The Foundling Boy (17 page)

‘Oh Salah, it’s impossible. My bike … you don’t know how much I love it. Let’s go and get it back from this man straight away …’

‘I’m afraid the damage will already be done.’

Tears rolled down Jean’s cheeks. He could have faced almost anything, but not some mad sculptor crushing the bicycle that he cherished above everything else, his finest possession, a perfect bicycle, such as he had never known before and would never know again.

‘Don’t cry, for goodness’ sake! You’re a man, and tomorrow I’m going to take you to buy another one.’

‘An English bike, Salah! You must be joking! The English have never made a proper racing bike. They ride around on bikes that date back to Louis XIV.’

‘Well, look, I’ve got the money, I’ll give it to you and you can buy yourself another one in France.’

‘It won’t ever be the same. That bike was my bike. My bike, do you understand? And how am I going to get back to Newhaven?’

‘I shall drive you there in the Hispano.’

As soon as they got back to Geneviève’s house, Jean dashed up
the steps two at a time and rang the bell, hoping that it would turn out to be a bad dream, but Baptiste opened the door with a prim expression.

‘Monsieur has heard?’ he said. ‘His bicycle has become a work of art: yes, of ART!’

Jean spent a profoundly unhappy evening, despite a letter that Geneviève had left for him.

But next morning Jean rejected every bicycle he was offered. They were all fitted with English rod brakes, that work well enough but make the machine much heavier. As for racing handlebars, not one dealer knew what he meant. In the end Salah handed Geneviève’s money to Jean, who almost gave it straight back: it was roughly enough for at least three bicycles fitted with the latest derailleur used by Leducq in the 1932 Tour. Instead he started to dream. Salah dropped him off at museums and parks and picked him up at the exit. Geneviève was right: the chauffeur was also a friend, thoughtful, intelligent and discreet. Mysterious too from time to time, skilfully avoiding answering embarrassing questions, such as the one Jean asked on his last day. Each morning he had been woken by a different
maid, and every one was called Mary, or María, or even Marie, who was French and whom he was amazed to identify without a shadow of a doubt as the over-made-up girl from Toulouse who had given him directions in Soho to Odeon Street where the Hispano-Suiza was parked. The Chelsea house was not so grand that it required a very large staff, especially since the prince almost never used it, and Geneviève was touring the English countryside every weekend. Even if she invited a dozen of her friends to lunch or dinner, there was still no need for so many staff. And why were these interchangeable maids all called Mary? Why were they, if not beauties, all at least good-looking girls? Jean had also made a disturbing discovery when he had gone downstairs one evening, around midnight, to fetch a glass of water from the kitchen. He was still on the stairs when the front door opened. Baptiste was returning from an evening stroll, and was followed by a woman Jean immediately recognised as the mulatto from the boat. Baptiste behaved a good deal less civilly with her than with Geneviève’s guests. Jean was surprised too by what she was wearing: a short, very tight-waisted green suit, a loud scarf decorated with a pearl, and a blue cap tilted over one ear. She was smoking. Baptiste told her she had better go and throw her cigarette outside if she didn’t want a good slap, and the previously exuberant creature obeyed without a word before following Baptiste into the kitchen. Jean went back upstairs on tiptoe and stayed awake for a good part of the night, attempting to work out what it could all mean. The next day Salah made no answer when he asked him about it.

On the Saturday the Hispano-Suiza took Jean back to Newhaven. Because the packet was an hour late, he decided to visit Mrs Pickett, and found her little house and sign – ‘B and B’ – with ease. The old lady opened the door with her hat and coat on. She was just going out for a short walk. Oh, not far! Just around the corner. Jean gestured to Salah, who opened the door of the car, and Mrs Pickett climbed in without being asked. It doubtless seemed perfectly natural to her that Jean, having arrived on a red bicycle, should come back to
visit her in a yellow chauffeur-driven Hispano-Suiza. They stopped outside Mrs Pickett’s favourite pub, where her arrival caused a small sensation which she did not deign to acknowledge. Salah refused alcohol, which surprised her a little, and when he explained to her that he was a Muslim she gave him a charming smile and said, ‘That’s awfully bad luck, you ought to convert.’ They left her, supported by her pillar and already happy, after Jean had tried again and failed to speak to her in French. No, she knew nothing of that barbaric language. The mystery remained.

The packet was edging alongside as they drove onto the dock. Salah contemplated the boat with a melancholy look.

‘There are days when I would like to get back to Egypt,’ he said, ‘to my Nubia where I was born, Djebel Chams, next to the Nile. My father is getting older and there is a chance I may not see him again. It’s not because he showed me very great kindness. He thought I was too dark-skinned. I have two very pale half-brothers, almost like the English, and he has always been prouder of them than of me, even though they are both useless fools who sponge off our father and are completely idle. Of course he doesn’t know that I am a chauffeur. I pretend that I have a job in a bank, and as I regularly send him money he thinks I’m rich and regrets a little that he did not have confidence in me.’

‘I’d really like to go to Egypt with you,’ Jean said.

‘In that case, I’ll take you there. I promise. We shall go up the Nile by boat and arrive loaded down with presents for my father …’

‘And your mother.’

‘No, she’s dead,’ Salah said. ‘I hardly knew her at all. She was just a slave in the house, and I was brought up by my stepmother.’

Jean caught sight of the captain on the gangplank. His familiar face dispelled a little of the sadness that choked him as he got ready to leave England and Salah. When would he see Salah – his first proper friend – again? They shook hands. With his haversack on his back, Jean walked up the gangplank. On deck he went straight
to the rail to catch a last glimpse of the chauffeur and his beautiful Hispano-Suiza, gleaming in the late afternoon sunlight, but the car had already driven away and disappeared behind the docks, leaving no trace on the streets or seafront of this red-bricked, soot-blackened town. His gateway to England was closing on many unanswered questions. Some things would become clear in time Not all. And Jean would draw from it the conviction that it was better not to know exactly why Mrs Pickett spoke French at night when she was drunk, nor why, in an elegant house in Chelsea, the maids were all called some version of Mary and were different every morning. After all, what did it matter? His view of the world had broadened. In future he would no longer live inside La Sauveté’s walls the way he had lived until now.

On that hot afternoon at summer’s end, graceful clouds scudded across the sky: gazelles, lambs, melting snowmen. Dust rose from the avenues at La Sauveté as vans and carts passed over them, loaded with furniture. The official auctioneer, Maître Prioré, arrived from Rouen in his black suit and tie, mopped his brow with a cambric handkerchief and drank large glasses of water flavoured with a drop of grenadine. He was no longer enjoying himself. His zest was dwindling with the indecision and and timidity of the final bidders. The coat stand was snapped up for thirty francs, the umbrella-stand only found a taker at ten. Yet people were not leaving. Initially respectful, they had begun wandering through the empty house, where paintings had left behind large, lighter oval and rectangular patches on the worn wallpaper. Others strolled through the park, and from his window Albert had seen some of them picking flowers or sitting on the hallowed lawn. He had not moved when one stranger had stolen his watering hose and a woman had taken a pot full of climbing geraniums. Having been weeping since the morning, Jeanne now seemed dazed, and sat on a kitchen chair, her large hands, bleached by endless laundry washing, motionless on her knees. Albert lit a pipe, and the smell of tobacco drifted through the kitchen. He caught sight of Monsieur Le Couec, who, with an air of feigned indifference, walked among the crowd, exchanging a word with those he knew and staring in surprise at those who were carrying something away: a pitcher, a bowl, a box, a copper planter. Occasionally he allowed himself some reproach that went uncomprehended by his interlocutor. The auctioneer bent down to one of his assistants, who shook his head. There was nothing more to sell. La Sauveté had been emptied in an afternoon by an
invasion of ants who had left the house with only its old lace curtains and rugs so worn that they tempted no one. A silence settled, then the murmuring started up again. The bookkeeper was enjoying himself with various sums in his large black oilcloth ledger. With a drink or two, the whole sale might have been turned into a festive occasion, but elements conspired against it: the heat, the absence of the du Courseaus, the shyness of the bidders and the embarrassment, at least for the people who lived nearby, of plundering this house whose modest grandeur had for a long time contributed to the fortunes of the neighbouring village. People gossiped to each other that the new owners, still known only to the notary, were Monsieur and Madame Longuet. The gossip had quickly spread: they were going to knock down the dividing wall and demolish La Sauveté, or convert it into one of those welcoming establishments that had been the basis of their fortune. Monsieur Le Couec would be its chaplain. Did he not have something of a weakness for Madame Longuet who, being from Alsace, kept him well supplied with alcool blanc, raspberry or plum according to the season? No one had seen the Longuets during the general sell-off, but an antique dealer from Rouen was thought to be their straw man. This person had bought the family portraits, which could only have been for clients who wanted to invent a lineage for themselves. One further absence, which had met with favourable comment, was that of the Malemorts. They stayed away from any public event that risked descending into a free-for-all; the only exception was when they went hunting in the forest of Arques. Marie-Thérèse du Courseau, with Michel and Antoinette, was living with them while she waited for the villa she was having built on the cliff on the road out of Grangeville to be finished. Some praised her dignity in the face of ruin, others declared that the ruin was not hers but that of her husband, from which she could have saved him with a single gesture. As for Antoine, no one had seen him that day. For good reason: he had spent the afternoon at the Café des Tribunaux in Dieppe, playing draughts with Jean Arnaud. Jean was leading by
five games to four when the auctioneer arrived, having swapped his black suit for a sports jacket and grey slacks. At the wheel of a red Alfa Romeo roadster, he was a different man.

‘We can be fairly satisfied,’ he said. ‘The day has gone better than I expected.’

‘What will you have?’ Antoine asked.

‘Scotch for me!’

‘Scotch? I don’t know if they have any here.’

Antoine’s slur on the Café des Tribunaux was unfounded. There was indeed Scotch for the locals, as the British never ordered it, addicted as they were to white wine from the moment they disembarked.

‘Will you do me the pleasure of dining with us?’ Maître Prioré asked, intrigued by Antoine’s Olympian indifference. ‘I mean, with my bookkeeper and myself. And Monsieur as well, of course.’

Jean was not often addressed as ‘Monsieur’, and he looked up at the person who had just disturbed his game.

‘I’ll take you back after dinner,’ Antoine said.

Jean accepted. The auctioneer asked to see a menu and the head waiter. He wanted sole. He had come to Dieppe to eat sole. But before deciding whether he would have them
au gratin
or
meunière
, he needed to see them. A lavish choice was presented to him, because they were all very different sizes.

‘Do you have a preference?’ the auctioneer asked for form’s sake, believing that Antoine did not give a damn, as he did not about everything else.

‘Yes. Small. Two hundred and fifty grams at the most, because I like them
meunière
.’

‘Well all right,
meunière
you shall have if you like, but have this big fat one instead. It’s truly only here that they have such enormous ones.’

‘No, they’re like that at Oléron too,’ Antoine said, ‘but so fat that they only taste good
au gratin
, with the skin on. Small ones you skin,
they have a more delicate taste. Medium size, you stuff them, which I’m not wild about. I don’t like shallots or peeled shrimps. The stuffing kills the flavour of the fish. Naturally I exclude anything prepared with tomatoes or mushrooms, which is for people who are tired of life, and that’s not the way I feel at all, nor you, I sincerely hope.’

‘No, obviously not. Well then, let’s follow your advice.’

The bookkeeper protested mildly. He wanted a salad with some ham. No one listened to him. On the choice of wine Antoine was equally categorical: there would be no wine. The patron kept a few bottles of a personal reserve of sparkling cider, which survived the summer thanks to a cool and remarkably well-insulated cellar.

‘I’m completely in your hands!’ Maître Prioré said. ‘You’re a true epicure.’

‘Sometimes, though more and more rarely. When I travel, I’m happy with saucisson and red wine.’

‘You travel a good deal for your business, I imagine.’

‘I get around. It’s not exactly business, which I understand nothing about and wish to understand nothing about. Besides, you wouldn’t be here this evening if I had known how to look after myself.’

‘You haven’t even asked me how much the sale this afternoon amounted to.’

‘No, I haven’t, and yet the cheque you’ll hand over represents all that I have left …’

Abandoning his sole, which he had been clumsily picking at, the bookkeeper made a grab for his black ledger, on the bench beside him.

‘We have plenty of time,’ Antoine said.

The auctioneer gestured irritably at his bookkeeper. Antoine du Courseau surprised him, and he was extremely curious to know who this man really was, so untroubled at his separation from his fortune. He tried politics.

‘The Front Populaire has ruined France in the space of three months.’

‘Do you think so?’ Antoine asked, pouring himself some cider. ‘I don’t. Money’s being redistributed, that’s all, and I generally think that’s a good thing.’

‘People tell me that the strikes in the armaments industry have driven any number of small companies to the wall.’

‘We’re anachronisms. Others will come and take our place.’

‘Even so, you won’t deny that if things continue as they are, we’ll soon start losing the will to work, even for our children’s sake. Thanks to my father’s hard work I’ve been able to acquire my position, and if I’m not mistaken your own company was founded by your father.’

‘I didn’t manage to hang on to what he left me. He took a lot of trouble for nothing.’

‘A great shame for your own son! Isn’t that right, young man?’

‘I’m not Monsieur du Courseau’s son,’ Jean said.

Maître Prioré began to feel uncomfortable. Plain speaking and platitudes generally worked much better than this. He had aimed too low, thinking he was dealing with an unsophisticated Norman ruined by his own stupidity, and discovered that beneath his provincial appearance Antoine concealed a profound well of contempt. The auctioneer was annoyed, and could not see how to backtrack easily and show that he was the kind of man he felt himself to be (and in reality was, with a slight self-over-estimation that was normal in his smooth-tongued profession): a connoisseur of dependable taste, possibly the best expert he knew in English furniture, and a great collector of enamels. It is always difficult to switch from one tone to another when one has made a mistake. Flight is usually the only way out. There is nothing like it for leaving your mistakes behind. They decay, forgotten and alone.

‘Shall we meet tomorrow?’ he asked.

‘Is that really necessary? I’d intended to make an early start. I’d like to be at Saint-Tropez in time for dinner.’

‘In which case you’ve no time to lose: it’s 1100 kilometres.’

‘Oh, I can do that in ten hours.’

‘In an Alfa Romeo, I’m guessing?’

‘Absolutely not. A 57S.’

‘A Bugatti?’

‘Who ever told you a 57S was anything other than a Bugatti?’

‘Yes, you’re right of course, forgive me. Which model?’

‘The Atalante.’

The intelligent, cultured auctioneer, at ease with everyone and in every situation, crumbled. He could be criticised for his taste, his collections or his reading matter, but not for his car. He would rather have been cheated on, arrested for a breach of trust, or molested by a meharist in the middle of the desert than bested in his choice of wheels.

‘You’re still loyal to Bugatti!’ he said, with a twisted grin. ‘He’s been finished for four or five years.’

‘Is that so? I wasn’t aware of that. Let’s see, we’re 1936 now: that would mean that Bugatti hasn’t won anything since 1932.’

‘Very minor races, Monsieur.’

‘Achille Varzi made Tazio Nuvolari look pretty foolish in the 1933 Monaco Grand Prix.’

‘An unfortunate mechanical problem!’

‘Oh yes … at the gasometer bend he took the lead from under his nose like no other driver could have done with any other car.’

‘Then Nuvolari overtook him on the hill up to the Casino—’

‘And over-revved his car and sent it up in flames. He had to finish the last lap pushing it. And name me another constructor who has won the Targa Florio five times in a row. Last year the first continental car to win the Brooklands 500 was Earl Howe’s Bugatti. Apart from that, and this year’s ACF Grand Prix, Bugatti is definitely washed-up as a constructor.’

‘That isn’t at all what I was trying to say, my dear Monsieur, but Alfa Romeo, Maserati, Mercedes and Auto-Union are winning everything else.’

‘All of Italy, all of Germany are behind those makes. Bugatti races alone. He’s nothing short of a genius, and in France geniuses are
condemned to isolation. But tomorrow I’ll be happy to take you on. Dieppe to Saint-Tropez. Eight o’clock start. The first to arrive wins the bet, as much as you like.’

‘Sadly tomorrow’s impossible. What about Sunday?’

‘I’m not going to sit languishing here from now till Sunday. A thousand regrets! But speak to me no more of Alfa Romeos. It annoys me. Good evening to you, Maître.’

There was nothing superior in his tone, he was just weary. The auctioneer became bad-tempered.

‘You think you know everything!’

‘I don’t know anything,’ Antoine said. ‘Nobody knows anything. I’m simply saying that you don’t compare a Rolls-Royce to a bicycle.’

He stood up and gestured to Jean. The draughtboard was waiting for them at a neighbouring table.

‘Shall I sign your cheque?’

‘If you’ll be so kind.’

He pocketed it without a glance and moved a draught forward.

‘Goodnight to you,’ Maître Prioré said.

‘Goodnight.’

Jean won the game. They were at 6–4, and decided to stop rather than desperately chase a draw. Antoine had a cognac, Jean a lemonade. A few couples lingered, an elderly English pair and a girl of twenty with a man in his fifties with whom she appeared to be in love. Antoine thought about Marie-Dévote. Another twenty-four hours and he would be with her. He would stroke her still glorious though over-ample breasts. Lying next to her, he would know the meaning of peace. The shells would stop bursting and Marie-Thérèse would stop shouting.

‘I’ll drive you home,’ he said to Jean.

‘But where will you sleep, Monsieur?’

‘At La Sauveté.’

‘There’s nothing left there.’

‘I don’t need anything.’

There was no light, except in the lodge. Antoine drove through the park and stopped in front of his door. It was not locked. What was there left to be stolen? They went in and walked through empty rooms that still smelt strongly of the removers. Through the windows, their shutters open, the full moon spilt long yellow splashes on the carpets and rugs. Antoine reached his bedroom where, after pulling a flat silver flask from his hip pocket, he sat on the floor with his back to the window and took a long swallow.

‘You still don’t drink?’

‘No. I think I’ll like to drink one day, but later. I’m rowing on Sunday.’

‘Just look how pretty my Atalante is in the moonlight.’

The Bugatti cast its long bluish shadow across the gravel. The chrome of its radiator grille glittered in the moon’s unworldly silver light. It sat there silently, placidly, sure of its strength. Jean thought it was as beautiful as a scull.

‘Do you remember this room?’ Antoine asked. ‘You were a small boy.’

‘The burst hosepipe. I’ve never forgotten it.’

‘I liked you very much that day. It seems to me that we’ve got on well since then … apart from one small mishap …’