Michel Déon - The Foundling Boy

‘I suppose,’ Monsieur du Courseau went on, ‘that you took the blame to spare my daughter from getting into more trouble.’

‘I like her a lot. Sometimes I even think she’s my sister.’

‘What about Michel?’

Jean looked down and did not dare to answer.

‘I see,’ Antoine said. ‘You know, I feel exactly the same about him. What a strange idea to have gone and told everyone what he saw. He turned the house upside down. You and I are obliged to hide to talk to each other, and my wife is not about to forgive you in a hurry.’

‘I’m even more cross that my father won’t forgive me. He’s so upright and so good. I feel ashamed.’

‘I’ll do my best to fix that. Man to man, you can say what you want.’

‘You won’t punish Antoinette?’

‘Punish Antoinette? I’ve never done such a thing. And in any case, my little Jean, I’m not blameless myself. I have another life … Far away …’

He broke off to watch an English couple who had walked into the café, a tall, slim blonde woman and a man in a tweed jacket and grey trousers. All his attention was taken up by the young woman. She sat down and attempted to decipher the menu that she had been given by a good-humoured waiter. Her husband took the menu from her and ordered mussels and white wine without consulting her.

‘They’re aliens!’ Antoine said.

‘Yes, they’re English.’

‘No, no, I mean they weren’t born on the same planet as us. Like the Chinese, the American Indians, the Arabs or the Africans. Our planet is here, Normandy. They’ll leave it behind on the midday packet, and tonight at six o’clock they’ll be at Newhaven, where they’ll drink tea and eat ham squashed between two pieces of rubbery bread with the crusts cut off.’

‘I’d still really like to go to England.’

‘There’s an idea! Would you like to go and explore? Geneviève is living in London at the moment. I can write and tell her you’re coming.’

‘Papa will never let me go!’

‘Leave that to me.’

Antoine drank the last of his glass of cider and called the waiter to ask for the bill. When he had paid, he walked out, climbed into the car and drove away, forgetting Jean, who had gone back to fetch his cap, which he had left hanging on a peg inside. Without a centime to his name, he could not even catch a bus, and so he walked back to Grangeville that warm August day, seething every time a cyclist passed him. He was arriving at La Sauveté when he met the abbé Le Couec, huge and red-faced, striding along.

‘Jean! Heaven has sent you to me!’

‘Father, you were looking for me?’

‘Yes, I need you.’

The priest’s iron hand clamped the boy’s biceps, and for a second he thought he had been taken prisoner.

‘My parents will be thinking that I’ve run away …’

‘That is indeed what’s happening! Let us go to the rectory. I need to talk to you and to introduce you to a hero.’

‘They’ll punish me.’

‘I’ll square that, don’t worry.’

‘I’ve already lost my bike for the whole summer.’

‘You’ll get your bicycle back. Come along … time presses.’

We shall call the man hidden at the rectory Yann, for the sake of convenience. Jean saw a tall Celt, with yellow, wavy hair, eyes of a clear blue and hollow cheeks, who shook his hand and immediately addressed him as a man.

‘Jean Arnaud, the abbé has told me about you. Just by looking at you, I know that I can count on your discretion and your loyalty.’

‘Yes, Monsieur.’

‘The police are looking for me. Don’t ask me why, but a false move, a word in the wrong place, will put me in prison for many years. We have to be certain of your discretion and your complicity.’

‘Yes, Monsieur.’

The abbé took out of his cupboard a bottle with the sort of label children use on their school exercise books: ‘Monsieur Le Couec’s calvados’. He filled two glasses, and was about to fill a third when Jean stopped him.

‘Father, I mustn’t … being fit … you know … I’m trying to stay fit even though I don’t have my bike.’

‘You’ll have your bicycle back tonight, a priest’s word on it.’

‘Papa won’t give in that easily.’

‘I know how to persuade him. But before dinner you need to go to Tôtes and meet someone at a café.’

‘In that case, it’s Maman who won’t let me go so easily. She doesn’t like me going out on my bike at night.’

‘I’ll take care of it.’

‘The man you’ll meet at the café — it’s Les Amis de Tôtes,’ Yann said, ‘will be wearing a white carnation. He’ll be drinking cider, and you’ll go up to him to shake hands and say, “Good evening, Monsieur Carnac,” and he’ll reply — pay attention, it’s important — “All right, son?” After you’ve exchanged a few words, you’re to leave together and bring him here. He will have a car, a motorbike or a bicycle. He’s short, clean shaven, and his hair’s going grey. You won’t know his real name, any more than you know mine.’

The abbé emptied his glass of calvados. Red blotches appeared at his neck and throat.

‘Now I’m going to see your father,’ he said.

Albert, who had just had to deal with a lecture from Antoine du Courseau about the absolute necessity of returning Jean’s bicycle to him, felt like the victim of a plot when the priest then came to him demanding the same thing. It irritated him to be, as he saw it, pushed around, and Jean was briefly in real danger of having his bicycle confiscated until he was twenty-one. Monsieur Le Couec guessed what had happened, and quickly changed his insistent tone to one of gentle flattery, with the result that Jean found himself reunited with his cherished bicycle. He immediately set about oiling its chain and hubs and pumping up its tyres.

‘I’ll take him with me,’ the priest said. ‘We have things to talk about. He can sleep at the rectory tonight. I’ll send him back to you for his breakfast, because I have nothing to give him.’

‘Behave yourself!’ Jeanne implored, no longer knowing whether her child was a monster or a man already worthy of a priest’s company.

On the road to the rectory, the priest offered Jean a monologue all to himself.

‘God is all goodness. He will forgive me, after my penitence, for having lied to your parents. Lives are at stake. One day all of this will be much clearer to you than it is today. This evening I only ask you to trust me, as your spiritual guide and your friend … In fact, as I am your confessor, how is it possible that I don’t know why you have been so severely punished by your father?’

Jean began to think his legs would fail him. The confessional lent itself to the lie of omission, but here on the road, face to face with the priest, who had stopped and was staring at him in his rough and tender way, it was infinitely harder to wriggle out of the truth. He made a vague gesture to signify everything and nothing, intending to play down the matter.

‘Oh, it was nothing, just some stories about girls!’

‘Is that all it was?’ the abbé said. ‘Hardly enough to hang a Catholic, I’d have said. If you knew what I heard at confession. But you’re a bit on the young side, all the same … It’s true that you look a good deal older that thirteen … Girls could easily think you were older. Anyway, you’re not having your head turned, are you?’

‘No, Father.’

‘That’s the essential thing. We’ll talk about it again. At this moment, what needs our attention is Monsieur Carnac. I knew him at the seminary, but he gave up … didn’t have the vocation … Some are like that … I’m not talking about myself. When I look at my life, I don’t think I could have been anything but a priest. Well, I am a priest and there’s never been a day when I haven’t been happy to be one, when I haven’t thanked God for having taken me into his service, for having given me the health that my ministry demands, and the strength — or innocence if you prefer — not to have been undermined by any doubt.’