by Michel D
‘First we’re going to Westminster Abbey, and then we’ll see.’
‘What about my bike?’
‘Let’s leave it here. Baptiste will look after it. Where we’re going is not very good for bicycles.’
Regretfully Jean agreed to leave his bicycle behind. The Hispano-Suiza was waiting at the kerb, so familiar now that it no longer impressed him. At Westminster he felt cold. He preferred the church at Grangeville, with its smells of candles and incense and the sound of the abbé’s big feet plodding between the pews. The visit did not last long.
‘Now what would you like to see?’ Salah asked.
‘I don’t know. Where do those boats go to?’
Large boats were taking on lines of passengers at Westminster Bridge.
‘To Hampton Court. It’s a long way. You get there in time for lunch, and you come back in the late afternoon.’
‘Actually I’d really like to go for a boat ride on the Thames.’
Salah was very reluctant, and Jean had to persuade him that it was safe to go on his own. It was not every day that one encountered lecherous clergymen.
‘If anything happened to you, Madame would never forgive me.’
‘On the telephone she told me herself that I should go to Hampton Court. Nothing will happen to me. Go and have a French lesson.’
Salah smiled and allowed himself to be convinced. On the boat at first Jean saw only old ladies in frilly dresses, clutching cups of milky tea. He counted three three-cornered hats and a number of shoes with buckles. The first part of the trip, past docks and wharfs, was gloomy, but the old ladies expressed themselves delighted. They found it ‘charming’. The truth was that they were short-sighted and not actually looking at anything, but entirely taken up with refilling their teacups from the urn that was provided. Fortunately Jean found an unusual couple to distract him at the boat’s stern: a short, stocky, bald man who had a jaw like Mussolini’s and a Borsalino jammed on his head was literally licking the face of a mulatto woman with bleached and not very well straightened hair. Everyone seemed to be ignoring the woman’s antics as she tittered and squirmed, crossing and uncrossing pretty legs sheathed in fishnet stockings, and those of the man, who was getting increasingly impatient. Their Anglo-Italian pidgin seemed to be delighting both of them. Jean watched them, fascinated, until the man caught him looking and glared furiously. The boat slid on up the black, slack river between banks occupied by factories and empty spaces. Just before Hampton Court the countryside finally appeared, soft and green and rolling, dotted with pretty houses with slate roofs and surrounded by gardens in bloom. He imagined them inhabited by army officers with ruddy cheeks, children in velvet breeches, and pretty tennis players. The old ladies on board, stimulated by their innumerable cups of tea, waved enthusiastically at everyone they saw. Having found the docks charming, they had no words left to admire the English countryside. The man with the Borsalino went on licking his mulatto, who was squirming like a dog on heat; her pointed tongue looked as if it had been dipped in raspberry jam.
At the landing stage the old ladies rushed away like clumsy sparrows towards the palace and the park, where Jean stretched his legs for a moment before going back to the bank of the Thames. Young men were launching sharp, arrow-shaped skiffs with varnished hulls. Pale-skinned, with red or blond hair, they rowed with an application and seriousness that Jean admired. The blades of their oars dipped without a splash into the dark water and their boats, as if seized by sudden inspiration, flew over the still surface of the river. The cox’s sharp instructions paced the exertions of the rowers, upright and tense like machines, and Jean promised himself that one day he would try rowing, a noble sport that had sculpted fine athletes and imparted to generations a sense of teamwork. It was not a popular sport in France, probably because, as Albert liked to say in his best flights of philosophical fancy, the French were a bunch of dirty individualists who only thought about getting ahead. Besides, rowing’s joys were best experienced on expanses of calm water that reflected nature arranged by man, parks of beech and cedar that sloped down to drink at river and lake, country houses whose images wobbled, vanished and reformed in the passing of motor cruisers and barges.
The boat left again at two o’clock. Jean was first on board, followed by the old ladies, who fell on the tea urn to refill their cups with pungent, scalding tea, and the crew was about to cast off when the flamboyant mulatto rushed up, dragging by the hand her companion in the Borsalino, who was breathless, his clothes half undone. They settled themselves back on the bench at the stern, giggling like children, and then the woman put her hand in her coat pocket and pulled out a pair of bluish lace knickers that she put back on without ceremony. Which bush had they been playing behind? The scene left Jean mystified, and led his thoughts back to the games of Antoinette, to the sweet ecstasies of their incomplete pleasures and the happy silence that followed. There must, then, be two sorts of love, one horrid, rude and immodest, and the other secret, sparking off dreams and gentle pleasures.
Salah was waiting at the landing stage. Jean stepped ashore behind the lustful pair and was astonished to hear Salah say a curt ‘Good evening’ to the mulatto, who immediately stopped laughing and dragged her companion away. The old ladies collected their bags of needlepoint and baskets of food and trotted to a waiting bus.
‘Did you enjoy yourself?’ Salah asked.
‘Enjoy? No, not really. Well, I suppose I saw some things. Do you know that lady?’
‘Slightly. Jamaican, I believe.’
Jean told him the story of the knickers discovered in her coat pocket and replaced without fuss. Salah’s stern expression cracked and he laughed.
‘A strange girl,’ he said. ‘Not to be recommended. You definitely are going to leave with a curious idea of London … I regret now that I let you go off for the whole day. Madame came to lunch. She was hoping to see you.’
‘I’ll see her tonight.’
‘I’m afraid she has just driven away in her Bentley again. She’s spending the weekend with some friends in Kent. I also have to tell you something that may annoy you … She arrived with three friends, a poet, a painter, and the sculptor John Dudley. Mr Dudley is very bizarre. He makes extravagant sculptures from all sorts of things: he will weld an old coffee-maker to an iron, a saucepan on top of a clock, whatever. Apparently it sells. Art lovers can’t get enough of his work. Anyway, when he saw your bicycle in the hall he decided that it was a sublime object and that he would construct a masterpiece from it by crushing it in his hydraulic press. Madame allowed him to take it away …’
‘What?’ Jean exclaimed, his eyes full of tears.
‘Madame asked me to buy you another one tomorrow morning.’
‘Oh Salah, it’s impossible. My bike … you don’t know how much I love it. Let’s go and get it back from this man straight away …’
‘I’m afraid the damage will already be done.’
Tears rolled down Jean’s cheeks. He could have faced almost anything, but not some mad sculptor crushing the bicycle that he cherished above everything else, his finest possession, a perfect bicycle, such as he had never known before and would never know again.
‘Don’t cry, for goodness’ sake! You’re a man, and tomorrow I’m going to take you to buy another one.’
‘An English bike, Salah! You must be joking! The English have never made a proper racing bike. They ride around on bikes that date back to Louis XIV.’
‘Well, look, I’ve got the money, I’ll give it to you and you can buy yourself another one in France.’
‘It won’t ever be the same. That bike was my bike. My bike, do you understand? And how am I going to get back to Newhaven?’
‘I shall drive you there in the Hispano.’
As soon as they got back to Geneviève’s house, Jean dashed up the steps two at a time and rang the bell, hoping that it would turn out to be a bad dream, but Baptiste opened the door with a prim expression.
‘Monsieur has hear
d?’ he said. ‘His bicycle has become a work of art: yes, of ART!’
Jean spent a profoundly unhappy evening, despite a letter that Geneviève had left for him.
My dear Jean, your bicycle so excited Mr Dudley that I allowed him to take it away. I do hope this won’t upset you. Salah will drive you to a bicycle shop tomorrow and you will have a replacement. I was so sorry not to see you today, but now I must go to see some friends and shan’t be back till Monday. Enjoy your last three days here. Salah is an excellent guide. He knows everything. He is not just a chauffeur, he is also a friend. Please kiss my parents for me, and Antoinette and Michel too, and especially your maman, dearest Jeanne, who was so good to me when I was a little girl.
Your
Geneviève du Courseau
But next morning Jean rejected every bicycle he was offered. They were all fitted with English rod brakes, that work well enough but make the machine much heavier. As for racing handlebars, not one dealer knew what he meant. In the end Salah handed Geneviève’s money to Jean, who almost gave it straight back: it was roughly enough for at least three bicycles fitted with the latest derailleur used by Leducq in the 1932 Tour. Instead he started to dream. Salah dropped him off at museums and parks and picked him up at the exit. Geneviève was right: the chauffeur was also a friend, thoughtful, intelligent and discreet. Mysterious too from time to time, skilfully avoiding answering embarrassing questions, such as the one Jean asked on his last day. Each morning he had been woken by a different maid, and every one was called Mary, or María, or even Marie, who was French and whom he was amazed to identify without a shadow of a doubt as the over-made-up girl from Toulouse who had given him directions in Soho to Odeon Street where the Hispano-Suiza was parked. The Chelsea house was not so grand that it required a very large staff, especially since the prince almost never used it, and Geneviève was touring the English countryside every weekend. Even if she invited a dozen of her friends to lunch or dinner, there was still no need for so many staff. And why were these interchangeable maids all called Mary? Why were they, if not beauties, all at least good-looking girls? Jean had also made a disturbing discovery when he had gone downstairs one evening, around midnight, to fetch a glass of water from the kitchen. He was still on the stairs when the front door opened. Baptiste was returning from an evening stroll, and was followed by a woman Jean immediately recognised as the mulatto from the boat. Baptiste behaved a good deal less civilly with her than with Geneviève’s guests. Jean was surprised too by what she was wearing: a short, very tight-waisted green suit, a loud scarf decorated with a pearl, and a blue cap tilted over one ear. She was smoking. Baptiste told her she had better go and throw her cigarette outside if she didn’t want a good slap, and the previously exuberant creature obeyed without a word before following Baptiste into the kitchen. Jean went back upstairs on tiptoe and stayed awake for a good part of the night, attempting to work out what it could all mean. The next day Salah made no answer when he asked him about it.
On the Saturday the Hispano-Suiza took Jean back to Newhaven. Because the packet was an hour late, he decided to visit Mrs Pickett, and found her little house and sign – ‘B and B’ – with ease. The old lady opened the door with her hat and coat on. She was just going out for a short walk. Oh, not far! Just around the corner. Jean gestured to Salah, who opened the door of the car, and Mrs Pickett climbed in without being asked. It doubtless seemed perfectly natural to her that Jean, having arrived on a red bicycle, should come back to visit her in a yellow chauffeur-driven Hispano-Suiza. They stopped outside Mrs Pickett’s favourite pub, where her arrival caused a small sensation which she did not deign to acknowledge. Salah refused alcohol, which surprised her a little, and when he explained to her that he was a Muslim she gave him a charming smile and said, ‘That’s awfully bad luck, you ought to convert.’ They left her, supported by her pillar and already happy, after Jean had tried again and failed to speak to her in French. No, she knew nothing of that barbaric language. The mystery remained.
The packet was edging alongside as they drove onto the dock. Salah contemplated the boat with a melancholy look.
‘There are days when I would like to get back to Egypt,’ he said, ‘to my Nubia where I was born, Djebel Chams, next to the Nile. My father is getting older and there is a chance I may not see him again. It’s not because he showed me very great kindness. He thought I was too dark-skinned. I have two very pale half-brothers, almost like the English, and he has always been prouder of them than of me, even though they are both useless fools who sponge off our father and are completely idle. Of course he doesn’t know that I am a chauffeur. I pretend that I have a job in a bank, and as I regularly send him money he thinks I’m rich and regrets a little that he did not have confidence in me.’
‘I’d really like to go to Egypt with you,’ Jean said.
‘In that case, I’ll take you there. I promise. We shall go up the Nile by boat and arrive loaded down with presents for my father …’
‘And your mother.’
‘No, she’s dead,’ Salah said. ‘I hardly knew her at all. She was just a slave in the house, and I was brought up by my stepmother.’
Jean caught sight of the captain on the gangplank. His familiar face dispelled a little of the sadness that choked him as he got ready to leave England and Salah. When would he see Salah – his first proper friend – again? They shook hands. With his haversack on his back, Jean walked up the gangplank. On deck he went straight to the rail to catch a last glimpse of the chauffeur and his beautiful Hispano-Suiza, gleaming in the late afternoon sunlight, but the car had already driven away and disappeared behind the docks, leaving no trace on the streets or seafront of this red-bricked, soot-blackened town. His gateway to England was closing on many unanswered questions. Some things would become clear in time Not all. And Jean would draw from it the conviction that it was better not to know exactly why Mrs Pickett spoke French at night when she was drunk, nor why, in an elegant house in Chelsea, the maids were all called some version of Mary and were different every morning. After all, what did it matter? His view of the world had broadened. In future he would no longer live inside La Sauveté’s walls the way he had lived until now.
6
On that hot afternoon at summer’s end, graceful clouds scudded across the sky: gazelles, lambs, melting snowmen. Dust rose from the avenues at La Sauveté as vans and carts passed over them, loaded with furniture. The official auctioneer, Maître Prioré, arrived from Rouen in his black suit and tie, mopped his brow with a cambric handkerchief and drank large glasses of water flavoured with a drop of grenadine. He was no longer enjoying himself. His zest was dwindling with the indecision and and timidity of the final bidders. The coat stand was snapped up for thirty francs, the umbrella-stand only found a taker at ten. Yet people were not leaving. Initially respectful, they had begun wandering through the empty house, where paintings had left behind large, lighter oval and rectangular patches on the worn wallpaper. Others strolled through the park, and from his window Albert had seen some of them picking flowers or sitting on the hallowed lawn. He had not moved when one stranger had stolen his watering hose and a woman had taken a pot full of climbing geraniums. Having been weeping since the morning, Jeanne now seemed dazed, and sat on a kitchen chair, her large hands, bleached by endless laundry washing, motionless on her knees. Albert lit a pipe, and the smell of tobacco drifted through the kitchen. He caught sight of Monsieur Le Couec, who, with an air of feigned indifference, walked among the crowd, exchanging a word with those he knew and staring in surprise at those who were carrying something away: a pitcher, a bowl, a box, a copper planter. Occasionally he allowed himself some reproach that went uncomprehended by his interlocutor. The auctioneer bent down to one of his assistants, who shook his head. There was nothing more to sell. La Sauveté had been emptied in an afternoon by an invasion of ants who had left the house with only its old lace curtains and rugs so worn that they tempted no one. A silence settled, then the murmuring started
up again. The bookkeeper was enjoying himself with various sums in his large black oilcloth ledger. With a drink or two, the whole sale might have been turned into a festive occasion, but elements conspired against it: the heat, the absence of the du Courseaus, the shyness of the bidders and the embarrassment, at least for the people who lived nearby, of plundering this house whose modest grandeur had for a long time contributed to the fortunes of the neighbouring village. People gossiped to each other that the new owners, still known only to the notary, were Monsieur and Madame Longuet. The gossip had quickly spread: they were going to knock down the dividing wall and demolish La Sauveté, or convert it into one of those welcoming establishments that had been the basis of their fortune. Monsieur Le Couec would be its chaplain. Did he not have something of a weakness for Madame Longuet who, being from Alsace, kept him well supplied with alcool blanc, raspberry or plum according to the season? No one had seen the Longuets during the general sell-off, but an antique dealer from Rouen was thought to be their straw man. This person had bought the family portraits, which could only have been for clients who wanted to invent a lineage for themselves. One further absence, which had met with favourable comment, was that of the Malemorts. They stayed away from any public event that risked descending into a free-for-all; the only exception was when they went hunting in the forest of Arques. Marie-Thérèse du Courseau, with Michel and Antoinette, was living with them while she waited for the villa she was having built on the cliff on the road out of Grangeville to be finished. Some praised her dignity in the face of ruin, others declared that the ruin was not hers but that of her husband, from which she could have saved him with a single gesture. As for Antoine, no one had seen him that day. For good reason: he had spent the afternoon at the Café des Tribunaux in Dieppe, playing draughts with Jean Arnaud. Jean was leading by five games to four when the auctioneer arrived, having swapped his black suit for a sports jacket and grey slacks. At the wheel of a red Alfa Romeo roadster, he was a different man.
