His childhood.
Bejardy had lain down on the bed and was resting his feet on the padded bedposts so as not to get the satin bedspread dirty. Louis stayed standing, by the window.
“So here it is. I need you to do something for me. You’re taking a little trip to England.”
•
In the living room, sitting at the low table, Brossier and Odile were absorbed in their chess game. Odile had acquired a taste for it under Mary’s influence; it was Mary who had taught her and Louis how the pieces moved.
Bejardy and Louis followed the game in silence. After ten or fifteen minutes, Odile said checkmate. Brossier was not a very expert player either.
“A formidable opponent, our little Mrs. Memling,” Brossier said with a smile.
•
Outside, they walked in the direction of Porte d’Auteuil. The streets were deserted. Now and then a bus would pass, and its whir would dissipate in the sunlight.
They felt light, as if they were breathing in the open air again after a long time underwater. Maybe, Louis thought, it was because winter was over. He remembered back to December, leaving his barracks with his soggy shoes. The swishy watery noise they made with every step gave him the feeling of being permanently bogged down. Now he would happily run barefoot on the dry sidewalk.
“What are you thinking about?” Odile asked him, taking his arm.
“We’re going to England. I’ll explain…”
“To England?”
She was unfazed. This afternoon, anything seemed possible to her.
They eventually reached the edge of the Bois de Boulogne. Loud groups of people were making their way to the racetrack entrance.
“Let’s take a boat ride,” Louis said.
On their way to the lake, they changed their mind. The wind gently stirring the leaves and scattering the children’s laughs and screams, the sun, the prospect of this trip to England — it all made them lazy. They sat down at an outdoor table at the Auteuil farm and ordered two cherry milks.
They didn’t talk. Odile rested her head on Louis’s shoulder and drank her white grenadine through a straw. Down on the riding path, an Amazonian brunette riding a spotted gray horse passed slowly by, and they thought they recognized Nicole Haas.
~ ~ ~
JUST AFTER the Russian Orthodox Easter, which they celebrated with Mary, Brossier set up an appointment for them at the “French-English Youth Exchange” office across the street from the Opéra Comique. He was signing them up to spend their holidays in Bournemouth, the seaside resort in Hampshire.
In a narrow room cluttered with folders, they were received by a Mr. “A. Stewart,” according to the name they saw on a brass plate on the door. He was in his eighties, with wrinkles around his eyes and mottled skin. All their papers were ready. Louis and Odile only had to give their dates of birth.
“I said that you’re students,” Stewart said in the voice of an insect. “It’s better that way.”
“You’re right,” Brossier said.
“Of course you’re not obligated to stay to the end,” Stewart said.
“I know,” Louis said.
“How’s Roland?” Stewart asked.
“He’s fine.”
He walked them to the door.
“I knew Roland de Bejardy’s father very well,” Stewart said, suddenly serious, turning to Odile and Louis. “We were close friends.”
•
Brossier had things to do and asked Louis to take Bejardy’s car, which the three of them had used to go to the Youth Exchange office on rue Favart. Odile and Louis walked at random and sat down at an outdoor café table on rue Réaumur, near the window. There was a copy of the financial newspaper, Cote Desfossés, on the table.
Louis, for appearances’ sake, flipped through the paper and his eyes were drawn to the Unlisted Securities section. The time had come to tell Odile the reason for this trip to England, but he didn’t know how to bring up the delicate subject.
“Is that interesting?”
She held out her hand with a smile for the Cote Desfossés, and put it aside on the bench next to her. Louis looked at her, uncertainly.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing. The stock market. Look.”
He pointed to the Bourse on the other side of the street, with its colonnade and the stairs with the groups of businessmen walking down them. It was raining. More and more customers came into the café and gathered at the counter. Most of them were carrying black briefcases. At the table next to theirs, a man, still quite young but red in the face, with sparse black hair combed back, looked up occasionally from the folder he was studying and rudely stared at Odile.
“So, this trip to England. It’s to do something for Bejardy.”
Taking a deep breath, he gave her the details in a rush, as though afraid she might interrupt him. All the details. That he was supposed to bring almost five hundred thousand francs in cash into England for Bejardy, that he would get a percentage of it, and that the trick was to join a French-English Youth Exchange group to avoid customs. Stewart, the director of the youth exchange, was in on the scheme, it seemed.
She listened with her eyes wide, and when he was finished they were silent for a moment.
“They must have been planning this from the start. I’m sure of it,” she said.
“Yes, definitely…”
Louis shrugged. They’d just have to see what happened. He knew she was thinking the same thing.
“Well, it’s nothing too bad, all this.”
They were living through one of those moments when you feel the need to grab on to something stable and solid, the longing to ask someone for advice. But there wasn’t anyone. Except for the gray silhouettes with their black briefcases crossing rue Réaumur in the rain, coming into the café, having their coffee or drink at the counter, and leaving. Their movements made Odile and Louis feel numb. The ground was shifting under their feet.
•
They walked through the concourse at Gare Saint-Lazare, and Brossier wanted to stop at the little café in the passageway between the station and the Hotel Terminus.
“No, I think it’d be better for us downstairs,” Louis said. “Near the departure platform.”
Odile looked at him and smiled.
“This place has bad memories for us,” he said.
So they headed for the cafeteria at the back and sat down. The meeting place was at the entrance to the passageway leading to the departure platforms. A group of young people was standing a few feet away. Louis looked at his watch: It was almost the meeting time.
“That’s the youth exchange group, isn’t it?” Louis asked Brossier.
“It must be.”
Brossier tried and failed to suppress a laugh, and Odile caught it.
“You think it’s funny?” Louis asked. But in the end he laughed too.
“I hope you study hard,” Brossier said. “Learn a lot of English, with the others.”
Louis had put a large canvas backpack, with lots of pockets, on a chair next to him. It contained some of the bundles of banknotes, hidden in shirts and sweaters. The rest of the money was concealed at the bottom of Odile’s cardboard valise.
“Time to join the others now,” Brossier said.
He helped Louis put on his blue backpack, like a camper’s or mountaineer’s. Odile carried her little cardboard suitcase herself.
They went over to the edge of the group, with Brossier.