Charles insisted that the captain dine with him.
‘We have business to discuss,’ he said.
Antoine shuddered inwardly. The most recent warnings of his notary at Dieppe were fresh in his mind, and as people only ever discussed business with him with one purpose in mind, he was on his guard. The garage was big enough as it was; and he would say the same to Marie-Dévote, who was planning a new wing to her hotel, and to Mireille, who wanted to add a long terrace to her restaurant that would face Cap Martin and the sea.
Charles, not imagining for a second that anyone might want to run from his company, asked anxiously, ‘How’s the little one? Nothing serious, I hope?’
‘Nothing at all. She’s as right as rain.’
Antoine’s heart beat faster. He thought of Toinette, the little girl he had had with Marie-Dévote, so slight and skinny, who had just recovered from typhoid fever. Charles, who for some time had known everything that went on in his captain’s life, added, ‘What about Mireille?’
‘She doesn’t often write. She prefers me to visit.’
‘It’s understandable.’
Night was falling.
‘I’ve still got a good way to go,’ Antoine said.
‘What a shame! Jeannette would have made us tomato soup.’
‘Tomato soup?’ Antoine repeated, seized by weakness.
‘I can send a lad over to let her know.’
‘No!’ Antoine said, agitated at the thought of all these banquets costing him so dearly. ‘Next time!’
‘As you like, Captain.’
The Bugatti was ready. A mechanic started the engine, with one eye on the dipstick. Antoine shook Charles’s hand and sat at the wheel.
‘Till the next time!’
Charles turned to the mechanic, who still held Antoine’s tip in the palm of his hand.
‘A little beauty!’ he said with a wink.
‘A real beauty,’ the mechanic said thoughtfully. ‘It would take me two years of working without eating or drinking to afford one of those.’
The Bugatti was already gone, leaving behind it a bluish trail of oil. Antoine reached Saint-Tropez two hours later in a cold, cloudless night. The hotel was extensive now, with twenty or so rooms, a lounge, a large dining room and an enormous kitchen. There was no off-season any more, and during the summer Parisians who did not fear the sun, and were sometimes even incautious about going out in it, occupied the rooms vacated by the painters, who preferred the months of winter, bathed in its limpid light.
The hotel’s door opened, and Marie-Dévote appeared with her back to the light. Her southern beauty made the most of a certain plumpness, a bigger waist and more splendid bust, and Antoine felt happier the moment he set eyes on her and she ran towards him, kissing him tenderly on both cheeks while he still sat in the Bugatti’s cockpit, the engine ticking as it cooled.
‘I was longing for you to come! Come inside quickly, it’s cold out here.’
He followed her into the kitchen, where, since her mother had died, one of Théo’s aunts had taken over, an immense and rather strong-smelling woman, a genius at making fish soup, tomatoes à la provençale and pissaladière. He was cold through from the drive, having come all the way with the hood down, and they served him a hot supper there and then on the kitchen table.
‘When I’ve warmed up, I’ll go up and kiss Toinette. How is she?’
‘Wonderful. And first in school too. This evening she came home with two more good marks.’
‘Is Théo in bed?’
‘He’s in Marseille. He’s coming home tomorrow or the day after. He’s buying himself a new boat to take the Parisians on trips next summer.’
Antoine was content. Tonight there would be no complications, none of the innuendos that irritated him so much. His cares instantly slipped away, he thanked aunt Marie with a gentle slap on her bottom, and took the stairs that led to Toinette’s bedroom two at a time. She was asleep in a four-poster bed draped in pink silk, and was every inch his daughter: pale skin, blond hair with a tinge of chestnut, and long, blue-veined hands. In any case the doctors had confirmed to Théo that he could not have children. Antoine pressed his lips gently on her fragile temple, and Toinette turned over in her bed with a little moan. He was so happy that he put his hand up Marie-Dévote’s skirt as she came to stand behind him.
‘Antoine! Not here,’ she chided him. ‘You don’t have any morals at all!’
He would so much have liked to. But how do you explain these things? As the years went by, she was becoming more and more bourgeois. In a sense it was reassuring, because with all the artists who came to lodge with her for the winter, she could easily have been making love every night. But she joined him later in his bedroom and left him the next morning, shaking him vigorously as she went.
‘Antoine! Your daughter …’
‘What about my daughter?’
‘She’s going to be late for school …’
There were rituals, then. Every time he visited he drove their daughter to the Saint-Tropez primary school. With a ribbon in her hair, dressed in pastel colours that went with her Nordic complexion, Antoinette made an arrival that the children chattered about for weeks.
‘Uncle Antoine, the other girls, they really want to be me.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘Their uncles don’t have Bugattis.’
‘Well, I’ve always had one, so it doesn’t seem very unusual to me.’
‘Will you come and fetch me at lunchtime?’
‘Yes, if you like.’
He returned to have breakfast at the hotel. Three painters were there. He didn’t recognise them and so, reserved as usual, he pretended to ignore them. The dining room was full of pictures, some of which commemorated unpaid bills, others Antoine’s purchases. It was beginning to acquire a reputation, and people often came a long way to admire the Derains, Dufys, Dunoyers de Segonzacs and Valmincks hanging on its walls. Théo was starting to worry.
‘Soon there won’t be any more room … What are we going to do with all these daubs?’
Marie-Dévote, whose instincts were more sensitive and who overheard what passing visitors said, was beginning to see the daubs as a good investment.
‘You don’t know anything. One day they’ll all be famous, and then you’ll be following them around, begging them to do you a drawing on the paper tablecloth.’
‘You’ll always know how to make me laugh.’
*
When he was at Saint-Tropez Antoine
