The Lollipop Shoes (27 page)

Instead I took his hand. It was rough and scratchy from working.

I thought he looked surprised; then he smiled.

‘I’d like to see your boat,’ I said.

‘Maybe you will,’ said Roux.

‘Is it as nice as the last one?’

‘You’ll have to decide that for yourself.’

‘When?’

He shrugged.

Maman looked at me in that way that she has when she’s annoyed, but won’t say so because other people are around. ‘I’m sorry, Roux,’ she told him. ‘If you’d called before – I wasn’t expecting . . .’

‘I wrote,’ he said. ‘I sent a card.’

‘I never got it.’

‘Oh.’ I could tell he didn’t believe her. And I knew she didn’t believe him. Roux is the world’s worst letter-writer. He means to write, but rarely does; and he doesn’t like to talk on the phone. Instead, he sends little things in the post – a carved oak-leaf on a string; a striped stone from the seaside; a book – sometimes with
an accompanying note, but often with no word at all.

He looked at Thierry. ‘I’ve got to go.’

Yeah, right. Like there was anywhere he had to be; Roux who always pleases himself; who never lets anyone tell him what to do. ‘I’ll be back.’

Oh, you liar.

I was suddenly so angry with him that I almost spoke the words aloud.
Why did you come back, Roux? Why did you bother to come back at all?

I told him so, but in my mind, in my shadow-voice, as hard as I could, the way I’d spoken to Zozie on that first day outside the
chocolaterie
.

Coward
, I said.
You’re running away
.

And Zozie heard. She looked at me. But Roux just stuck his hands even deeper into the pockets of his jeans, and didn’t even wave as he opened the door and walked away without looking back. Thierry went right after him – just like a dog chasing off an intruder. Not that Thierry would ever fight Roux – but even the thought of it made me want to cry.

Maman was going to go after them both, but Zozie stopped her.

‘I’ll go,’ she said. ‘They’ll be all right. You wait here with Annie and Rosette.’

And off she went into the dark.

‘Go upstairs, Nanou,’ said Maman. ‘I’ll be with you right away.’

And so we went upstairs, and waited. Rosette fell asleep, and in a while I heard Zozie come up, then Maman a few minutes later, walking very quietly so as not to disturb us. And after a while I went to sleep, but the sound of the creaky floorboard in Maman’s room woke me up a couple
of times, and I knew she was still awake in there, standing by the window in the dark, listening to the sound of the wind and hoping –
just once
– it would leave us alone.

3

Sunday, 2nd December

THE CHRISTMAS LIGHTS
went on last night. Now the whole
quartier
is illuminated; not in colours, but in simple white, like a hedge of stars over the city. In the Place du Tertre, where the artists stand, the traditional Nativity scene has been erected, with the Christ child smiling in the straw and the mother and father looking into the crib, and the Magi standing by with gifts. It fascinates Rosette, who asks to see it again and again.

Baby
, she signs.
Go see baby
. So far she has seen it twice with Nico; once with Alice; countless times with Zozie; with Jean-Louis and Paupaul, and of course, with Anouk, who seems almost as fascinated by it as she is, repeating the story to Rosette of how the baby (who has changed sex in Anouk’s version) was born in a stable in the snow, and how the animals came to see her, and the three Wise Men, and how even a star stopped overhead—

‘Because she was a special baby,’ Anouk says, to Rosette’s
delight. ‘A special baby, just like you, and soon it’ll be
your
birthday, too . . .’

Advent. Adventure.
Both words suggest the coming of some extraordinary event. I’d never considered the similarity before; never celebrated the Christian calendar; never fasted, repented or confessed.

Almost never, anyway.

But when Anouk was little, we celebrated Yule: lit fires against the coming dark; made wreaths of holly and mistletoe; drank spiced cider and wassails and ate smoking-hot chestnuts from an open brazier.

Then Rosette was born, and things changed again. Gone were the wreaths of mistletoe, the candles and the frankincense. Nowadays we go to church and buy more presents than we can afford, and leave them under the plastic tree, and watch TV, and get anxious about the cooking. The Christmas lights may
look
like stars, but closer inspection shows them to be fake: heavy garlands of wires and cables fix them across the narrow streets. The magic has gone –
and isn’t that what you wanted, Vianne?
says that dry voice inside my head, the voice that sounds like my mother, like Roux, and now just a little like Zozie; who reminds me of the Vianne I was, and whose patience is a kind of reproach.

But this year again will be different. Thierry loves the traditional ways. The church, the goose, the chocolate log – a celebration, not only of the season, but of the seasons we have shared together, and will continue to share—

No magic, of course. Well, is that so bad? There’s comfort and safety and friendship – and love. Isn’t that enough for us? Haven’t we been down the other road? Brought up on folk-tales all my life, why do I find it so
hard to believe in the happy-ever-after? Why is it, when I know where he leads, that I still dream of following the Pied Piper?

I sent Anouk and Rosette to bed. Then I went after Roux and Thierry. A small enough delay – three minutes, perhaps, or five at most – but as I stepped out into the still-crowded street I already half knew that Roux would be gone, vanished into the warren of Montmartre. All the same, I had to try. I started towards the Sacré-Coeur – and then among the groups of visitors and tourists I caught sight of Thierry’s familiar figure walking down towards Place Dalida, hands in pockets, head thrust forward like a fighting cock’s.

I held back, took a left up a cobbled street and into Place du Tertre. Still no sign of Roux. He was gone. Of course he was – why would he stay? – and yet I lingered at the edge of the square, shivering (I’d forgotten my coat) and listening to the sounds of night-time Montmartre: music from the clubs below the Butte, laughter, footsteps, children’s voices from the Nativity scene across the square, a busker playing the saxophone, fragments of talk snatched on the wind—

It was his stillness that finally caught my attention. Parisians are like shoals of fish – if they stop moving, even for a moment, they die. But he was just standing there, half-hidden in the harlequin light of the red neon sign in a café window. Watching in silence, waiting for something. Waiting for me—

I ran across the square to him. Threw my arms around him, and for a moment feared he would not respond. I could feel the tension in his body, see the crease between
his brows – and in that harsh light he looked like a stranger.

And then he put his arms around me, reluctantly at first, I thought, then with a fierceness that belied his words. ‘You shouldn’t be here, Vianne,’ he said.

There’s a place in the curve of his left shoulder that matches my forehead perfectly. I found it again, and rested my head. He smelt of the night, and of engine oil, and cedarwood and patchouli and chocolate and tar and wool and the simple unique scent of
him
, something as elusive and familiar as a recurring dream.

‘I know,’ I said.

And yet I couldn’t let him go. A word would have done it; a warning; a frown.
I’m with Thierry now. Don’t mess things up
. To try to suggest anything else would be pointless and painful and doomed from the start. And yet—

‘It’s good to see you, Vianne.’ His voice, though soft, was curiously charged.

I smiled. ‘You too. But why now? After all this time?’

A shrug from Roux conveys many things. Indifference, contempt, ignorance, even humour. In any case it dislodged my forehead from its cradle and brought me back to earth with a jolt.

‘Would knowing make a difference?’

‘It might.’

He shrugged again. ‘No reason,’ he said. ‘Are you happy here?’

‘Of course.’ It’s all I’ve ever wanted. The shop; the house; schools for the children. The view from my window every day. And Thierry—

‘It’s just that I never imagined you here. I thought it was just a matter of time. That one day, you’d—’

‘What? See sense? Give up? Live on the move, from day to day, from place to place, like you and the other river rats?’

‘I’d rather be a rat than a bird in a cage.’

He was getting angry, I thought. His voice was still soft, but his Midi accent had become more pronounced, as it often does when his temper is roused. It struck me that perhaps I
wanted
to make him angry, to force him into a confrontation that would leave neither of us with any choice. It hurt to think it, but perhaps it was true. And perhaps he sensed it too, because he looked at me then, and shot me a grin.

‘What if I told you I’d changed?’ he said.

‘You haven’t changed.’

‘You don’t know that.’

Oh, but I do
. And it hurts my heart to see him so very much the same. But
I
have changed. My children have changed me. I can’t just do what I want any more. And what I want is—

‘Roux,’ I said. ‘I’m happy to see you. I’m glad you came. But it’s too late. I’m with Thierry. And he’s really nice when you get to know him. He’s done so much for Anouk and Rosette—’

‘And do you love him?’

‘Roux, please—’

‘I said, do you love him?’

‘Of course I do.’

Again, that shrug of deliberate contempt. ‘Congratulations, Vianne,’ he said.

I let him go. What else could I do? He’ll be back, I thought. He’ll have to come back. But so far he hasn’t;
leaving nothing, not an address, not a phone number – though it would surprise me if Roux had a phone. As far as I know, he has never even had a television set, preferring to watch the sky, he says, a spectacle that never bores him, and that never runs repeats.

I wonder where he’s staying now. On a boat, he told Anouk. A barge, I thought, was the most likely, carrying cargo up the Seine. Or perhaps another river-boat, assuming he’d managed to find one cheap. A hulk, perhaps; a derelict; working on it between jobs, patching it up, making it his. Roux has endless patience with boats. With people, however—

‘Will Roux be back today, Maman?’ said Anouk over breakfast.

She’d waited until morning to speak. But then Anouk rarely speaks impulsively; she broods, she reflects, and then she speaks, in that solemn, rather guarded way, like a TV detective just getting to the truth.

‘I don’t know,’ I told her. ‘It’s up to him.’

‘Would you
like
him to come back?’ Persistence has always been one of Anouk’s most enduring characteristics.

I sighed. ‘It’s difficult.’

‘Why? Don’t you like him any more?’ I heard the challenge in her voice.

‘No, Anouk. That’s not why.’

‘Then why is it?’

I almost laughed. She makes it all sound so very straightforward; as if our lives were not a house of cards, every decision, every choice carefully balanced against a multitude of other choices and decisions, precariously stacked against each other and leaning, tilting with every breath—

‘Listen, Nanou. I know you like Roux. So do I. I like him a lot. But you have to remember—’ I searched for the words. ‘Roux does what he wants, he always has. Never stays in the same place for long. And that’s OK, because he’s alone. But the three of us need more than that.’

‘If we lived with Roux, he wouldn’t be alone,’ said Anouk reasonably.

I had to laugh, though my heart was aching. Roux and Anouk are so strangely alike. Both of them think in absolutes. Both stubborn, secretive and frighteningly resentful.

I tried to explain. ‘He
likes
being alone. He lives on the river all year round, he sleeps outside, he’s not even comfortable in a house. We couldn’t live like that, Nanou. He knows that. And so do you.’

She gave me a dark, appraising look. ‘Thierry hates him. I can tell.’

Well, after last night, I don’t suppose anyone could fail to see that. His booming, trollish cheeriness; his open contempt; his jealousy. But that’s not Thierry, I told myself. Something must have upset him. The little scene at La Maison Rose?

‘Thierry doesn’t know him, Nou.’

‘Thierry doesn’t know
any
of us.’

She went back upstairs with a croissant in each hand and a look that promised further discussion at a later time. I went into the kitchen; made chocolate; sat down and watched it go cold. Thought of February in Lansquenet, with the mimosa in bloom on the banks of the Tannes and the river-gypsies with their long narrow boats, so many and so closely packed that you could almost have walked to the other side—

And one man sitting there on his own, watching the river from the roof of his boat. Not so different from the rest of them, and yet somehow I’d known almost straight away. Some people shine. He’s one of them. And even now, after all this time, I can feel myself drawn to that flame again. If it hadn’t been for Anouk and Rosette I might have followed him last night. After all, there are worse things than poverty. But I owe my children something more. That’s why I’m here. And I can’t go back to being Vianne Rocher, to Lansquenet. Not even for Roux. Not even for me.