The Foundling Boy. Michel Deon

table, she bit her lip. They drank warm white wine and nibbled slices of soft sausage that were supposed to get them in the mood. Antoine was looking forward to enjoying himself when the bad boys and their molls had left the dance floor, but no one was brave enough to follow them and the guide gathered his tourists together to go. The tour was over. The bus discharged its dazed and exhausted night owls at Place de l’Opéra, which was deserted except for the street-sweeping machines sluicing it clean with great jets of water. The Swedish woman looked around for Antoine, but he was already gone, walking quickly up towards Trinité and then via Rue Blanche back to Pigalle, suddenly anxious for his car, which he had left with the hood down in the fine drizzle that had started to fall over the city, varnishing its empty, dirty streets strewn with dustbins. Girls leaving nightclubs as they closed ran, pushing up their coat collars. The blue Bugatti was where he had left it, its handsome leather upholstery soaked and its steering wheel dripping. Antoine dried both with an old raincoat and set off slowly in search of the Porte d’Italie, to which a policeman on a bicycle eventually directed him. Day was breaking. He shivered in his still-wet cockpit, but the engine’s organ-pipe sound was on song with such evident pleasure that Antoine kept going to Fontainebleau, cutting deep into the frosty forest that sparkled in the morning light. On the main square he found a brasserie and ordered a bowl of coffee, as he waited for a barber and a shirt-maker to open their doors. He felt pleasantly light-headed at the change he had wrought in an itinerary that for ten years had been immutable. He had a pang of regret about the Swedish woman – the warm skin between her stocking and knickers had seemed very welcoming. But one cannot have everything, and at the other end of the Nationale Sept4 there was Marie-Dévote and little Toinette and at Roquebrune Mireille Cece, the daughter of poor Léon. It was already plenty. Antoine was no longer twenty years old. He even admitted to being fifty-six, and though he had lost weight at Marie-Dévote’s express request – despite her shamelessly filling out herself – he could no longer lay claim to a young man’s adventures. Shaved and roused by coffee, he set out again and made Lyon without stopping, where he slept for twelve hours and opened his eyes on a deep, swirling fog. A pea-souper, thick and dirty and clinging, had come in through the window and was raking his throat. He could not see as far as the end of his bed. The foggy moods of the Saône and Rhône were joining forces. Antoine remembered the nickname given to Lyon by Henri Béraud: Mirelingue-la-brumeuse.5 The Lyonnais, accustomed to this miasma blanketing their city, seemed not even to notice it. Antoine eventually found the Vienne road, and immediately the fog lifted, revealing the Rhône valley, green and grey and lovely under the winter sun.

      At Aix he halted outside Charles’s garage, under the sign saying Chez Antoine. Charles no longer got his hands dirty, and instead oversaw his mechanics from a small glass office which he filled with caporal tobacco smoke while reading books about the war. Hearing the Bugatti’s engine, he came straight out.

      ‘All right, Captain? Well, well, the new one, eh?’

      He spread his arms wide, as if the Bugatti was going to jump up and hug him. The engine was idling, and he put his ear to the bonnet to hear the tick-over.

      ‘Terrific!’ he said. ‘Really terrific.’

      ‘Twenty-four valves, single overhead cam. Like a watch: I averaged 112 between Lyon and Aix. In October I’ll have the 50: double overhead cam and supercharger.’

      ‘Ye gods! … This one must do at least 200 an hour.’

      ‘Only 175,’ Antoine said modestly.

      They drank a pastis together, standing by the car, while a mechanic changed the plugs and the engine oil. Charles insisted that the captain dine with him.

      ‘We have business to discuss,’ he said.

      Antoine shuddered inwardly. The most recent warnings of his notary at Dieppe were fresh in his mind, and as people only ever discussed business with him with one purpose in mind, he was on his guard. The garage was big enough as it was; and he would say the same to Marie-Dévote, who was planning a new wing to her hotel, and to Mireille, who wanted to add a long terrace to her restaurant that would face Cap Martin and the sea.

      Charles, not imagining for a second that anyone might want to run from his company, asked anxiously, ‘How’s the little one? Nothing serious, I hope?’

      ‘Nothing at all. She’s as right as rain.’

      Antoine’s heart beat faster. He thought of Toinette, the little girl he had had with Marie-Dévote, so slight and skinny, who had just recovered from typhoid fever. Charles, who for some time had known everything that went on in his captain’s life, added, ‘What about Mireille?’

      ‘She doesn’t often write. She prefers me to visit.’

      ‘It’s understandable.’

      Night was falling.

      ‘I’ve still got a good way to go,’ Antoine said.

      ‘What a shame! Jeannette would have made us tomato soup.’

      ‘Tomato soup?’ Antoine repeated, seized by weakness.

      ‘I can send a lad over to let her know.’

      ‘No!’ Antoine said, agitated at the thought of all these banquets costing him so dearly. ‘Next time!’

      ‘As you like, Captain.’

      The Bugatti was ready. A mechanic started the engine, with one eye on the dipstick. Antoine shook Charles’s hand and sat at the wheel.

      ‘Till the next time!’

      Charles turned to the mechanic, who still held Antoine’s tip in the palm of his hand.

      ‘A little beauty!’ he said with a wink.

      ‘A real beauty,’ the mechanic said thoughtfully. ‘It would take me two years of working without eating or drinking to afford one of those.’

      The Bugatti was already gone, leaving behind it a bluish trail of oil. Antoine reached Saint-Tropez two hours later in a cold, cloudless night. The hotel was extensive now, with twenty or so rooms, a lounge, a large dining room and an enormous kitchen. There was no off-season any more, and during the summer Parisians who did not fear the sun, and were sometimes even incautious about going out in it, occupied the rooms vacated by the painters, who preferred the months of winter, bathed in its limpid light.

      The hotel’s door opened, and Marie-Dévote appeared with her back to the light. Her southern beauty made the most of a certain plumpness, a bigger waist and more splendid bust, and Antoine felt happier the moment he set eyes on her and she ran towards him, kissing him tenderly on both cheeks while he still sat in the Bugatti’s cockpit, the engine ticking as it cooled.

      ‘I was longing for you to come! Come inside quickly, it’s cold out here.’

      He followed her into the kitchen, where, since her mother had died, one of Théo’s aunts had taken over, an immense and rather strong-smelling woman, a genius at making fish soup, tomatoes à la provençale and pissaladière. He was cold through from the drive, having come all the way with the hood down, and they served him a hot supper there and then on the kitchen table.

      ‘When I’ve warmed up, I’ll go up and kiss Toinette. How is she?’

      ‘Wonderful. And first in school too. This evening she came home with two more good marks.’

      ‘Is Théo in bed?’

      ‘He’s in Marseille. He’s coming home tomorrow or the day after. He’s buying himself a new boat to take the Parisians on trips next summer.’

      Antoine was content. Tonight there would be no complications, none of the innuendos that irritated him so much. His cares instantly slipped away, he thanked aunt Marie with a gentle slap on her bottom, and took the stairs that led to Toinette’s bedroom two at a time. She was asleep in a four-poster bed draped in pink silk, and was every inch his daughter: pale skin, blond hair with a tinge of chestnut, and long, blue-veined hands.