The Foundling Boy (28 page)

‘Wait for me on the other side of town, on the Nevers road.’

An hour later Palfy came into view at the wheel of the Italian-registered Alfa.

‘How did you do it?’ Jean asked.

‘That’s my secret. Don’t you think she’s rather smart?’

‘She won’t be when I’m sitting next to you.’

‘Come along, no false modesty. Jump in and let’s go …’

We shall not follow their every kilometre on the last stretch of their journey, which was, as may be imagined, far more rapid than the first in the old and worn-out Mathis. The Alfa Romeo, with all due respect to Antoine du Courseau, was an agile, sparkling car that stayed glued to the road as if by instinct. Palfy nevertheless affected to consider it merely an amusing toy for the nouveaux riches. His taste was for English cars, and when in Rouen he saw, left for a moment by its owner, a majestic black and chrome Bentley with white-walled tyres, his hand flew to his heart.

‘I’m lost, dear boy. Head over heels. I must have that Bentley. I know what you’re going to say: it’s not as good as the Rolls …’

‘No, that isn’t what I was going to say!’

‘And actually it isn’t as good as the Rolls, the most beautiful outward sign of wealth that can be imagined, but the Bentley is
sensitive and responsive and not quite so noticeable. With a Rolls we wouldn’t get far. With that Bentley we’ll cross France all over again, and no one will notice.’

‘I’d really like to get back to Dieppe.’

‘Agreed, model son, but first a short detour via Deauville, which cost my father so dear that I rarely pass up an opportunity when in the vicinity to recoup a few of the notes he scattered on its green baize …’

Deauville was deserted in midweek, whipped by a wind laden with spray. Palfy explained the town’s topography and pointed out the boardwalk that, as he assured Jean, he had walked up and down a hundred times, clutching his mother’s skirts, around 1910. They pulled up in front of an exceptionally smart restaurant, where their appearance in a Bentley with English registration plates made a doorman snap to attention and greet them with a few words painfully learnt from a small book he kept at the bottom of his coat pocket. Jean had ceased to be surprised and did not even smile as Palfy began to speak with an English accent that was so affected it was hard not to laugh. But the Bentley, and his friend’s blue blazer and flannel trousers, were more than enough to impress a maître d’hôtel.

‘Understand,’ Palfy said, ‘that appearances are all on our side. The car, my clothes … and you …’

‘What do you mean, me? I’m getting to look quite revolting.’

‘That’s what makes it real. I picked you up on the road, now I’m going to feed you, and for them there’s no doubt about the outcome: tonight I shall take you to bed with me. We’re two queers, do you understand? Few things inspire more trust.’

Jean thought to himself that they would have to pay when lunch was over, even so, this restaurant was not the kind of place where you could slip out through the toilets. Palfy seemed not to be worried in the slightest.

‘Do you know how to eat?’ he asked.

Jean was suddenly afraid that he did not know how to hold a fork
or knife properly, despite the lessons he had been given over and over again by Marie-Thérèse du Courseau. Obviously he had not strolled the boardwalk at the age of four, clutching Jeanne’s skirts, and faced with Palfy’s poise – he seemed to have spent his whole childhood at spas and luxury seaside resorts – he felt paralysed. Eventually he understood that Palfy only wanted to make sure that the unimpressable maître d’hôtel was left a little surprised by his guests. First the chef was summoned, to take down a recipe for oyster soup.

‘Careful with the onions,’ Palfy reminded him. ‘Diced very fine, above all. Then simmer. On no account let it boil, it will be a catastrophe if you do. Do you have a fresh mullet?’

‘This morning, Monsieur.’

‘Then serve it for us with a hollandaise sauce.’

‘Monsieur means—’

‘I mean a hollandaise sauce: egg yolks, flour, melted butter, a cup of stock. Careful, no boiling there either, or the sauce will turn.’

‘Oh no, Monsieur, of course not.’

‘The sommelier, please.’

Palfy crowned his performance by ordering a single wine, a blanc de blanc. Jean observed the reverse of a ritual he had watched at Mireille’s, in a less refined version, from the pantry. Palfy was suddenly disclosing a whole new world to him. He could no longer be regarded in the same light, this Fregoli brimming with self-assurance.
11
His roguishness had greatness, it had something superb about it. If they were arrested by the gendarmes, he would make sure they knew it. But for how long would his luck hold? The first glass of blanc de blanc swiftly dispelled his anxiety about the final act, and when Palfy, casting a cursory look at the bottom of the bill, took out a cheque book and wrote a cheque drawn on an English bank, he hardly even experienced relief. Everything was turning out so well!

‘Where did you find that cheque book?’ he asked when they were outside.

‘In the glove compartment. There usually is one in that sort of car. If there weren’t, it wouldn’t be much fun borrowing them … Now, I suppose you want very much to see your popa and your moma …’

‘Yes … actually I don’t really know.’

‘Let’s not go overboard. Everything must come to an end. Our little entertainment was a success. Not one snag. Let’s head for Dieppe. Shall we keep the Bentley?’

‘Why not?’

‘I wonder if it isn’t a little too pompous to turn up to your house in. A Traction Avant would be quite adequate.’

He replaced the cheque book in the glove compartment, and they drove slowly through the streets until Palfy spotted a Citroën that he liked the look of. By late afternoon they were at Grangeville. La Sauveté’s gates were locked. They drove along the wall by the hawthorn hedge and stopped outside the door where seventeen years earlier unknown hands had left a basket containing the baby Jean. A woman in an austere black dress, her hair scraped into a bun on top of her head and thin lips made up with a single slash of lipstick, opened the door.

‘What do you want?’ she asked.

‘My parents.’

‘Your parents?’

‘Albert and Jeanne Arnaud.’

‘They don’t live here any more.’

The door shut in Jean’s face. The sun was going down. He could hear the magpies chattering in the park and the first gusts of the west wind that would blow all night, driving the Channel waves onto the high cliffs.

‘I know that person,’ Palfy said behind Jean, who had not moved.

‘Who is she?’

‘The former sub-mistress of Two Two Four.’

‘I don’t know what a sub-mistress is, and I don’t know Two Two Four.’

‘My dear innocent friend, a sub-mistress is the supervisor of a brothel, and Two Two Four is at 224 Rue Déroulède, the smartest whorehouse in Paris. Has she come to retire here, or to open a country annexe? It would be interesting to know. Meanwhile, we ought to find your parents. Who can put us on the right track?’

‘Monsieur the abbé Le Couec.’

‘A shame I chucked my cassock away.’

‘Don’t be an idiot. The abbé is the best man in the world.’

Monsieur the abbé, seated on a kitchen chair with his cassock hitched up to his knees, was soaking his feet in a bowl of cold water in which a fistful of rock salt was dissolving, after a hard day: mass at six o’clock, mass for the repose of the soul of Mathieu Follain at eight o’clock, baptism of Célestin Servant at ten o’clock, marriage of Clémentine Gentil to Juste Boillé at midday, a wedding feast that had finished at four o’clock, just in time for him to give extreme unction to Joseph Saindou. The wedding feast had been the most exhausting: seven courses, and so large a number of
trous normands
12
that the groom had staggered out supported by two of the ushers and Clémentine, a girl who was usually rather reserved, had undone her bodice and let a white breast slip out, goose-pimpled like the skin of a plucked chicken. Monsieur Le Couec was musing about all these people who had been born, got married and died in a single day. He had accompanied them through their lives and to the brink of death, been present at their celebrations and their sorrows, known the fragments of secrets that they gave him during confession, and yet he knew nothing at all of whether they were happy or not. They did not listen to him very much, less and less in fact, and for several years he had been asking himself whether the religion of which he was a minister did not represent a formality for these people, in which God or the sufferings of Christ appeared to them as no more than magic potions. They remained loyal to it in order to guarantee themselves a little good fortune, out of superstition. Had he been right to follow his nature, to be familiar, bon vivant, understanding, sometimes even complicit? His attitude meant that people treated him as an equal, as a good fellow they respected, but knew that a
full glass of calvados could make him all-forgiving. Where had they vanished to, those priestly wraths he had been armed with as he emerged from the seminary? Even from the pulpit he thundered no longer, stripped of the illusion that his sermons held the attention of his faithful. And so? He had only ever had a very relative propensity for asceticism, but in his idealistic moments he liked to imagine that his parish’s destiny would have been quite different if he had shown the sublime, intransigent faith of Saint John Vianney – the
curé
of Ars – if his flock had believed that he was fighting every day against a devil trying desperately to overturn his potato soup or set his cassock on fire. It was true that the war had weighed heavily on him. You couldn’t explain away that gigantic spectacle of filth, heroism and idiocy, and keep your faith intact. Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney had very prudently deserted before becoming a priest. The wise thing would have been to follow his example in 1914 …

The abbé was at this point in his sour reflections when Jean knocked and walked straight in, having glimpsed through the window Monsieur Le Couec with his feet in a bowl.

‘My little Jean! The prodigal son returns! And I know two others, apart from me, who will be happy to see you. Come and let me kiss you.’

Jean kissed the abbé and introduced Palfy.

‘This generous friend drove me here. We’ve just been to La Sauveté. The door was slammed in my face. Where are Papa and Maman?’

The priest’s face darkened.

‘Your mother isn’t well, my boy. The sale, her eviction – I mean what I say, eviction – have deeply affected her. She’s in hospital at Dieppe, where they’re trying to coax her and treat her and bring her back to us. In a month she’ll be bursting with health again, I’m sure. As for your father, he’s living at Monsieur Cliquet’s while he waits for Madame du Courseau to find him a position. He’s bitter, I can tell you. To work all your life and find yourself on the street from one
day to the next, without work, without a roof over your head and only the maximum invalid’s pension to live on, it makes you think … Anyway, everything will work out now that you’re here. And you, Monsieur, who are you?’

‘A good-for-nothing, Father.’

Monsieur Le Couec looked disconcerted, more by the tone of the answer than by the evident accuracy of Palfy’s self-judgment. Palfy smiled humbly and looked around him. In a glance he had gauged both the priest’s state of penury and his character.

‘There are no good-for-nothings,’ said the abbé. ‘First of all, you have brought my dear Jean back. Then again, you also exist and one day you will understand why.’

‘I very much hope so. In the meantime there is no proof so far, and I sometimes get tired of waiting for it.’

‘That is because it will take a form you don’t yet know, that you cannot even envisage in the state in which you find yourself. In your place I should be very optimistic, even reassured.’

Jean was astonished to see the priest’s words make an impression on Palfy. He would have thought his friend completely invulnerable to such reflections, much too ironical or cynical to listen to them without mockery. The priest dried his feet with an old towel and eased his socks and heavy boots back on.

‘Let’s go and see your father,’ he said to Jean. ‘He’ll be having his supper with Uncle Cliquet.’

‘What about Maman?’

‘Visiting hours at the hospital are between midday and two o’clock. You can go tomorrow. If you would like me to, I’ll telephone from the grocer’s to ask them to let her know that you’re back. Oh dear Jean, it is a great joy to have you back among us.’

We shall not describe in detail the reunions with Albert and Jeanne. Jean was shocked at how much they had aged in two months. He saw instantly that Jeanne remained shattered by events. She rambled sometimes, then realised what she was doing and sank into exhaustion. Albert was as proud as ever, but Jean guessed his distress. He talked about ‘the release of death’ before hostilities broke out again, which in his view was not far off. Monsieur Cliquet was still assuring him that what with the railways nationalised and the strikes and the sabotage, mobilisation was impossible. The government knew it and was playing for time. Captain Duclou was more optimistic: the French navy was ready as it had not been since the days of Louis XVI, its destroyer escorts and fast escorts would eliminate the German submarines within days, while British cruisers ensured the freedom of the seas. We are not going to rehearse in these pages the interminable conversations that took place after supper that evening in Monsieur Cliquet’s modest kitchen. They would testify too well to the blindness of an era. Let us instead return to Jean and Palfy, who spent the night at the rectory. Jean would have liked his friend to stay on for a few days, but Palfy was loath to stay still. He explained very clearly why.

‘You know, dear boy, being on the move is my only security. I have to stay mobile, especially when I sign bad cheques. It’s not hard to understand. A crossed cheque paid in the same day is cashed the following day in the worst case, within two or three days in the best. Without putting my liberty at risk, I can stay in one place for
twenty-four
hours, forty-eight maximum, three days if I happen to sign a cheque on Friday afternoon. Thanks to the weekend, it will only be paid in on the Monday. That way, at the end of the week I get a
well-earned
rest before resuming my getaway.’

Palfy explained the mechanism of his swindles so clearly, in fact, and with such frankness that it was impossible even for a mind as fundamentally honest as Jean’s to feel outraged. He found the
looting of collection boxes in church more reprehensible than the bad cheques, promissory notes and worthless bonds. And even there Palfy had justified, in his way, his plundering of priests and the poor.

‘I admire,’ Jean said, ‘your ability to live in such perpetual anxiety.’

‘Anxiety? It is unknown to me. I live well, tell myself stories, dupe fools and enjoy myself without hurting anyone. For example, that cheque I signed at Deauville from the cheque book I found in the Bentley: I wrote the amount on the counterfoil. The owner, who is rolling in it, won’t even notice. When there’s a car involved, I always give it back it good condition with a full tank. As for the instability, it suits me completely. I can’t stay in one place. During my childhood my parents never stayed more than a month in the same place. I acquired a taste for travel. I love travelling. So do you, actually. You’ve got the bug. Don’t deny it.’

‘It’s true, and I don’t know how I’m going to satisfy it. Not like you, anyway. One of these days you’ll fall flat on your face.’

‘One day? Yes, perhaps, and I accept it. It can end well too. Certainties are as dull as ditchwater. Let us live in delicious uncertainties.’

Jean could not wait to introduce Palfy to Joseph Outen. After his visit to Jeanne he met his friend at the Café des Tribunaux and took him to Dieppe Rowing Club, where the Sunday morning team training had just taken place. Joseph emerged from the shower, his hair and beard damp, his face taut from the morning’s exercise.

‘Holy moly,’ he said, ‘I thought rowing had lost you for good, buried alive beneath the pleasures of the flesh and the frying pan. When do you start again?’

‘Tomorrow. Joseph, I’d like you to meet my friend Palfy, Constantin Palfy.’

With a rudeness too deliberate to be natural, Joseph examined the
dandy before him from head to toe, in his grey flannel suit, blue shirt and English-style old school tie.

The disdainful scrutiny left Palfy unruffled, and he simply said, ‘What are you training for? Coxed pairs?’

‘Yes. Do you know about rowing?’

‘Sadly I know nothing at all about coxed pairs. I rowed in an eight for Oxford, the last time in 1926.’

Joseph was visibly flustered, Jean embarrassed. It was probably untrue, but you had to know Palfy to guess that he was lying whenever he pretended modesty.

‘And who won?’

‘Cambridge. By a slim margin.’

‘Where are you two having lunch? It’s on me.’

‘No, it’s my shout,’ Palfy said. ‘You choose …’

They drove to an auberge in the Arques valley, where Palfy displayed one of his better qualities: he listened. Joseph began to shed his prejudices. Certainly he had a low opinion of such a
well-dressed
man; he could only be an imbecile. But Palfy had rowed for Oxford and although Oxford was, to his mind, a breeding ground for crashing snobs, that fabulous university town was also a place where incontrovertible sporting qualities were nurtured. To be more certain of what he was hearing, Joseph tossed out two or three writers’ names, which were received with a blank stare. Palfy confessed his ignorance. Cars were his only interest. Jean was annoyed with Joseph for showing off and making no attempt to hide his amused condescension to his friend, not doubting for an instant that Palfy was of sufficient stature to be worth ten Joseph Outens. He began to wish Palfy would wake up and wrong-foot him. But Palfy continued to play the ingénu who was only too happy to attend to the pearls cast by a real intellectual.

‘And you, Jean, what are you going to do?’ Joseph asked.

‘Look for work.’

‘You’ll be lucky. There’s no work, except in the armaments factories.’

‘Well, there’s no armaments factory at Dieppe and I want to stay near my parents. They’ve aged so quickly.’

‘I know. They’ve been appallingly tricked. That’s what happens when you believe in the so-called goodwill of a paternalistic employer.’

‘Don’t say anything bad about Antoine du Courseau.’

‘Why not? He’s shoved off and left your parents in the soup. His bitch of a wife is worse, I agree.’

‘I’ll sort things out without anyone’s help.’

‘It’s a shame you aren’t able to come to England with me,’ Palfy said. ‘I would have found you something very easily in London. I have a lot of friends there.’

Jean did not react. It was the first time Palfy had mentioned leaving for England: a lie doubtless triggered by the Newhaven packet’s appearance at Dieppe port two hours earlier. ‘What on earth is that old tub?’ he had asked. The answer had made him thoughtful. In the meantime the idea had taken root.

Palfy signed a cheque for more than the bill and pocketed the difference with a rueful smile. They drove back to Dieppe, where Joseph left them at Le Pollet.
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He shook Palfy’s hand and said to Jean, ‘The film club is showing King Vidor’s
Hallelujah!
at six. Do you want to come? It’s a classic.’

‘I thought you despised the cinema.’

‘Not the classics.’

Joseph had begun his ‘cinema’ period in the wake of his ‘sporting writers’ period and was throwing himself into it with the same passion, trying to create a circle of young cinephiles in a town where Georges Milton and saucy innuendo were rather more popular with
public taste than Charlie Chaplin and Greta Garbo. Jean agreed to meet him after Palfy had left. They parked the car on the Place du Marché.

‘Is it true that you’ve decided to go to England? I thought you were saying it for effect, to impress Joseph.’

‘I said it for effect, and now I’ve decided. What time does the ferry leave?’

‘At five.’

‘Plenty of time to buy a couple of tickets.’

‘I can’t come.’

‘Jean, you disappoint me … but I understand. If you change your mind, here’s my address in London: the Governor Club, 22 Hamilton Street. I drop in there around lunchtime to pick up my post. My post and a glass of something. It’s full of Oxford men.’

‘So is it true you were at Oxford?’

‘Absolutely.’

Palfy lifted his suitcase from the boot and left the keys on the dashboard.

‘Tomorrow you might do something kind: an anonymous phone call to the police to report a stolen car on the Place du Marché. They’ll let the owner know. He’ll be getting anxious.’

‘You are a credit to your profession.’

‘Am I not? Have you got any money? I didn’t make much at the restaurant, and at Newhaven I’ll need to pay for my train ticket in cash.’

‘I’ve got a hundred francs left.’

‘Well, that’ll have to do.’

At least Palfy was not the kind of conman who promises to pay you back. He borrowed without scruples or pretence, and doubtless lent the same way if he happened to be flush. They walked the length of the quayside and found the ticket office. Palfy bought a first-class ticket and asked what time dinner was served and when the first fast train to London was. Jean reflected a little gloomily that he was going
to have to walk back to Grangeville on foot, since he no longer had even the two francs necessary for the evening bus.