Michel Déon - The Foundling Boy

‘Madame’s guests will like that very much,’ he said. ‘If Monsieur would care to give me his luggage and follow me.’

‘Oh no, that’s all right. I’ll carry it myself.’

‘In that case, if Monsieur would be very careful on the stairs where there are many pictures!’

Jean carried his haversack in his hand and was shown to a small bedroom which had green-lacquered Cubist furniture and walls overloaded with naïve paintings. The window looked out onto a charming garden, in which the greenish beam of a spotlight illuminated a spherical head that was eyeless and had an only just discernible nose.

‘Would Monsieur like me to run him a bath?’

Jean thanked him with a certain embarrassment. He found the haste of this servant in wanting to wash him rather suspect, but when he looked closely at himself in the bathroom mirror he realised that after more than a hundred kilometres of riding through the dust, heat, and lorry exhausts, a bath was a far from indecent suggestion. Unfortunately, all he had to change into afterwards was a pair of trousers that had been crushed in his haversack, a short-sleeved shirt Jeanne had bought for him in a sale at the Nouvelles Galeries at Dieppe, and a sweater she had knitted. After he had amused himself with the bath salts, shampoo, moisturising cream, perfume for men, and other beauty products that were lined up on a glass shelf, he washed himself conscientiously. A ringing telephone summoned him from his bath, and he ran to pick up a strangely baroque instrument apparently made of shells.

‘Monsieur’s dinner is served.’

Jean promised that he would come down immediately. His heart beat faster. Perhaps Madame Geneviève had come back from the country. But he was disappointed: the valet was waiting for him in the hall where his bike was still parked amidst the Venetian sculptures and amorphous metallic objects. He ate alone in a candle-lit dining room, a low-ceilinged room with no other decorations apart from the table silver. Because he was hungry he couldn’t feel intimidated. He gobbled his dinner and let himself be served as if he had had a footman standing behind him since he was a baby. He nevertheless felt his thoughts wander to Chantal de Malemort: why was she not there, at the other end of the table, her sweet face lit by the candelabra’s unsteady glow? She was made for luxury like this, and one day he would offer it to her, in a brilliant existence among foreign lands. They would only — when there was no valet with them — have to reach out their hands to touch each other’s fingertips and reassure and repeat to each other that they were quite alone in the world. Jean’s heart sank from anxiety. Where was she at this moment? Madame du Courseau was closing her net. Michel could see Chantal any day he wanted to …

Jean did not refuse the crème au chocolat . The valet disappeared and came back with a telephone.

‘Madame wishes to speak to Monsieur.’

Jean picked up the receiver. A young and dulcet voice, slightly breathless at the start, said, ‘Dear Jean, I’m so desolate not to be with you. I hope they’re looking after you.’

‘Oh yes, they are, Madame.’

‘I’ll be back in town tomorrow. Make yourself comfortable, and treat the house as if it were your own. In the morning the chauffeur will drive you to the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey, if you’d like that. Or you can jump on a riverboat and go to Hampton Court. It’s delightful and awfully relaxing. How is my father?’

‘Very well, Madame. He’s at La Sauveté.’

‘And my dear Jeanne, your maman?’

‘She gave me some jams to give to you.’

‘That’s so thoughtful. Till tomorrow, dear Jean. Lots of love.’

She hung up. Jean tried to go on listening, but the crackle on the line separated him from the lovely dulcet voice. The valet took back the telephone and it disappeared as if by magic. Everything seemed enchanted in this house: thick carpets muffled the sound of footsteps so that you could never be sure you were alone, you could shine a bright light on an object and turn it into a transparent ball; walls slid back and forth to reveal or conceal rooms that were either bare or packed with paintings. So far Jean had only seen the valet. Was he alone, assisted by robots, or was there, behind these magic partitions, a magic people making sure that the house worked magically?

‘Monsieur,’ Jean began.

The servant interrupted him in a superior tone. ‘My name is Baptiste, Monsieur.’

‘Baptiste? Gosh, that’s not a name I’ve heard very often.’

‘And nor is it my name, Monsieur. Baptiste is the name Madame gives to all her butlers. I accepted the post and the name. I shall have my own name back when Madame no longer has need of me.’

Jean went back to his room. Someone had turned down his bed and laid out his striped cotton pyjamas next to the pillow. In the garden the spotlight still lit up the golden head. Jean opened empty drawers and a wardrobe in which there hung a silk dressing gown. He read the spines of some cloth-bound books on a bookshelf: Daniel Defoe, Dickens, Ruskin, Joyce, Pound, and a signed copy of Paul Morand’s Londres: ‘To Geneviève, in London when the £ was at 28 francs, her friend Paul.’ He began reading, and only stopped hours later, far into the night, his eyes blinking. So that was what this great city that encircled him was really like, the city that he would see tomorrow, before he had even been to Paris? He experienced a vague fear at the extent of his discovery, his solitude, and his ignorance; but helped by the tiredness he felt from his long ride, despite the excitement of so much novelty he fell asleep the second his head hit the pillow and opened his eyes again to see a white and blue silhouette and a pink face with a forehead topped by a starched cap.

‘Madame!’ he said, thinking this was Geneviève.

‘I am Mary!’ the young woman said, opening the curtains and letting in the light of a radiant September sun before pushing a trolley to his bedside.

Mary smiled at him and lifted the silver dome from a plate to reveal fried eggs and bacon and a grilled tomato. She was far prettier than Eliza Pickett, and as she bent over to pick up Jean’s shirt and lay it carefully on the armchair she also revealed the pretty backs of her knees and the beginnings of soft thighs. He hoped she didn’t drink beer in the morning, like the only English woman he had met so far and who — no, really, it was impossible — could not be the paragon of all other Englishwomen.

‘What luxury!’ he said out loud when she had gone.

The day was just beginning. Going downstairs, Jean was thrilled to catch sight of his bicycle, carefully restored to a brilliant shine. His heart leapt, and he stroked its saddle, its handlebars and its shining red frame. He and it would visit London together. Refusing Baptiste’s help, he tucked it under his arm and walked down the front steps to come face to face with the black chauffeur whom he recognised and who immediately also recognised him. In the rain, on the hill up to Grangeville, this same chauffeur had borrowed his bicycle to fetch a mechanic. The yellow Hispano-Suiza with black mudguards and white wheels was waiting, parked by the pavement. In the narrow street it seemed even bigger, excessive, with its long bonnet whose radiator cap was in the shape of a silver arrow, perhaps the very silver arrow that had struck Haroun, the king’s enemy, in the heart. Things were becoming clearer: the prince and Geneviève enjoyed a close relationship, probably a very close one.

‘Hello!’ Jean said. ‘We’ve met already.’

The chauffeur laughed and raised his cap.

‘My name is Salah, and I have been ordered to show you around London.’

‘What about my bicycle?’