Michel Déon - The Foundling Boy

‘They’ve nearly signed up,’ Palfy went on. ‘A word from their wives will make sure they don’t shillyshally too much.’

‘If I understand you correctly, you took me on as your gigolo.’

‘Oh, at your age you’d make love to a goat, wouldn’t you?’

‘Lily Sandow and Marina Afner are not goats.’

‘No, but Jane Ascot—’

‘She raped me. She threw herself at me and I didn’t know how to say no. Palfy, you’re a dreadful cynic.’

‘Not at all, not at all. I’m enjoying myself.’

‘And what’s my share if I help you?’

‘Nothing. I take all the risks, so I take all the profit. You’ve been living with me for six months. I’m presenting you with the bill.’

‘I’ll think about it.’

‘Oh no you don’t. You shit or you get off the pot, here and now.’

‘And if I get off the pot—’

‘Impossible. So we agree. It’s late. I’m going to bed.’

He stood up, and Jean grasped his arm.

‘One last question. Where did the money come from that you’ve been spending so lavishly for the last few months?’

Palfy affected the expression of a man grieving, lowering his dancing-girl’s lashes over his dark eyes.

‘I am going to disappoint you, dear Jean. I neither stole it nor fiddled it. It’s my uncle Thomas’s inheritance, my mother’s brother. He worked for forty years to amass a decent lump sum to leave to me, and I’ve spent it in eighteen months. Quite moral of me, don’t you think? I’ve always been against inheritance.’

Alone in his room, Jean opened the notebook he had started at Roquebrune, noting down reflections inspired by his life at that time. Months had passed without him having the urge to reflect on what he had discovered. He wrote:

h) I’m just a plaything in the hands of all those who possess a bit of personality: Antoinette, Mireille, Constantin. I may have succeeded in extricating myself without too much difficulty from the clutches of Antoinette and Mireille, but with Constantin the stakes are higher. Obviously I’m not going to run out on him. He’s right. I shall help him as much as I can, despite the self-disgust I know I shall feel, but maybe you have to reach the point of self-disgust to start to know yourself at all. i) Despite the promise we exchanged, I haven’t written to Chantal. It’s not an omission, it’s an admission. How dare I speak to her without embarrassment, after what’s happening to me and my accepting it? The same feeling as after my return from Roquebrune, when I still felt ‘dirty’ from Mireille, and I avoided her.

Inevitably, in the days that followed, he spoke to Lily Sandow, Marina Afner and Jane Ascot, and it was they who convinced their husbands. Constantin was exultant. He entrusted the devising of the toothpaste to a small East End chemist, found a laboratory and produced a batch of samples that made the business plausible. The start-up was stunning. The sales technique, which excluded wholesalers and resellers, attracted a large number of women. Before it had manufactured any product at all, the company had a million pounds of capital in the bank. Palfy operated skilfully. Jean scarcely saw him. He smoked cigars as long as his forearm and employed a chauffeur to drive the Rolls. Jean had lunch with Geneviève at a French restaurant in Soho. He felt that the intimacy between them had gone. She seemed cold, condescending and almost — the mortification! — charitable towards him. Prince Ibrahim and Salah were expected back in a few days. His room for manoeuvre was limited. As they were saying goodbye on the pavement, he decided to throw himself on her mercy.

‘I’m very young. I don’t know what I’m supposed to say …’

She stepped into her Bentley convertible and started the engine.

‘I believe you’re mistaken,’ she said. ‘Come and have dinner tomorrow with your friend

Palfy.’ Palfy was anxious: would she have the nerve to invite them on their own? What an insult! She would have to answer for it. Jean shook with nerves and only calmed down as he counted the other guests: ten people who ignored them to begin with, as only artists know how, but by the time the dessert arrived Palfy, with his diabolical skill, had turned the situation around. All heads were turned to him, and Jean realised that everyone was wondering who this man with the long nose was, who was so good at making Geneviève laugh. After dinner, Jean found himself at her side for a moment and brushed her hand.

‘No,’ she said in a low voice. ‘You’re being indiscreet.’

His heart sank. For the rest of the evening he could not take his eyes off her, and he left the house with feet of lead. In the Rolls, as it glided silently along the Kings Road, Palfy sighed, ‘You’re feeling bad about something, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, very.’

‘I would willingly warn you but—’

‘But what?’

‘It’s difficult … just an impression … I’ve seen the two of you together … There is something—’

‘You’re not going to lecture me.’

‘No, no, no. It’s something else entirely …’

Jean could not get another word out of his friend, and so did not confess that he and Geneviève were going to the theatre the following day. When the time came, he had to lie, without knowing whether Palfy had been taken in. He met Geneviève outside the theatre. The play was uninteresting or hard to follow or both, but at one of its infrequent amusing moments Geneviève leant towards him to share her gaiety and he took her hand which he then refused to let go, despite her pretending to pull away at the start. As they left the auditorium she said simply, ‘I don’t like restaurants after the theatre. Come back to the house, there’s bound to be something in the refrigerator.’

How simple everything would have been if she hadn’t been French! She laid two places in the kitchen and served cold chicken with a bottle of Bordeaux. As if to avoid anything embarrassing being said, she did not let Jean get a word in. He for his part was not listening to her but counting the minutes as they slipped by, despairing of his indecision and his awkwardness, gazing at her animated, gracious, thoughtful and lovely face.

‘Have you finished?’

He had not touched his chicken. She cleared his plate away and served him a Turkish coffee.

‘Salah taught me how to make them, but I’ll never do it as well as he does. What were you muttering?’

‘Did my lips move?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then I must have been repeating to myself that I’m a fool.’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because things are the way they are, and I’m not going to change my life for anything in the world, and Ibrahim is arriving tomorrow. Goodnight, dear Jean. Go home and go to bed.’

On the doorstep her lips brushed his and she pushed him gently away from her.

‘I’ll telephone you.’

He walked home in pouring rain, soaked to the skin, his trouser bottoms splashed with mud as though he had crossed a ploughed field. Palfy was waiting for him in an armchair, reading a medical encyclopaedia.

‘I’m improving my mind, as you can see,’ he said. ‘Looking for angles for our advertising.’

‘Your toothpaste hasn’t even been manufactured yet.’

‘Therein lies a difficulty, it must be said. It appears to be impossible to find a single factory able to satisfy the fabulous growth in demand.’

‘So?’

‘So we are possibly looking at catastrophe within three weeks to a month. Let us give ourselves a moment’s respite. Where have you come from, Don Juan?’

‘From Geneviève du Courseau’s.’

Palfy leapt up.

‘You haven’t slept together, have you?’

‘Why are you asking me? Are you afraid that I’m going to let my charms go to waste, without being useful to your plans?’