Michel Déon - The Foundling Boy

At the landing stage the old ladies rushed away like clumsy sparrows towards the palace and the park, where Jean stretched his legs for a moment before going back to the bank of the Thames. Young men were launching sharp, arrow-shaped skiffs with varnished hulls. Pale-skinned, with red or blond hair, they rowed with an application and seriousness that Jean admired. The blades of their oars dipped without a splash into the dark water and their boats, as if seized by sudden inspiration, flew over the still surface of the river. The cox’s sharp instructions paced the exertions of the rowers, upright and tense like machines, and Jean promised himself that one day he would try rowing, a noble sport that had sculpted fine athletes and imparted to generations a sense of teamwork. It was not a popular sport in France, probably because, as Albert liked to say in his best flights of philosophical fancy, the French were a bunch of dirty individualists who only thought about getting ahead. Besides, rowing’s joys were best experienced on expanses of calm water that reflected nature arranged by man, parks of beech and cedar that sloped down to drink at river and lake, country houses whose images wobbled, vanished and reformed in the passing of motor cruisers and barges.

The boat left again at two o’clock. Jean was first on board, followed by the old ladies, who fell on the tea urn to refill their cups with pungent, scalding tea, and the crew was about to cast off when the flamboyant mulatto rushed up, dragging by the hand her companion in the Borsalino, who was breathless, his clothes half undone. They settled themselves back on the bench at the stern, giggling like children, and then the woman put her hand in her coat pocket and pulled out a pair of bluish lace knickers that she put back on without ceremony. Which bush had they been playing behind? The scene left Jean mystified, and led his thoughts back to the games of Antoinette, to the sweet ecstasies of their incomplete pleasures and the happy silence that followed. There must, then, be two sorts of love, one horrid, rude and immodest, and the other secret, sparking off dreams and gentle pleasures.

Salah was waiting at the landing stage. Jean stepped ashore behind the lustful pair and was astonished to hear Salah say a curt ‘Good evening’ to the mulatto, who immediately stopped laughing and dragged her companion away. The old ladies collected their bags of needlepoint and baskets of food and trotted to a waiting bus.

‘Did you enjoy yourself?’ Salah asked.

‘Enjoy? No, not really. Well, I suppose I saw some things. Do you know that lady?’

‘Slightly. Jamaican, I believe.’

Jean told him the story of the knickers discovered in her coat pocket and replaced without fuss. Salah’s stern expression cracked and he laughed.

‘A strange girl,’ he said. ‘Not to be recommended. You definitely are going to leave with a curious idea of London … I regret now that I let you go off for the whole day. Madame came to lunch. She was hoping to see you.’

‘I’ll see her tonight.’

‘I’m afraid she has just driven away in her Bentley again. She’s spending the weekend with some friends in Kent. I also have to tell you something that may annoy you … She arrived with three friends, a poet, a painter, and the sculptor John Dudley. Mr Dudley is very bizarre. He makes extravagant sculptures from all sorts of things: he will weld an old coffee-maker to an iron, a saucepan on top of a clock, whatever. Apparently it sells. Art lovers can’t get enough of his work. Anyway, when he saw your bicycle in the hall he decided that it was a sublime object and that he would construct a masterpiece from it by crushing it in his hydraulic press. Madame allowed him to take it away …’

‘What?’ Jean exclaimed, his eyes full of tears.

‘Madame asked me to buy you another one tomorrow morning.’

‘Oh Salah, it’s impossible. My bike … you don’t know how much I love it. Let’s go and get it back from this man straight away …’

‘I’m afraid the damage will already be done.’

Tears rolled down Jean’s cheeks. He could have faced almost anything, but not some mad sculptor crushing the bicycle that he cherished above everything else, his finest possession, a perfect bicycle, such as he had never known before and would never know again.

‘Don’t cry, for goodness’ sake! You’re a man, and tomorrow I’m going to take you to buy another one.’

‘An English bike, Salah! You must be joking! The English have never made a proper racing bike. They ride around on bikes that date back to Louis XIV.’

‘Well, look, I’ve got the money, I’ll give it to you and you can buy yourself another one in France.’

‘It won’t ever be the same. That bike was my bike. My bike, do you understand? And how am I going to get back to Newhaven?’

‘I shall drive you there in the Hispano.’

As soon as they got back to Geneviève’s house, Jean dashed up the steps two at a time and rang the bell, hoping that it would turn out to be a bad dream, but Baptiste opened the door with a prim expression.

‘Monsieur has heard?’ he said. ‘His bicycle has become a work of art: yes, of ART!’

Jean spent a profoundly unhappy evening, despite a letter that Geneviève had left for him.

My dear Jean, your bicycle so excited Mr Dudley that I allowed him to take it away. I do hope this won’t upset you. Salah will drive you to a bicycle shop tomorrow and you will have a replacement. I was so sorry not to see you today, but now I must go to see some friends and shan’t be back till Monday. Enjoy your last three days here. Salah is an excellent guide. He knows everything. He is not just a chauffeur, he is also a friend. Please kiss my parents for me, and Antoinette and Michel too, and especially your maman, dearest Jeanne, who was so good to me when I was a little girl.

Your

Geneviève du Courseau

But next morning Jean rejected every bicycle he was offered. They were all fitted with English rod brakes, that work well enough but make the machine much heavier. As for racing handlebars, not one dealer knew what he meant. In the end Salah handed Geneviève’s money to Jean, who almost gave it straight back: it was roughly enough for at least three bicycles fitted with the latest derailleur used by Leducq in the 1932 Tour. Instead he started to dream. Salah dropped him off at museums and parks and picked him up at the exit. Geneviève was right: the chauffeur was also a friend, thoughtful, intelligent and discreet. Mysterious too from time to time, skilfully avoiding answering embarrassing questions, such as the one Jean asked on his last day. Each morning he had been woken by a different maid, and every one was called Mary, or María, or even Marie, who was French and whom he was amazed to identify without a shadow of a doubt as the over-made-up girl from Toulouse who had given him directions in Soho to Odeon Street where the Hispano-Suiza was parked. The Chelsea house was not so grand that it required a very large staff, especially since the prince almost never used it, and Geneviève was touring the English countryside every weekend. Even if she invited a dozen of her friends to lunch or dinner, there was still no need for so many staff. And why were these interchangeable maids all called Mary? Why were they, if not beauties, all at least good-looking girls? Jean had also made a disturbing discovery when he had gone downstairs one evening, around midnight, to fetch a glass of water from the kitchen. He was still on the stairs when the front door opened. Baptiste was returning from an evening stroll, and was followed by a woman Jean immediately recognised as the mulatto from the boat. Baptiste behaved a good deal less civilly with her than with Geneviève’s guests. Jean was surprised too by what she was wearing: a short, very tight-waisted green suit, a loud scarf decorated with a pearl, and a blue cap tilted over one ear. She was smoking. Baptiste told her she had better go and throw her cigarette outside if she didn’t want a good slap, and the previously exuberant creature obeyed without a word before following Baptiste into the kitchen. Jean went back upstairs on tiptoe and stayed awake for a good part of the night, attempting to work out what it could all mean. The next day Salah made no answer when he asked him about it.