Of course it’s absurd. I don’t believe in Fate. I believe we have a choice; that the wind can be stilled, and the Black Man fooled, and even the Kindly Ones appeased.
But at what cost? I ask myself. And that’s what keeps me awake at night, and that’s what made me tense up inside as the wind-chimes rang out their warning note and Thierry came in with that look on his face – that stubborn look he gets sometimes, that speaks of unfinished business.
I tried to stall. I offered him hot chocolate, which he accepted without much enthusiasm (he prefers coffee), but which gave me a reason to keep my hands busy. Rosette was playing with her toys on the floor, and Thierry watched her as she played: lining up rows of loose buttons from the button-box to make concentric patterns on the terracotta tiles.
On a normal day he would have commented; made some observation about hygiene, perhaps, or worried that Rosette might choke on the buttons. Today he said nothing; a warning sign that I tried to ignore as I set about making the chocolate.
Milk in the pan, couverture, sugar, nutmeg, chilli. A coconut macaroon on the side. Comforting, like all rituals; gestures handed down from my mother to me, to Anouk, and maybe to her daughter too, some day in a future too distant to imagine.
‘Great chocolate,’ he said, eager to please, cupping the little demi-tasse in hands best suited to building walls.
I sipped mine; it tasted of autumn and sweet smoke, of bonfires and temples and mourning and grief. I should have put some vanilla in, I told myself. Vanilla, like ice cream – like childhood.
‘Just a little bitter,’ he said, helping himself to a sugar lump. ‘So – how about a break this afternoon? A stroll along the Champs-Elysées – coffee, lunch, shopping . . .’
‘Thierry,’ I said. ‘That’s very sweet, but I can’t just close shop for the afternoon.’
‘Really? It looks completely dead.’
Just in time, I stopped the sharp retort. ‘You haven’t finished your chocolate,’ I said.
‘And you haven’t answered my question, Yanne.’ His eyes flicked to my bare hand. ‘I notice you’re not wearing the ring. Does that mean the answer’s no?’
I laughed without meaning to. His directness often makes me laugh, although Thierry himself has no idea why. ‘You surprised me, that’s all.’
He looked at me over his chocolate. His eyes were tired, as if he hadn’t slept, and there were lines bracketing his mouth that I hadn’t noticed before. It was a hint of vulnerability that troubled and surprised me; I’d spent so long telling myself I didn’t need him that it had never occurred to me that he might need me.
‘So,’ he said. ‘Can you spare me an hour?’
‘Give me a minute to change,’ I said.
Thierry’s eyes lit up at once. ‘That’s my girl! I knew you would.’
He was back on form again, the small moment of uncertainty gone. He stood up, cramming his macaroon into his mouth (I noticed he’d left the chocolate). He grinned at Rosette, still playing on the floor.
‘Well, jeune fille, what do you think? We could go to the Luxembourg, play with the toy boats on the lake—’
Rosette looked up, her eyes bright. She loves those boats, and the man who rents them; would stay there all summer if she could . . .
See boat, she signed, emphatically.
‘What did she say?’ said Thierry, frowning.
I smiled at him. ‘She says that sounds like a pretty good plan.’
I was struck by a sudden affection for Thierry, for his enthusiasm, his goodwill. I know he finds Rosette difficult to cope with – her eerie silence, her refusal to smile – and I appreciated the effort he was making.
Upstairs, I discarded my chocolate-smeared apron and put on my red flannel dress. It’s a colour I haven’t worn in years; but I needed something to combat that cold November wind, and besides, I thought, I’d be wearing a coat. I wrestled Rosette into anorak and gloves (a garment which, for some reason, she despises), and then we all took the Métro to the Luxembourg.
So curious to be a tourist still, here in the city of my birth. But Thierry thinks I’m a stranger here, and he takes such joy in showing me his world that I cannot disappoint him. The gardens are crisp and bright today, pebbled with sunlight beneath a kaleidoscope of autumn leaves. Rosette loves the fallen leaves, kicking through them in great exuberant arcs of colour. And she loves the little lake, and watches the toy boats with solemn enjoyment.
‘Say boat, Rosette.’
‘Bam,’ she says, fixing him with her catlike gaze.
‘No, Rosette, it’s boat,’ he says. ‘Come on now, you can say boat.’
‘Bam,’ says Rosette, and makes the sign for monkey with her hand.
‘That’s enough.’ I smile at her, but inside, my heart is beating too fast. She has been so good today; running about in her lime-green anorak and red hat like some wildly animated Christmas ornament, occasionally calling – Bam-bam-bam! – as if shooting down invisible enemies, still not laughing (she rarely does) but concentrating with fierce intent, her lip pushed out, her brows drawn together, as if even running could be a challenge not to be taken frivolously.
But now there’s danger in the air. The wind has changed; there’s a gleam of gold from the corner of my eye, and I’m beginning to think it’s time—
‘Just one ice cream,’ Thierry says.
The boat does a clever little flip in the water, turning ninety degrees to starboard and heading out for the middle of the lake. Rosette looks at me mischievously.
‘Rosette, no.’
The boat flips again, now pointing at the ice cream stand.
‘All right, just one.’
We kissed as Rosette ate her ice cream by the side of the lake, and he was warm and vaguely tobacco-scented, like somebody’s father, his cashmere-coated arms folded bear-like over my too-thin red dress and my autumn coat.
It was a good kiss, beginning with my cold fingers and finding its clever, earnest way towards my throat and finally my mouth, unfreezing what the wind had frozen, little by little, like a warm fire, repeating I love you, I love you (he says that a lot), but under his breath, like Hail Marys delivered in haste by an eager child too keen for redemption.
He must have seen something in my face. ‘What’s wrong?’ he said, serious again.
How to tell him? How to explain? He watched me with sudden earnestness, his blue eyes watery with the cold. He looked so guileless, so ordinary – unable, for all his business acumen, to understand our kind of deceit.
What does he see in Yanne Charbonneau? I’ve tried so hard to understand. And what might he see in Vianne Rocher? Would he mistrust her unconventional ways? Would he sneer at her beliefs? Judge her choices? Feel horror, perhaps, at the way she lied?
Slowly, he kissed my fingertips, putting them one by one in his mouth. He grinned. ‘You taste of chocolate.’
But the wind was still blowing in my ears, and the sound of the trees all around us made it immense, like an ocean, like a monsoon, sweeping the sky with dead-leaf confetti and the scent of that river, that winter, that wind.
An odd little thought came to me then—
What if I told Thierry the truth? What if I told him everything?
To be known; to be loved; to be understood. My breath caught—
Oh, if only I dared—
The wind does curious things to people: it turns them around, it makes them dance. In that moment it made Thierry a boy again, tousle-haired, bright-eyed and hopeful. The wind can be seductive that way; bringing wild thoughts and wilder dreams. But all the time I could hear that warning – and even then I think I knew that for all his warmth and all his love, Thierry le Tresset would be no match for the wind.
‘I don’t want to lose the chocolate shop,’ I told him (or maybe the wind). ‘I need to keep it. I need it to be mine.’
Thierry laughed. ‘Is that all?’ he said. ‘Then marry me, Yanne.’ He grinned at me. ‘You can have all the chocolate shops you want, and all the choco
lates. And you’ll taste of chocolate all the time. And you’ll even smell of it – and so will I—’
I couldn’t help laughing at that. And then Thierry took my hands and spun me around on the dry gravel, making Rosette hiccup with laughter.
Perhaps that’s why I said what I did; a moment of fearful impulsiveness, with the wind in my ears and my hair in my face and Thierry holding on for all he was worth, whispering I love you, Yanne, against my hair in a voice that sounded almost afraid.
He’s afraid to lose me, I suddenly thought, and that was when I said it, knowing that there could be no turning back after this, and with tears in my eyes and my nose pink and running from the wintry cold.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘But quietly . . .’
His eyes widened a little at the suddenness of it.
‘You’re sure?’ he said, a little breathlessly. ‘I thought you’d want – you know.’ He grinned. ‘The dress. The church. The choir singing. Bridesmaids, bells – the whole shebang.’
I shook my head. ‘No fuss,’ I said.
He kissed me again. ‘As long as it’s yes.’
And for a moment it was so good; the small, sweet dream right there in my hands. Thierry’s a good man, I thought. A man with roots; with principles.
And money, Vianne, don’t forget that, said the spiteful voice inside my head, but the voice was faint, and getting fainter as I gave myself to the small, sweet dream. Damn her, I thought, and damn the wind. This time it would not blow us away.
7
Friday, 9th November
TODAY I QUARRELLED with Suze again. I don’t know why it happens so much; I want to be friends, but the more I try, the harder it gets. This time it was about my hair. Oh, boy. Suze thinks I should get it straightened.
I asked why.
Suzanne shrugged. We were alone in the library during Break – the others had gone to buy sweets at the shop, and I was trying to copy up some geography notes, but Suze wanted to talk, and there’s no stopping her when that happens.
‘Looks weird,’ she said. ‘Like Afro hair.’
I didn’t care, and told her so.
Suze made the fish-mouth face she always makes when someone contradicts her. ‘So – your dad wasn’t black, was he?’ she said.
I shook my head, feeling like a liar. Suzanne thinks my father’s dead. But he might have been black for all I know. For all I know he might have been a pirate, or a serial killer, or a king.
‘Because, you know, people might think—’
‘If by people, you mean Chantal—’
‘No,’ said Suzanne crossly, but her pink face went a shade pinker, and she didn’t quite meet my eyes as she said it. ‘Listen,’ she went on, putting her arm around my shoulders. ‘You’re new to this school. You’re new to us. The rest of us went to the primary school. We learnt to fit in.’
Learn to fit in. I had a teacher called Madame Drou, back in the days at Lansquenet, who used to say the exact same thing.
‘But you’re different,’ said Suze. ‘I’ve been trying to help—’
‘Help me how?’ I snapped, thinking of my geography notes and how I never, never get to do what I want when she’s around. It’s always her games, her problems and her Annie please stop following me around when somebody better comes along. She knew I didn’t mean to snap, but she looked hurt anyway, pushing back her (straightened) hair in what she thinks is a very adult fashion and saying, ‘Well, if you won’t even listen . . .’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘What’s wrong with me?’
She looked at me for a moment or two. Then the lesson bell rang, and she gave me a sudden, brilliant smile and handed me a folded piece of paper.
‘I made a list.’
I read the list in geography class. Monsieur Gestin was talking to us about Budapest, where we’d lived once, for a while, though I don’t remember much about it now. Only the river, and the snow, and the old quarter that looks so like Montmartre to me somehow, with its winding streets and its steep stairways and the old castle on the little hill. The list was written on half a sheet of exercise-book paper in Suze’s neat, pudgy hand. There were tips on grooming (hair straight, nails filed, legs shaved, always carry deodorant); dress (no socks with skirts, wear pink, but not orange); culture (chick-lit good, boy-books bad); films and music (recent hits only); what to watch on television, websites (as if I had a computer anyway), how to spend my free time and what type of mobile phone to carry.
I thought at first it was another joke; but after school, when I met her queuing for the bus, I realized she was serious. ‘You have to make an effort,’ she said. ‘Otherwise people will say you’re weird.’
‘I’m not weird,’ I said. ‘I’m just—’
‘Different.’
‘What’s so bad about being different?’
‘Well, Annie, if you want to have friends . . .’
‘Real friends shouldn’t care about that kind of thing.’
Suze went red. She often does when she’s annoyed, and it makes her face clash with her hair. ‘Well, I do,’ she hissed, and her eyes went to the front of the queue.
There’s a code in queuing for the bus, you know, just as there’s a code when you’re going into class, or picking teams in games. Suze and I stand about halfway. In front of us there’s the A-list: the girls who play basketball for the school; the older ones who wear lipstick, who roll their skirts up at the waistband and smoke Gitanes outside the school gates. And then there are the boys: the best-looking ones; the team members; the ones who wear their collars turned up and their hair gelled.
And there’s the new boy: Jean-Loup Rimbault. Suzanne has a crush on him. Chantal really likes him too – though he never seems to notice either of them much, and never joins in any of their games. I began to see what was going on in Suze’s mind.
Freaks and losers stand at the back. First, the black kids from the other side of the Butte, who keep to their group and don’t talk to the rest of us. Then Claude Meunier, who stutters; Mathilde Chagrin, the fat girl; and the Muslim girls, a dozen or so of them, all in a bunch, who caused such a fuss about wearing their headscarves at the beginning of term. They were wearing them now, I noticed as my eyes went to the back of the queue; they put them on the minute they leave the school gates, even though they’re not allowed them at school. Suze thinks they’re stupid to wear headscarves, and that they should be like us if they’re going to live in our country – but she’s just repeating what Chantal says. I don’t see why a headscarf should make a difference any more than a T-shirt, or a pair of jeans. Surely, what they wear is their business.
Suze was still watching Jean-Loup. He’s quite tall, good-looking, I suppose, with black hair and a fringe that covers most of his face. He’s twelve, a year older than the rest of us. He should be in a higher form. Suze says he was kept back last year, but he’s really bright, always top of the class. A lot of the girls like him; but today he was just trying to be cool, leaning against the bus stop, looking through the viewfinder of the little digital camera he never seems to be without.
‘Oh, my God,’ whispered Suze.
‘Well, why don’t you talk to him for once?’
Suze shushed me furiously. Jean-Loup looked up briefly at the noise, then went back to his camera. Suze went even redder than before. ‘He looked at me!’ she squeaked, then, hiding behind the hood of her anorak, turned to me and rolled her eyes. ‘I’m going to get highlights. There’s a place that Chantal goes to for hers.’ She grasped my arm so hard it hurt. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘We could go together! I’ll get highlights, and you can get yours straightened.’
‘Stop going on about my hair,’ I said.
‘Come on, Annie! It’ll be cool. And—’
‘I said stop it!’ Now I was beginning to feel really angry. ‘Why do you keep going on about it?’
‘Oh, you’re hopeless,’ said Suze, losing her temper. ‘You look like a freak, and you don’t even care?’
That’s another thi
ng she does, you know. Makes a sentence sound like a question when it isn’t.
‘Why should I?’ I said. By now the anger had become something like a sneeze, and I could feel it coming, building, ready to burst whether I liked it or not. And then I remembered what Zozie had said in the English tea-shop, and wished I could do something to take the smug look off Suzanne’s face. Not something bad – I’d never do that – but something to teach her, all the same.
I forked my fingers behind my back and spoke to her in my shadow-voice—
See how you like it, for a change.
And for a second, I thought I saw something. A flash of something across her face; something that was gone before I’d really seen it.
‘I’d rather be a freak than a clone,’ I said.
Then I turned and walked to the back of the queue, with everyone staring and Suze wide-eyed and ugly, quite ugly with her red hair and her red face and her mouth hanging open in disbelief as I stood there and waited for the bus to arrive.
I’m not sure if I expected her to follow me or not. I thought perhaps she would, but she didn’t; and when the bus came at last she sat next to Sandrine, and never even looked at me again.
I tried to tell Maman about it when I got home, but by then she was trying to talk to Nico and wrap a box of rum truffles and fix Rosette’s snack at the same time and I couldn’t quite find the words to tell her how I felt.
‘Just ignore them,’ she said at last, pouring milk into a copper pan. ‘Here, watch this for me, will you, Nanou? Just stir it gently while I wrap this box . . .’
She keeps the ingredients for the hot chocolate in a cabinet at the back of the kitchen. At the front she has some copper pans, some shiny moulds for making chocolate shapes, the granite slab for tempering. Not that she uses them any more; most of her old things are downstairs in the cellar, and even before Madame Poussin died, there was scarcely any time for making our specials.
But there’s always time for hot chocolate, made with milk and grated nutmeg, vanilla, chilli, brown sugar, cardamom and 70 per cent couverture chocolate – the only chocolate worth buying, she says – and it tastes rich and just slightly bitter on the back of the tongue, like caramel as it begins to turn. The chilli gives it a touch of heat – never too much, just a taste – and the spices give it that churchy smell that reminds me of Lansquenet somehow, and of nights above the chocolate shop, just Maman and me, with Pantoufle sitting to one side and candles burning on the orange-box table.
The Lollipop Shoes Page 8
