The Foundling Boy by Michel Déon Read Free Book Online Page B

du Courseaus lived so complacently. He grasped Jean’s hand and squeezed it in his own.
    ‘You see … I didn’t know any of that, and I’m very grateful to you for telling me. Do you like secrets?’
    ‘What’s a secret?’
    ‘Something you only share with one person.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘All right … you and I are going to have a secret. Michel won’t bepunished for his naughtiness, but you and I will be friends for ever. We’ll never argue. We’ll tell each other everything, and when one of us has a sadness he’ll tell the other one, who’ll cheer him up.’
    Jean watched Antoine, concentrating carefully. He did not understand everything he was saying, but the friendly sound of his voice made enough of an impression on him that afterwards this scene never left his memory, and nor did Antoine’s affectionate hug that accompanied it and smelt of cigars, calvados and embrocation. As Jean was leaving, Antoine called him back.
    ‘Let me look at you again. You remind me of someone, but I don’t know who.’
    ‘Someone?’
    ‘Yes, we’ll try and find out who. Goodbye, Jean. Come up and see me when you get bored. We’ll talk.’
     
    In September, from his bedroom, Antoine followed the days’ rhythm. The rose bushes faded to make way for autumn flowers. One morning, the last horse they kept in the stables, which took Marie-Thérèse in her tilbury to church at Grangeville on Sundays, was led away on a long rein behind a knacker’s cart. A few minutes later, Madame du Courseau appeared at the gates at the wheel of a Model T Ford, in which she turned two circles in the drive before parking in the loose box belonging to the Bugatti. Antoine rang his bell. Marie-Thérèse appeared, her cheeks pink, a little out of breath.
    ‘Did you see?’ she said.
    ‘I saw, and you have three minutes to take your heap of junk out of my Bugatti’s garage and put it somewhere else.’
    ‘But the Bugatti’s not there!’
    ‘All the more reason. Would I put another woman in your bed when you’re not there?’
    ‘I must say I think you’re being extremely fussy to include a car in your respect for the conventions.’
    ‘Then you respect them too!’
    ‘I knew you were attached to your car … but to such an extent … more than to your wife, more than to your children …’
    ‘Have I ever specified the degrees of my passion? No. So stop making things up and go and get the woodshed behind the outhouse cleared out. You can park your dinosaur there.’
    Marie-Thérèse did as she was told, and the Model T Ford did not cohabit with the Bugatti, which returned from Molsheim one afternoon with a mechanic in white overalls at the wheel. Antoine, who had been brought down to the ground floor on a chair, studied his car, its engine still ticking from the road and its bodywork spattered with squashed mosquitoes. He had it washed as he sat there, with a sponge, warm water and hose. The blue paintwork and spoked wheels gleamed in the warm afternoon light. Everyone came to watch: Adèle, Jeanne, Marie-Thérèse, Albert, Jean, Michel, Antoinette and two other servants, whose names I shan’t bother with because they were only casual staff. Hands caressed the bodywork, the chrome and the oak steering wheel, felt the still-warm bonnet secured with a leather strap, the gear lever and oil pump lever. Antoine managed to squeeze himself into the passenger seat, and the mechanic took the wheel again. They did a lap of the park to the sound of eight cylinders firing like organ pipes, raising a delicate cloud of white dust behind them. When they arrived back at the front steps, the abbé Le Couec was waiting, a handkerchief in the neck of his cassock.
    ‘The golden calf!’ he said in his rich, gravelly voice. ‘How we love the golden calf! And the sinners they do increase … Pity the heavens as they empty!’
    He nevertheless helped Antoine to extricate himself from the cockpit and get back upstairs to his room, where they remained alone