Michel Déon - The Foundling Boy

On the Saturday the Hispano-Suiza took Jean back to Newhaven. Because the packet was an hour late, he decided to visit Mrs Pickett, and found her little house and sign — ‘B and B’ — with ease. The old lady opened the door with her hat and coat on. She was just going out for a short walk. Oh, not far! Just around the corner. Jean gestured to Salah, who opened the door of the car, and Mrs Pickett climbed in without being asked. It doubtless seemed perfectly natural to her that Jean, having arrived on a red bicycle, should come back to visit her in a yellow chauffeur-driven Hispano-Suiza. They stopped outside Mrs Pickett’s favourite pub, where her arrival caused a small sensation which she did not deign to acknowledge. Salah refused alcohol, which surprised her a little, and when he explained to her that he was a Muslim she gave him a charming smile and said, ‘That’s awfully bad luck, you ought to convert.’ They left her, supported by her pillar and already happy, after Jean had tried again and failed to speak to her in French. No, she knew nothing of that barbaric language. The mystery remained.

The packet was edging alongside as they drove onto the dock. Salah contemplated the boat with a melancholy look.

‘There are days when I would like to get back to Egypt,’ he said, ‘to my Nubia where I was born, Djebel Chams, next to the Nile. My father is getting older and there is a chance I may not see him again. It’s not because he showed me very great kindness. He thought I was too dark-skinned. I have two very pale half-brothers, almost like the English, and he has always been prouder of them than of me, even though they are both useless fools who sponge off our father and are completely idle. Of course he doesn’t know that I am a chauffeur. I pretend that I have a job in a bank, and as I regularly send him money he thinks I’m rich and regrets a little that he did not have confidence in me.’

‘I’d really like to go to Egypt with you,’ Jean said.

‘In that case, I’ll take you there. I promise. We shall go up the Nile by boat and arrive loaded down with presents for my father …’

‘And your mother.’

‘No, she’s dead,’ Salah said. ‘I hardly knew her at all. She was just a slave in the house, and I was brought up by my stepmother.’

Jean caught sight of the captain on the gangplank. His familiar face dispelled a little of the sadness that choked him as he got ready to leave England and Salah. When would he see Salah — his first proper friend — again? They shook hands. With his haversack on his back, Jean walked up the gangplank. On deck he went straight to the rail to catch a last glimpse of the chauffeur and his beautiful Hispano-Suiza, gleaming in the late afternoon sunlight, but the car had already driven away and disappeared behind the docks, leaving no trace on the streets or seafront of this red-bricked, soot-blackened town. His gateway to England was closing on many unanswered questions. Some things would become clear in time Not all. And Jean would draw from it the conviction that it was better not to know exactly why Mrs Pickett spoke French at night when she was drunk, nor why, in an elegant house in Chelsea, the maids were all called some version of Mary and were different every morning. After all, what did it matter? His view of the world had broadened. In future he would no longer live inside La Sauveté’s walls the way he had lived until now.

On that hot afternoon at summer’s end, graceful clouds scudded across the sky: gazelles, lambs, melting snowmen. Dust rose from the avenues at La Sauveté as vans and carts passed over them, loaded with furniture. The official auctioneer, Maître Prioré, arrived from Rouen in his black suit and tie, mopped his brow with a cambric handkerchief and drank large glasses of water flavoured with a drop of grenadine. He was no longer enjoying himself. His zest was dwindling with the indecision and and timidity of the final bidders. The coat stand was snapped up for thirty francs, the umbrella-stand only found a taker at ten. Yet people were not leaving. Initially respectful, they had begun wandering through the empty house, where paintings had left behind large, lighter oval and rectangular patches on the worn wallpaper. Others strolled through the park, and from his window Albert had seen some of them picking flowers or sitting on the hallowed lawn. He had not moved when one stranger had stolen his watering hose and a woman had taken a pot full of climbing geraniums. Having been weeping since the morning, Jeanne now seemed dazed, and sat on a kitchen chair, her large hands, bleached by endless laundry washing, motionless on her knees. Albert lit a pipe, and the smell of tobacco drifted through the kitchen. He caught sight of Monsieur Le Couec, who, with an air of feigned indifference, walked among the crowd, exchanging a word with those he knew and staring in surprise at those who were carrying something away: a pitcher, a bowl, a box, a copper planter. Occasionally he allowed himself some reproach that went uncomprehended by his interlocutor. The auctioneer bent down to one of his assistants, who shook his head. There was nothing more to sell. La Sauveté had been emptied in an afternoon by an invasion of ants who had left the house with only its old lace curtains and rugs so worn that they tempted no one. A silence settled, then the murmuring started up again. The bookkeeper was enjoying himself with various sums in his large black oilcloth ledger. With a drink or two, the whole sale might have been turned into a festive occasion, but elements conspired against it: the heat, the absence of the du Courseaus, the shyness of the bidders and the embarrassment, at least for the people who lived nearby, of plundering this house whose modest grandeur had for a long time contributed to the fortunes of the neighbouring village. People gossiped to each other that the new owners, still known only to the notary, were Monsieur and Madame Longuet. The gossip had quickly spread: they were going to knock down the dividing wall and demolish La Sauveté, or convert it into one of those welcoming establishments that had been the basis of their fortune. Monsieur Le Couec would be its chaplain. Did he not have something of a weakness for Madame Longuet who, being from Alsace, kept him well supplied with alcool blanc, raspberry or plum according to the season? No one had seen the Longuets during the general sell-off, but an antique dealer from Rouen was thought to be their straw man. This person had bought the family portraits, which could only have been for clients who wanted to invent a lineage for themselves. One further absence, which had met with favourable comment, was that of the Malemorts. They stayed away from any public event that risked descending into a free-for-all; the only exception was when they went hunting in the forest of Arques. Marie-Thérèse du Courseau, with Michel and Antoinette, was living with them while she waited for the villa she was having built on the cliff on the road out of Grangeville to be finished. Some praised her dignity in the face of ruin, others declared that the ruin was not hers but that of her husband, from which she could have saved him with a single gesture. As for Antoine, no one had seen him that day. For good reason: he had spent the afternoon at the Café des Tribunaux in Dieppe, playing draughts with Jean Arnaud. Jean was leading by five games to four when the auctioneer arrived, having swapped his black suit for a sports jacket and grey slacks. At the wheel of a red Alfa Romeo roadster, he was a different man.

‘We can be fairly satisfied,’ he said. ‘The day has gone better than I expected.’

‘What will you have?’ Antoine asked.

‘Scotch for me!’

‘Scotch? I don’t know if they have any here.’

Antoine’s slur on the Café des Tribunaux was unfounded. There was indeed Scotch for the locals, as the British never ordered it, addicted as they were to white wine from the moment they disembarked.