Michel Déon - The Foundling Boy

‘No, elegant.’

‘Elegance is invisible. If I “look” elegant it means I must be ridiculous. And I cannot be ridiculous. My suit comes from Savile Row. In London I would not be elegant, I would be invisible.’

‘All right. I didn’t say a thing.’

‘That’s better. Now, the next thing we need to do is change our car. We can’t go on in this dreadful rattletrap, which in any case threatens to give up the ghost every time it sees a hill.’

‘Is it yours?’

‘Mine? You must be mad. All I own is a suitcase that contains two suits and a few shirts. No! I borrowed it. And we are going to borrow another one. Are you scared?’

‘Yes. To be honest, I am.’

‘Well, you’re lucky. I don’t even feel scared any more. I’ve reached the point where it bores me. But sometimes you have to do boring things. Moulins is the place.’

And as he had said, at Moulins Palfy spotted a handsome little red Alfa Romeo parked outside a garage.

‘Wait for me on the other side of town, on the Nevers road.’

An hour later Palfy came into view at the wheel of the Italian-registered Alfa.

‘How did you do it?’ Jean asked.

‘That’s my secret. Don’t you think she’s rather smart?’

‘She won’t be when I’m sitting next to you.’

‘Come along, no false modesty. Jump in and let’s go …’

We shall not follow their every kilometre on the last stretch of their journey, which was, as may be imagined, far more rapid than the first in the old and worn-out Mathis. The Alfa Romeo, with all due respect to Antoine du Courseau, was an agile, sparkling car that stayed glued to the road as if by instinct. Palfy nevertheless affected to consider it merely an amusing toy for the nouveaux riches. His taste was for English cars, and when in Rouen he saw, left for a moment by its owner, a majestic black and chrome Bentley with white-walled tyres, his hand flew to his heart.

‘I’m lost, dear boy. Head over heels. I must have that Bentley. I know what you’re going to say: it’s not as good as the Rolls …’

‘No, that isn’t what I was going to say!’

‘And actually it isn’t as good as the Rolls, the most beautiful outward sign of wealth that can be imagined, but the Bentley is sensitive and responsive and not quite so noticeable. With a Rolls we wouldn’t get far. With that Bentley we’ll cross France all over again, and no one will notice.’

‘I’d really like to get back to Dieppe.’

‘Agreed, model son, but first a short detour via Deauville, which cost my father so dear that I rarely pass up an opportunity when in the vicinity to recoup a few of the notes he scattered on its green baize …’

Deauville was deserted in midweek, whipped by a wind laden with spray. Palfy explained the town’s topography and pointed out the boardwalk that, as he assured Jean, he had walked up and down a hundred times, clutching his mother’s skirts, around 1910. They pulled up in front of an exceptionally smart restaurant, where their appearance in a Bentley with English registration plates made a doorman snap to attention and greet them with a few words painfully learnt from a small book he kept at the bottom of his coat pocket. Jean had ceased to be surprised and did not even smile as Palfy began to speak with an English accent that was so affected it was hard not to laugh. But the Bentley, and his friend’s blue blazer and flannel trousers, were more than enough to impress a maître d’hôtel.

‘Understand,’ Palfy said, ‘that appearances are all on our side. The car, my clothes … and you …’

‘What do you mean, me? I’m getting to look quite revolting.’

‘That’s what makes it real. I picked you up on the road, now I’m going to feed you, and for them there’s no doubt about the outcome: tonight I shall take you to bed with me. We’re two queers, do you understand? Few things inspire more trust.’

Jean thought to himself that they would have to pay when lunch was over, even so, this restaurant was not the kind of place where you could slip out through the toilets. Palfy seemed not to be worried in the slightest.

‘Do you know how to eat?’ he asked.

Jean was suddenly afraid that he did not know how to hold a fork or knife properly, despite the lessons he had been given over and over again by Marie-Thérèse du Courseau. Obviously he had not strolled the boardwalk at the age of four, clutching Jeanne’s skirts, and faced with Palfy’s poise — he seemed to have spent his whole childhood at spas and luxury seaside resorts — he felt paralysed. Eventually he understood that Palfy only wanted to make sure that the unimpressable maître d’hôtel was left a little surprised by his guests. First the chef was summoned, to take down a recipe for oyster soup.

‘Careful with the onions,’ Palfy reminded him. ‘Diced very fine, above all. Then simmer. On no account let it boil, it will be a catastrophe if you do. Do you have a fresh mullet?’

‘This morning, Monsieur.’

‘Then serve it for us with a hollandaise sauce.’

‘Monsieur means—’

‘I mean a hollandaise sauce: egg yolks, flour, melted butter, a cup of stock. Careful, no boiling there either, or the sauce will turn.’

‘Oh no, Monsieur, of course not.’

‘The sommelier, please.’

Palfy crowned his performance by ordering a single wine, a blanc de blanc. Jean observed the reverse of a ritual he had watched at Mireille’s, in a less refined version, from the pantry. Palfy was suddenly disclosing a whole new world to him. He could no longer be regarded in the same light, this Fregoli brimming with self-assurance. 11 His roguishness had greatness, it had something superb about it. If they were arrested by the gendarmes, he would make sure they knew it. But for how long would his luck hold? The first glass of blanc de blanc swiftly dispelled his anxiety about the final act, and when Palfy, casting a cursory look at the bottom of the bill, took out a cheque book and wrote a cheque drawn on an English bank, he hardly even experienced relief. Everything was turning out so well!

‘Where did you find that cheque book?’ he asked when they were outside.

‘In the glove compartment. There usually is one in that sort of car. If there weren’t, it wouldn’t be much fun borrowing them … Now, I suppose you want very much to see your popa and your moma …’

‘Yes … actually I don’t really know.’

‘Let’s not go overboard. Everything must come to an end. Our little entertainment was a success. Not one snag. Let’s head for Dieppe. Shall we keep the Bentley?’

‘Why not?’

‘I wonder if it isn’t a little too pompous to turn up to your house in. A Traction Avant would be quite adequate.’

He replaced the cheque book in the glove compartment, and they drove slowly through the streets until Palfy spotted a Citroën that he liked the look of. By late afternoon they were at Grangeville. La Sauveté’s gates were locked. They drove along the wall by the hawthorn hedge and stopped outside the door where seventeen years earlier unknown hands had left a basket containing the baby Jean. A woman in an austere black dress, her hair scraped into a bun on top of her head and thin lips made up with a single slash of lipstick, opened the door.

‘What do you want?’ she asked.

‘My parents.’

‘Your parents?’

‘Albert and Jeanne Arnaud.’

‘They don’t live here any more.’

The door shut in Jean’s face. The sun was going down. He could hear the magpies chattering in the park and the first gusts of the west wind that would blow all night, driving the Channel waves onto the high cliffs.

‘I know that person,’ Palfy said behind Jean, who had not moved.