Michel Déon - The Foundling Boy

‘Hello. Are you still cross with me?’

He said ‘yes’ at the exact moment when he realised that he no longer was, that Antoinette, there in front of him, in all the freshness of her seventeen years, a little plump but so sleek too, and as fragrant as a young peach, still had an inexpressible power that he was far too inexperienced to detach himself from in a single encounter. It was to her that he owed the discovery of wonderful sensations. But how could she give them to someone else, to others? Tears filled Jean’s eyes, and he clenched his fists to keep his emotions in check. Seeing him, Antoinette guessed the reason for his furious silence and tried hard not to show her delight too quickly.

‘Will you come for a walk with me?’ she said.

‘We’re not allowed to see each other.’

‘I know a barn—’

‘Who else have you been there with?’

‘Nobody.’

‘Liar!’

Antoinette’s face hardened, and Jean was overcome by panic. What if he lost her? He wouldn’t be able to bear it, any more than he could bear being with her and her huge dishonesty.

‘I didn’t lie to you,’ she said. ‘I don’t lie to you.’

‘But you said it was me that you did your horrible things with at the bottom of the cliff.’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘Who said it then?’

‘Do you really want to know?’

‘Yes.’

‘You won’t try to get your own back?’

‘Tell me … you can say anything you like, can’t you?’

‘Michel.’

‘Oh the … I hate him! One day I’ll kill him.’

Antoinette smiled. Jean’s noble vow enchanted her.

‘Just this once, you would be wrong. He really thought it was you. Ever since he started trying to catch us out. He confused you with Gontran.’

‘Have you been doing it with him for a long time?’

‘It was the first time.’

He did not believe her but felt too upset to be angry and make her realise how shameless she was. Besides, he could no longer think about anything except slipping his hand inside Antoinette’s sweater, stroking her sweet girlish breasts, feeling their points stiffen under his hand. A mist passed across his vision, and he bowed his head.

‘Come quick,’ she said. ‘I promised to be home by six.’

Jean cut across the fields while she cycled on. They met up again on a path next to a hedge that ran around an abandoned house. The barn was invisible from outside the hedge. Antoinette hid her bicycle and they climbed over the wooden barrier. Inside they caressed each other in the straw, but Jean sensed that he could not go as far as Gontran. He cursed his inexperience. Antoinette promised that it would be for another time.

‘You’re only thirteen!’ she said. ‘It could be bad for you, and you could make me have a baby.’

Defeated, he accepted his pleasure from Antoinette’s hand as his reward, and afterwards they spent a good fifteen minutes laughing as they pulled off all the stalks of straw that had stuck to their hair and sweaters. Antoinette cycled cheerfully home, reassured and joyful. Jean dashed to the grocer’s and bought the butter.

‘You’ve been away a long time, my boy!’ Jeanne said, busy ironing in the kitchen.

‘I met Antoinette!’ he said impulsively.

‘Oh!’

Jeanne held the iron close to her cheek and put it back on the range.

‘It would be better for everybody if you kept your meetings to yourself.’

‘You know, Maman … it wasn’t me with her, down at the cliffs.’

‘I believe you … but why didn’t you stand up for yourself?’

‘Because of her!’

Jean’s heart was beating madly. The warmth in his mother’s face filled him with remorse. He knew that he was just playing with words, and that what he had been doing an hour ago was the same, apart from one detail, as what Gontran had done with Antoinette. At least I’m not the idiot who gets caught in the act, he thought.

‘Your father’s been very upset. He says he no longer dares to look Monsieur Antoine’s family in the face. We thought about giving up our place here, but then we’d be penniless: when you’re fifty-five and you’ve got one leg less than everyone else, there’s no work to be had.’

Jean was appalled that he had not, for a single moment, considered the extent of what had happened.

‘I’ll talk to him,’ he said.

‘Try, my child … but there’s none so deaf as those who don’t want to hear.’

‘And I’ll talk to Monsieur du Courseau.’

‘Madame would be better.’

‘No, not her.’

Jeanne smiled indulgently.

‘You owe her a lot.’

‘To you, to Papa, I owe a lot. Not to her.’

‘One day you’ll understand.’

Jeanne kept so much goodness hidden inside her that it was enough to tell her there was no such thing as evil for her to believe it and for her pious, honest soul to rejoice that she lived in an unblemished world. Albert might have been the same, if the horrors of war and the sacrifice of his leg had not produced an authoritarian outlook that mistook itself for intelligence. He had ideas: firm, clear-cut, and to a certain extent immovable. Jean had little hope of convincing him by a confrontation. On the other hand, something told him that Antoine du Courseau might show himself to be understanding. He had to be brave enough to talk to him, but Antoine was a man who discouraged conversations that he had not initiated. At the first sign of difficulty he climbed into his Bugatti and vanished for several days, returning when those who had stayed behind had dealt with the problem for him. Jean would have continued to hesitate if he had not been so angry about being deprived of his bike for the rest of the summer. Not daring to go to the house, he resorted to a letter, which he rewrote ten times over before he was sure that it was short enough for Antoine to deign to read it and not throw it straight into the wastepaper basket.

Monsieur,

May I permit myself, in the name of our very old pact, agreed when I was a small boy, to ask you for an interview. I will explain to you that I am not guilty and why I have allowed people to think that I am. I will say it to you because you are the only person whose opinion matters to me. Your

Jean Arnaud

He posted the letter at Grangeville, and the next morning the Bugatti, nosing out of the park, took the drive that led past the lodge. Jean had been looking out for it, and ran down and jumped in beside the driver. Antoine put his foot down, and they sped to the Dieppe road; reaching the docks, they halted at a café where hot shrimps, washed down with an honest sparkling cider, were served around the clock.

‘Thank you, Monsieur!’ said Jean, after Antoine urged him to start.

‘I suspected you weren’t guilty. But to tell you the truth, and I’ll say it only to you, I wouldn’t care if you were. Antoinette is seventeen … Some girls are like that. She has my temperament …’

Jean did not know exactly what he meant by temperament, but guessed it had something to do with a predisposition to forbidden pleasures, and he smiled so understandingly that Antoine smiled back, then said, ‘What do you want to do when you grow up?’

‘Uncle Duclou wants me to take the merchant navy examinations, but I’m not very good at maths … and Uncle Cliquet is pushing me to work on the railways—’

‘And you think it’s boring!’

‘Really boring.’

‘And you don’t have any idea of your own?’

‘No. All I know is that I’m not going to be a gardener, and I am going to travel.’

‘Ah!’ Antoine said casually, buttering a slice of brown bread.

Jean, on the brink of other confidences, stopped short at Antoine’s rapid loss of interest.