Michel Déon - The Foundling Boy

‘Have a chair. A small glass of something?’

‘I wouldn’t say no.’

Albert filled his pipe and lit it. The pungent smell of caporal tobacco spread around the room. He took the offered glass, which was not small, and dipped his moustache in it.

‘The 1920,’ he said.

‘Mm. The last carafe.’

‘It’s good.’

Antoine swallowed a mouthful. ‘Yes. Good, but no more. It hasn’t learnt how to age.’

‘You don’t ask that from calvados.’

‘Yes, I know. Albert, I asked you to come up because you slapped Jean this afternoon.’

‘He deserved it. The hosepipe’s buggered. I’ll have to get a new one.’

‘No, don’t. I’ll have it replaced.’

‘I said I’ll do it!’ Albert said bad-temperedly.

‘From the window here I saw Michel cut Adèle’s scarf and then puncture your hosepipe. He gave the scissors to Jean to hold and ran away.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Then I’ve made a bad mistake.’

‘Did Jean protest?’

‘No, Captain. The little fool!’

Antoine saw Albert’s discomfiture, which was not due to his remorse at having smacked his child but to the idea that an all-powerful Justice had been offended against. He would have liked to find a way to reassure his friend: all-powerful Justice was doing perfectly well (in men’s minds at any rate), despite the daily offences showered upon her. It was a pity that Albert didn’t possess a more relative sense of the great moral principles: he was storing up sad days for himself, disappointments and rages that would not be good for his health.

‘He didn’t say anything to me, he didn’t even try to defend himself!’

‘He’s still a very small boy. I’d like you to send him to me. I want to talk to him, but don’t tell him what it’s about. Let me deal with it.’

Albert downed his glass and left, looking thoughtful. A short time later Antoine heard a faint tapping at the door and called to Jean to come in. The boy entered, looking serious. His shorts were too long and covered his knees, and Jeanne, in her economical way, had studded his boots so that he slipped on the polished floorboards. He came to Antoine’s armchair and kissed him on the cheek.

‘Hello, Monsieur.’

‘I know who stabbed the hosepipe and cut Adèle’s scarf.’

‘Oh, you know!’ Jean repeated, smiling.

‘But I don’t understand why you didn’t say it was Michel who did it.’

‘If I had, he would have hit me, and anyway nobody would believe me. He’s your son.’

Antoine felt a gulf opening up in front of him. This small, sweet, discreet boy was showing him a world far more complicated than the one in which the du Courseaus lived so complacently. He grasped Jean’s hand and squeezed it in his own.

‘You see … I didn’t know any of that, and I’m very grateful to you for telling me. Do you like secrets?’

‘What’s a secret?’

‘Something you only share with one person.’

‘Yes.’

‘All right … you and I are going to have a secret. Michel won’t be punished for his naughtiness, but you and I will be friends for ever. We’ll never argue. We’ll tell each other everything, and when one of us has a sadness he’ll tell the other one, who’ll cheer him up.’

Jean watched Antoine, concentrating carefully. He did not understand everything he was saying, but the friendly sound of his voice made enough of an impression on him that afterwards this scene never left his memory, and nor did Antoine’s affectionate hug that accompanied it and smelt of cigars, calvados and embrocation. As Jean was leaving, Antoine called him back.

‘Let me look at you again. You remind me of someone, but I don’t know who.’

‘Someone?’

‘Yes, we’ll try and find out who. Goodbye, Jean. Come up and see me when you get bored. We’ll talk.’

In September, from his bedroom, Antoine followed the days’ rhythm. The rose bushes faded to make way for autumn flowers. One morning, the last horse they kept in the stables, which took Marie-Thérèse in her tilbury to church at Grangeville on Sundays, was led away on a long rein behind a knacker’s cart. A few minutes later, Madame du Courseau appeared at the gates at the wheel of a Model T Ford, in which she turned two circles in the drive before parking in the loose box belonging to the Bugatti. Antoine rang his bell. Marie-Thérèse appeared, her cheeks pink, a little out of breath.

‘Did you see?’ she said.

‘I saw, and you have three minutes to take your heap of junk out of my Bugatti’s garage and put it somewhere else.’

‘But the Bugatti’s not there!’

‘All the more reason. Would I put another woman in your bed when you’re not there?’

‘I must say I think you’re being extremely fussy to include a car in your respect for the conventions.’

‘Then you respect them too!’

‘I knew you were attached to your car … but to such an extent … more than to your wife, more than to your children …’

‘Have I ever specified the degrees of my passion? No. So stop making things up and go and get the woodshed behind the outhouse cleared out. You can park your dinosaur there.’

Marie-Thérèse did as she was told, and the Model T Ford did not cohabit with the Bugatti, which returned from Molsheim one afternoon with a mechanic in white overalls at the wheel. Antoine, who had been brought down to the ground floor on a chair, studied his car, its engine still ticking from the road and its bodywork spattered with squashed mosquitoes. He had it washed as he sat there, with a sponge, warm water and hose. The blue paintwork and spoked wheels gleamed in the warm afternoon light. Everyone came to watch: Adèle, Jeanne, Marie-Thérèse, Albert, Jean, Michel, Antoinette and two other servants, whose names I shan’t bother with because they were only casual staff. Hands caressed the bodywork, the chrome and the oak steering wheel, felt the still-warm bonnet secured with a leather strap, the gear lever and oil pump lever. Antoine managed to squeeze himself into the passenger seat, and the mechanic took the wheel again. They did a lap of the park to the sound of eight cylinders firing like organ pipes, raising a delicate cloud of white dust behind them. When they arrived back at the front steps, the abbé Le Couec was waiting, a handkerchief in the neck of his cassock.

‘The golden calf!’ he said in his rich, gravelly voice. ‘How we love the golden calf! And the sinners they do increase … Pity the heavens as they empty!’

He nevertheless helped Antoine to extricate himself from the cockpit and get back upstairs to his room, where they remained alone with the carafe of calvados and the box of cigars. A strong smell rose from the abbé, who did not always take great care of his cassock. Domestic matters did not preoccupy him. He lived in one room of the rectory, which functioned simultaneously as bedroom, library and kitchen and which, very occasionally, he allowed a female parishioner to sweep and dust. But as a former infantryman, trained by the Manuel d’infanterie , he paid very particular attention to the health of his feet. The faithful souls who visited him often found him sitting in a chair and reading his breviary with his cassock hitched up to his knees, revealing his sturdy legs and hiker’s calves and his feet soaking in a bowl full of water, in which he had dissolved coarse salt collected from the hollows of the rocks. Grangeville’s parish priest needed this treatment: he walked a great deal. To walk to Dieppe and back did not trouble him in the slightest. He had walked to Rouen in twelve hours once, to answer a summons from his bishop, and returned the following day at the same pace, relieved of a number of bitter feelings after a stormy audience.