Michel Déon - The Foundling's War

‘Why are you spying on me?’ she asked.

‘Why shouldn’t I spy on you?’

Wrapped in a towel, she pushed the screen aside and sat on the edge of his bed. Cyrille was still sleeping, and they had to talk in low voices.

‘What if he wasn’t here?’ Jean said, pointing to Cyrille.

She thought about his question with the seriousness and concentration she showed every time they discussed their unusual relations.

‘I wouldn’t be so strong.’

‘He wasn’t there to protect you when you went away for three days.’

‘Do you still think about that?’

‘Now and then.’

Stretching out his arm, he held her ankle, squeezed it hard, ran his hand up her shin to the knee he loved so much and stroked her thigh, exposed by the towel.

‘No!’ she said.

‘When?’

Her eyes glistened with tears.

‘I want it as much as you do,’ she whispered. ‘But not here. Not here. Not now.’

‘You’re right, it’s horrible here. And we came to find the sun. I hate this place, I hate the wardrobe, the colour of the curtains, the violet carpet, that embroidered armchair. Let’s not stay. I’ll telephone Antoine.’

‘Who’s Antoine?’

‘My grandfather, but he doesn’t know it and I’m not going to be the one to tell him. He lives at Saint-Tropez.’

It was not Antoine who answered, because he was out fishing in his rowing boat as he did every morning, but Toinette, whose cool voice and singsong accent brought back the last delicious summer before the war, the cruises on Théo’s ‘yacht’ and a way of living in the moment that now seemed lost for ever. The hotel was shut, she said, and her mother and father were in the ‘village’, but her mother would phone back before lunch.

It was Théo who telephoned at lunchtime.

‘What’s all this, Jean, your rain from Paris you’re bringing us? We’re going to send you and your miserable storms straight back, you know. And what the hell are you doing at Saint-Raphaël? It’s the middle of nowhere. Antoine and me’ve decided you’re coming here. I’ll pick you up in the truck at three, if I can get the gas generator going.’

‘I’m not on my own, I’ve got a friend with me, a girlfriend.’

‘Saints … Toinette didn’t say nothing about that. I hope she’s good-looking, at least.’

‘I think so.’

‘That’s all right then. We got to take life as it comes … we’ve been making do ever since we ran out of petrol … What was the war like? We got plenty of time, save it for later … I’ll pick you up at three.’

The rain stopped just before Théo arrived, and a radiant sun daubed the houses in fresh colours and lightened the ochre mass of the Maures, sending up a bluish mist in the new sunshine. Théo assured them that wherever he went, the sun followed him. His truck smelt of fish.

‘I never make a trip for nothing. I’ve brought them two hundred kilos. They don’t know how to fish at Saint-Raphaël. I’m taking chickpeas and rice back. That’s all they have here. Put your bags on top.’

He showed no surprise at seeing Cyrille. He stroked his cheek and peeled him an orange.

‘Nice boy. A bit pasty. We’ll fix that.’

Théo had not changed. The odd grey hair at his temples, but his face had stayed young, enlivened constantly by the winks, pouts and comical expressions that punctuated his indefatigable chatter. He had sold his ‘yacht’, which had sailed away, laden with English passengers, just after the armistice. His truck now satisfied his hunger for mechanical toys. The gas generator was not perfect, but by fiddling and coaxing, the truck could be made to start. Antoine had looked very happy at the thought of his friend Jean coming, having not seen him for so long. Of course … very happy was putting it too strongly. Being a Norman, a man of the north, he didn’t show his feelings much, and spoke less and less. Fishing was the only thing that interested him. He was getting very good at it. He kept the house well supplied. Toinette was seventeen now. A real angel. She helped her mother. Oh, yes, Marie-Dévote was well too. He’d find her a bit thinner than before … yes, true, Jean hadn’t met her … Well, some said she was better-looking like that. He, Théo, he’d liked her skinny, and with a bit of flesh on her, and even good and round, and he loved her the way she was now because there was no other woman on earth like her.

The road followed the curve of the gulf. After three days’ torrential rain the rivers were pouring the red earth of the Maures into the sea, staining the waves. Cyrille sounded the horn as they went round the bends.

‘I tell you, Jean, this little chap’s going to send both of them dotty, Marie-Dévote and Toinette. You don’t see blond kids around here much. They’ll be crazy about him! Cyrille, you say that’s your name?’

‘Yes, Monsieur.’

‘And polite too! Dotty! Dotty’s what they’ll be, I tell you. They won’t want to give him back! My word on it.’

They were arriving at Saint-Tropez, outside the shuttered hotel. Théo hooted furiously and Toinette appeared at the door in trousers and a sweater, her long chestnut hair falling over her shoulders, instantly reminding Jean of the delightful, unspoken complicity between them during the short summer of 1939 and the deliciously sweet letter he had received at the camp at Yssingeaux where he and Palfy had done their basic training. He could have recited by heart the few lines she had written, to which he had never replied.

Dear godson, I send you my best warm wishes and a muffler. I hope it isn’t dangerous there, where you are. Don’t catch cold. Uncle Antoine sends you a thousand affectionate thoughts. He says you are his only friend. He kisses you, and I shake your hand. Toinette

Marie-Dévote appeared next, as they were unloading their cases. Jean had not seen her before and he was struck by the richness and maturity of her beauty. She had kept her soft skin and her fleshy mouth, like a Provençal nectarine. Rationing had made her lose the ten kilos excess that had weighed down her hips and bust. She was no longer the scornful girl, the wild fruit who twenty years earlier had beguiled Antoine, but almost another creature, fully in control of her body and its gestures.

‘Antoine’s waiting for you inside,’ she said. ‘He’s quite choked up at the thought of seeing you again. He hasn’t talked much about you, but we always knew you were his friend from way back.’

Turning to Claude, she said, ‘I’m Marie-Dévote, and this is my daughter Toinette. What’s your little boy’s name?’

‘Cyrille. And I’m Claude.’

‘Cyrille’s my pal,’ Théo said. ‘I’m kidnapping him. We’re going to check over the boat. Like boats, Cyrille?’

‘Oh yes.’

He took Théo’s hand and followed him.

‘The hotel’s shut,’ Marie-Dévote said, ‘but we have friends come down now and again and we give them the bungalow over there. There’s one big bedroom. Toinette will bring over a cot for the little one. Come on, Monsieur Jean, Antoine’s waiting. I’ll sort everything else out with Madame Claude. It’s women’s work.’

‘Where’s Antoine?’

‘In his little place over on the beach side. It’s his retreat. Nobody but him’s allowed there. You might find he’s changed from when you saw him last. To me — to us,’ she corrected herself, ‘he’s still the same.’

Antoine could not have failed to hear the truck hooting as it arrived. Seated on a stool, he was checking the weights on a line he was coiling into a wicker basket. He looked up as if someone he saw every day had come to disturb him, put down the line, and got to his feet. He too had lost several kilos as a result of rationing, and his faded red cotton trousers and rollneck sweater flapped around him, but at sixty-seven, his face scarcely wrinkled, he remained the same solid Antoine, with the same deliberate step.