“Well, I think so, but I’m not really sure what the whole family consists of.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Jasper and the children. Young Bruno, when he’s not at his schooling.”

“That’s right,” he agreed. “He was there.”

“Would that be all the company?”

“No,” Ricky said, feeling cornered, “there were Mr. and Mrs. Louis Pharamond, too.”

“Ah,” she said after a pause. “Them.”

Ricky started to move away but she said: “That would be all, then?”

He found her insistence unpleasant.

“Oh no,” he said, over his shoulder, “there was another visitor,” and he began to walk down the passage.

“Who might that have been, then?” she persisted.

“A Miss Harkness,” he said shortly.

“What was she doing there?” demanded Mrs. Ferrant.

“She was lunching,” Ricky said very coldly and ran upstairs two steps at a time. He heard her slam the kitchen door.

He tried to settle down to work but was unable to do so. The afternoon was a bad time in any case, and he’d had two glasses of beer. Julia Pharamond’s magnolia face stooped out of his thoughts and came close to him, talking about a pregnant young woman who might as well have been a horse. Louis Pharamond was making a pass at her and the little half-naked Selina pulled faces at all of them. And there, suddenly, like some bucolic fury, was Mrs. Ferrant: “You’re back, then” she mouthed. She’s going to scream, he thought, and before she could do it, woke up.

He rose, shook himself, and looked out of the window. The afternoon sun made sequined patterns on the harbor and enriched the colors of boats and the garments of such people as were abroad in the village. Among them, in a group near the jetty, he recognized his landlord, Mr. Ferrant.

Mr. Ferrant was the local plumber and general handyman. He possessed a good-looking car and a little sailing boat with an auxiliary engine in which, Ricky gathered, he was wont to putter around the harbor and occasionally venture quite far out to sea, fishing. Altogether the Ferrants seemed to be very comfortably off. He was a big fellow with a lusty, rather sly look about him but handsome enough with his high color and clustering curls. Ricky thought that he was probably younger than his wife and wondered if she had to keep an eye on him.

He was telling some story to the other men in the group. They listened with half smiles, looking at each other out of the corners of their eyes. When he reached his point they broke into laughter and stamped about, doubled in two, with their hands in their trouser pockets. The group broke up. Mr. Ferrant turned toward the house, saw Ricky in the window and gave him the slight, sideways jerk of the head which served as a greeting in the cove. Ricky lifted his hand in return. He watched his landlord approach the house, heard the front door bang and boots going down the passage.

Ricky thought he would now give himself the pleasure of writing a bread-and-butter letter to Julia Pharamond. He made several shots at it but they all looked either affected or labored. In the end he wrote:

He decided to go out and post it. He had arrived only last evening in the village and had yet to explore it properly.

There wasn’t a great deal to explore. The main street ran along the front and steep little cobbled lanes led off it through ranks of cottages of which the one on the corner, next door to the Ferrants’, turned out to be the local police station. The one shop there was, Mercer’s Drapery and General Suppliers, combined the functions of post office, grocery, hardware, clothing, stationery, and toy shops. Outside hung ranks of duffel coats, pea jackets, oilskins and sweaters, all strung above secretive windows beyond which one could make out further offerings set out in a dark interior. Ricky was filled with an urge to buy. He turned in at the door and sustained a sharp jab below the ribs.

He swung round to find himself face to face with a wild luxuriance of hair, dark spectacles, a floral shirt, beads and fringes.

“Yow!” said Ricky and clapped a hand to his waist. “What’s that for?”

A voice behind the hair said something indistinguishable. A gesture was made, indicating a box slung from the shoulder, a box of a kind very familiar to Ricky.

“I was turning round, wasn’t I,” the voice mumbled.

“OK,” said Ricky. “No bones broken. I hope.”

“Hurr,” said the voice, laughing dismally.

Its owner lurched past Ricky and slouched off down the street, the paint box swinging from his shoulder.

“Very careless, that was,” said Mr. Mercer, the solitary shopman, emerging from the shadows. “I don’t care for that type of behavior. Can I interest you in anything?”

Ricky, though still in pain, could be interested in a dark blue polo-necked sweater that carried a label “Hand-knitted locally. Very special offer.”

“That looks a good kind of sweater,” he said.

“Beautiful piece of work, sir. Mrs. Ferrant is in a class by herself.”

“Mrs. Ferrant?”

“Quite so, sir. You are accommodated there, I believe. The pullover,” Mr. Mercer continued, “would be your size, I’m sure. Would you care to try?”

Ricky did try and not only bought the sweater but also a short blue coat of a nautical cut that went very well with it. He decided to wear his purchases.

He walked along the main street, which stopped abruptly at a flight of steps leading down to the strand. At the foot of these steps, with an easel set up before him, a palette on his arm, and his paint box open at his feet, stood the man he had encountered in the shop.

He had his back toward Ricky and was laying swaths of color across a large canvas. These did not appear to bear any relation to the prospect before him. As Ricky watched, the painter began to superimpose, in heavy black outline, a female nude with minuscule legs, a vast rump, and no head. Having done this he fell back a step or two, paused, and then made a dart at his canvas and slashed down a giant fowl taking a peck at the nude. Leda, Ricky decided, and, therefore, the swan.

He was vividly reminded of the sketches pinned to the drawing-room wall at L’Espérance. He wondered what his mother, whose work was very far from being academic, would have had to say about this picture. He thought that it lacked integrity.

The painter seemed to decide that it was completed. He scraped his palette and returned it and his brushes to the box. He then fished out a packet of cigarettes and a matchbox, turned his back to the sea breeze, and saw Ricky.

For a second or two he seemed to glower menacingly but the growth of facial hair was so luxuriant that it hid all expression. Dark glasses gave him the look of some dubious character on the Côte d’Azur.

Ricky said: “Hullo, again. I hope you don’t mind my looking on for a moment.”

There was movement in the whiskers and a dull sound. The painter had opened his matchbox and found it empty.

“Got a light?” Ricky thought must have been said.

He descended the steps and offered his lighter. The painter used it and returned to packing up his gear.

“Do you find,” Ricky asked, fishing for something to say that wouldn’t be utterly despised, “do you find this place stimulating? For painting, I mean.”

“At least,” the voice said, “it isn’t bloody picturesque. I get power from it. It works for me.”

“Could I have seen some of your things up at L’Espérance — the Pharamonds’ house?”

He seemed to take another long stare at Ricky and then said: “I sold a few things to some woman the other day. Street show in Montjoy. A white sort of woman with black hair. Talked a lot of balls, of course. They always do. But she wasn’t bad, figuratively speaking. Worth the odd grope.”