of an English novel; one day a swindler, the next a successful wheeler-dealer. Beside him Jean measured his own clumsiness and naivety, discovering that life is made up of such differences: one child is born into a glittering, false milieu that gives him a passport for the rest of his existence; another, born in a caretaker’s lodge at Grangeville in Normandy, will always feel the weight on his shoulders of his humble origins as the child of a washerwoman and a gardener, and have to discover everything by himself. The fact that Jean had known his real mother’s name since Antoinette’s revelation at Yssingeaux – Geneviève du Courseau – changed nothing. Only Albert and Jeanne counted. The couple had brought him up with strict principles, boring virtues and flat homilies that had proved useless in the present circumstances. As for Geneviève, she had offered him only the most ambiguous feelings. He was once again hanging on to Palfy’s coat-tails, as he kept the man with two sticks company.
‘My sister keeps house for me,’ the arthritic old man said, each step producing a grimace of pain. ‘She leaves me a few francs for my tobacco. I’ve been rolling my own since 1914, shag, nothing but shag. And enough to order an Amer Picon before lunch. What do you drink?’
‘Champagne or vodka,’ Palfy answered.
‘I’ve drunk vodka … in the past. No taste. Champagne is for marriages, christenings and the sick … Here we are … This is it.’
He jabbed his stick at a massive, freshly painted door. A mermaid’s tail in gilded bronze served as a knocker beneath the iron grille. The shutters were closed.
‘There won’t be anybody home,’ the old man said. ‘They’ll all be at the parade. You’d be better off coming back – and making yourselves more presentable. They won’t let you in like that. It’s a place with a good reputation. It belongs to the diocese.’
In the distance the band struck up the first bars of ‘Le Téméraire’. The companies were marching past the general.
‘It’s over,’ Jean said. ‘They’re returning to barracks.’
Palfy lifted the knocker. The little old man stamped his foot and banged the pavement with his stick.
‘They’re not there! And they won’t let you in anyway.’
Having led them there, he was regretting his kindness. Good heavens! Two workers did not seriously think they were going to slake their appetites in a house that had seen Clermont’s political and municipal elite pass through its doors, not to mention distinguished men of the cloth and numerous respectable husbands and fathers.
‘They won’t let you in, I tell you!’
A creaking warned them that someone was sliding the grille aside to observe them. The door opened a fraction. A birdlike head, thin and with a long curved nose and jutting chin, crowned by a meagre but severe bun, appeared.
‘Now look, Monsieur Petitlouis, you know perfectly well that your sister does not want to see you coming here any more. Be reasonable. You’re past it now!’
Monsieur Petitlouis, choked with fury, banged his walking stick again.
‘My sister? Bugger my sister. And you too, you blooming madam.’
Palfy inserted a foot between the door and frame. The woman saw it and tried to force it back.
‘The establishment is closed.’
‘Not to me,’ he said.
‘The staff are watching the parade.’
‘We’ll both wait for them together then.’
‘You’ll wait outside …’
And more energetically than expected, she let fly a kick that connected with Palfy’s shin and dislodged him. The door shut again.
‘Didn’t I tell you you wouldn’t get in?’ chuckled the ghastly old man.
Through the grille the woman called out that she would call the police if they continued to make a scene in a street of respectable citizens. But Palfy was not to be deterred. He knocked again with the mermaid’s tail. The grille slid half-open.
‘What are you wanting now?’ the haughty, shrill voice demanded.
‘The correct form is, “What do you want?” but it’s a small detail and we shan’t let ourselves get hung up on grammar. I want to see Monsieur Michette. I have a message for him.’
‘Monsieur Michette is doing his duty. He’s gone to war.’
‘Allow me to point out to you that the war is over.’
‘Madame Michette will be here shortly.’
The grille slammed shut. It was clear this time that the door would stay closed. The assistant madam had her orders. Monsieur Petitlouis almost burst with pleasure. He spat into a checked handkerchief. Have I mentioned that on this particular day in July 1940 the temperature had risen to 31 degrees in the shade, overwhelming a town far more used to a temperate climate? Jean and Palfy had been running. Their throats were parched. Monsieur Petitlouis offered to take them to a bistro where they served home-distilled pastis, on condition naturally that they bought him a glass.
‘My sister will never know!’
He laughed so hard he almost choked again. Jean looked anxiously at Palfy. The night before had left them with no more than a few francs in their pockets, hardly enough to buy half a baguette and some mortadella. As the reader will have realised, Palfy was not a man to let such a detail bother him. One on each side of the arthritic old devil, they reached a café at the bottom of the street. Back from the parade, the patron, in a black jacket and homburg hat, was raising the shutter. He served them at the counter, philosophising about the morning’s spectacle.
‘Well, Monsieur Petitlouis, you really missed something at that parade! You have to hand it to our army and how it’s put itself back together, two weeks after the armistice. The Germans won’t want to brush with them a second time, I tell you. You can see it in our chaps’ faces: they’re raring to go. It’s the government that’s not. A fine bunch of traitors in the pay of Adolf, I tell you … That armistice business was all for show, with a fat lot of cash changing hands to stop us pulling off another Marne like we did in ’14, on the Loire …’
Monsieur Petitlouis agreed. Traitors were everywhere. Customers were arriving, red in the face and breathless. They listened to the patron, nodding or choosing their words carefully to express mild doubts. The pastis was served in cups, in case a policeman came past and decided to apply the new law on the consumption of spirits. Jean kept an eye on the street. In the distance he caught sight of about a dozen women, led by a matron in a blue skirt, white blouse and red hat, walking up the middle of the street. They fanned themselves with little paper tricolours, and as they passed the café he saw, sashaying in the middle of the group, a black woman with straightened hair, her back hollow and her buttocks stretching the pink satin of her skirt. She reminded Jean of the girls from the Antilles who had brought up Antoinette and Michel du Courseau and simultaneously been their father’s bit on the side. And what an odd coincidence: one of them, Victoire Sanpeur, had come to live at Clermont after her departure from La Sauveté. He decided to tell that part of the story to Monsieur Petitlouis, who was sipping his pastis like a greedy child.
‘You really knew Victoire!’ the old hog exclaimed. ‘You were lucky. They say she’s still living with her député. She comes back sometimes to see her old girlfriends. She’s been known not to turn down the odd customer, even now. For fun – know what I mean? Ah yes, that’s a real establishment, a proper family if you’re with the Michettes. Not one of those nasty whorehouses where they chuck the girls in the street when they’re a bit past it. No. They teach them a trade, how to spell and use a knife and fork; then they find them a job somewhere …’
The women walked past, looking straight ahead and ignoring the customers’ ribald comments. Madame Michette glared at those responsible for the coarsest comments. Two girls giggled. Palfy ordered another round of pastis and made a sign to Jean.
‘We’ll