Chocolat (19 page)

       “I could see she — she told me to go to the fridge and — there was medicine in there…” He broke off again in increasing agitation. “I didn’t touch her. I never touched her. I wouldn’t —” He spat the words out with an effort, like broken teeth. “They’ll say I attacked her. I wanted to take her money. It isn’t true. I gave her some brandy and she just…”

       He stopped. I could see him struggling to maintain control.

       “It’s all right,” I told him calmly. “You can tell me on the way down. Josephine can stay with the shop. Narcisse can phone the doctor from the florist’s.”

       Stubbornly: “I’m not going back there. I’ve done what I could. I don’t want…”

       I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him after me. “We haven’t got time for this. I need you with me.”

       “They’ll say it was my fault. The police…”

       “Armande needs you. Now come on!”

       On the way to Les Marauds I heard the rest of the disjointed tale. Roux, feeling ashamed of his outburst in La Praline the previous day, and seeing Armande’s door open, decided to call on her and found her sitting half-conscious in her rocking-chair. He managed to rouse her enough for her to speak a few words. Medicine…fridge…On top of the refrigerator was a bottle of brandy. He poured a glassful, forced some of the liquid between her lips.

       “She just — slumped. I couldn’t get her to come round.” Distress ebbed from him. “Then I remembered she was a diabetic. I probably killed her trying to help.”

       “You didn’t kill her.” I was out of breath with running, a stitch cramping my left side. “She’ll be all right. You got help in time.”

       “What if she dies? Who do you think’ll believe me?” His voice was harsh.

       “Save your breath. The doctor will be here soon.”

       Armande’s door is still open, a cat wound halfway around the frame. Beyond it the house is still. A piece of loosened guttering spouts rainwater from the roof. I see Roux’s eyes flick to it in sudden, professional appraisal: I’ll have to fix that. He pauses at the door as if waiting to be invited in.

       Armande is lying on the hearthrug, her face a dull mushroom colour, her lips bluish. At least he has put her in the recovery position, and one arm pillows the head, neck at an angle to free the airways. She is motionless, but a tremor of stale air between her lips tells me she is breathing. Her discarded tapestry lies beside her, a cup of spilled coffee forming a comma-shaped stain on the rug. The scene is strangely flat, like a still from a silent film. Her skin beneath my fingers is cold and fishy, her dark irises clearly visible beneath eyelids as thin as wet crepe. Her black skirt has ridden up a little over her knees, revealing a crimson ruffle. I feel a sudden flare of sorrow for her arthritic old knees in their black stockings and the bright silk petticoats beneath the drab housedress.

       “Well?” Anxiety makes Roux snarl.

       “I think she’ll be all right.”

       His eyes are dark with disbelief and suspicion.

       “She must have some insulin in the fridge,” I tell him. “That must have been what she meant. Get it quickly.”

       She keeps it with the eggs. A tupperware box contains six ampoules of insulin and some disposable needles. On the other side a box of truffles with La Celeste Praline lettered on the lid. Otherwise there is hardly anything to eat in the house; an open tin of sardines, a piece of paper with a smear of rillettes, some tomatoes. I inject her in the crook of her elbow. It is a technique I know well. During the final stages of the disease for which my mother tried so many alternative therapies — acupuncture, homoeopathy, creative visualization — we eventually fell back on good old morphine, black-market morphine when we couldn’t get it on prescription, and though my mother loathed drugs she was happy to get it, with her body sweltering and the towers of New York swimming before her eyes like a mirage. Armande weighs almost nothing in my arms, her head rolling loosely. A trace of rouge on one cheek gives her a desperate, clownish look. I press her cold, rigid hands between my own, loosening the joints, working at the fingers.

       “Armande. Wake up. Armande.”

       Roux stands watching, uncertain, his expression a blur of confusion and hope. Her fingers feel like a bunch of keys in my hands.

       “Armande.” I make my voice sharp, commanding. “You can’t sleep now. You have to wake up.”

       There it is. The smallest of tremors, a leaf fluttering against another.

       “Vianne.”

       In a second, Roux was on his knees beside us. He looked ashen, but his eyes were very bright.

       “Oh, say it again, you stubborn old woman!” His relief was so intense it hurt. “I know you’re in there, Armande, I know you can hear me!” He looked at me, eager, almost laughing. “She spoke, didn’t she? I didn’t imagine it?”

       I shook my head. “She’s strong,” I said. “And you found her in time, before she lapsed into coma. Give the injection time to act. Keep talking to her.”

       “OK.” He began to talk, a little wildly, breathlessly, looking into her face for signs of consciousness. I continued to rub her hands, feeling the warmth returning little by little.

       “You’re not fooling anyone, Armande, you old witch. You’re as strong as a horse. You could live for ever. Besides, I’ve just fixed your roof. You don’t think I did all that work just so that daughter of yours could inherit the lot, do you? I know you’re listening, Armande. I know you can hear me. What are you waiting for? D’you want me to apologize? OK, I apologize.” Tears marbled his face. “D’you hear that? I’ve apologized. I’m an ungrateful bastard and I’m sorry. Now wake up and —”

       “…loud bastard…”

       He stopped mid-sentence. Armande gave a tiny chuckle. Her lips moved soundlessly. Her eyes were bright and aware. Roux cupped her face gently in his hands.

       “Scared you, did I?” Her voice was lace-thin.

       “No.”

       “I did, though.” With a trace of satisfaction and mischief.

       Roux wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “You still owe me money for the work I did,” he said in a shaky voice. “I was only scared you’d never get round to paying me.”

       Armande chuckled again. She was gaining strength now, and between us we managed to lift her into her chair. She was still very pale, her face half-collapsed into itself like a rotten apple, but her eyes were clear and lucid. Roux turned towards me, his expression unguarded for the first time since the fire. Our hands touched. For a second, I caught a glimpse of his face in moonlight, the rounded curve of a bare shoulder against grass, a lingering ghost scent of lilac…I felt my eyes widen in stupid surprise. Roux must have felt something too, because he stepped back, abashed. Behind us I heard a soft chuckle from Armande.

       “I told Narcisse to phone the doctor,” I told her with a pretence at lightness. “He’ll be here any minute.”

       Armande looked at me. Knowledge passed between us, and not for the first time, I wondered just how clearly she saw things.

       “I’m not having that death’s-head in my house,” she said. “You can send him right back where he came from. I don’t need him telling me what to do.”

       “But you’re ill,” I protested. “If Roux hadn’t come along you might have died.”

       She gave me one of her mocking looks. “Vianne,” she said patiently. “That’s what old people do. They die. It’s a fact of life. Happens all the time.”

       “Yes, but —”

       “And I’m not going to Le Mortoir,” she continued. “You can tell them that from me. They can’t force me to go. I’ve lived in this house for sixty years and when I die, it’s going to be here.”

       “No-one’s going to force you to go anywhere,” said Roux sharply. “You were careless with your medication, that’s all. You’ll know better next time.”

       Armande smiled. “It isn’t quite that simple,” she said.

       Stubbornly: “Why not?”

       She shrugged. “Guillaume knows,” she told him. “I’ve been talking to him quite a lot. He understands.” She sounded almost normal now, though she was still weak. “I don’t want to take this medicine every day,” she said calmly. “I don’t want to follow endless diet-sheets. I don’t want to be waited on by kind nurses who talk to me as if I were in kindergarten. I’m eighty years old, for crying out loud, and if I can’t be trusted to know what I want at my age —” She broke off abruptly. “Who’s that?”

       There is nothing wrong with her hearing. I heard it too, the faint sound of a car drawing up on the uneven pathway outside. The doctor.

       “If it’s that sanctimonious quack, tell him he’s wasting his time,” snapped Armande. “Tell him I’m fine. Tell him to go find someone else to diagnose. I don’t want him.”

       I glanced outside. “He seems to have brought half of Lansquenet with him,” I remarked mildly. The car, a blue Citroen, was packed with people. As well as the doctor, a pallid man in a charcoal suit, I could see Caroline Clairmont, her friend Joline and Reynaud crammed together on the back seat. The front was occupied by Georges Clairmont, looking sheepish and uncomfortable, silently remonstrating. I heard the car door slam, and the peewit-shrill of Caroline’s voice soaring above the sudden clamour.

       “I told her! Didn’t I tell her, Georges? No-one can accuse me of neglecting my filial duty, I gave my all for that woman, and look how she —”

       A quick crunch-criss of steps across the stones, then the voices flared into cacophony as the unwanted visitors opened the front door.

       “Maman? Maman? Hold on, darling, it’s me! I’m coming! This way, Monsieur Cussonnet, this way into the — oh yes, you know your way around, don’t you? Oh dear, the times I’ve told her — positively knew something like this would happen —”

       Georges, feebly protesting: “Do you really think we ought to interfere, Caro darling? I mean, let the doctor get on with it, you know?”

       Joline in her cool, supercilious tone: “One does wonder what he was doing in her house in any case.”

       Reynaud, barely audible: “Should have come to me…”

       I felt Roux stiffen even before they came into the room, looking quickly round for a way out. Even as he did it was too late. First Caroline and Joline with their immaculate chignons, their twin-sets and Hermes scarves, closely followed by Clairmont — dark suit and tie, unusual for a day at the lumber yard, or did she make him change for the occasion? — the doctor, the priest, like a scene from melodrama, all frozen in the doorway, faces shocked, bland, guilty, aggrieved, furious. Roux staring them out with that look of insolence, one hand bandaged, damp hair in his eyes, myself by the door, orange skirt mudsplashed from my run down to Les Marauds, and Armande, white but composed, rocking cheerily in her old chair with her black eyes snapping with malice and one finger crooked, witchlike.

       “So the vultures are here.” She sounded affable, dangerous. “Didn’t take you long to get here, did it?” A sharp glance at Reynaud, standing at the rear of the group. “Thought you’d got your chance at last, did you?” she said acidly. “Thought you’d slip in a quick blessing or two while I wasn’t compos mentis?” She gave her vulgar chuckle. “Too bad, Francis. I’m not quite ready for last rites yet.”

       Reynaud looked sour. “So it would appear,” he said. A quick glance in my direction. “It was fortunate that Mademoiselle Rocher is so — competent — in the use of needles.” There was an implicit sneer in the words.

       Caroline was rigid, her face a smiling mask of chagrin. “Maman, cherie, you see what happens when we leave you on your own. Frightening everyone like this.”

       Armande looked bored.

       “Taking up all this time, putting people out?” Lariflete jumped up onto her knee as Caro was talking, and the old lady stroked the cat absently. “Now do you understand why we tell you —”

       “That I’d be better off in Le Mortoir?” finished Armande flatly. “Really, Caro. You don’t give up, do you? That’s your father all over, you know. Stupid, but persistent. It was one of his most endearing characteristics.”

       Caro looked petulant. “It isn’t Le Mortoir, it’s Les Mimosas, and if you’d only have a look round —”

       “Food through a tube, someone to take you to the toilet in case you fall over?”

       “Don’t be absurd.”

       Armande laughed. “My dear girl, at my age I can be anything I please. I can be absurd if I feel like it. I’m old enough to get away with anything.”

       “Now you’re behaving like a child.” Caro’s voice was sulky. “Les Mimosas is a very fine, very exclusive residential home, you’d be able to talk to people your own age, go on outings, have everything organized for you —”

       “It sounds quite wonderful.” Armande continued to rock lazily in her chair. Caro turned to the doctor, who had been standing awkwardly at her side. A thin, nervy man, he looked embarrassed to be there at all, like a shy man at an orgy. “Simon, tell her!”

       “Well, I’m not sure it’s really my place to —”

       “Simon agrees with me,” interrupted Caro doggedly. “In your condition and at your age, you simply can’t go on living here on your own. Why, at any time, you might —”

       “Yes, Madame Voizin.” Joline’s voice was warm and reasonable. “Perhaps you should consider what Caro — I mean, of course you don’t want to lose your independence, but for your own good…”

       Armande’s eyes are quick and bright and abrasive. She stared at Joline for a few moments in silence. Joline bridled, then looked away, blushing. “I want you out of here,” said Armande gently. “All of you.”

       “But, Maman?”

       “All of you,” repeated Armande flatly. “I’ll give the quack here two minutes in private — seems I need to remind you of your Hippocratic oath, Monsieur Cussonnet — and by the time I’ve finished with him I expect the rest of you buzzards to be gone.” She tried to stand, pushing herself up from her chair with difficulty: I took her arm to steady her, and she gave me a wry, mischievous smile.

       “Thanks, Vianne,” she said gently. “You, too.” This was to Roux, still standing at the far side of the room looking drab and indifferent. “I want to talk to you when I’ve seen the doctor. Don’t go away.”