by Michel D
There was a moment when he mentioned he was from Normandy. Toinette looked up and stared at him. Théo noticed.
‘That always sets her off. Her uncle’s Norman. He talks to her about Normandy sometimes, how it rains there and the light, when there is any, it’s very pretty.’
‘Does he often come to see you?’ Jean asked.
‘Does … He lives with us! He only likes the Midi now. He’s a funny bloke, I can tell you. He owns a Bugatti.’
Jean no longer had any doubts. Antoine du Courseau was alive and well at Saint-Tropez, unbeknown to his family, and this shy, graceful child was not his niece but his daughter. If you looked carefully you could see straight away some of Geneviève’s features, and that look Antoinette had had at the same age, as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. And her name! Toinette. The boat. The hotel and its sign: Chez Antoine. Everything was becoming clear.
‘What are you thinking about?’ Théo asked.
‘About Normandy.’
Théo had drunk so much pastis that he began casting glances at his cabin, eager to have a siesta before putting to sea again.
‘Well?’ he said. ‘Is that it for this summer? He might apologise, Herr Hitler, for spoiling our lives. Anyway … if it works out again, send me word and I’ll come.’
He yawned and moved towards the bridge. Jean caught Toinette’s eye and she smiled shyly. He leaned towards her and murmured, ‘Tell your uncle that Jean Arnaud sends his very best wishes. Promise?’
‘I promise.’
Théo whipped around anxiously, as though Jean had made the most of his few seconds of inattention to show his daughter his private parts. Their smiles reassured him. At the gangway he said, ‘All the best … bye. The little one’s sweet, isn’t she?’
‘More than sweet. Bye, Théo. I’ll phone you.’
The afternoon was undemanding. He was the only one in the office when the postman arrived with a parcel for him: Toulet’s Counter-rhymes, which Salah had promised him. Two of his colleagues had received their call-up papers. The owner of the agency was wearing a suitably serious expression. He could already see himself walking behind a hearse, having placed a notice in the window: ‘Closed for reasons of general heroism’. At last Palfy appeared, wearing a shantung suit, a blue silk handkerchief spilling out of his breast pocket.
‘Come. I’m taking you out. I’ve found a delicious bistro at Mougins where we shall taste kid aux herbes courtesy of Madame Victoire. A highly indicative name for an era such as ours.’
The Austro-Daimler was outside. Palfy hummed all the way to Mougins. When they were seated he ordered pastis and tomato juice. They seemed to know him, and Madame Victoire kissed him.
‘You are unfaithful to me, Baron.’
‘Me?’ he exclaimed with indignation.
‘Yes, you!’
‘All right, I admit it!’
‘Your cynicism is shocking!’
Jean did not know where to begin. Palfy looked so happy. Did he have any right to curtail the happiness of a man so sure of himself? He let him keep talking, and as Palfy did so he pulled a packet of visiting cards out of his pocket and handed one to Jean.
At Cannes …
Mme Miranda
Tel: 28-32
‘Simple, elegant, discreet. Don’t you think? I adore the name Miranda. Where did Madeleine get the idea to call herself that? Can you see me having her answer the telephone as … Mme Madeleine? But Miranda’s almost a fairytale name for the French, for the English too come to that, they all have a little niece called Miranda, an aunt Miranda, a sister Miranda. Can’t you see the attraction?’
With horror, Jean thought he understood.
‘Constantin, for heaven’s sake, don’t tell me you’ve become Madeleine’s pimp.’
‘No, you fool. Madeleine’s past all that. Instead I have appointed her the head of a charming, and entirely frivolous, network of pretty girls and women who have difficulty making ends meet. A telephone call, a little disclosure of one’s tastes, and she finds just the right match from her card-file index. Obviously the card files need expanding. We’re recruiting – Madeleine mainly – nice little wives whose husbands are looking the other way. Professionals are out, of course. Somehow they always strike the wrong note. Now, you can help … no no, I beg you … none of your sensitivity … you’re in constant contact with English visitors. Here’s a packet of visiting cards. All you have to do is distribute them intelligently. No need for explanations, clients will understand at once. My system is completely new. A great pity I’m not able to patent it. I’ve already got a name: “Call Girls & Co”. All right?’
Jean hesitated. There were only the two of them in the small restaurant, which in August should have been full to the doors, with customers crushed together at long tables and busy waitresses nagging them. The rats really were leaving the sinking ship. Soon there would be only Palfy and himself left in France to face the coming war.
‘I should hate to think I was forcing you,’ Palfy said, annoyed by his silence.
‘You’re not forcing me, but I’ve got a message for you. I’m afraid that in your scurrilous scheme you‘ve treated the competition much too lightly. Apparently if you hadn’t been my friend you wouldn’t have been given a second chance.’
Palfy put down his glass without flinching. He knew how to take such shocks.
‘I see,’ he said. ‘I would be awfully grateful if you would reveal who asked you to convey this message.’
‘Is that absolutely necessary?’
‘Absolutely. If it’s the owner of some crappy little brothel, I am not scared in the slightest. But someone highly placed would definitely worry me.’
Jean did not hesitate. If he failed to reveal Salah’s role, Palfy would treat the matter as a joke. It was far better to really put him on his guard.
‘Salah.’
Palfy picked up his glass and drank its contents in a single gulp. The roast kid was served.
‘I’m not very hungry any more.’
‘Why do you think Salah’s warning is so serious?’
Palfy shrugged.
‘The reason is slightly delicate to explain.’
‘Do tell me.’
‘Your friend, the prince, is a real prince. An Egyptian title, I think, and fairly authentic, at least more so than mine. Clean hands, doubtless transparently so, though I have not seen them. Educated at a French college, then Oxford, has travelled all over the world, high society, considerable fortune. If you haven’t lived such a life, you have no idea how boring it is. So how do you distract yourself? Exploiting the stupidity and vices of men is one temptation. Sex has been an investment of his. Oh, not directly, of course … One must keep one’s hands clean, always! But through the agency of devoted aides. Salah, among others. Even that Longuet fellow from Grangeville. Do you remember telling me how surprised you were that he mentioned his name to you in his car in Rome one evening? The centre of the organisation, and his headquarters, are in Lebanon.’
In Lebanon? That explained everything: the reason for their departure, their destination.
‘How do you know?’ Jean asked.
‘Oh, little by little … In London people talked and, you know … in my free time I keep bad company … The girls sometimes talk … I’ve built up a picture of a very small part of a large network that covers several countries. Unwittingly you helped me. For example, that house in Chelsea is a cover—’
‘Does Geneviève know?’
‘No. Definitely not! But you can see that the facts prove it: the dubious butler, the different chambermaids every morning. They have work permits, “regular” employment. The famous Madame Germaine, who whipped half the masochists in London, worked under their protection. You found Salah there.’
Two American couples came into the restaurant after hesitating at the sight of its interior, which, apart from Jean and Palfy’s table, remained empty. Victoire took possession of them, lit some candles and was translating the menu into
irresistible English until one of the men interrupted her in perfect French and pointed out that there was an essential difference between a rock lobster and a lobster and that only dullards would confuse one with the other, and would she please not consider them as such because it irritated them, especially as they were, all four of them, great friends of France.
‘Something of a misjudgement on her part,’ Palfy murmured. ‘A very French error that is the result of your preconceived ideas and lack of curiosity. You’re a whisker away from treating the rest of the world as fools, which is your way of reassuring yourselves about who you are. But what a letdown it will be for you when you lose the war!’
‘Do you think we’re going to lose it?’
‘Who can doubt it?’
Palfy drove slowly back down to Cannes. The cool night air, the engine turning over in near silence, the Austro-Daimler’s overpowering majesty, produced a heady sense of freedom. It would have been so pleasant just to go on living like this, not to see the clouds massing on the horizon. They stopped outside the building where Madeleine lived. There was no light at her window.
‘She can’t be asleep already,’ Palfy said.
They walked up two floors and rang her bell, but there was no answer. Palfy had a key. The apartment was in disarray, the bed unmade, the cupboards and drawers empty and wide open. A light had been left on in the bathroom. They looked at each other. Did they have to find out what had happened?
‘We risk coming across a truly revolting spectacle,’ Palfy murmured.
He was pale and calm, concentrating on how best to conduct himself, and Jean realised that this time the age of fun, the age of carelessness and excess, was over. A terrible shadow passed over them both, all the more threatening for remaining secret and invisible, for only having been hinted at. They still had time to wipe their fingerprints off everything they had touched and silently tiptoe away.
‘A little courage!’ Palfy said, his voice shaking.
He opened the bathroom door. Empty. The bath still full of water. On the glass shelf above the washbasin some perfume bottles still stood unstoppered.
‘Phew!’ Jean said.
They went back to the bedroom, and on a corner table found a sheet of paper folded in four, in Madeleine’s large round handwriting.
Constantin, I like my life. My little place in Rue Lepic’s worth more than your big place in Cannes. ‘They’ warned me. They was nicer than I expected. Usually its curtains straight away. If I was you, I’d get out fast. No hard feelings
Madeleine
‘They have been quick,’ Palfy said, a trace of admiration in his voice.
The telephone rang. It was a ‘customer’. He sent him packing.
‘The annoying thing,’ he said, as the car wound down towards the port, ‘is that I put money into the idea. The car? I won’t get a penny for it. All those panic-stricken millionaires have gone off and left dozens of unsaleable monsters behind. I settled my bill at the Carlton yesterday. I should be able to stay there another couple of weeks if I leave the weekly bill unpaid for a while, and thenmake myself scarce. A real shame that I couldn’t patent my little invention and sell it to the Americans. More difficult than the last time around. A question of morals. Very punctilious, you know, the Americans, about morality. In ten years’ time you’ll see I was right. One should never be ahead of the morals of one’s time, whether one’s selling toothpaste or pleasure. That will be my consolation: to have been a pioneer. What about you? Are you happy with your job at the agency?’
Jean agreed that it was bearable, that he had known worse and that, going out nearly every day with the tourists he looked after, he was less bored than he would be sitting behind a desk. Even so, the future seemed limited. He had no chance of getting a better job until he had done his military service, and actually the necessity for that seemed to be fast approaching. He was twenty and he could go early, before he was called up.
‘Dammit!’ Palfy said. ‘That could be a way out.’
They stopped beside one of the quays. Both French and foreign yachts were moored there. Crews were sitting drinking and eating in their cockpits, by the light of storm lanterns.
‘Usually there are ten times as many foreigners,’ Jean remarked. ‘Have they all gone? Yesterday I heard a man in the crowd say, “The rats are leaving the sinking ship!”’
‘They’re fools! A lightning war, and Europe will be German, or French. Great business opportunities are coming. It’s a good sign that the rats are leaving. Let us stay, and swear that if, in two weeks’ time, I have failed to come up with a new scheme, we shall enlist in the French army.’
‘My father won’t be able to bear it.’
‘Oh come on … he’d be ashamed if you wriggled out of it. One military march, and the most hardened onlookers have tears in their eyes.’
The next fortnight flashed past. The agency closed. Cannes was emptying. The fine summer was dying gently away, indifferent to the preparations for the great upheaval. Jewellers were selling off diamonds, banks dollars. From the horizon in the early morning came the dull, rhythmic crump of artillery. The French navy was exercising out at sea. A regiment from Marseille marched through the town. Troops were taking up defensive positions on the Italian frontier. Mules pulling mountain cannons followed. A regiment of Senegalese garrisoned at Fréjus left for the north. At the harbour master’s a queue formed of foreign yacht owners waiting to have their papers stamped to leave for Spain or Gibraltar. Shops began to run out of sugar, coffee, tea and jam. Jean and Palfy went for drives in the country behind Cannes, where a soothing indifference reigned, sampling the last of a summer that had been heartbreakingly tranquil and delightful. In the cafés, between games of cards and boules, people listened to the wireless as it broadcast with undeniable and vindictive skill its news digest preparing the population for war. Jean was tempted several times to go as far as Saint-Tropez to see Théo and Toinette and confirm that the Norman uncle was really the man he thought he was. He made do with calling Théo on the telephone on his last day to tell him that he was enlisting.
‘In the Train des Équipages?’18 Théo asked with a trace of anxiety.
‘No, no. Infantry.’
‘But you’ll be on foot, and Berlin’s a bit far for marching.’
‘I’ll hitchhike.’
‘All right then. You’re a brave one. I’m just in the GVC.’19
‘The GVC.?’
‘Guarding the lines of communication. When you’re past forty they don’t let you go to war, especially when you’re a father. Anyhow, it’ll be short, I’m telling you … Théo is telling you. We’ll expect you back at Christmas to slosh down some champagne with us. And come back with a Croix de Guerre. That’ll please Toinette.’
‘Send her a kiss from me.’
‘Send her a kiss!’
Jean felt Théo was taking himself a little too seriously as a father, and being excessively strait-laced. Of course he wished Toinette nothing but well. Come to think of it, why shouldn’t she be his wartime godmother? Théo said he would have to think about it.
‘I don’t want her to get any ideas. At her age, for heaven’s sake!’
‘Ask her uncle Antoine what he thinks. Tell him it’s for Jean Arnaud.’
‘Why? He hasn’t got a clue who you are!’
‘Yes he has, I promise he has. I’m a friend.’
The second week’s bill from the Carlton resembled, as foreseen, one of those ultimatums that had been echoing around Europe for the past three years. It was impossible to misread its tone. Palfy had already safely hidden several suits and some underwear, basic necessities for a future hoax that he was already applying his mind to. In the meantime he needed to disappear as fast as he could. Posters on town-hall doors were inviting him to do just that: ‘Enlist. Re-enlist. Beat the call-up.’ Despite having been discharged at twenty, he requested to take a new medical board. The medical officer noted his hollow chest, but in the face of his intense feigned patrio
tism passed him ‘fit for active service’. Jean was passed fit without reservation. A fifty-franc note slipped to the orderly secretary in charge of the allocation of recruits to training depots got them onto the same list. They were each issued with directions, but Palfy tore up their travel warrants. After a final tour of the town’s nightclubs, where age-exempt saxophonists blew up a storm on empty dance floors, they climbed into the Austro-Daimler and headed west and north, towards the Auvergne.
Palfy was in raptures at the thought of the magnificent bill left behind at the hotel. At every stop he took the account out of his wallet and grieved at not having ordered caviar and champagne every night.
‘One day I shall regret it bitterly. But the truth compels me to say that at this moment I am sick of champagne, caviar, lobster à l’américaine, and foie gras. One must take care of oneself. The MO was right, apart from the fact that he needs new glasses: it’s not my chest that’s hollow, it’s my stomach that’s ballooning.’
Three days later, after numerous stops at restaurants and country hotels, the all-consuming Austro-Daimler pulled up outside high gates at the entrance to a field at Yssingeaux in the upper Loire. On a washed-out banner they read: ‘Military Training Centre. No entry.’ A huge sergeant was on guard duty, his helmet and boots greased, his thumbs tucked into his belt.
‘Move along!’ he shouted mechanically.
It took him some time to realise that the two men alighting from the monstrous dimensions of the vehicle in front of him were recruits. And recruits liable to a week’s confinement to barracks for arriving two hours late.
‘What – what about your car?’ he asked, shocked that they should abandon their fabulous conveyance so blithely, in the middle of nowhere.
‘My chauffeur, who is following behind on his bicycle, should be here in a moment. He will drive it to the garage. And if by some chance he should fail to appear, it’s yours. An extraordinary vehicle, whose like we shall not see again. It was built especially for a Russian grand duke.’
