocket, and had later found and destroyed.
Tom left Mongibello by taxi around six o'clock, after an espresso at Giorgio's, where he said good-bye to Giorgio, Fausto, and several other village acquaintances of his and Dickie's. To all of them he told the same story, that Signer Greenleaf was staying in Rome for the winter, and that he sent his greetings until he saw them again. Tom said that undoubtedly Dickie would be down for a visit before long.
He had had Dickie's linens and paintings crated by the American Express that afternoon, and the boxes sent to Rome along with Dickie's trunk and two heavier suitcases, to be claimed in Rome by Dickie Greenleaf. Tom took his own two suitcases and one other of Dickie's in the taxi with him. He had spoken to Signer Pucci at the Miramare, and had said that there was a possibility that Signor Greenleaf would want to sell his house and furniture, and could Signor Pucci handle it? Signor Pucci had said he would be glad to. Tom had also spoken to Pietro, the dock-keeper, and asked him to be on the lookout for someone who might want to buy the Pipistrello, because there was a good chance that Signor Greenleaf would want to get rid of it this winter. Tom said that Signor Greenleaf would let it go for five hundred thousand lire, hardly eight hundred dollars, which was such a bargain for a boat that slept two people, Pietro thought he could sell it in a matter of weeks.
On the train to Rome Tom composed the letter to Marge so carefully that he memorised it in the process, and when he got to the Hotel Hassler he sat down at Dickie's Hermes Baby, which he had brought in one of Dickie's suitcases, and wrote the letter straight off.
Rome
28 November, 19— Dear Marge,
I've decided to take an apartment in Rome for the winter, just to have a change of scene and get away from old Mongy for a while. I feel a terrific urge to be by myself. I'm sorry it was so sudden and that I didn't get a chance to say good-bye, but actually I'm not far away, and I hope I'll be seeing you now and then. I just didn't feel like going to pack my stuff, so I threw the burden on Tom.
As to us, it can't harm anything and possibly may improve everything if we don't see each other for a while. I had a terrible feeling I was boring you, though you weren't boring me, and please don't think I am running away from anything. On the contrary, Rome should bring me closer to reality. Mongy certainly didn't. Part of my discontent was you. My going away doesn't solve anything, of course, but it will help me to discover how I really feel about you. For this reason, I prefer not to see you for a while, darling, and I hope you'll understand. If you don't—well, you don't, and that's the risk I run. I may go up to Paris for a couple of weeks with Tom, as he's dying to go. That is, unless I start painting right away. Met a painter named Di Massimo whose work I like very much, an old fellow without much money who seems to be very glad to have me as a student if I pay him a little bit. I am going to paint with him in his studio.
The city looks marvellous with its fountains going all night and everybody up all night, contrary to old Mongy. You were on the wrong track about Tom. He's going back to the States soon and I don't care when, though he's really not a bad guy and I don't dislike him. He has nothing to do with us, anyway, and I hope you realise that.
Write me c/o American Express, Rome until I know where I am. Shall let you know when I find an apartment. Meanwhile keep the home fires burning, the refrigerators working and your typewriter also. I'm terribly sorry about Xmas, darling, but I don't think I should see you that soon, and you can hate me or not for that.
All my love,
Dickie
Tom had kept his cap on since entering the hotel, and he had given Dickie's passport in at the desk instead of his own, though hotels, he had noticed, never looked at the passport photo, only copied the passport number which was on the front cover. He had signed the register with Dickie's hasty and rather flamboyant signature with the big looping capitals R and G. When he went out to mail the letter he walked to a drugstore several streets away and bought a few items of make-up that he thought he might need. He had fun with the Italian salesgirl, making her think that he was buying them for his wife who had lost her make-up kit, and who was indisposed in the hotel with the usual upset stomach.
He spent that evening practising Dickie's signature for the bank cheques. Dickie's monthly remittance was going to arrive from America in less than ten days.