Michel Déon - The Foundling Boy

Albert took Jean’s departure philosophically.

‘I can’t tell you to stay, though I can see nothing good in your journey. But I have no right to keep you in France. Everything here is rotten. Perhaps it’s the same with the English, in which case you’ll come back and be happy to see us again. If war breaks out between France and Germany, don’t listen to the warmongers. Stay put, where it’s safe …’

The abbé Le Couec added, ‘I knew the demon of travel would not let you go. Be careful of life’s many traps. Will you find work? The English are not pushovers. Anyway, you’re a free man.’

And so everyone, apart from him, had known for a long time that he was leaving. Instead of the wealth of vague and innocent advice he received, he would have preferred a bit of money. His savings amounted to 2000 francs, enough to live on for a month once he had bought himself a suit. He left La Vigie on 31 July without bothering to tell his employers, resisting the violent impulse to punch Grosjean’s face and shout at the women whose job it was to fold the print work that all in all they were the biggest bunch of idiots he had ever come across. He plucked up courage to telephone Chantal and invite her to a last meeting. She arrived on a bicycle. Her horse was lame. They left their bicycles behind a bush and walked in the lovely forest.

‘I wanted to say goodbye to you. Can I still write to you?’

‘Of course. What could be more natural?’

What else was there to to be said? One might have been tempted to add: alas! The two had known each other since they were children, and no shadow had ever fallen between them.

‘I talked to my father about you. He thinks you’re right. At your age it’s suffocating here. You’ll come back a man. You will come back, won’t you?’

‘Yes. I’ll come back.’

The truth was that up to this point he had never thought about coming back, or leaving, for good. The commitment that she was asking of him was an important one whose significance seemed not even to occur to her.

‘My father approves of you,’ she said. ‘He praises your spirit of adventure. He regrets …’

She stopped, embarrassed. Jean came to her aid.

‘That I’m the son of a gardener?’

‘Oh no. It’s not that. We’re only farmers ourselves now—’

‘Living in a handsome château.’

‘They’re just appearances.’

‘I can reassure you on one matter: I’m not a gardener’s son, even if I wouldn’t blush to be one.’

‘I know.’

‘You too!’

He could not understand how his origins had become an open secret.

‘And do people know who my parents are?’

‘No.’

For a moment his hopes had been raised. Was Chantal concealing something that he would perhaps find out one day, after everyone else? Seeing him looking so sad, she put up her hand and stroked his forehead, as if to chase away the clouds there. Jean grasped her hand and kissed it.

‘I’m glad we’re such good friends.’ Chantal said, stepping away.

There would be nothing else between them, except for that ghostly gesture and its fleeting aftermath. Things needed to be that way in order to last. They carried on walking through the forest for a long time, both with heavy hearts, neither of them knowing whether the other suffered as they did. When they came back to their bicycles they kissed each other politely on the cheeks.

‘Come back soon!’ Chantal whispered.

He watched her pedal away down the path, her skirt revealing her pretty, pale legs, and only moved when she had disappeared around the corner of the gamekeeper’s lodge, where the dogs barked as she passed.

The same evening, after his goodbyes to Monsieur Cliquet, Captain Duclou, his father and the abbé, he walked down to Dieppe with his single small case, asked for a room at the Hôtel de l’Océan and waited for Antoinette, who arrived just after he had finished dinner. They spent the night together. Their lovemaking was not the same any more. She wept, and he hugged her tightly until dawn began to lighten the sky and the gulls announced the coming day with their plaintive cries. Antoinette was still sleeping when he left, case in hand, and went down to the port to have a coffee by the landing-stage. Joseph joined him in espadrilles, cotton trousers and a turtleneck sweater. Two months of confinement had changed him almost beyond recognition. Eating and drinking only bread and butter and coffee, leaving his room only when he had to, he seemed unsteady on his long legs, and in his gaunt pale face, framed by a black beard, his eyes shone, feverish. Did he realise he looked like Dostoyevsky, like The House of the Dead revisited? Without the Russian’s talent, alas, although the famous novel had made considerable progress, driven on by its author’s whip.

‘You’re leaving, then,’ he said. ‘You’ve decided to run for it.’

‘To run to the future.’

‘When you come back, I’ll either have won the Goncourt or I’ll be the last of the losers. Don’t write to me. I shan’t have time to write back.’

The packet left at nine o’clock. Jean was abandoning his country to a new prime minister, Camille Chautemps, whose name the right-wing press invariably wrote by preceding it with a ∴

‘Have a look round it,’ Palfy said. ‘It’s a monument. No two are the same. It was ordered specially in 1930 by Lord Albigate to drive around his estate in Suffolk, a distance of eighteen miles. A short expedition that he undertook once a year. Add it up: that makes 126 miles in seven years, not much more than 200 kilometres. It’s new, in other words. Obviously its body doesn’t have the same lines as a modern car. High wings, and the same radiator grille they’ve had since 1912, but that’s the beauty of a Rolls-Royce. They’ve never thought of themselves as peanut sellers. A loyal clientele. Try to buy one if your name’s Levy. They’ll look at their order book and tell you there is nothing available until 1947. Albigate asked to see my certificate of baptism before he’d let me have it, forgetting for a second that he married a Rosenstein. But honour was satisfied.’

Jean walked around the silver Rolls parked at the bottom of the gangplank, gleaming in the afternoon sun as if it had just left the factory. The green hide cushions, the walnut burl dashboard, the internal intercom, everything was of a fully achieved and lordly distinction. It really was an extremely incongruous sight among the dusty production-line cars that were coming off the ferry and lining up to present themselves for customs inspection. Palfy had made himself worthy of driving it, in his golfing plus fours and his calves sheathed in green tasselled hose. He had not changed, though his face looked more yellow than before.

‘I’m not sure,’ he said, ‘that you’ll ever see a more beautiful example. To tell you the truth, I’m thinking very seriously, the day I no longer have the use of it, of burning it rather than see it fall into unworthy hands. Put your case on the back seat and let’s go.’

After a rather rough crossing Jean could have done with a sandwich to settle his stomach, but it was quite clear that one did not eat sandwiches in a Rolls-Royce. One only drank, thanks to a silver drinks cabinet prettily built in to the rear compartment. At Palfy’s suggestion Jean poured them each a neat whisky as they drove out of Newhaven.

‘My outfit isn’t nearly elegant enough for your car,’ Jean said. ‘I should stay outside, on the running board.’

‘Outfit! Oh, the clumsiness! Certain people will judge you by your use of such words. We say suit. And yes, you’re right, your suit reeks of off-the-pegness. We’ll deal with all that. First I shall drive you to my tailor …’