‘Lastly, there is another thing,’ Salah said in a different voice, as if he wanted to inject a more serious note of warning into his words. ‘Yes, one other … I doubt you will understand, but you’ll pass on the message, I’m sure. You are to warn your friend, “Baron” Palfy, that he is involved in a much more dangerous game than a person of his sort should be. If he weren’t your friend, he would already have found himself in serious trouble. Some well-informed people have granted him a reprieve. But it is only a reprieve.’
Salah saw that his words had disturbed Jean, and he placed his hand on his arm to reassure him.
‘Don’t worry, it’s nothing to do with you. Now let us talk about something else. When this war is over and Monseigneur and I come back to Europe — or perhaps I alone — I should like to see you. Paris and London are both enormous. We could pass each other a hundred times without seeing each other.’
Jean thought hard. The only lasting affections that he could count on were those of the abbé Le Couec and Antoinette. Albert would not survive a war that had insulted his only article of faith: peace at any price.
‘I think you could always write to Antoinette du Courseau, Geneviève’s sister. She will know where I am.’
Salah wrote the address in a notebook.
‘Do not let us lose sight of each other, my dear Jean. How the time here has flown past! I’ve hardly seen you. We haven’t talked about anything. I would have liked to share my admiration for a marvellous poet with you … You must have heard of him, and you must not make fun of me because I am completely self-taught. I have had to go a long way on my own down a path along which you were guided at a very young age.’
‘Who do you mean?’
‘Paul-Jean Toulet.’
‘I’ve never read him.’
Salah raised his arms.
‘You fortunate man! You have a delightful writer to discover. I envy you. Tomorrow I’ll send a copy of his Counter-rhymes to you at the agency. I’ll leave you the joy of hunting through bookshops for the rest: The Stripling Girl, The Misses La Mortagne, Monsieur du Paur, Public Figure. Reading him, you will think of me, and above the fray we shall maintain a Touletian friendship.’
A bellhop appeared in front of Salah.
‘Monsieur … The prince is asking for you. Urgently.’
Jean walked out of the hotel. Night was falling. He did not know where to go in this elegant and handsome town that was so cold in the evening, without secrets and so aloof that to encounter it in the darkness was to feel immediately uneasy. His solitary evenings usually ended in a small restaurant at the port where Palfy sometimes joined him, but mostly he returned to his hotel room to read. He had started on a reading list of epic proportions: Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, Roger Martin du Gard’s The Thibaults, Jules Romains’ Men of Goodwill. Many of his nights were now spent with his nose in a book, and whether excited or disappointed, he felt that his life was gaining a new dimension as his curiosity was awakened and he measured the narrowness of his own experiences against other destinies of so many different stamps. At twenty, he felt he had seen nothing. His work at La Vigie, his six months in London, his job at the agency were dead ends. He would have given anything to go to Lebanon with the prince, and then maybe to Egypt. At least war — if there was going to be war — would make some space and movement. For a short time that evening he wished it would come, in the form in which it is often imagined by naïve eyes: a masculine adventure that disrupts the monotony of a cowardly and gloomy world in which boys of his age encountered only brick walls to bang their heads against.
Palfy did not turn up at the restaurant, and when Jean called Madeleine the telephone rang vainly in an empty apartment. He left a message at the Carlton, went to bed, read, and slept. The next day Palfy remained untraceable, but when he called Madeleine again she answered immediately.
‘Yesterday night? I must have gone out for five minutes to get cigarettes. I don’t leave the apartment for anything else, as you know. It must have been you I heard — around nine? — as I had my key in the door. I ran, but I was too late. I was afraid it might be Palfy. He would have been furious.’
‘Why?’
‘He likes me to be at home then.’
‘Oh. Okay … Listen, I need to see him, the sooner the better. Tell him, will you?’
‘Mm. Jean … do you think he’s really a baron?’
‘He’s as much a baron as I am.’
‘You’re a baron too! I thought so.’
He did not have the heart to disillusion her. That evening, before dinner, he went for a walk by the port. A new liner was waiting out to sea, and launches were leaving, loaded with passengers. The exodus was under way, still hardly perceptible but clear enough for it to be unmistakable nevertheless. Jean mingled with the other onlookers and friends of travellers gathering on the quay. The yellow Hispano-Suiza appeared, driven by a white chauffeur with Salah seated beside him. It stopped in front of the customs building. A nurse came forwards, pushing a wheelchair. Salah and the chauffeur sat the prince carefully in it. Geneviève followed, wearing a light-coloured dress and a beret, with a travelling coat over one arm and a jewellery bag in her other hand. Jean had time to register her lightly made-up face and see its sadness and disarray. How would she survive so far from London and her friends? The group moved towards the police and customs building. They emerged again on the other side of the barrier, and two porters lifted the chair into a launch at whose bow there stood a black sailor in a white turban and uniform. Geneviève turned round to look at the crowd gathered on the quay. If she had known he was there, she would have been able to make him out among the other anxious and curious faces. The launch cast off and pushed back, helped by the sailor at the bow with his gaff. Salah stood next to the prince, one hand resting on the back of the wheelchair, contemplating the diminishing quay, the town switching on its first lights, France and Europe in their last days of peace.
‘The rats are leaving the sinking ship,’ someone said behind Jean.
Other cars were arriving, bringing their passengers: a Cadillac, a Rolls-Royce, a Mercedes, a Bentley. The yellow Hispano-Suiza started up. The chauffeur had taken off his jacket and was smoking a cigarette.
Jean called Madeleine. She sounded anxious. No, the ‘baron’ was not in Cannes. In the society column of the Éclaireur du Soir she had seen a photo of him in a dinner jacket at a reception at the Casino de la Méditerranée at Nice. Perhaps he had stayed on to spend the day there. She also needed to see him urgently. Jean walked the streets of Cannes for a while, alone and lost. He was reluctant to return to his hotel room, for he knew that reading would not banish the two images that had suddenly forced their way back to disturb the peace of mind he thought he had found: Geneviève going away from him towards the Middle East, and Chantal, her long hair tumbling across the pillow, framing her sleeping face. Running away had made no difference. Everything was still there within him, and the one person he would have liked to confide in lived cooped up in Grangeville. Writing to her might alleviate the obscure, nameless pain that he felt.
Dear Antoinette,
Midnight. I have no one to talk to. I wish you were here. I want mussels, cider and apples. I dream of a green field. I saw your sister just now, boarding a ship for Lebanon. It hurt to see her go, as if I had lost someone dear to me. It seems impossible to deny that I’m as attached to the du Courseaus (not all of them!) as I am to my own family. A question I hardly dare ask: where is Chantal? Do you know? With love, Jean