Michel Déon - The Foundling Boy

‘No, you fool … Answer me! You haven’t slept together?’

Jean would happily have lied for the sake of boasting a little, but honesty won out.

‘No. And it’s not going to happen in the foreseeable future.’

Palfy fell back into his armchair.

‘Oof! Pour me a brandy.’

‘When you tell me why you said “oof ”!’

‘No conditions between us! Absolute rule.’

Jean, resigned, poured the brandy.

‘So?’

‘Well, dear boy, there are sometimes hypotheses that are better left untested. Geneviève and you are definitely related in some way.’

‘Because of her sister, Antoinette?’

‘No, double fool … The other evening I was watching you … But I’m telling you: it’s only an impression. I may be mistaken.’

Jean grabbed Palfy by the silk lapels of his smoking jacket and forced him to his feet.

‘Tell me, or I’ll beat you to a pulp.’

‘Let me go. You’ve lost your senses.’

‘I want to know.’

‘Do some calculations, work it out, dig around in your past. I’m suggesting, that’s all. For my money, you’re one of the du Courseau family. Perhaps you’re Antoine’s son or Marie-Thérèse’s, in other words the half-brother of Antoinette and Geneviève and Michel. It needs to be gone into more deeply: in your position I’d go back to France and pump those who know. I’ll pay for the trip. Incidentally, thanks so much for letting me go; I was about to knee you in the balls and put you out of action for a fortnight. A sad injury for a man of your calibre.’

‘My calibre is as good as your calibre.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I’m sorry, Constantin, I don’t know what I’m doing any more, or what I’m saying.’

‘You are forgiven, my son.’

He vaguely sketched the sign of the cross and drank his brandy.

‘Our lives are fragile. Let’s not shatter them for reasons of vanity. In any case, quite sincerely, I’m very fond of you. I think of you as the younger brother I wanted and never had. Go. But you do need someone to shout at you sometimes. Price will pack a bag for you and the chauffeur will drive you to Newhaven tomorrow. Goodnight.’

Chantal was waiting for him in the rain at the landing stage. From the gangplank he recognised her slim outline, wearing a white hooded raincoat. She had answered his telegram, she would help him. With the hand she had pulled from her pocket she waved back. Six months had passed without altering their tacit agreement, even though Jean had not written. Would she guess everything, and would he be able to explain that certain things that had happened on a distant planet had nothing to do with their unconfessed feelings in any way? He felt, even at this distance, that he could already smell her fresh smell, awakened by the rain. She was flesh and blood too, and a disturbing oneness radiated from her body, her eyes, her voice, something he knew he would never find in his life again. His certainty of this was so acute that it was like a sharp, incurable pain in his chest. Everything would be spoilt if he opened his mouth. Where Chantal was concerned, a single truth mattered: that of their childhood, which they had to continue, protecting it from the compromises he had so easily accepted when he was away from her. His passport was stamped, after which he had to go through customs, where he was met by a suspicious official who demanded an explanation for his English suits. Their quality, and the Savile Row labels, roused all the spitefulness of a miserable mean-minded employee whose sartorial prospects would never rise higher than the Nouvelles Galeries’ menswear department. Envy and stupidity are two ideas so powerful that, once they have established themselves in a man’s head, they are impossible to get rid of. Jean was asked for a receipt. How could he explain that he had not paid for them? And that the tailor would probably never be paid by Palfy. Other passengers passed through unhindered, as a plump female customs officer with an impressive bosom, the seams of her uniform stretched to breaking point, inventoried his underwear. On the other side of the door Chantal must be getting tired of waiting, or perhaps she was beginning to worry. He asked if he could go through for a moment and come back. His request was refused, and he felt as if he was trapped in a net, in the corridor and box-rooms of the customs post, a grey maze that smelt of coarse damp blankets and unwashed feet. The last passengers were ushered out almost eagerly, as though they were attempting to distract the Republic’s representatives from their true mission. The entire customs post was now savouring a victim. One from every ferry was the rule. This preoccupied young man, a little cocky, anxious to get away for a reason they were not aware of but felt they could easily guess, was hiding something he was unable or unwilling to admit to, some irregularity that their mediocrity immediately elevated to criminal status. Officers fell upon his two cases, counting his underwear, his trousers, jackets, drawing up a long inventory that seemed beneath contempt to Jean, so much did he feel that his one and only crime was to have been the agent of a diabolical Palfy. As a result he started to lie, to contradict himself, to get muddled, digging himself ever deeper, to the rabble’s great delight. With such people there was no negotiation: the bill Jean was presented with swallowed every franc he had left. When he finally emerged, dispossessed and humiliated after six months away, he saw Chantal leaning against a pillar. The rain had soaked through the shoulders of her raincoat. She was shivering, despite it being May. Cars driving along the quay had already switched on their yellow headlamps, pairs of seeking eyes reflected in the shining asphalt. The sea smelt of fuel oil. Chantal smiled.

‘I thought they were never going to let you out.’

‘They discovered a major criminal: a Frenchman bringing back English suits. National pride was at stake. I had to pay. I don’t have a franc to my name any more. I can’t even take you out to dinner.’

‘You’re having dinner at Malemort. My father’s waiting for us at the Café des Tribunaux. He’s very intrigued about your journey to England.’

‘I wanted to talk to you on your own.’

‘You’ll have to wait till this evening.’

They walked side by side along the main street, Jean carrying his heavy cases, careful not to bang into other pedestrians’ legs.

‘You didn’t write,’ Chantal said. ‘I waited for a long time, then started to tell myself that you had good reasons.’

‘My reasons weren’t very good.’

‘Well, in that case keep them to yourself.’

As they walked past La Vigie ’s well-lit front window, the ghastly Grosjean was standing in the doorway, opening his umbrella. Jean’s face reminded him of something, and he brought his fingers up to his cap. Jean shrugged his shoulders.

‘Do you know him?’ Chantal asked.

‘I had him on my back for nearly a year. No one had treated me that way before, and no one will ever treat me like that again. He spoke to me as if I was a dog. Now I’m well dressed, and he raises his cap as I walk past. I’ve booked myself a seat in the front of the grandstand for the day they take him out and shoot him.’

Chantal did not answer. They reached the café, whose windows were misted up. The marquis, a curling pipe in the corner of his mouth, was reading a farming paper. He had not changed: sturdy, solid, his face weathered by country air, his broad hands used to driving his tractor, to fork and reins. He was bursting with robustness. Instead of lamenting an unsalvageable past, he seized life by the scruff of the neck and shook it with a gentleman’s aloofness.