The Foundling Boy. Michel Deon

that went on at La Sauveté. Marie-Thérèse was only waiting for Antoine to come back so that war could be declared. He had not got out of the car before she came running to him.

      ‘Have you seen? A week! A whole week just to put up that scaffolding. We’ll be just in time to get the building stopped.’

      ‘Let’s plant trees instead.’

      ‘They’ll take fifty years to grow.’

      ‘Not if you plant pines or eucalyptuses.’

      ‘They’re not trees from around here.’

      ‘Then let’s put up with it.’

      Marie-Thérèse shrugged angrily, turned on her heel and went back inside to scold the new Martiniquan, a Mademoiselle Artémis Pompon, who worked in the laundry, the children having grown too big to have a nurse. Artémis aroused no feelings in Antoine: she was a skinny nag, always barefoot in the house, with a disappointing bosom and a dropping lower lip. She was nevertheless a dutiful girl, who had been told that her employer would sleep with her for the same price as her predecessor, and had appeared on her first morning, giggling, at Antoine’s library door, where he, in his dressing gown and smoking the first cigar of the day, had received her with astonishment.

      ‘Artémis, you are mistaken. I want peace and quiet in my house. Go to bed. You need to rest. I know Madame treats you badly, but there’s nothing to be done, it’s the way she is.’

      Satisfied – sometimes even beyond his capacity – he now preferred to devote his early mornings to reading, so much so that in a bold step, uncharacteristic of his conservative nature, he had bought in a sale at a Dieppe bookseller’s a complete edition of Alexandre Dumas, whose pleasure he had not yet managed to exhaust.

       4

      About fifty people had crowded onto the pavement facing the offices of La Vigie: pensioners with their caps on straight, young workers with theirs jauntily over their ears, children. No women. But many bicycles stood next to their owners, one in particular, that of Jean Arnaud, red and with derailleur gears and racing handlebars taped up with gutta-percha. Whenever an employee emerged through the glass door and placed his ladder against the wall beneath the blackboard above the exhibition area, there was an ‘ahh’ of satisfaction from the waiting crowd. Calmly, in a round, well-turned hand, the man wrote in chalk ‘Stage: Nice–Gap. 1st André Leducq, 2nd Bonduel, 3rd Benoît Faure’. In the overall placings, of course, Leducq had retained the yellow jersey. The crowd dispersed, disappointed, almost without comment. Reawakened in 1930 by the return to a system of national teams, French chauvinism was bored by a victory that lacked drama. That André Leducq, a great sprinter but lamentable climber, should have won a mountain stage proved that, unless the dice were loaded, it was all over. The 1932 Tour, in stark contrast to the previous year, when there had been victory for the great Antonin Magne combined with a heroic sacrifice by his young team-mate René Vietto on the Col du Lautaret, would finish in tedium. Jean got on his bike and set off for Grangeville, this time climbing the hill without standing up on his pedals. He had been feeling on top form since the beginning of the Tour, and his bike, a Peugeot, was worthy of a champion. He had bought it at Easter with his savings, supplemented by two postal orders from the mysterious prince. Nearly thirteen years old, he looked sixteen or seventeen; he was five foot seven, with long legs and a well-developed upper body. Jeanne now bought his clothes at the men’s department in the Nouvelles Galeries. The term before, he had liberated himself from Madame du Courseau’s yoke by starting to ride to school at Dieppe, refusing a lift with Michel in her new Ford V8, still rather high-bodied and old-fashioned, but powerful and silent. He preferred his bike, however steep the hill back up to Grangeville. His height earned him the frequent (cautious) mockery of his schoolfriends, who themselves wisely remained below average in that respect. Jean stood up to their meanness without pleasure. He recognised Michel’s sly handiwork in these skirmishes: in the year above Jean, he was the one anonymously orchestrating the taunts and rallying cries. Less innocent now, Jean began to keep a tally. One day he would put an end to Michel’s campaign. His fists itched, but for now Michel continued to enjoy the aura of his family. He was the brother of the delicious Antoinette, with whom Jean’s excitements were becoming more and more specific. He was also the son of Antoine du Courseau, with whom he, Jean, had made a secret pact that was still in force, despite Antoine’s frequent absences. And he would have wounded his parents deeply by attacking one of the du Courseaus who, despite their accumulating difficulties, retained a certain magnificence for Jeanne and Albert.