The Foundling Boy

by Michel D

  They took delivery there and then, drove up and down the Croisette, and parked outside the Carlton, where they went straight up to Jean’s room to admire from above the garnet-red roadster, its white leather seat and the glittering chrome of its headlights and bumpers. They were standing on his balcony, Palfy as excited as a child with a new toy, when a yellow Hispano-Suiza, old-fashioned but with an immutable elegance and majesty, parked behind the Austro-Daimler, driven by a white chauffeur in a blue uniform who opened the door for a dark-skinned man in a plain grey flannel suit. Salah, for he it was, vanished with a rapid step into the hotel.

  ‘Fantastic!’ Palfy said. ‘I’ve always thought that when a black man prospers he ought to take on a white chauffeur.’

  ‘It’s Salah, the prince’s old chauffeur! I mean, old because he looks as if he’s been promoted. A wonderful man. The prince must be staying at the Carlton. He always comes to the Riviera in spring!’

  ‘Luck smiles on us, does she not, dear boy? I know now why I came to prise you from your garret in Rue Lepic. You were the very man I needed. You can’t believe how much you were … You must introduce me to the prince.’

  Jean did not reply. He now knew that he would not escape Palfy and his grand schemes as easily as he had thought. He was a devil incarnate, and for the moment also a saviour without whom he, Jean, might well have drowned. He nevertheless promised himself to be more circumspect this time, and not end up having to pay with his body for Palfy’s squalid enterprises.

  The concierge gave them the required information. Yes, the prince was living at the Carlton, as he did every year at this time. He was one of their longest-standing customers. The Côte d’Azur air calmed his asthma. Well, usually … although this year he had not left his room for two weeks, and a doctor, plus nurse, was in permanent attendance. His was telephone was never answered, apart from once a day, in the evening, always at the same time, when it took a call from London. A black secretary, an Egyptian, took care of all the practical details.

  Jean immediately had a note sent to Salah, whom he met at the bar an hour later, before dinner. Salah had not changed, apart from a few grey hairs at his temples and early wrinkles that betokened a face of deep creases in old age. The last time they had seen each other was the evening they had spent at Via del Babuino.

  ‘I greatly regretted leaving in such a hurry the next morning,’ Salah said. ‘The prince wanted to go to Venice. The doorman at the Adler was meant to give you an envelope with 500 lira from the prince that I left in your name.’

  ‘Not only did he not give me the money, but he was also vile to me. Because of him I conceived a deep hatred for doormen, and have been punished for it. For six months I had to work as a doorman myself.’

  He told Salah the story of his return from Italy, the year he had spent portering at La Vigie, his winter in London.

  ‘Yes, I knew you were there. The prince was not well. He couldn’t cope with the fog and cold. Afterwards he was in remission, but at the moment we are going through a difficult period: acute shortness of breath and neurasthenia. Madame is to come in the next few days, although every evening he does his best to reassure her …’

  Salah stopped talking. Palfy was standing at Jean’s side in such a way that it was impossible not to introduce him. Salah’s expression changed barely perceptibly, as if he felt a secret aversion for this figure deliberately imposing himself on them, this man in blue blazer and white flannel trousers with a cravate tucked into his open shirt and an ironic smirk on his lips. In common with other former servants, Salah had learnt to judge at a glance those who belonged to the owning classes. Rich or broke, Palfy was one of them.

  ‘I must go back,’ Salah said. ‘We shall meet tomorrow.’

  ‘Won’t you stay and have a glass of something?’ Palfy asked.

  ‘I don’t drink alcohol. Two orangeades is one too many.’

  Alone with Jean, Palfy rubbed his hands.

  ‘A quite remarkable fellow!’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘His instinctive wariness. I much prefer that to the dupes who say yes immediately. This one is no dupe, I guarantee. Nor his prince … Nothing could be more promising for what I have in mind.’

  ‘Constantin, I’ve had enough of your mysteries.’

  ‘Never mind! Mysteries they must remain a little longer, then you’ll understand. But do me a favour this minute, will you? Write to your friend Madeleine, ask her to join us. I’ll write her a little cheque so that she can buy herself some respectable clothes and book a sleeper.’

  ‘You must be mad! You saw her for all of five minutes. Don’t try to tell me you’ve fallen in love!’

  ‘Me in love? I should not dream of being so vulgar, dear boy. No. But I think she may be just the woman I need to manage my business.’

  ‘Listen, Madeleine earns her living by turning tricks. That’s bad enough for her. Do not get her involved in one of your rackets. She was kind to Chantal and me. I like her. Leave her out of it.’

  ‘Fool! These are her last years. In a year or two she’ll be picking up Arab labourers at the factory gates. So let us rescue her.’

  ‘I didn’t know you belonged to the Salvation Army.’

  ‘A brand-new side to me, eh? Just do as I ask. You have no right to spoil her chance of a lifetime.’

  Jean wrote to Madeleine, enclosing Palfy’s cheque. Three days later they waited at the station for her to step off the train. Her transformation into a respectable woman had not been entirely successful. Palfy took her in hand, booked her into a modest hotel and reassured her that he would soon find her an apartment worthy of her. With a telephone.

  ‘A telephone? What for?’ she asked, suddenly anxious. ‘I don’t know anyone here who will call me.’

  ‘But I know plenty.’

  She confided her anxiety to Jean.

  ‘Your chap is strange. He’s got to be a pimp. And if he thinks he’s going to drop in and read my meter for me, he’s wrong. I work for myself.’

  ‘I don’t think he is a pimp. If he turns into one, you can drop him like a shot.’

  Jean met Salah again, to ask if he would help him find a job. He waited less than a week before a travel agency engaged him to organise the leisure activities of groups of English tourists who had come to the Riviera to rest. How was he to organise leisure activities for English people on holiday? He had no idea at all. He moved out of the Carlton and took a room in the same hotel as Madeleine. The agency’s office looked out onto the Croisette. Several times a day he saw through the window the garnet-red Austro-Daimler driving past with Madeleine at Palfy’s side. He had persuaded her to dye her hair black. She wore very little make-up and smoked with a tortoiseshell cigarette-holder. From time to time the Hispano-Suiza also stopped outside the office, and Salah came in to talk to Jean.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, it’s not boring, and I’m earning my keep; I’m not dependent on Palfy. How is the prince?’

  ‘No better nor worse. He’s still in his room. I talked to him about you. He would like to see you as soon as he is better. Madame spoke very highly of you to him. Although she also spoke highly of your unusual friend …’

  Jean did not dare ask if she was going to come to Cannes. He dreaded her coming, and longed for it. Dreaded because of the unspeakable confusion she had thrown him into, longed for her to come because she had been a revelation, a dazzling revelation, to him. Alone again, he found it hard to bear the lack of a woman’s company that left him facing the first genuine failure of his life so far. From the nights spent in anguish and distress he assessed the appetite and needs created in him by Chantal. He went to see Madeleine, in her room above his, and unburdened himself to her.

  ‘I’ve picked up a really bad habit, a very lazy streak. I need to be with a good woman. Do you think I’ll get over it?’

  She kissed his forehead.

  ‘You’re a very nice boy. For a little while you two made me believe in l
ove. But there’s always disappointment waiting. I need to thank Chantal for reminding me. Don’t fall in love any more, sweetheart. It hurts, and it’s stupid.’

  He realised quickly that Madeleine was changing from one day to the next. Supposing Palfy was Pygmalion? Madeleine was working on her English, which she had spoken fairly fluently when she lived in London, and he found out she was also taking elocution lessons. Her Parisian drawl was fading. She started expressing herself more clearly, in a calm voice.

  ‘Your friend will end up making me sit my school certificate. He’s a strange chap all right. He ain’t even – I mean he has not even asked to sleep with me. You see how I use negatives now? I didn’t think about it before. Apparently it’s very fashionable.’

  Palfy’s ultimate goal still remained a mystery. With his aplomb, psychological acuity and, even more, his phoney barony, address at the Carlton and Austro-Daimler, he had not dragged his heels about meeting Cannes high society. The Éclaireur de Nice et du Sud-Est published a picture of Baron Palfy dining at the same table as the Aga Khan and the Begum, hugely distinguished company in the eyes of idiots. Like Salah he frequently paused at the agency to talk to Jean.

  ‘You’re looking well! Makes me feel good! What about your work?’

  ‘It’s very interesting.’

  ‘I’ll end up thinking that work is what makes all of us healthy. You see what kind of an influence you have on me.’

  He would take Jean for dinner at a restaurant at the old port, and sometimes even seemed to want to be sincere.

  ‘I don’t know why I like you, but I do like you, Jean, for sure. If I think about it, I could have been a boy like you ten years ago. But I got thrown in at the deep end. I kept my head above water, sometimes in a good way, sometimes not. And then I suffer from this curious absence of scruples, almost an illness. Everything is too slow for me; the result is that I push things, events, people. I liked the way you didn’t come back to London, where life was easy. I was disappointed, but I felt it was the right thing. It’s the same here. You’ve got yourself a job. Fine by me. You’re not an easy boy to ruin. I sometimes think I’ve cracked it, and then you rebel, you’re off. That’s good. You’re a decent fellow, someone who won’t ever betray me. Am I right?’

  ‘Yes, you are. I wouldn’t. But why don’t you give up this life, Palfy? How can you live constantly with the prospect of being arrested or going to prison? It would drive me mad.’

  ‘They haven’t caught me yet. My star is still protecting me. Luck is the only bitch. She puts all the trumps in my hand and at the last minute she folds, and I fall from a great height. Which is not to say that I don’t love the fall. It’s intoxicating. Every time I tell myself: perhaps there is some great innate Justice, some playful God who’s protecting me from myself. Obviously one shouldn’t examine one’s surroundings too much at a moment like that, it’s too depressing, that meanness triumphing over the world. But I drool over it. Anyway, even so Justice moves me, as she did when I was a little boy and I thought she was very beautiful, despite her big tits.’

  ‘You won’t hurt Madeleine, will you? She’s a really kind woman.’

  ‘Don’t worry. She has nothing to worry about, except earning her living without using her body to pay for it.’

  He paused and seemed to reflect briefly before offering his next confession.

  ‘Do you want to know part of my secret?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m enormously amused by human stupidity. It’s a rolling performance, no breaks, no intervals. In a few weeks, a few months, you’ll see it unleashed when war is declared …’

  War? Jean heard people around him talking about it and listened with half an ear. In his childhood he had heard them keep bringing up the same stories, and he scarcely believed in them any more. Albert had protested too much to be credible. But the rumble of war talk amplified and began to weigh upon even the most careless and egotistical, closing down people’s enthusiasms and facial expressions and drawing a blood-red line through the future.

  Jean’s task was to escort groups of British visitors on holiday in Cannes. He accompanied them to the Îles de Lérins and to the perfumeries of Grasse, to the lavender fields and the fortified villages at Èze and Cagnes. His charges, elderly couples for the most part, pink and pale-skinned, found it very beautiful and marvelled at the slightest thing. They never talked about war, even though there were often old soldiers among them. They had come to soak up the sun and enjoy the still-fresh air of the last of springtime, and were indifferent to the rest of the world’s affairs. They were either reassuring or ridiculous, depending on your point of view, but Jean liked them and, if only for the pleasure of hearing them say, ‘How lovely!’ he did his best to widen the scope of their sightseeing. Remembering the unbounded delight of the old ladies on the boat up the Thames to Hampton Court, he suggested to the owner of the agency that they should hire a small yacht to explore the inlets of the Esterel as far as Saint-Raphaël. The idea met with approval, and he was given the name of a skipper from Saint-Tropez who rented out a motor yacht, the Toinette. The owner himself came to the agency to introduce himself to Jean. At forty-five he still had the figure of a young man, and the odd crease in his suntanned face added the merest hint of weariness to his rough charm. As he kept his skipper’s cap on, his baldness went largely unnoticed: to greet female passengers he simply raised two fingers to the peak of his cap. His accent, nonchalance and affected coolness charmed Jean. They quickly came to terms: the Toinette would anchor at Cannes twice a week to take his tourists out for the day.

  ‘British?’ he said. ‘They’ll be fine. They know the sea. I wouldn’t be so keen if you’d said some other nationality. Me, I go out whatever the weather. No excuses!’

  He was exaggerating. The first two or three times the Toinette stayed at her moorings; the mistral was blowing, and the skipper claimed there was a problem with the engines. Finally they got out to sea, where he told Jean his story. He had racketed across all the oceans of the world before finally coming home to settle at Saint-Tropez with a wife who owned a hotel there, Chez Antoine – it was known all over the region – a proper museum, full of Picassos, Derains, Segonzacs, Braques, Frieszs, Tanguys, Dalís, Ernsts. With a gesture he indicated that the quantity was such, no one knew exactly how many. It would all go to the little girl, Antoinette, ‘Toinette’ for short, who looked like an angel and was the apple of her uncle’s eye, the uncle who lived with them. As the weeks went by, his accounts varied sufficiently for Jean to entertain doubts. But people nodded and assured him that the hotel existed, and its walls were covered with beautiful pictures. Théo, the skipper, was perhaps not a complete liar, except when he was recounting his round-the-world voyages, for clearly he had only ever navigated in coastal waters and always made for port at high speed the moment he glimpsed the slightest hint of fleecy clouds on the horizon. Rashly Jean mentioned to him that his uncle, Captain Duclou, had rounded Cape Horn several times. Théo made a derisively dismissive gesture.

  ‘Cape Horn! Know it by heart. And I tell you: there’s no love lost between us.’

  Jean was enchanted by it all: the politeness of the tourists he accompanied, the Côte d’Azur’s beauty before the July and August crowds, the inconsequential singsong charm of the accents he heard. He forgot his sorrow, and the sharp memory of Chantal’s disappearance, even though he would have liked to have her beside him to share the new, wild beauties of this coast. Unthinkingly, he went on wishing that Geneviève would come. Salah told him that the prince, who was feeling stronger, had dissuaded her from joining him. The former chauffeur frequently came to fetch Jean for lunch. One day brought up the subject of Palfy.

  ‘I know he is your friend, but I don’t understand him. What is he doing here? One sees him everywhere. One sees him too much. If the scheme he is setting up here is as shady as the one he set up in England, he’ll have problems.’

  ‘Salah, I don’t know. I like Palfy. He’s a happy rogue. He
makes genuinely grand gestures. I shall never be like him, and perhaps I ought to regret that.’

  ‘No. Don’t regret anything. One needs to be better armed than you are to ward off his wiles.’

  Jean closed his eyes in vain, he could not ignore everything. Madeleine moved out of the hotel and up to a studio on the hillside, which she would have liked to decorate with prints and pompoms on the lampshades. Palfy forbade it. He chose the furniture, the curtains, the carpets, the prints. She understood none of it, and acquiesced with a humility learnt from years in men’s company. She was his creature now.

  The reader, better informed than the hero of this story, will be surprised that Jean has not made the connection between Théo’s hotel and Antoine du Courseau, especially after the information Antoinette had given him. Antoinette, Toinette, Chez Antoine – Mireille Cece’s as well as its Saint-Tropez counterpart, not to mention the garage at Aix – there were enough clues there to put any detective wise about Antoine’s whereabouts. But Jean had loved that good, generous, absent man. The idea of pursuing him to his hideaway did not even cross his mind. He would have considered it a betrayal of their ancient, secret pact, and of that last night spent together at an empty, echoing La Sauveté. At the beginning of July, nevertheless, the Toinette arrived at Cannes with an extra crew member on board: a slim girl of fifteen with light-coloured eyes and chestnut hair. She spoke with the same appealing singsong accent as her father. To be fifteen in 1939 was still to be a young girl, to lower one’s eyes without shame, not to speak until one was spoken to. She looked after the bar, the picnic on board, the children and the old ladies. When she was there Théo stopped swearing and telling tales of round-the-world voyages.