The Foundling Boy

by Michel D

  ‘It’s a secret,’ she said. ‘I understand. One you don’t even want to tell me, who will not give it away. But I demand that you promise—’

  ‘You don’t need to demand.’

  ‘You’ll write to me.’

  ‘At the château?’

  ‘Why not? We’re not doing anything wrong.’

  He agreed that she was right, they weren’t doing anything wrong, and he did not dare say how sorry he was that they weren’t. Everything remained innocent and vague between them. Their growing friendship would perhaps never go further than that. Jean would have loved to perform some distinguished task for her, the kind of thing he had read in the novels of Alexandre Dumas: to chastise a ruffian, stop her runaway horse, save the marquis from a fire. He had only had one opportunity he could really boast about. Chantal had complained to him that Gontran Longuet was pursuing her in his absurd Georges Irat convertible. The brothel-keeper’s son seemed to like overtaking her, calling out unfunny remarks and hooting madly, making her horse shy and bolt. One Sunday morning Jean was lucky enough to come across him on the track that ran past La Sauveté. Up till now I have hardly described Gontran, a character devoid of interest in any case, and yet impressive to some young provincial ladies merely by virtue of coming from Paris, driving a sports car, and spending money in bars. In 1937 he was a tall beanpole with slicked-back hair, on which there usually sat an English cap. He liked posing as a cad. Jean stopped him at the side of the track. Gontran demanded to know what he wanted with such contemptuous rudeness that Jean squeezed his fists in his pockets.

  ‘Just to tell you to keep away from Chantal de Malemort.’

  ‘We’ll see about that.’

  ‘I’m telling you to see about it, you prick.’

  ‘No one’s ever called me a prick.’

  ‘Yes they have. Me. Just now.’

  Jean was counting on his strength, but had not fought much in his life, just two or three times at the most at his lycée, and never with great conviction. He judged Gontran to be of about equal strength. He slapped him, knocking off his arrogant English cap. They exchanged a few almost cautious blows. Gontran was not jeering any more and his face was livid. Jean punched him in the eye and split his cheek. Blood ran. Unfortunately the brawls he had taken part in while working for his father had taught Gontran a vicious defence: twisting on his left leg, he smashed his right foot into his opponent’s pelvis. Jean doubled up.

  ‘And I suggest you don’t start that again,’ he said, retrieving his cap from the dirt.

  Jean got off with a bruised lower stomach for the next fortnight. It might have been worse. But Gontran, with a split cheek and black eye, was the laughing stock of Grangeville. He no longer hung around Mademoiselle de Malemort. Joseph Outen, hearing what had happened, drew a moral from it.

  ‘The truth is, you don’t know how to fight. It’s a gap in your education. I know a Japanese man here who gives judo lessons. Go and enrol—’

  ‘No money.’

  ‘He’s a saint. He teaches for the greater love of Buddha.’

  Jean attended the classes a dozen times and gave up. It was asking too much of his strength, when training was intensifying at Dieppe Rowing Club. In June he competed with Joseph in a coxed pair for the club heats and won. Two weeks later they faced the Rouen club. Fifty metres before the finish, they were leading and on the point of winning when Joseph drove his blade in too deeply. The scull nearly capsized and they came third. Joseph refused to accept the defeat and, blaming the equipment, gave up rowing. He was in any case at a period of great decisions in his life, and at the same time quit his job as sports editor at La Vigie, wound up the film club, sold his books and furniture, keeping only his Littré,14 a bed, and a table and chair that he set up in a servant’s room in an attic overlooking the port. He had wasted too much time. He was going to write a book, something completely new, in which he would make clear, by means of fiction, that humanity lives in a prison so long it refuses to divest itself of its need for love and money. He intended to finish by September, just in time for the NRF15 to publish it before the prize season. A representative of that house had confirmed to him that they were urgently looking for new manuscripts. If the NRF could not promise him their full support for the Goncourt,16 he would give his novel to Grasset.

  ‘I’m taking holy orders,’ he said to Jean. ‘You understand what that means: blinkers on. Don’t disturb me for anything. Find yourself another crew member at the Club. It wasn’t the equipment that let me down at Rouen, it was me who let the equipment down. I wasn’t where I should have been. I was already in my book …’

  A few days later, when he visited the hospital to see his mother, Jean was surprised to see a screen around her bed. She had died half an hour earlier. Marie-Thérèse du Courseau arrived from Grangeville with Albert who, numb and with trembling lips, repeated several times in a hoarse voice, ‘It’s happened to others besides me … it’s happened to others besides me …’

  The abbé Le Couec delivered a funeral oration so affecting and so simple that Albert suddenly understood the extent of his misfortune and the solitude to which he had been condemned. Jean had made confession the night before and this time took communion, kneeling at the altar next to Michel du Courseau, who stealthily squeezed his hand and murmured, ‘I am your brother.’

  At the cemetery, through tears that he kept in check with the greatest difficulty, Jean saw the Malemorts and their daughter crossing themselves as the coffin was lowered into the small vault. The marquis and marquise shook his hand, Chantal kissed him on both cheeks, and the intense happiness of her kissing him lightened the sad day. The next day he resumed work at La Vigie, where Grosjean behaved less odiously than usual. Pedalling back to the rectory that evening, he found Antoinette waiting at the top of the hill.

  ‘I couldn’t speak to you yesterday,’ she said. ‘There were too many people. You must be very sad.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you going to go away?’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Chantal told us. She knows more of your secrets than I do. What are you hoping for?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Don’t leave me without saying goodbye.’

  They walked together down a path that cut across the fields, where they kissed for a long time. Antoinette had lost weight after her terrible experience. She was no longer the deliciously ripe fragrant fruit he had stroked in the hay, but a nervous and desperate woman, who reminded him more of Mireille than anyone else.

  ‘Before you leave,’ Antoinette said, ‘we’ll go and spend the night in a hotel in Dieppe. I want to sleep in your arms and wake up next to you.’

  How lonely she must be! Marie-Thérèse du Courseau’s excessive love for her son had taken an aggressive form towards everything that upset him, even if it was no more than another presence. And how could she hope to marry Antoinette off after what had happened? Everyone knew. The only way out would have been to set her free, send her to Paris, but the idea of setting foot outside Normandy never occurred to Madame du Courseau. One married among one’s own, in one’s own milieu, never outside.

  Jean promised. Weeks passed. He wrote to Palfy and by return received a long telegram.

  Marvellous! I’m expecting you. Come, and we shall invent the future. I’m putting the caviar on ice. Bring a baguette and a ripe Camembert. Business is going well. The world is our oyster. Constantin

  Jean had his eighteenth birthday, and the only thoughtful present he received was an album bound in black leather of twenty drawings by Michel. They were all of him. He felt a sense of embarrassment and thanked Michel flatly, in a quiet moment, Michel having explained that his mother was to know nothing. Why such a mystery?

  Albert took Jean’s departure philosophically.

  ‘I can’t tell you to stay, though I can see nothing good in your journey. But I have no right to keep you in France. Everything here is rotten. Perhaps it’s the same with the English, in which case
you’ll come back and be happy to see us again. If war breaks out between France and Germany, don’t listen to the warmongers. Stay put, where it’s safe …’

  The abbé Le Couec added, ‘I knew the demon of travel would not let you go. Be careful of life’s many traps. Will you find work? The English are not pushovers. Anyway, you’re a free man.’

  And so everyone, apart from him, had known for a long time that he was leaving. Instead of the wealth of vague and innocent advice he received, he would have preferred a bit of money. His savings amounted to 2000 francs, enough to live on for a month once he had bought himself a suit. He left La Vigie on 31 July without bothering to tell his employers, resisting the violent impulse to punch Grosjean’s face and shout at the women whose job it was to fold the print work that all in all they were the biggest bunch of idiots he had ever come across. He plucked up courage to telephone Chantal and invite her to a last meeting. She arrived on a bicycle. Her horse was lame. They left their bicycles behind a bush and walked in the lovely forest.

  ‘I wanted to say goodbye to you. Can I still write to you?’

  ‘Of course. What could be more natural?’

  What else was there to to be said? One might have been tempted to add: alas! The two had known each other since they were children, and no shadow had ever fallen between them.

  ‘I talked to my father about you. He thinks you’re right. At your age it’s suffocating here. You’ll come back a man. You will come back, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll come back.’

  The truth was that up to this point he had never thought about coming back, or leaving, for good. The commitment that she was asking of him was an important one whose significance seemed not even to occur to her.

  ‘My father approves of you,’ she said. ‘He praises your spirit of adventure. He regrets …’

  She stopped, embarrassed. Jean came to her aid.

  ‘That I’m the son of a gardener?’

  ‘Oh no. It’s not that. We’re only farmers ourselves now—’

  ‘Living in a handsome château.’

  ‘They’re just appearances.’

  ‘I can reassure you on one matter: I’m not a gardener’s son, even if I wouldn’t blush to be one.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You too!’

  He could not understand how his origins had become an open secret.

  ‘And do people know who my parents are?’

  ‘No.’

  For a moment his hopes had been raised. Was Chantal concealing something that he would perhaps find out one day, after everyone else? Seeing him looking so sad, she put up her hand and stroked his forehead, as if to chase away the clouds there. Jean grasped her hand and kissed it.

  ‘I’m glad we’re such good friends.’ Chantal said, stepping away.

  There would be nothing else between them, except for that ghostly gesture and its fleeting aftermath. Things needed to be that way in order to last. They carried on walking through the forest for a long time, both with heavy hearts, neither of them knowing whether the other suffered as they did. When they came back to their bicycles they kissed each other politely on the cheeks.

  ‘Come back soon!’ Chantal whispered.

  He watched her pedal away down the path, her skirt revealing her pretty, pale legs, and only moved when she had disappeared around the corner of the gamekeeper’s lodge, where the dogs barked as she passed.

  The same evening, after his goodbyes to Monsieur Cliquet, Captain Duclou, his father and the abbé, he walked down to Dieppe with his single small case, asked for a room at the Hôtel de l’Océan and waited for Antoinette, who arrived just after he had finished dinner. They spent the night together. Their lovemaking was not the same any more. She wept, and he hugged her tightly until dawn began to lighten the sky and the gulls announced the coming day with their plaintive cries. Antoinette was still sleeping when he left, case in hand, and went down to the port to have a coffee by the landing-stage. Joseph joined him in espadrilles, cotton trousers and a turtleneck sweater. Two months of confinement had changed him almost beyond recognition. Eating and drinking only bread and butter and coffee, leaving his room only when he had to, he seemed unsteady on his long legs, and in his gaunt pale face, framed by a black beard, his eyes shone, feverish. Did he realise he looked like Dostoyevsky, like The House of the Dead revisited? Without the Russian’s talent, alas, although the famous novel had made considerable progress, driven on by its author’s whip.

  ‘You’re leaving, then,’ he said. ‘You’ve decided to run for it.’

  ‘To run to the future.’

  ‘When you come back, I’ll either have won the Goncourt or I’ll be the last of the losers. Don’t write to me. I shan’t have time to write back.’

  The packet left at nine o’clock. Jean was abandoning his country to a new prime minister, Camille Chautemps, whose name the right-wing press invariably wrote by preceding it with a ∴

  10

  ‘Have a look round it,’ Palfy said. ‘It’s a monument. No two are the same. It was ordered specially in 1930 by Lord Albigate to drive around his estate in Suffolk, a distance of eighteen miles. A short expedition that he undertook once a year. Add it up: that makes 126 miles in seven years, not much more than 200 kilometres. It’s new, in other words. Obviously its body doesn’t have the same lines as a modern car. High wings, and the same radiator grille they’ve had since 1912, but that’s the beauty of a Rolls-Royce. They’ve never thought of themselves as peanut sellers. A loyal clientele. Try to buy one if your name’s Levy. They’ll look at their order book and tell you there is nothing available until 1947. Albigate asked to see my certificate of baptism before he’d let me have it, forgetting for a second that he married a Rosenstein. But honour was satisfied.’

  Jean walked around the silver Rolls parked at the bottom of the gangplank, gleaming in the afternoon sun as if it had just left the factory. The green hide cushions, the walnut burl dashboard, the internal intercom, everything was of a fully achieved and lordly distinction. It really was an extremely incongruous sight among the dusty production-line cars that were coming off the ferry and lining up to present themselves for customs inspection. Palfy had made himself worthy of driving it, in his golfing plus fours and his calves sheathed in green tasselled hose. He had not changed, though his face looked more yellow than before.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he said, ‘that you’ll ever see a more beautiful example. To tell you the truth, I’m thinking very seriously, the day I no longer have the use of it, of burning it rather than see it fall into unworthy hands. Put your case on the back seat and let’s go.’

  After a rather rough crossing Jean could have done with a sandwich to settle his stomach, but it was quite clear that one did not eat sandwiches in a Rolls-Royce. One only drank, thanks to a silver drinks cabinet prettily built in to the rear compartment. At Palfy’s suggestion Jean poured them each a neat whisky as they drove out of Newhaven.

  ‘My outfit isn’t nearly elegant enough for your car,’ Jean said. ‘I should stay outside, on the running board.’

  ‘Outfit! Oh, the clumsiness! Certain people will judge you by your use of such words. We say suit. And yes, you’re right, your suit reeks of off-the-pegness. We’ll deal with all that. First I shall drive you to my tailor …’

  ‘I have enough to live on for a month if I’m not extravagant.’

  ‘You fool, who said anything about paying the tailor? Only the nouveaux riches have such egregious taste, and you’ll see how fast it loses them respect in Savile Row. Trust me.’

  ‘I haven’t noticed you bringing much good fortune to those who trust you.’

  ‘Are you becoming sarcastic in your old age? Be quiet, you’re still a child.’

  ‘All right. I’ll be quiet.’

  The Rolls-Royce sped noiselessly along a country road that Jean had travelled five years earlier, first on his bicycle and then in the prince’s Hispano-Suiza, with Salah driving him. He saw it as a definite sig
n of his advancement, since one could hardly imagine anything more superior than a Rolls, unless it was the monarch’s state coach. Had Palfy stolen this car, as it was his habit? It would all end badly one day, but the anxiety that Jean felt at sharing his friend’s adventures again was also tinged with pleasure. It banished the last crushing year of mediocrity that he had spent in France, waiting for something, anything new to happen. It was a year that had passed desperately slowly, and now here he was, rolling at sixty miles an hour along a lovely road through little red-brick towns with bright red and apple-green shopfronts. It was impossible for this not to be the dawning of a new era, the beginning of a man’s life of multiple twists and turns. Palfy had not changed. Precise, relaxed, he drove with a light hand, displaying an almost exaggerated courtesy towards cars he overtook or to which he gave way. It occurred to Jean that he did not even know which country his friend was from.

  ‘That’s rather complicated,’ Palfy said. ‘My mother was English, my father Serbian, and I was born in France, at Nice. So I’m French by accident, merely because my father was there trying out an infallible system at the Casino on the Jetée-Promenade. That said – since you’re interested – I’ll make a confession. I’m not just French by civil status, as they say, but in my heart too. It’s true. It’s my ridiculous side.’