“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.
“You’ll call us when you get there, right?” Brossier said.
“You really think there won’t be any problems?” Louis said.
“None. I’ll leave you now. Give me a kiss.”
The suggestion surprised him, coming from Brossier, who exchanged kisses on the cheek with Odile too. Then he left. He turned around at the top of the stairs and waved, before he disappeared.
“You’re with us?” a young man with very large lips and a crew cut asked Odile.
“Yes.”
“Great. Over here . . .”
They shook hands with about ten young people who introduced themselves by first name. The crew-cut guy seemed to be in charge of the group.
“Here, stick these on your luggage and the back of your jackets.”
He showed Odile and Louis little triangular labels saying YOUTH EXCHANGE, and attached them himself to their coats, backpack, and suitcase.
“If they come off, I’ll give you more.”
Most of their traveling companions already knew each other. They brought up a previous stay in Bournemouth and talked about someone named Axter, whose name Louis had heard from Bejardy.
“Who’s Axter?” Louis asked the guy he thought of as the group leader from then on.
“Mr. Axter is the head of the school where we’ll be taking courses.”
“Courses?”
“Yes, every morning.”
“Is this the first time you two are going to England with the youth exchange?” a brunette with blue eyes asked.
“Yes,” Louis said.
“It’s really great, you’ll see.”
“Well, I think it’s time,” the crew-cut guy with the big lips said.
The train to Le Havre was waiting on the platform. The crew-cut guy handed a group ticket to the ticket controller.
“How many?”
“Twelve.”
The controller distractedly counted them as they proceeded onto the platform.
“Can I go buy some magazines?” Odile asked.
“Hurry,” the crew-cut guy said. “And if you see Science and Life, buy me one?”
“I’ll go with you,” Louis said.
They walked quickly. As they left the platform, they showed the ticket controller their Youth Exchange stickers.
At the kiosk, Louis bought Elle, Candide, Match, Paris-Presse, and Science and Life. Odile waited, sitting on her suitcase, absentmindedly watching the people come and go, more and more of them since rush hour was approaching. Suddenly her heart was pounding and she was almost suffocating: She had seen the fat blond, the policeman who had used her as bait. He walked by not far from her and slowly headed for the entrance to the café.
•
The youth exchange group had reserved two compartments, and Odile and Louis sat face-to-face next to the door. She had put her suitcase up on the luggage rack and Louis kept his blue backpack in his hands. She was thinking about the fat blond and felt demoralized, caught in a trap. That deposition she had signed . . . They had kept it in a file somewhere. So what. But maybe the fat blond had found evidence to link her to Bellune’s apartment? She thought she might have left one of her flexi-discs there, and some photographs of her that Bellune had wanted for a record cover . . . But what if he wasn’t on that case? Well, she had seen him at avenue des Ternes, in front of the Hotel Rovaro.
Louis was talking to the others. Little by little, she started listening to them, and eventually forgot about the fat blond.
She was sitting next to a girl who admitted to her that she was only seventeen. She looked older because of her height, her sunglasses, and her deep voice. The brunette with blue eyes and a pleated skirt was sitting to Louis’s right. There was another girl with a chubby face, and a brown-haired boy who clearly thought he was very handsome. He wore a signet ring and never stopped running his hand through his hair.
“What about you?” he asked Odile and Louis. “You have your families’ addresses?”
They didn’t understand what he meant. Our families? Yes, the members of the youth exchange lived with families during their stay in Bournemouth. But Odile and Louis did not know their families’ addresses.
•
At Le Havre, they waited for departure at a café table on the pier. The jukebox was playing Italian songs, and the melodious sound of their words got swallowed up by the mist and concrete all around.
The boat was at the dock. The crew-cut guy told Odile and Louis that it was called the Normania
and that it would travel to Southampton overnight.
The customs office was in a kind of small hangar. The crew-cut guy had collected all the passports from the group members; when Odile handed hers over, she had a fleeting memory of the fat blond policeman.
One of the customs officers stamped the passports one after the other and gave them back to the youth exchange group leader, who seemed to know him.
“Lots of passengers tonight?”
“Not bad,” the customs officer answered. “It’s Easter break. Look.”
Groups of teenagers, boys and girls between fifteen and twenty, were standing packed together on the Normania’s deck. Some were singing a song. When the youth exchange members boarded, they could hardly make their way through the crush of people. The crew-cut guy waved with one hand and held Louis’s wrist tightly with the other.
“Don’t lose sight of us. We’ll meet up in the grand salon. Make sure you keep your badges on you . . . Yes . . . Yes . . . Keep them on you, that’s the most important thing. I gave them to you, keep them on.”
The poor man, he was horrified at the thought that the youth exchange group might get split up in the crowd. His voice, which up until then had suggested a sheepdog’s bark, was almost a sob.
•
Night had long since fallen by the time the Normania cast off. Odile and Louis, leaning on the ship’s railing, looked out at the lights of Le Havre getting farther and farther away. Louis was still wearing his blue backpack and Odile clutched her suitcase between her legs. Nearby, ten or fifteen young people in large black velvet berets were singing an old ballad in the gentle breeze, in a language they didn’t recognize. The group alternated in halves, repeating the chorus, and Odile and Louis relaxed and let the melodious unknown language wash over them.
Before long, the deck was empty except for them. Neither one felt the cold air—this was their first time traveling by ship. They walked to the stern and then down a staircase and along gangways where small groups of people, sitting on the ground, were chatting and playing cards. A bit farther up, people were crowding around a metal counter to buy a sandwich or a warm drink. Eventually they came out into what the group leader had called the “salon,” but which looked more like a smoking lounge, with leather sofas and armchairs bolted to the floor and landscape photos on the paneled walls like the pictures in train compartments. There were two portholes, one on each side, and a bridge table in front of one of them.
As soon as they walked in, the smell of pipes and brown tobacco seized them by the throat. Here, as well, passengers were sitting around on the floor. Some were even asleep in their sleeping bags. The youth exchange group was gathered around a sofa and an armchair, and the crew-cut group leader waved Louis and Odile over. Louis carried Odile’s suitcase on his shoulder and the two of them forced their way through the outstretched bodies and the groups sitting cross-legged. Near the bridge table, three of the mysterious beret-clad strangers were still singing, in a subdued voice.
“I thought you were lost,” the group leader said. “Sit over here. Why are you still carrying your luggage? That doesn’t make sense, you should have left it with ours.”
Louis shrugged his shoulders in response. He sat down on the floor, his back against the side of the sofa, and Odile found a place next to him.
“We use first names in our group,” the leader said. “My name’s Gilbert.”
He introduced the blue-eyed brunette with the pleated skirt and the boy with the signet ring: “Françoise, Alain.” Then the others.
“Marie-Jo, Claude, Christian . . .”
Louis and Odile said their names in turn.
“You’re brother and sister?” Gilbert asked.
“No, cousins,” Louis said without thinking.
The ship had started to rock and now the movement grew more noticeable.
“I hope you don’t get seasick,” Gilbert said. “It usually doesn’t last long. The crossing is pretty smooth, actually.”
He took a pipe out of his pocket.
“Personally, I have a radical cure for seasickness: a pipe! Axter and me, we agree about that. He’s a great one for pipe-smoking too.”
Odile curled up, closed her eyes, and rested her cheek against the back of the sofa. Gilbert lit his pipe. With his crew cut and large lips, he looked like a good little schoolboy, and Louis imagined him in short pants, at the top of the class, raising a finger every time the teacher asked a question and saying, “M’sieu! M’sieu!”
On the armchair, the dark-haired boy with the ring was flirting with Marie-Jo, the girl who seemed older than her seventeen years. Then he kissed her, interminably. His arms were crossed behind the girl’s neck and Louis suspected him of glancing secretly at his wristwatch to time how long the kiss lasted.
“You don’t want a puff, do you, old boy?” Gilbert said.
He offered him the pipe. Louis refused.
“Your cousin is asleep, old boy,” Gilbert said, pointing to Odile.
The ship rocked more and more. Odile’s suitcase, sitting at the foot of the sofa, slid a little and Louis caught it. He had put his backpack back on.
“Wearing that pack doesn’t bother you, old boy?” Gilbert said.
“No,” Louis said. “I’m used to it.”
The dark-haired boy and Marie-Jo were still in their embrace. Other romances were springing up between members of the group. The chubby-cheeked girl was holding hands with a short redheaded boy whose accent sounded French Algerian. The brunette with the blue eyes and pleated skirt seemed jealous of Marie-Jo, held close by the dark-haired boy.
“The problem is that they won’t learn English because they’ll spend all their time pairing up with each other,” Gilbert said. “I’ll have to have a talk with Axter about it. Good-for-nothings . . . Now you and your cousin are setting a good example, at least. That’s how it should be.”
One of the mysterious singers by the bridge table was feeling seasick and holding his large velvet beret ready in case he needed to throw up in it.
“We’ll get to Southampton around seven in the morning,” Gilbert said, with his pipe between his teeth.
Odile opened her eyes and looked sleepily at Louis. Just then, the lights flickered and went out. There were shouts and exclamations from all sides. Someone, who sounded like he was from the south of France, shouted: “Fuck the Queen of England!”
Laughter. A hubbub of conversation. Hiccups, no doubt from one of the singers with the velvet berets, Louis thought. Several voices shouting in unison: “Lights! Liii-ights!”
Some people lit their cigarette lighters. Louis leaned over to Odile.
“Let’s go to bed,” he whispered in her ear.
He picked up Odile’s suitcase and they left the “salon,” trying their best to avoid the tangle of bodies on the floor. A dim light was coming from the gangway.
Eventually they found the corridor of cabins, and Louis took a ticket out of his pocket to check for their number. Two couchettes. They lay down. Louis clutched the backpack and suitcase tight and wondered what their group leader would think if he knew that Odile and he had a cabin, which Brossier had reserved for them back in Paris. Gilbert would surely be hurt that these two cousins were not sleeping in the salon with the rest of the “youth exchange.”
•
Everything was floating in a white mist. Disembarking from the Normania, they passed through English customs and Gilbert took them to a bus waiting on the pier.
A man in the back of the bus greeted Gilbert.
“How are you, Mr. Axter?”
“Well, thank you. And you? Was it a pleasant crossing?”
He spoke French with a very slight accent. A blond man, in his forties, with curly hair and big tortoiseshell glasses, a red tweed vest, and a pipe.
The members of the group sat down in the bus, with Odile and Louis sitting a little farther back. Axter looked worriedly around the group.
“Tell me, Gilbert, do you have in your group a certain . . .
Louis Memling?”
“Louis? Louis? Ah, yes, the cousins.”
He pointed out Louis and Odile.
Axter smiled at them.
“Michel Axter,” he said. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
There was a certain coquetterie in the way he Frenchified his first name. He shook hands with Louis and Odile and then sat down across the aisle from them, keeping his head turned to face them.
“Roland de Bejardy phoned me last night to let me know you were coming. He is a very good friend of mine, you know.”
He stuffed his pipe, a smile fixed to his face. Gilbert kept a respectful distance, surprised at this sudden intimacy between Axter and Louis and Odile. Surprised and maybe a bit jealous, too.
“I would go so far as to say that Roland and I are childhood friends.”
This time his face opened up in a real smile. Gilbert, more and more taken aback, nervously brought out his pipe, as though trying to win back Axter’s attention with the gesture and reestablish the complicity between them. He stammered: “Still a fan of the Amsterdammer, sir?”
But Axter wasn’t listening. He leaned toward Odile and Louis.
“I am so pleased to welcome you to our school in Bournemouth.”
Then, from where he was sitting, he counted the members of group with his index finger.
“Everyone here?”
“Everyone is here, Mr. Axter,” Gilbert said.
“All right, tell the driver.”
The bus started and Gilbert sat back down, very near Axter, Odile, and Louis. He was probably afraid that they would say bad things about him if he wasn’t there.
“It won’t be long. Bournemouth is very close by,” Axter said.
“So how is your wife?” Gilbert asked, desperately trying to get Axter’s attention.
But Axter opened a newspaper and read it with great composure.
Outside the windows, everything disappeared in a bright white fog, and Louis wondered by what miracle the driver was able to see where he was going.
•
A few minutes before they reached Bournemouth, the sun reappeared, which prompted Axter to say, “You see, it’s always sunny in Bournemouth.”
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