The Foundling Boy (36 page)

Chantal led Jean to a round room in the tower, the guest room, with an enormous bed swollen by a red quilt.

‘I find all this strange,’ he said. ‘This morning I was still in London. Now I’m here with you. Where do you sleep?’

She did not answer, and began to unfasten her dress. Jean was afraid. An idea about what love should be was shattering in front of him as Chantal’s body was exposed, white, slender, exquisite and fragile as a Dresden figurine. She kept her gaze fixed on him and, so as not to miss her looking at him, he hardly dared look at her. When she put her arms around his neck he was seized by a terrible anxiety.

He awoke at dawn, on his own in the great bed. A cock was crowing under his window. He patted the sheets with the flat of his hand to find a trace of the body that had vanished while he slept. No,
he had not dreamt it. What an awful cheat life was! The one being he had respected endlessly had given herself to him without a word, and he had not ravished a virgin. Chantal knew as much about love as he did. He wanted to cry. He had never felt so lonely as he did for the two hours that preceded a discreet knock at the door and Chantal’s voice calling, ‘Jean, breakfast is ready.’

He stuck his head under the cold tap and went downstairs. The marquis was pushing away his soup plate before he sugared his bowl of coffee. Madame de Malemort was in her dressing gown, adjusting the toaster. Chantal, already dressed, looked down so as not to see Jean. A much more extraordinary thing than leaving London in the morning and going to bed the same night in a Norman château was being Chantal’s lover now, and enjoying with her a confused pleasure in which were mingled images of Geneviève. The one, the girl, inspired all his desire; the other, the woman, inspired his admiration.

‘Good morning!’
the marquis roared in English. ‘We’re having a lazy start. Well, guests are allowed, but only on the first day.’

At eight in the morning he had already driven his cows out, fed the horses, cut down a tree and given the hens their grain. He had a full schedule for the day: to ride with his daughter, train a young Brittany spaniel, cut back the yews at the gates, get the churns ready for the milk collector, and that afternoon wait for the combine harvester hired for the week.

‘I feel ashamed,’ Jean said.

It was true, but for reasons that the Malemorts could not suspect. Standing behind them, Chantal looked at Jean. Nothing gave her away, except perhaps a faint shadow under her eyes. He no longer knew whether he loved her, now that she had given herself to him. The fallen veil had stripped of its attractions an old dream born in his childhood. He would have given everything to erase the night just past and go on living with his illusions.

‘I need to go and see my father,’ he said.

‘How he will love that!’ the marquise said, with the same conviction as if she had forecast that it would rain that afternoon. ‘I saw him the day before yesterday at Marie-Thérèse’s. He was watering.’

Yes, what else would he have been doing, dear Albert, but watering, planting, pruning trees and cutting back rose bushes? It was all he had left, now that he was without a home, a wife, a son. Life had been excessively unfair to him. And to rub salt into the wound, here was war looming once more, delivering a fatal blow to his life’s hopes. On 11 March Hitler had invaded and annexed Austria. So Ernst had been right. You only had to read
Mein Kampf
. Jean had been expecting the usual litanies of life at Grangeville, but everything was changing. When, after seeing Chantal and her father off on their morning ride, he borrowed the marquis’s old bike to cover the ten kilometres from Malemort to Grangeville, he was assailed by memories. He knew every bend, every farm, every spinney. On the hills he had paced himself on the way up, then thrown caution to the wind on the way down. He remembered a happy time that had posed few more challenging problems than that of keeping fit. Today his legs were like cotton wool, and he laboured half-heartedly along the road. A feeling of unease gripped him, something that would perhaps never leave him, a nausea he refused to identify. At last he saw Monsieur Cliquet’s burr-stone cottage: a closed world, remote from the foolish drama that had taken him by surprise. Albert appeared on the doorstep; he was leaning on a walking stick, having for years refused to use one out of pride. A few steps from his adoptive father, Jean experienced a sudden lightening of spirit: this man was simple and good, narrow-minded but of a rectitude that nothing could break. There was a moment of uncertainty, a hesitation. Albert was not sure that the elegant young man in front of him, in a shirt and tie and wearing a cap of the same cloth as his jacket, was his son. They kissed each other, and Jean recognised the familiar prickle of his father’s moustache and smell of cold caporal tobacco and coffee
mixed with calvados that had been the smell of every morning of his childhood.

‘Have you just arrived?’

‘Yesterday evening.’

‘Where did you sleep?’

‘At the Malemorts'.’

Albert raised his eyebrows. He was not very happy about it. The classes ought not to mix, despite the marquis looking more and more like any other farmer. But how could he make Jean see it? Times were changing; the golden rules of twenty years ago meant nothing to the new generation. Jean saw his father’s unhappy astonishment and tried to explain.

‘They offered so kindly and naturally that I couldn’t say no. And apparently the abbé is away on a pilgrimage.’

‘Then you did the right thing. What about tonight?’

‘I’m staying with them again, as long as you don’t mind.’

‘Me? You must be joking. Your uncle’s still asleep. He’s a late riser. You can say hello on the way back. Come to Madame du Courseau’s with me. They’ll be pleased to see you.’

They walked together to the new villa, completed at long last and standing in the middle of a garden in which Jean recognised his father’s fixations: squares of lawn, ruthlessly symmetrical flowerbeds, saplings in staggered rows, with none of the exuberant, romantic untidiness of English gardens.

‘It’ll be all right in two or three years’ time,’ Albert said, looking for Jean’s approval. ‘But will I see it? You’ve no idea how old I feel since your mother died.’

‘I can imagine.’

They pushed open the gate with its painted plaque: ‘La Michelière.’ So Marie-Thérèse was clear about who she wanted this house to go to after Antoinette left home. The first person they saw was Michel. He was crouching with his hand extended over an ornamental pond,
holding out birdseed to a pair of white pigeons that were flapping their wings on the far side, not daring to fly to him. Jean’s appearance made him stand up.

‘How did you get here? I wanted to write and thank you, but ask you to stop: I’m not ready.’

It took Jean a few seconds to remember that Geneviève had shown the album of drawings to a London gallerist, who had offered Michel a show in October.

‘I can’t do everything at once,’ Michel went on. ‘I’m still working on my engraving, but the most important thing I’m doing is practising for a recital at Pleyel in a year’s time: nothing but Francis Poulenc. He’s going to accompany me himself. You can’t imagine how wonderful he is. From the first moment we met, we understood each other perfectly. He’s writing two new songs for me based on poems by Cavafy … you must know him, the Greek poet …’

‘No, I don’t.’

Michel did not look disappointed. In fact he was not listening, as Jean noticed very quickly. He was only thinking about his recital, in which he had been encouraged by a music critic named Jean Vuillermoz. Vuillermoz was one of the two or three critics who understood modern music. The rest? Old buffoons and failures from the Conservatoire who understood nothing about anything, unless you slipped them an envelope … Albert had moved away, and Jean was Michel’s captive audience as Michel stood at the edge of the pond, looking taller than usual, dressed in beige corduroy trousers and a blue turtleneck sweater. The pair of pigeons flew upwards, circling high above them.

‘They’re lovely, aren’t they?’

‘Yes. I didn’t know you were a pigeon fancier.’

‘I’m learning. Have you ever dreamt you were flying?’

‘Sometimes I do.’

‘Do you know the psychoanalytic explanation of that dream?’

‘No.’

Jean was inordinately relieved to be rescued from a long disquisition on pigeons and dreams by Antoinette’s arrival. She was thinner, and from a distance her silhouette recalled Geneviève’s, with a little less grace and lightness, her very short hair shaping a boy’s face.

‘You pig!’ She ran towards him. ‘You pig, you didn’t tell me you were coming.’

She threw herself at his neck and kissed him on the cheeks with a vehemence that shocked Michel.

‘What’s got into you, Antoinette?’

‘Nothing. I’m just happy to see him.’

‘Me too. We’re all happy …’

Crossly he turned his back on them and went into the house.

‘Come inside. Maman would like to talk to you. I hear you’ve seen Geneviève. How is she? Tell me. Terrific, apparently. Do you know the man who keeps her?’

‘Is that what your mother wants to know?’

‘You idiot! Can you see her asking that question? Come on.’

Albert walked past, ignoring them, pushing a wheelbarrow with a box of petunias in it.

‘I came to help my father.’

‘He can spare you for a minute, and anyway you’re not wearing gardening clothes. What beautiful tweed! Are you rich?’

‘No, utterly broke.’

‘Good. I like you better that way.’

Jean turned away, preferring not to see the lopsided figure of

Albert pushing his wheelbarrow, and let himself be dragged towards the house.

‘Where did you sleep?’ Antoinette asked.

‘At Malemort.’

‘Ah!’

She squeezed his arm violently and was silent. Pigeons flew over their heads and landed at the edge of the pond.

‘Filthy birds,’ Antoinette said. ‘Inedible too. I don’t understand Michel. He spends hours every day taming them. Did you see Chantal?’

‘Of course I did.’

‘Did you sleep with her?’

‘Why are you asking me?’

‘No reason.’

Six months ago Antoinette would never have asked such a question. It made Jean feel uneasy. Piece by piece the edifice was crumbling. Inside the villa several pieces of furniture furtively bought back from the La Sauveté auction reminded him of the old house.

‘Do you remember that chest?’ Antoinette asked.

‘It was in the hall.’

‘I kept the chest of drawers from my bedroom and that low armchair. The rest is new. We had to make a very public show that we were changing our life, that Papa was never coming back.’

‘Where is he?’

‘We don’t know.’

Alerted by the sound of a stranger’s voice, Marie-Thérèse du Courseau was coming downstairs. Like the Marquise de Malemort, her face was unchanged. The absence of grace can work miracles. In a flash she assessed Jean’s transformation, the new maturity of his features, the cut of his jacket and flannel trousers. Instinct warned her that he could no longer be spoken to as he once had been. She kissed him nevertheless, with dry, trembling lips.

‘I’m so glad to see you again.’

Doubtless she genuinely was. Jean did not flinch at the sharp gaze that examined him.

‘Did you see Geneviève in London?’

‘Several times.’

‘She wrote to Michel. She’s terribly keen on his drawings and talked about organising a show for him. All thanks to you.’

Oh, I didn’t do anything, apart from show her the album Michel gave me.’

He had, without being aware of it, touched a sensitive nerve. In return for his supposed admiration for Michel, Marie-Thérèse forgave Jean everything.

‘It’s a pity,’ he said, ‘that he’s more interested in singing than engraving.’

‘He’s so good at both, he’ll do both. Do you want to see his studio? Antoinette, will you take him? I must leave you, I have to go into Dieppe. You’ll stay for lunch, won’t you?’

‘No, I’ll have lunch with my father. But thank you.’

He was well aware that his father had lunch in Marie-Thérèse’s kitchen, and in the evening made do with what Uncle Cliquet cooked up on his cheap portable gas stove while he leafed through that year’s railways almanac.

They found Michel in his studio, with its glass walls that faced the soft north light. An unfinished canvas stood on the easel. Michel smiled in embarrassment.

‘You’ve discovered a secret of mine. I’ve started doing oils. Nobody has seen it yet. It’s
The Pilgrims at Emmaus
. What do you think of my head of Christ?’

‘Very accomplished.’

The face was fine, that of a young man whose deep, calm blue eyes gazed out at them.

‘It’s the butcher’s son from Grangeville,’ Antoinette said.

‘You can’t imagine how serene he is. He can keep still without moving for hours on end in the studio. When I tell him he can stop, he stays here and asks me questions: his mind is still a
tabula rasa
, a fantastic uncultivated territory. He asks me how destiny chose him to be the very image of Christ. I say the same thing to him every time:
it was an intuition, a voice that told me to stop one day as I saw him leaving the boys’ lycée in Dieppe. It could only be him.’

Outside in the corridor Antoinette winked at Jean.

‘Do you know what’s going on?’

‘I think so.’

‘So does Maman. A big shock to begin with. Then she accepted it, and now she prays for him, repeating that the ways of the Lord are not for us to know. You see … religion everywhere.’

‘What about the abbé Le Couec?’

‘He sees absolutely zero. Michel takes communion two or three times a week. Even more elevated souls – and they do exist, forgive me, dear old Father,’ she said, comically pressing her hands together, ‘even more elevated souls would be taken in. Do you remember this bedroom?’

She opened the door into a small room that looked out over the garden.

‘I only came here once.’

‘We made love on the bare mattress.’

‘Yes we did.’

She took him into the sitting room, patted the place beside her on the sofa, and took his hand.