Michel Déon - The Foundling Boy

‘I have enough to live on for a month if I’m not extravagant.’

‘You fool, who said anything about paying the tailor? Only the nouveaux riches have such egregious taste, and you’ll see how fast it loses them respect in Savile Row. Trust me.’

‘I haven’t noticed you bringing much good fortune to those who trust you.’

‘Are you becoming sarcastic in your old age? Be quiet, you’re still a child.’

‘All right. I’ll be quiet.’

The Rolls-Royce sped noiselessly along a country road that Jean had travelled five years earlier, first on his bicycle and then in the prince’s Hispano-Suiza, with Salah driving him. He saw it as a definite sign of his advancement, since one could hardly imagine anything more superior than a Rolls, unless it was the monarch’s state coach. Had Palfy stolen this car, as it was his habit? It would all end badly one day, but the anxiety that Jean felt at sharing his friend’s adventures again was also tinged with pleasure. It banished the last crushing year of mediocrity that he had spent in France, waiting for something, anything new to happen. It was a year that had passed desperately slowly, and now here he was, rolling at sixty miles an hour along a lovely road through little red-brick towns with bright red and apple-green shopfronts. It was impossible for this not to be the dawning of a new era, the beginning of a man’s life of multiple twists and turns. Palfy had not changed. Precise, relaxed, he drove with a light hand, displaying an almost exaggerated courtesy towards cars he overtook or to which he gave way. It occurred to Jean that he did not even know which country his friend was from.

‘That’s rather complicated,’ Palfy said. ‘My mother was English, my father Serbian, and I was born in France, at Nice. So I’m French by accident, merely because my father was there trying out an infallible system at the Casino on the Jetée-Promenade. That said — since you’re interested — I’ll make a confession. I’m not just French by civil status, as they say, but in my heart too. It’s true. It’s my ridiculous side.’

‘Why ridiculous?’

‘Who still believes in the French? But who does things better than they do? Talking of which, I hope you haven’t forgotten the Camembert and baguette.’

‘No. They’re there in my case.’

‘We’ll have them tonight. I have a couple of friends for dinner. The Ascots. Charming, both of them.’

‘I don’t speak English.’

‘We’re going to sort that out too. A good teacher—’

‘Not too strict.’

Palfy roared with laughter.

‘You really astonish me! How is it that you already know about such a typically English vice?’

‘What vice?’

‘The one with whips, chains, spanking.’

‘I don’t know anything about it, except that a few years ago I met a French lady in Soho who gave lessons and claimed to be very strict.’

‘Goodness me!’ Palfy said with a smile.

‘A friend told me later she’d been murdered. She was called Madame Germaine.’

‘I remember reading something about that. She was one of those many French prostitutes who offer their London clients the latest refinements on Masoch’s pleasures. There are about a hundred of them in Soho, generally well thought of, so they quickly become rich. After working here for three or four years they go back to France with a nice lump sum, settle somewhere provincial, open a haberdasher’s or a shop selling religious pictures and marry into the petty bourgeoisie. I know a couple like that: one in Vannes, the other at Colmar. Excellent mothers …’

Jean felt Palfy was making fun of him.

‘If you like, I’ll introduce you to one,’ Palfy said.

‘When?’

‘Not tonight, we have a dinner. But tomorrow if you like.’

Jean was ill at ease. He thought about Salah, whom he had not yet mentioned to Palfy. What pleasures had the prince’s chauffeur been seeking in these unsavoury districts? Palfy’s disclosures showed Salah in a disturbing light. A hundred questions occurred to Jean, to which it was getting interesting to find answers. Who were all those international Maries who had played the housemaid at Mademoiselle Geneviève’s? Who was the blonde mulatto Marie whom he had met at Hampton Court, glimpsed later in the hall of the Chelsea house, then seen again in the brasserie in Via del Babuino? These were mysteries that needed solving. The Rolls was coming into the London suburbs. People here hardly gave the car a second glance, despite the fact that in all the crushing repetitive ugliness that surrounded it, it looked like a meteorite, an incomprehensible thing of grandiose beauty from another planet, which deigned to reflect in its silver bonnet and chrome radiator the fleeting, deformed images of a world of troglodytes.

Palfy drove his friend straight to Savile Row, where a tailor and his staff busied themselves about them. Palfy chose cloth for five suits and a dinner jacket for Jean, then led him to a shirtmaker and bootmaker.

‘I don’t want anyone to notice you,’ he said. ‘This evening I’ll lend you a dinner jacket of my father’s. He was about your height. Fortunately for you, it’s old and very shabby and nearly antique, and therefore madly chic. It doesn’t fit me, I regret to say. My father was tall and broad-shouldered.’

Palfy was living in Eaton Square, in a four-roomed flat that possessed a butler who wore a black suit and tie and white gloves.

‘This is Price,’ Palfy said. ‘You’ll notice that he’s about my size. He’s very good for breaking in my new shoes. Essential man, in every way. Of course he doesn’t know French, but if you can say “yes” and “no”, you’ll got on very well with him.’

‘Then — you’ve become rich?’ Jean asked, dismayed, unable to believe that one could surround oneself with such comfort and pay for it all with bad cheques.

‘Well, it’s true that you haven’t known me in my comfortable phase. But the wheel turns. Have a bath and get yourself ready. Dinner is at seven thirty. Price will bring you a tie and socks. Relax.’

History was repeating itself. This second arrival in London resembled, in its surprises, the first one five years earlier. Jean gave up trying to think and even drifted off to sleep for a few moments in his bath, exhausted by the night spent with Antoinette and the bad crossing. A discreet knock at the bathroom door woke him. Price’s muffled voice was calling, ‘Mr Arnaud, please.’

He dressed in a hurry. The dinner jacket fitted him well, despite being a little short in the sleeves. He had some difficulty buttoning the stiff collar and realised he had entirely forgotten how to tie a bow-tie. Price knocked at the door a second time. Jean opened it and, pointing at his neck, indicated his predicament. The butler understood immediately, pulled off his gloves, and tied the black tie. It was perfect.

But why go to such trouble? The Ascots were a couple of indeterminate age, rather hatchet-faced, who spoke absolutely incomprehensible English. Jane — despite her sharp features her face was pretty, her skin fresh — wore a lamé dress will all the grace of a coal sack. Her neckline gaped when she leant forward, revealing two fairly unappetising poached eggs. Both Ascots were very affable to Jean at the outset, and then, rapidly realising that he was not from their world, ignored him for the rest of the evening, talking only to Palfy, who gave up translating when he gauged Jean’s total lack of interest in their extended personal conversation about a society in which he knew no one. To tell the truth, the dry Martini before dinner, the sherry with the turtle consommé, the claret with the roast, the Graves with the apple tart, the port with the Camembert (over which they went into raptures, gaining Jean a brief flicker of renewed interest) and the brandy with the coffee had all been too much for him to take. He was dropping from fatigue; his eyelids were drooping, his tongue was like cardboard, his mind wandering, mostly back to Antoinette, whom he would have liked to be caressing again tonight, after unbuttoning the stiff collar that had been digging into his neck without mercy. At ten thirty the Ascots stood up and left. Palfy saw them to their car. He returned to find Jean collapsed on the sofa.