As Jean approached the village he caught sight of a Renault Primaquatre belonging to the gendarmerie, which had stopped a car. A sergeant was asking for the driver’s and passengers’ papers. Jean slowed down and cycled past them, sitting up, hands on the flat of his handlebars.
The café called Les Amis de Tôtes sat with its terrace at a crossroads. Jean parked his bike, and ignoring the pinochle players and two pensioners sitting idly outside counting the cars coming from Dieppe and Rouen, went inside. He saw Monsieur Carnac’s carnation instantly, a white fleck on the lapel of a man tucked away reading L’Ouest-Éclair in a corner of the room. He walked over to the table, gave the password, and received the expected answer.
‘Would you like a drink?’ Monsieur Carnac asked.
‘A shandy, please.’
The waitress poured beer and lemonade together and put the glass down in front of Jean, who sipped politely, even though he was very thirsty.
‘How are your parents?’ Monsieur Carnac said.
Jean immediately lost his composure.
‘Do you know them?’
Monsieur Carnac glowered as if the whole world was listening, despite the room being empty. There was only the waitress, wiping a table near the door with a tired and dirty cloth that left spiral-shaped smears on the slate.
‘How are your parents?’ Monsieur Carnac repeated more firmly.
‘Very well, thank you. They’re expecting you tonight.’
‘Drink your beer and we’ll be off.’
‘There are policemen stopping cars on the road out of Tôtes.’
‘I haven’t got a car. I borrowed a bicycle in Rouen.’
‘I’ve got a bike too.’
‘How far is it?’
‘Thirty kilometres.’
Monsieur Carnac frowned.
‘You can take my wheel.’
‘Take your wheel?’
Monsieur Carnac clearly knew nothing about cycling terminology. Jean’s explanation received an incredulous reaction. How could staying glued to the wheel in front help you if you were the unlucky rider pedalling behind?
‘All right,’ Monsieur Carnac said, ‘let’s see how it goes. If I need to rest, we’ll have to stop.’
Jean decided not to explain that to stop, far from helping, was extremely bad for your hamstrings. He was surprised to see Monsieur Carnac pick up a milk can and a small loaf of bread from the chair next to him and remove the carnation from his buttonhole. Jean finished his shandy standing up and followed him outside, where several bicycles including his own were parked.
‘That’s a nuisance. I can’t remember what the bike I borrowed looks like.’
‘Didn’t your friend tell you what make it was?’
‘I didn’t borrow it from a friend, to tell you the truth, but from someone I don’t know who is probably, at this moment, combing the streets of Rouen and pouring his heart out to a policeman.’
‘Did you steal it?’ Jean said, horrified at the idea of a theft that affected him personally. The bank robberies and corruption of government ministers that Albert enumerated every evening left him cold. But a bicycle thief was a man without soul or scruples, who deserved the severest punishment.
Monsieur Carnac read Jean’s indignation on his face and hastened to reassure him.
‘I left a car in exchange, whose registration number the police know only too well.’
‘Oh I see!’
He didn’t see anything, but it didn’t matter. So long as the abbé Le Couec was involved, everything was all right. To locate the right bicycle all he had to do was decipher the compulsory registration plates above the excise stamp. Monsieur Carnac knew nothing about traffic regulations, so Jean pretended to tie his shoelace in order to crouch down and inspect the plates, among which he found one from Rouen. Monsieur Carnac hung his can of milk on the handlebars and fixed his loaf of bread on the front carrier before getting on clumsily. Night was falling as they left Tôtes, and a moment later found themselves halted by the beam of a flashlight.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Home, where else?’ Monsieur Carnac said in an accent that was more Norman than the Normans.
The sergeant came closer and shone his flashlight on the can of milk and bread, which seemed to reassure him.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘On your way.’
The cool evening air reinvigorated Jean, but he felt as though he was dragging a heavy weight on an invisible thread behind him. Monsieur Carnac wheezed and spluttered and spat and loosed torrents of swear words, threatening continuously to get off and continue on foot, reduced to fury by the slightest gradient. The return journey took them more than two hours, and when they arrived outside the rectory they glimpsed through the lighted window the figure of the abbé Le Couec pacing up and down, his hands clasped behind his back. He opened the door in such a state of emotion that he could hardly speak as he enfolded Jean tightly in his arms.
‘Jean, my dear Jean, I was afraid … I should never have forgiven myself.’
Monsieur Carnac came in, carrying his bread and milk can. Yann appeared and shook his friend’s hand, before taking Jean by the shoulders and looking him squarely in the face.
‘My boy,’ he said, ‘we owe you a great debt, and one day it will be repaid! I won’t ever forget it.’
‘We might make a start by hiding the bike,’ Monsieur Carnac interrupted. ‘I stole it in Rouen.’
‘Stole?’ the abbé said.
Jean looked at Monsieur Carnac anxiously. He was a short man with thick hair that was already going grey, though he was certainly no more than forty. He looked like someone with a short fuse, hot-tempered and violent, but his face, weathered by the sun and creased with very mobile wrinkles, expressed a ruthless determination.
‘Yes, stole! One pinched bike is worth a man’s skin, I’d say.’
The abbé crossed himself and murmured a few almost unintelligible words.
‘Come on, my dear abbé,’ Yann said, ‘let’s not panic … the cause justifies the means.’
‘I would like to be as certain of that as you always are.’