Patrick Modiano - Young Once

One of the mysterious singers by the bridge table was feeling seasick and holding his large velvet beret ready in case he needed to throw up in it.

“We’ll get to Southampton around seven in the morning,” Gilbert said, with his pipe between his teeth.

Odile opened her eyes and looked sleepily at Louis. Just then, the lights flickered and went out. There were shouts and exclamations from all sides. Someone, who sounded like he was from the south of France, shouted: “Fuck the Queen of England!”

Laughter. A hubbub of conversation. Hiccups, no doubt from one of the singers with the velvet berets, Louis thought. Several voices shouting in unison: “Lights! Liii-ights!”

Some people lit their cigarette lighters. Louis leaned over to Odile.

“Let’s go to bed,” he whispered in her ear.

He picked up Odile’s suitcase and they left the “salon,” trying their best to avoid the tangle of bodies on the floor. A dim light was coming from the gangway.

Eventually they found the corridor of cabins, and Louis took a ticket out of his pocket to check for their number. Two couchettes. They lay down. Louis clutched the backpack and suitcase tight and wondered what their group leader would think if he knew that Odile and he had a cabin, which Brossier had reserved for them back in Paris. Gilbert would surely be hurt that these two cousins were not sleeping in the salon with the rest of the “youth exchange.”

•

Everything was floating in a white mist. Disembarking from the Normania , they passed through English customs and Gilbert took them to a bus waiting on the pier.

A man in the back of the bus greeted Gilbert.

“How are you, Mr. Axter?”

“Well, thank you. And you? Was it a pleasant crossing?”

He spoke French with a very slight accent. A blond man, in his forties, with curly hair and big tortoiseshell glasses, a red tweed vest, and a pipe.

The members of the group sat down in the bus, with Odile and Louis sitting a little farther back. Axter looked worriedly around the group.

“Tell me, Gilbert, do you have in your group a certain… Louis Memling?”

“Louis? Louis? Ah, yes, the cousins.”

He pointed out Louis and Odile.

Axter smiled at them.

“Michel Axter,” he said. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

There was a certain coquetterie in the way he Frenchified his first name. He shook hands with Louis and Odile and then sat down across the aisle from them, keeping his head turned to face them.

“Roland de Bejardy phoned me last night to let me know you were coming. He is a very good friend of mine, you know.”

He stuffed his pipe, a smile fixed to his face. Gilbert kept a respectful distance, surprised at this sudden intimacy between Axter and Louis and Odile. Surprised and maybe a bit jealous, too.

“I would go so far as to say that Roland and I are childhood friends.”

This time his face opened up in a real smile. Gilbert, more and more taken aback, nervously brought out his pipe, as though trying to win back Axter’s attention with the gesture and reestablish the complicity between them. He stammered: “Still a fan of the Amsterdammer, sir?”

But Axter wasn’t listening. He leaned toward Odile and Louis.

“I am so pleased to welcome you to our school in Bournemouth.”

Then, from where he was sitting, he counted the members of group with his index finger.

“Everyone here?”

“Everyone is here, Mr. Axter,” Gilbert said.

“All right, tell the driver.”

The bus started and Gilbert sat back down, very near Axter, Odile, and Louis. He was probably afraid that they would say bad things about him if he wasn’t there.

“It won’t be long. Bournemouth is very close by,” Axter said.

“So how is your wife?” Gilbert asked, desperately trying to get Axter’s attention.

But Axter opened a newspaper and read it with great composure.

Outside the windows, everything disappeared in a bright white fog, and Louis wondered by what miracle the driver was able to see where he was going.

•

A few minutes before they reached Bournemouth, the sun reappeared, which prompted Axter to say, “You see, it’s always sunny in Bournemouth.”

Gilbert, not wanting to pass up a chance to rejoin the conversation, added: “It’s a Mediterranean climate. Lots of pine trees, and flowers. As Mr. Axter has often remarked, Bournemouth is the Cannes of Dorset.”

His fawning fell flat. Axter shrugged his shoulders.

He took a list out of his pocket and, turning to face Odile and Louis, said, “We’ll drop off the young people with the families they’re staying with. It won’t take long.”

“We’re arriving at Christchurch, sir,” Gilbert said gravely, sounding like the guide on a jungle expedition, pointing out a path to his client.

Axter checked his list.

“We have someone getting out at Christchurch. Marie-José Quinili, with the Guilfords. 23 Meryl Lane. Tell the driver to stop at 23 Meryl Lane.”

Gilbert obeyed.

And the same ceremony took place every time. The bus stopped at the address on the list, a cottage or little house with a garden in front. The family was waiting outside: mother and children on the stoop, father on the sidewalk in front of the open garden gate, all standing at attention, so to speak. Axter stepped out of the bus with the boy or girl from the group, whom he introduced to the father. Gilbert followed behind them, carrying the student’s suitcase. Then the father, Axter, and the youth exchange student walked over to the stoop, where a short conversation took place with the members of the family, while Gilbert put the suitcase down. Then the father walked Axter and Gilbert back to the bus. The exchange student stayed on the stoop with the mother and children, and they all stiffly watched the bus, again, as it left.

There was no one left in the bus except Axter, Gilbert, Odile, and Louis. Gilbert was getting more and more anxious.

“I’ll take you to Cross Road, the same family as last year,” Axter said.

“Thank you. That way I’m very near you…” He paused. Then he blurted out: “And them? What family are they staying with?”

“They’re staying with me, at the school.”

Gilbert stared wide-eyed. “With you?”

He looked like he had just been punched in the stomach. He face crumpled and his lips were bigger than ever, as though pumped full of air, pneumatically somehow, and about to burst.

“Why with you?”

“Just because. Does that surprise you?”

The bus stopped at Cross Road, in front of a tidy little cottage with a white picket fence around the garden.

“Here you are, Gilbert.”

Gilbert didn’t move, trying to delay the moment of parting. Axter picked up his suitcase. Gilbert had no choice but to stand up sadly.

“They’re lucky they get to stay with you,” he said in a wheezing voice.

Axter put Gilbert’s suitcase down at the garden gate and shook his hand, then rejoined Odile and Louis in the bus.

Gilbert stayed unmoving, in front of the cottage, ignoring his suitcase. His face was alarmingly pale and he eyed Odile and Louis hungrily, lips curled, until the moment the bus started. Louis was amazed at the envy and hate in Gilbert’s eyes.

“He’s not a bad kid, but he is a bit clingy,” Axter said.

•

A sandy lane snaking past a closely mowed lawn and masses of rhododendrons led to the house, a big Norman-style mansion with a bell tower soaring overhead. A white marble plaque above the entrance bore the inscription: BOSCOMBE COLLEGE.

“Here we are,” Axter said. “Let me show you to your room.”

They walked down a hallway with classrooms visible through the open doors.

“The classes are held here,” Axter said. “Every morning. Of course, it’s not required that you attend.”