The Lollipop Shoes (44 page)

I smiled. ‘Just a small one. On Christmas Eve.’

He gave me that fawning smile of his, the one he uses when Zozie is around. I know from Zozie that he is alone – no family, no children on Christmas Eve. And although I don’t especially like the man, I can’t help feeling sorry for him, with his starched yellow collar and hungry-dog smile.

‘You’re welcome to join us, of course,’ I said. ‘Unless you’ve got other plans.’

He frowned a little, as if trying to recall the details of his frenetic social calendar.

‘I
might
be able to make it,’ he said. ‘There’s a lot to do, but—’

I hid a smile behind my hand. Laurent is the kind of man who needs to feel that he’s doing you a tremendous favour by accepting one himself.

‘We’d love to see you, Monsieur Pinson.’

He shrugged magnanimously. ‘Well, if you insist . . .’

I smiled. ‘That’s nice.’

‘And that’s a very becoming dress, if I may say so, Madame Charbonneau.’

‘Call me Yanne.’

He bowed again. I caught the scent of hair-oil and sweat. And I wondered – is this what Zozie does, every day while I make chocolates? Is this why we have so many customers?

A lady in an emerald coat, shopping for presents for Christmas. Her favourites are caramel swirls, and I tell her so without hesitation. Her husband will enjoy my apricot
hearts, and their daughter will love my gilded chocolate chilli squares—

What’s happening? What’s changed in me?

A new sense of recklessness seems to have caught me, a feeling of hope, of confidence. I am no longer quite myself, but something closer to Vianne Rocher, to the woman who blew into Lansquenet on the tail of the carnival wind—

Outside the chimes are totally still, and the sky is dark with unshed snow. This week’s unnatural mildness has lifted, and it’s cold enough to make breath plume as, in the square, the passers-by like grey columns blur past. There’s a musician on the corner; I can hear the sound of a saxophone, playing ‘Petite Fleur’ in its lingering, almost-human voice.

I think to myself –
he must be cold
.

It’s a strange thought for Yanne Charbonneau. Real Parisians cannot afford such thoughts. There are so many poor people here in this city; homeless people; old people bundled up like Salvation Army parcels in shop doorways and back alleys. All of them are cold; all hungry. Real Parisians do not care. And I do want to be a real Parisian . . .

But the music keeps playing, reminding me of another place, another time. I was someone else then, and the houseboats across the Tannes were crowded so close that you might almost have walked from one side of the river to the other. There was music then: steel drums and fiddles and whistles and flutes. The river people lived on music, it seemed, and though some villagers called them beggars I never actually saw them beg. In those days there would have been no hesitation—

You have a gift
, my mother used to say.
And gifts are meant to be given away
.

I make a pot of hot chocolate. I pour a cup and I take it to the saxophone player – who is surprisingly young, no more than eighteen – with a slice of chocolate cake on the side. It’s a gesture that Vianne Rocher would have made without thinking—

‘On the house.’

‘Hey, thanks!’ His face lights up. ‘You must be from the chocolate shop. I’ve heard about you. You’re Zozie. Right?’

I begin to laugh, a little wildly. The laughter feels as bittersweet and strange as everything else on this strange day, but the saxophone player doesn’t seem to notice.

‘Got any requests?’ he says to me then. ‘Anything you like, I’ll play. On the house,’ he adds with a grin.

‘I—’ I faltered. ‘Do you know “
V’là l’bon vent
”?’

‘Yeah. Sure.’ He picks up his sax. ‘Just for you, Zozie,’ he says.

And as the sax begins to play, I shiver with something more than the cold as I walk back to Le Rocher de Montmartre, where Rosette is still playing quietly on the floor among a hundred thousand spilt buttons.

12

Tuesday, 18th December

I WORKED IN
the kitchen for the rest of today, while Zozie dealt with the customers. We’re getting more customers than ever now; more than I can deal with alone, and it’s good that she is still happy to help, because as Christmas approaches it seems that half Paris has developed a sudden appetite for hand-made chocolates.

The supplies of couverture that I thought might last me until the New Year were exhausted within a couple of weeks, and we are getting deliveries every ten days just to keep up with increasing demand. The profits are above anything I could have dared to hope for, and all Zozie can say is:
I knew business would look up before Christmas
, as if such miracles happened every day . . .

And once more I find myself wondering at how very quickly things have changed. Three months ago, we were strangers here; castaways on this rock of Montmartre. Now we are part of the scenery, just like Chez Eugène or Le P’tit Pinson; and locals who would never have thought to set
foot in a tourist shop now pass here once or twice a week (and in some cases almost every day) for coffee, cake or chocolate.

What
has changed us? The chocolates, of course; I know that my hand-made truffles are far better than anything out of a factory. The décor, too, is more welcoming; and with Zozie here to help me, there is time to sit and talk awhile.

Montmartre is a village within the city – and remains deeply if dubiously nostalgic with its narrow streets and old cafés and country-style cottages, complete with summer whitewash and fake shutters at the windows and bright geraniums in their terracotta pots. To the folk of Montmartre, marooned above a Paris simmering with change, it sometimes feels like the
last
village; a fleeting fragment of a time when things were sweeter and simpler; when doors were always left unlocked and any ills and injuries could be cured with a square of chocolate—

It’s all an illusion, I’m afraid. For most people here, those times never existed. They live in a world of part-fantasy, where the past is so deeply buried beneath wishful thinking and regret that they have almost come to believe their own fiction.

Look at Laurent, who speaks so bitterly against immigrants, but whose father was a Polish Jew who fled to Paris during the war, changed his name, married a local girl and became Gustave Jean-Marie Pinson, Frencher than the French, sound as the stones of the Sacré-Coeur.

He does not speak of it, of course. But Zozie knows – he must have told her. And Madame Pinot, with her silver crucifix and her tight-lipped disapproving smile and shop window full of plaster saints—

She was never a Madame in her life. In her younger days (so says Laurent, who knows these things), she was a cabaret dancer at the Moulin Rouge, and would sometimes perform in a nun’s wimple, high heels and a black satin corset so tight it would make your eyes water – hardly what you’d expect of a seller of religious memorabilia, and yet—

Even our handsome Jean-Louis and Paupaul, who work the Place du Tertre with such expertise, seducing the ladies into parting with their money with swashbuckling compliments and broad innuendo. You’d think at least they were what they seemed. But neither one has ever set foot in a gallery, or been to art school, and for all their masculine appeal, both of them are quietly though sincerely gay, and are planning a civil ceremony – perhaps in San Francisco, where such things are more common and less harshly judged.

So says Zozie, who seems to know everything. Anouk, too, knows more than she tells me, and I find myself increasingly worrying about her. She used to tell me everything. But recently, she has grown restless and secretive; hiding for hours at a time in her room, spending most of her weekends in the cemetery with Jean-Loup, and her evenings talking with Zozie.

It’s natural, of course, for a child of her age to want a little more independence than she had. But there’s a kind of watchfulness in Anouk – a coldness of which even she may be unaware – that makes me uneasy. It’s as if some pivot has shifted between us, some relentless mechanism that has begun to move us slowly apart. She used to tell me everything. Now everything she says seems oddly guarded; her smiles too bright, too forced for comfort.

Is this because of Jean-Loup Rimbault? Don’t think I haven’t noticed the way she hardly mentions him now; the cautious look when I speak of him; the careful way she dresses for school when once she hardly brushed her hair . . .

Is it because of Thierry, perhaps? Is she anxious because of Roux?

I’ve tried asking her outright if there’s something wrong; something at school, perhaps, some trouble I don’t know about. But she always says
no, Maman
, in that clipped little good-girl voice, and trots off upstairs to do her homework.

But from the kitchen later that night, I hear laughter coming from Zozie’s room, and I creep to the bottom of the stairs to listen, and I hear Anouk’s voice, like a memory. And I know that if I open the door – to ask, perhaps, if she wants a drink – then the laughter will stop, and her eyes turn cool, and the Anouk I heard from far away will be gone like something in a fairytale . . .

Zozie was rearranging the Advent window, where a new door has opened today. A Christmas tree, cleverly made from sprigs of pine, now stands in the hallway of the little house. The mother stands at the door of the house, looking out into the garden, where a choir of carol-singers (she has used chocolate mice) are gathered in a semicircle, looking in.

As it happens, we put up our tree today. It’s only a small one, from the florist’s down the road, but it smells wonderfully of needles and sap, like a story of children lost in the woods, and there are silver stars to hang on the branches, and white fairy-lights to drape all around. Anouk likes to dress the tree herself, and so I have
deliberately left it bare so that when she gets home from school, we’ll be able to decorate it together.

‘So, what’s Anouk up to these days?’ The lightness in my tone is forced. ‘Seems like she’s always running off somewhere.’

Zozie smiled. ‘It’s nearly Christmas,’ she said. ‘Kids are bound to get excited around Christmas.’

‘She hasn’t said anything to you? She’s not upset about Thierry and me?’

‘Not that I know of,’ Zozie said. ‘If anything, she seems relieved.’

‘So there’s nothing on her mind?’

‘Just the party,’ Zozie said.

That party. I still don’t know what she expects to achieve. Since the day she first mentioned it, my little Anouk has been wilful and strange; making plans; suggesting dishes; inviting all comers with lavish disregard for the practicalities of seating and space.

‘Can we invite Madame Luzeron?’

‘Of course, Nanou. If you think she’ll come.’

‘And Nico?’

‘All right.’

‘And Alice, of course. And Jean-Louis and Paupaul—’

‘Nanou, these people have homes of their own – families – what makes you think—’

‘They’ll come,’ she says, as if she has arranged it personally.

‘How do you know?’

‘I just do.’

Maybe she does, I tell myself. She seems to know a great many things. And there’s something else – some secret in her eyes – a hint of something from which I am excluded.

I look into the
chocolaterie
. It looks warm in there, almost intimate. Candles are burning on the tables; the Advent window is lit with a rose glow. It smells of orange and clove from the pomander hanging above the door; of pine from the tree; of the mulled wine that we are serving alongside our spiced hot chocolate, and of fresh gingerbread straight out of the oven. It draws them in – three or four at a time – regulars and strangers and tourists alike. They stop at the window, catch the scent, and in they come, looking a little dazed, perhaps, at the many scents and colours and all their favourites in their little glass boxes – bitter orange cracknell;
mendiants du roi
; hot chilli squares; peach brandy truffle; white chocolate angel; lavender brittle – all whispering inaudibly—

Try me. Taste me. Test me.

And Zozie at the centre of it all. Even at the busiest times – laughing, smiling, teasing, giving out chocolates on the house, talking to Rosette, making everything a little brighter just because she is there . . .

It feels as if I’m watching myself; the Vianne I was in another life.

But who am I now? I lurk behind the kitchen door, unable somehow to look away. A memory of another time; a man standing in a similar doorway, peering suspiciously inside. Reynaud’s face; his hungry eyes; the hateful, haunted look of a man half disgusted by what he sees – but who must look in, nevertheless.

Could this be what I have become? Another version of the Black Man? Another Reynaud, tormented by pleasure, unable to bear the joy of others, crushed beneath his envy and guilt?

Absurd. How could I be envious of Zozie?

Worse still, how is it that I am afraid?

At four-thirty Anouk blows in from the misty streets, a light in her eyes and a telltale glimmer at her heels that might be Pantoufle, if he existed. She greets Zozie with an exuberant hug. Rosette joins in. They spin her round, shouting
bam-bam-bam
! It becomes a game, a kind of wild dance that ends with the three of them collapsing, laughing and breathless, on to the furry pink armchairs.