by Michel D
‘Why ridiculous?’
‘Who still believes in the French? But who does things better than they do? Talking of which, I hope you haven’t forgotten the Camembert and baguette.’
‘No. They’re there in my case.’
‘We’ll have them tonight. I have a couple of friends for dinner. The Ascots. Charming, both of them.’
‘I don’t speak English.’
‘We’re going to sort that out too. A good teacher—’
‘Not too strict.’
Palfy roared with laughter.
‘You really astonish me! How is it that you already know about such a typically English vice?’
‘What vice?’
‘The one with whips, chains, spanking.’
‘I don’t know anything about it, except that a few years ago I met a French lady in Soho who gave lessons and claimed to be very strict.’
‘Goodness me!’ Palfy said with a smile.
‘A friend told me later she’d been murdered. She was called Madame Germaine.’
‘I remember reading something about that. She was one of those many French prostitutes who offer their London clients the latest refinements on Masoch’s pleasures. There are about a hundred of them in Soho, generally well thought of, so they quickly become rich. After working here for three or four years they go back to France with a nice lump sum, settle somewhere provincial, open a haberdasher’s or a shop selling religious pictures and marry into the petty bourgeoisie. I know a couple like that: one in Vannes, the other at Colmar. Excellent mothers …’
Jean felt Palfy was making fun of him.
‘If you like, I’ll introduce you to one,’ Palfy said.
‘When?’
‘Not tonight, we have a dinner. But tomorrow if you like.’
Jean was ill at ease. He thought about Salah, whom he had not yet mentioned to Palfy. What pleasures had the prince’s chauffeur been seeking in these unsavoury districts? Palfy’s disclosures showed Salah in a disturbing light. A hundred questions occurred to Jean, to which it was getting interesting to find answers. Who were all those international Maries who had played the housemaid at Mademoiselle Geneviève’s? Who was the blonde mulatto Marie whom he had met at Hampton Court, glimpsed later in the hall of the Chelsea house, then seen again in the brasserie in Via del Babuino? These were mysteries that needed solving. The Rolls was coming into the London suburbs. People here hardly gave the car a second glance, despite the fact that in all the crushing repetitive ugliness that surrounded it, it looked like a meteorite, an incomprehensible thing of grandiose beauty from another planet, which deigned to reflect in its silver bonnet and chrome radiator the fleeting, deformed images of a world of troglodytes.
Palfy drove his friend straight to Savile Row, where a tailor and his staff busied themselves about them. Palfy chose cloth for five suits and a dinner jacket for Jean, then led him to a shirtmaker and bootmaker.
‘I don’t want anyone to notice you,’ he said. ‘This evening I’ll lend you a dinner jacket of my father’s. He was about your height. Fortunately for you, it’s old and very shabby and nearly antique, and therefore madly chic. It doesn’t fit me, I regret to say. My father was tall and broad-shouldered.’
Palfy was living in Eaton Square, in a four-roomed flat that possessed a butler who wore a black suit and tie and white gloves.
‘This is Price,’ Palfy said. ‘You’ll notice that he’s about my size. He’s very good for breaking in my new shoes. Essential man, in every way. Of course he doesn’t know French, but if you can say “yes” and “no”, you’ll got on very well with him.’
‘Then – you’ve become rich?’ Jean asked, dismayed, unable to believe that one could surround oneself with such comfort and pay for it all with bad cheques.
‘Well, it’s true that you haven’t known me in my comfortable phase. But the wheel turns. Have a bath and get yourself ready. Dinner is at seven thirty. Price will bring you a tie and socks. Relax.’
History was repeating itself. This second arrival in London resembled, in its surprises, the first one five years earlier. Jean gave up trying to think and even drifted off to sleep for a few moments in his bath, exhausted by the night spent with Antoinette and the bad crossing. A discreet knock at the bathroom door woke him. Price’s muffled voice was calling, ‘Mr Arnaud, please.’
He dressed in a hurry. The dinner jacket fitted him well, despite being a little short in the sleeves. He had some difficulty buttoning the stiff collar and realised he had entirely forgotten how to tie a bow-tie. Price knocked at the door a second time. Jean opened it and, pointing at his neck, indicated his predicament. The butler understood immediately, pulled off his gloves, and tied the black tie. It was perfect.
But why go to such trouble? The Ascots were a couple of indeterminate age, rather hatchet-faced, who spoke absolutely incomprehensible English. Jane – despite her sharp features her face was pretty, her skin fresh – wore a lamé dress will all the grace of a coal sack. Her neckline gaped when she leant forward, revealing two fairly unappetising poached eggs. Both Ascots were very affable to Jean at the outset, and then, rapidly realising that he was not from their world, ignored him for the rest of the evening, talking only to Palfy, who gave up translating when he gauged Jean’s total lack of interest in their extended personal conversation about a society in which he knew no one. To tell the truth, the dry Martini before dinner, the sherry with the turtle consommé, the claret with the roast, the Graves with the apple tart, the port with the Camembert (over which they went into raptures, gaining Jean a brief flicker of renewed interest) and the brandy with the coffee had all been too much for him to take. He was dropping from fatigue; his eyelids were drooping, his tongue was like cardboard, his mind wandering, mostly back to Antoinette, whom he would have liked to be caressing again tonight, after unbuttoning the stiff collar that had been digging into his neck without mercy. At ten thirty the Ascots stood up and left. Palfy saw them to their car. He returned to find Jean collapsed on the sofa.
‘Not quite up to the mark yet, I see,’ he said. ‘My friends thought you were charming.’
‘Charming? Me?’
‘Utterly. They’ve invited you to the country next weekend.’
‘You must be mistaken.’
‘Well, obviously they’re not particularly entertaining hosts, but it will amuse you to experience English country life for yourself.’
‘Constantin, I didn’t come here for that. I’m looking for work. Any work. You have to help me find something, not too mindless if at all possible. I dragged parcels around for nearly a year. I couldn’t go on.’
‘Work? Listen, my fine fellow. I’ve worked very little in my life and have no connections whatever among those who do. It’s no good your relying on me to help you there.’
‘But I can’t just sponge off you, can I?’
‘Why not? I live very well from sponging off other people. Let’s make the most of it. Later on, you’ll do your bit to help me if you get the chance.’
Dog-tired, Jean gave up arguing and went to bed to sleep and dream of Chantal de Malemort who, regarding him sadly, informed him that she knew about his affair with Antoinette and was giving him up.
‘As a good Christian,’ she said, ‘I must sacrifice myself for that sinner’s salvation. She loves you. Do not let her down. She is waiting for you in the barn with the abbé Le Couec, who will bless you.’
‘What about you?’
‘I am going to marry Michel. For his salvation.’
The revelation was so unpleasant that he awoke in the grip of nausea, and only just made it to the bathroom in time.
‘You look positively green!’ Palfy said to him at breakfast.
‘I’m never going to touch another drop of alcohol.’
‘You’re absurd! You just need to get used to it, show your liver what’s what. It’s impossible to exist in society without drinking. Look at my complexion. I’m turning into a lemon, but I drink and I never suffer for it
. It’s a question of will.’
Price came in, wheeling a trolley. The poached eggs and bacon were still cooking beneath a silver dome. Jean ate while he listened to Palfy.
‘You interest me, and you have every right to wonder why. First of all I assure you I have not the slightest interest in pinching your bottom. Do not for a moment imagine that I am a poof, even if I’m not all that wild about women. I know they find you attractive, and in time they’ll find you more and more attractive. I noticed it only last night with Jane Ascot. On the way out she asked how she might meet you again.’
Jean looked at the poached eggs on his plate and remembered Mrs Ascot’s gaping neckline.
‘I know, I know,’ Palfy went on, ‘there’s not much meat on her and she’s not a wonderful example, but it’s a sign: you’re good-looking and, as they said in the eighteenth century, you have honesty written all over your face. What an advantage you have over me! Obviously you’re raw material, shapeless, have not the slightest idea of how to keep a boring conversation going and possess none of the tools one needs to navigate one’s way through a world of pretence. In short, it all remains to be done with you – apart from teaching you table manners. There someone has shown you what to do, and I’ve never seen you strike a false or vulgar note at dinner. One day we shall also get to the bottom of the mystery of your birth, though I personally don’t set much store by genetics. You’re the son of the people who brought you up.’
Jean, who had been considering wiping the yolk off his plate with a slice of bread, thought better of it. Price was standing behind him. He already felt badly enough about having let the servant see his striped cotton pyjamas, threadbare shirts and woolly slippers. Price had rummaged vainly in his case for a dressing gown.
‘I am not motivated by fine feelings,’ Palfy continued, ‘if it helps you put away your scruples. My offer of an accelerated education is purely so that we can collaborate. I have big plans.’
‘Aren’t you going to tell me what they are?’
‘No. Later.’
His refusal was terse. The matter was not for discussion. Jean wondered whether it would not be more prudent to leave there and then, the way he had left Mireille’s. But what was he going to do with two thousand francs in his pocket? Get another job as a labourer? Scrub pans, deliver parcels, open doors? Watchful as a cat, Palfy sensed his hesitation.
‘You can say no,’ he said. ‘I shan’t hold it against you. I’ll even drive you back to Newhaven.’
‘I’m staying.’
‘In that case, let’s make a start.’
For a month Jean spent six hours a day following an intensive English course. He realised he had some basic knowledge, some ideas and even a vocabulary, without ever having established the connection between its constituent parts. The suits were finished. Palfy asked for the bill to be sent. The tailor exclaimed that there was all the time in the world. In the evenings Palfy hosted dinners at his club or at home. Never more than two guests, whom he chose carefully and whose background and what they represented he explained to Jean beforehand. Jean understood English better and better and was able to follow a conversation. No one paid much attention to him, and that left him free to observe as much as he wished. The following day Palfy would question him.
‘What do you imagine Jonathan Sandow does for a living?’
‘I’ve no idea, really. He didn’t give a single clue.’
‘For the very good reason that he doesn’t do anything. He has a private income that is diminishing by the year. He’s a complete fool and has a seat in the House of Lords. His wife left him for two years to go and live with a fisherman on Ischia. She came back last Christmas, and Jonathan pointed out to her that she was late for dinner.’
‘I’ll never understand anything about the English!’
Palfy was exultant: it was exactly what he was meant to say. Besides, there was nothing to understand. Jean was progressing by leaps and bounds. Palfy’s own plans, however, remained secret. He regarded questions of money with as much contempt as ever. Suppliers, the garage, restaurants sent their bills to Eaton Square. Someone must have paid from time to time, otherwise Palfy would not have been able to disport himself like a lord for very long. Jean noticed how easily and quickly one picked up the habit of living without cares. He noted in his moleskin notebook,
f ) Constantin is a perfect parasite. I should have nothing but contempt for his sort. But how, when I’m a parasite too? We live in a dream. It will be a rude awakening. Unless there is no awakening. In short, the moral is clear: living honestly is the surest way to wear yourself out. Society offers a thousand different solutions to enterprising spirits who want to leave drudgery behind. If I’d stayed at La Vigie, after twenty-five years of hard-working and loyal service I could have looked forward to taking Grosjean’s place. By burning my bridges, taking a risk, I gave myself the chance to escape my misery.
g) Now the second question looms with more and more urgency. Who is Palfy? I’d give almost anything for him to tell me the truth about his financial situation. Am I the only one to know that he’s a fraud?
Palfy declined several invitations to the country.
‘We must think carefully,’ he said to Jean. ‘You’re not quite ready yet. It would be a disaster.’
One day, instead of having lunch, Jean left his English lesson and found his way to the Chelsea street where he thought he might find Salah. The Hispano-Suiza was not in front of the house. He plucked up his courage and pressed the bell. A valet in a striped waistcoat, who was not the strange and obsequious Baptiste, opened the door.
‘Mademoiselle du Courseau?’
‘Oh, Mademoiselle isn’t here,’ the valet answered in French. ‘Mademoiselle is in Scotland. She will be back on Monday next.’
‘And Salah?’
‘Salah is with Monseigneur on the French Riviera, at Cannes. If Monsieur would like to leave a message for Mademoiselle …’
‘Will you tell her that Jean Arnaud is in London? I’ll telephone her when she comes back.’
‘Very good, Monsieur.’
It had certainly been a mistake to have asked for news of the chauffeur too – a mistake that could have roused the new Baptiste’s suspicions – but Jean noticed that for the first time a servant’s prejudice had judged him favourably on his outward appearance. That evening he mentioned this to Palfy, telling him the story of his first meeting with the prince, and he was surprised to see his friend paying close attention.
‘How dramatic! Very few people know him. He’s thought to be fabulously rich, and no one knows where his fortune comes from. As for her … mmm …’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve missed her twice at weekends with friends. She is the darling of bohemian, super-rich London. Very pretty, I’m told. You must see her … we must see her …’
Palfy’s eyes lit up, and Jean realised that in the situation in which he found himself he had just been slipped a trump card: Mademoiselle Geneviève. He would not disregard it.
The author has already regretted on several occasions not being able to speak at greater length about Geneviève du Courseau. We have seen her appear on the balcony outside her room when her father visited her just after the war. She was nineteen years old. Let us add up the years: she is thirty-six now and her beauty has grown and matured. But perhaps it is excessive to talk of beauty when one thinks of her face. Vivacity is more accurate. This young woman brushed by death, who carries a weakness that she carefully conceals, has been playing a wonderful part for fifteen years: she is the delight, the reason for living, the most admired object of a reserved and generous man who makes no demands and maintains her in splendour. She has freed herself completely from the milieu in which she was born, which is now no more than a distant memory. We have already noted this: she came back to La Sauveté only once, and then doubtless because it was on her way to Deauville. A visit that would have lasted ten minutes, if the Hispano-Suiza had not broken down on the hi
ll up to Grangeville. In short, Geneviève has created herself from scratch. Her French elegance is out of place in London, where she is always ahead of the latest trends in fashion, the theatre and film, and knows about all the budding actors, writers, painters and sculptors, to the point where people have started to take it as gospel that she is the true creator of new talents. She enchants by her intelligence, she surprises by the loyalty of her friendship, and no one can claim to have seen her make a mistake in love: her life contains only the prince. So no one can understand why that person, who shows (when he appears, which is becoming increasingly rare) an almost royal benevolence and total absence of prejudice, why that man does not marry the woman he loves. Geneviève herself never raises the question, and it is perfectly possible that she prefers being a kept woman to being a morganatic princess. The society in which she has elected to live has taken her side: Geneviève is untouchable. Whoever ventures a word against her will find themselves positively excluded from her circle. So, protected by some, ignored by others, she is one of the queens of London.
Jean telephoned the following week. She urged him to get in a taxi and come immediately, because she had guests for dinner shortly. Jean slipped out of the Eaton Square flat, leaving Price a message for the absent Palfy, jumped in a cab and, despite traffic jams, was at the house ten minutes later. The new Baptiste led him to the drawing room, whose decoration had been changed: there were seats now and a long sofa of black leather, and an entire wall panel lit by spotlights concealed in the ceiling was hollowed out with niches containing modern sculptures: serene ovoid forms, tormented abstract mechanisms. Was one of them his bicycle that Geneviève had given to John Dudley? Dudley had had no success with his crushed objects. He was twenty years ahead of his time, and while he waited for others to plagiarise him and be hailed as innovators by amnesiac critics, he was designing body shells for a large car maker. Jean walked around, studying the strange shapes on show. They surprised him, without his being able to analyse their meaning. When Geneviève came into the room, her knowing smile made him feel he had been caught out. She was dressed in an Indian sari, her hair held smoothly in place by a black headband that intensified her pallor. Shorter than he was, she put her hands up on his shoulders and gazed at him for a moment.
