The Foundling Boy Read Online Free PDF Page B

the satisfaction of hearing the engine fire immediately. Menton was waking up in a golden dawn, an oblique light that slid across the oily sea and stroked the trees in the gardens. On the quay fishermen in straw hats were untangling their nets. He eventually found a barber, who shaved him and let him wash. He bought a new shirt and discarded the one he was wearing. Throughout his journey he had not burdened himself with anything: shirts, socks, undershorts, toothbrushes marked his route, tossed inditches or available rubbish bins. It was harder to find somewhere to buy perfume at this early hour, but he came across a shop that advertised ‘goods from Paris’. Lacking in expertise, he relied on the saleswoman’s advice, then looked for a florist’s and ordered an enormous bouquet of white roses. The thought of burdening his Bugatti with roses threw him for a moment.
    ‘Would you like me to have them delivered?’ asked the florist, a small brown-haired woman with a downy upper lip.
    ‘That’s not a bad idea. With this package, if you don’t mind. Be careful, it’s perfume.’
    ‘Do you have a card?’
    He found one in his wallet and wrote carefully and legibly,
    My little Geneviève, these flowers will express all my affection much better than I could do it myself. Here also is the perfume you asked for. If you don’t care for it you can exchange it; I’ve left the name of the shop on the packet. Your papa, who kisses you.
    Feeling much calmer, he headed west once more and drove as far as the outskirts of Roquebrune, to the restaurant where he had stopped the previous evening. On a chair outside, still dressed in his grubby singlet, the patron was plucking a chicken.
    ‘Hello!’ Antoine said, without getting out of the car.
    ‘All right? So, your daughter is well?’
    ‘Much better, thanks.’
    ‘Are you eating with us?’
    ‘It’s a bit early and I’ve a long way to go. Another time. I’ll be back.’
    ‘Always in a hurry. Like a fart in a fan factory, you are.’
    ‘That’s life!’ said Antoine, who would never have thought he could slip so easily into this sort of badinage.
    ‘With a puss like mine, I don’t know that there’s any more life tobe had. But you’re right to make the most of it. On your way … see you again, and try not to have to scrape yourself off the road in that thing!’
    ‘Don’t worry, I’m a careful driver.’
    He let in the clutch and the Bugatti leapt westwards down the coast, only stopping when it reached the outskirts of Saint-Tropez and the open-air café. Lounging in a wicker armchair, Marie-Dévote was reading a magazine with a cat on her lap. She turned her head and smiled.
    ‘Back already? Did you get bored?’
    ‘I’m hungry.’
    ‘It’s not really lunchtime yet. Will you be happy with a bowl of bouillabaisse?’
    ‘I’m sure I will.’
    He sat down under the arbour, facing the beach, while she disappeared into the kitchen. A light breeze was blowing, raising ripples that expired on the white sand. He would happily have gone for a swim but the memory of his white, unappealing body disgusted him. Marie-Dévote put a steaming bowl and a carafe of Var wine in front of him.
    ‘It’s quiet here,’ he said.
    ‘On Sundays it gets busy.’
    ‘What day is it today?’
    ‘Friday. What are you doing that’s so interesting you can’t remember what day it is?’
    ‘Nothing,’ Antoine admitted.
    ‘Doesn’t your wife say anything?’
    ‘No.’
    He wanted to ask her to sit on the corner of the table the way she had the day before, and swing her leg and show him her knee, but standing in front of him, hands on hips and feet apart, she seemed much stronger and more solid than he remembered her. Good health, sunshine, the men she had to serve and whose jokes she tolerated,had made her grown-up at twenty. But it was more than that: she had ripened, she was ripe like a luscious Provençal fruit, with that directness of expression and rough candour that women