The Chocolate Promise

by Josephine Moon

  ‘No,’ Darla said finally, slowly and deliberately. ‘No.’

  Christmas had stormed to her room and slammed the door anyway.

  She’d never had a father, not even a photo of one. Not even one listed on her birth certificate to make it official in any way. It was as if she had just appeared from nowhere. She couldn’t quite grieve for her father, because she’d never had him. Yet still she felt his absence. It was the cruel irony of losing something she’d never even had.

  Joseph had married her mother when Christmas was six. He had been a stabilising influence on Darla, filling their empty fridge with pre-cooked dinners and fresh vegetables, and turning Darla’s midnight neighbourhood rambles into reading time and warm milk before bed. Then, when Christmas was seven, along came Val, and it looked for a while as though they’d be a happily-ever-after family.

  But a few years later, Joseph left. Twelve-year-old Christmas stood in the driveway watching the car, packed with him and her Tiny Val and their things, till long after it was out of sight, clutching the piece of paper with the phone number he’d written on it, telling her she could call any time. She’d refused to cry and her body burned with the pain instead.

  Now he’d be walking Val down the aisle, proud as punch with his little girl on his arm.

  He’d been the only father Christmas had known, and she’d lost him too.

  4

  The tail of summer, for what it was worth, had been shooed away with clouds and showers every day for the past week. It was a great relief for the farmers, whose land was parched from the prolonged drought through last winter, spring and late into summer.

  Easter Saturday started early for Christmas, at seven am, with a special consultation for Rosemary McCaw With a Rather Wide Jaw. (After reading four Hairy Maclary books to her nephews last week, she’d started to think of her fellow villagers as larger-than-life rhyming storybook characters. And Rosemary McCaw, a flamboyant woman in her seventies, was by far her favourite.)

  ‘My spirit is vexed,’ Rosemary said now, sitting on the tall-legged stool at the counter. Her bejewelled fingers were pressed to either side of her unnaturally ruddy cheeks, the source of which Christmas was unsure, though she’d always suspected that Rosemary was fond of the sherry. Rosemary did her best, though, to hide it. She never left the house without caked-on white makeup, pencilled eyebrows, and blush swept so high on the cheekbones it almost reached her eyes. Her blue-grey hair peeked out from beneath an emerald-green scarf wrapped around her head like a turban.

  Rosemary’s grown children and their collective brood of offspring were staying with her for the weekend and she was feeling overrun already, particularly as it was also the Evandale garden expo today. Rosemary was on the organising committee and, as she kept telling Christmas, she’d been run off her feet picking up the slack for the other committee members, who didn’t seem to care whether Evandale looked like a backyard garden patch, the Queen’s own leisure grounds, or a pile of hay and manure mucked out of a stable. And today she needed to be out making sure everyone was showing Evandale at its best, not worrying about entertaining the family circus, who seemed to feel the need to come and see her all at once for safety in numbers.

  Christmas listened closely to Rosemary’s many complaints. ‘I recommend plain dark chocolate,’ she said at last, selecting a small block from the shelf. ‘This is eighty-five per cent cocoa chocolate from Ecuador, made entirely from Criollo beans.’

  ‘Criollo?’ Rosemary rolled the word around her mouth as she reached for the chocolate life raft before her.

  ‘Criollo beans are flavour beans, usually used for specific taste sensations rather than mass volume.’

  ‘Like wine.’

  ‘Similar. But it means it’s not going to taste like a block of commercial chocolate you find in a supermarket, which are usually mostly made of Forastero beans.’

  ‘All the better.’

  ‘And the high cocoa content will make it drier and more intense,’ Christmas went on. ‘But what you’ll get from it are high levels of antioxidants to help combat the negative effects of stress, and the release of endorphins in the brain will help you feel better. There’s also research to suggest that chemicals in the chocolate can offer cardiovascular protection, also great during times of high stress. It’s not cheap, but it’s going to give you the biggest bang for your buck, with great nutritional benefits and without all the saturated fat and sugar of mass-produced chocolate.’

  ‘I’ll take it,’ Rosemary said. ‘How much should one consume?’

  ‘That block should last you all day. And you can eat it on the run, wherever you are, no matter what you’re doing. The caffeine in the chocolate might help keep your mind focused on your tasks too. But if you run out, you know where to find me.’

  Rosemary raised the block to her face as if she were going to press her red matte lipstick to its smooth paper-wrapped surface, her features relaxing as she inhaled the scent of roasted cocoa. ‘Christmas Livingstone, you’re an angel,’ she said, as she always did, in that husky resonant voice left over from her days in the theatre.

  ‘Well, a fairy godmother, anyway,’ Christmas said and smiled, as she always did.

  ‘If only I’d had such nourishment on hand when I was playing Ophelia under that horrid director in Hobart who shouted and cursed with every breath he took.’

  Rosemary then spent the next fifteen minutes explaining how important the annual garden show was for a small town like Evandale, and for Tasmanian tourism generally, lamenting the apathy of so many these days towards their town. Christmas nodded and assured her that she was doing great work. She’d always thought Rosemary was essentially a bit lonely and that she threw herself into community projects to pass the time.

  ‘Also, I would recommend a massage as soon as possible next week,’ Christmas said. ‘You can’t get much better than fine dark chocolate and massage for stress treatment.’

  ‘My shoulder has been rebellious lately. I’m sure it’s the weather. So changeable. I fell off the stage once and it’s never been the same since.’ Rosemary clasped her left shoulder and furrowed her brow.

  Christmas looked in the appointment book and chewed the end of her pen. ‘Abigail’s free Tuesday morning if you’d like to come in then?’

  ‘That sounds like a fine idea.’ Rosemary slipped the chocolate bar into her metallic purple handbag and retrieved her change purse. She pulled out some notes and handed them to Christmas. ‘You may as well take the money for the massage now too, to save bother later.’

  Christmas wrote the time onto an appointment card and Rosemary chose a piece of West African salted milk chocolate from the tasting plate on the counter.

  ‘Mmm . . .’ She closed her eyes and sucked in her cheeks.

  ‘Nice, isn’t it?’ Christmas said. ‘The sugar hits you first and then the salt just lingers at the end and seems to enhance the whole thing.’

  ‘There isn’t a word that could adequately describe that,’ Rosemary all but whispered.

  Christmas laughed and accompanied her to the door.

  ‘I can still count on you for the flower-inspired chocolates for the gourmet food tent?’ Rosemary asked, her anxiety returning.

  ‘Absolutely. Cheyenne is putting together flower arrangements and she’ll be bringing them down soon, I should think. I’ll be along shortly with the chocolates.’

  ‘Marvellous. See you in a few hours.’ Rosemary took a steadying breath before venturing forth.

  Christmas gave her a wave as she strode across the coir doormat and down the single rendered step to the footpath, heading towards the park and the white expo tents that had been set up since yesterday, her long skirt brushing the pots of dancing fuchsia petunias as she went. She stepped off the path briefly to allow a more senior woman to pass unhindered, and was nearly knocked off her feet by Gordon Harding Who Rode His Penny Farthing. Rosemary shook her fist and bellowed at him for his reckless scooting around town on his silly old bicycle. At leas
t, that’s what it sounded like to Christmas. She suppressed a giggle and turned back inside the shop.

  She was just opening the blue wooden window shutters to let in the mild day when Bert and Ernie bustled in the door. Those were their real names. She didn’t have to give them rhyming names; she couldn’t top what they already had. They’d been friends since they were boys and now played Canasta together every week with another couple of retired friends. They were fond of windcheaters and baseball caps. Bert still had his wife of more than forty years but Ernie’s wife had passed on last year, and since then he’d struggled to smile as often as he used to.

  ‘Morning, love, we heard you were opening early today,’ Bert said.

  ‘Yes, big day ahead.’ Christmas patted him lightly on the shoulder as he passed. ‘Busiest day of the year, I’d say.’

  Bert and Ernie headed for the coffee plunger on the marble counter.

  Christmas offered free coffee all day, every day. Real coffee from freshly roasted beans that were organic and ethically sourced, ground on site just prior to brewing. The smell wafted out onto the footpath, and the blackboard out front offering Free Coffee From Real Beans ensured that she capitalised on whatever pedestrian or motor traffic passed by her small garden of petunias, bluebells and daffodils within the white picket fence. And as Evandale was off the main thoroughfares, businesses had to capitalise on whatever they could. Too many small businesses had come and gone here over the years, so Christmas was determined to do whatever it took.

  She’d once read that during the Great Depression in America, cinemas offered free hot popcorn to patrons, the irresistible smell of butter and salt drawing people inside. That was a stroke of genius and exactly how you kept making money in difficult times, and she’d tucked that piece of information away in the back of her mind.

  Coffee was currency. Coffee was her social media. Yes, you could make tidy profits on coffee by selling it, but only if you got customers in the door in the first place. Coffee drinkers were like wine drinkers and chocolate connoisseurs. If she wanted customers to invest in high-quality chocolate that cost ten dollars for a hundred grams instead of mass-produced high-fat, high-sugar chocolate at three dollars a block, she had to meet their refined needs and give them something to make it worth it.

  And it worked. The constant stream of visitors made The Chocolate Apothecary one of the busiest shops in the street, right behind Jane Shaw’s Ingleside Bakery, which filled Christmas with tremendous pride. She’d built something really special here, and life was good.

  •

  Lincoln had only been back in the country two days, finding his feet again with the norms of grocery shopping, miserable weather and the constant dread of visiting his father. He was still adjusting to this land—the complete opposite of the Amazon—and it wasn’t helping his sense of place. It was disconcerting, and added to his restlessness to hit the road again.

  As if to rub it in, his publisher, Jeremy Gilshannon, was flying off to Tokyo tomorrow and had asked to Skype this morning to discuss the new book. Lincoln assumed it wasn’t good news, since Jez’s email was sketchy and filled with promises of catching up for teppanyaki and cold beer when he returned. But it also gave him an excuse to put off dealing with his father for a bit longer, by convincing himself he had ‘meetings’ to attend to. And since Nan was looking well, there seemed to be no urgency to confront Tom about whatever he’d been doing to upset her.

  Jez smiled smoothly at Lincoln from the computer screen. ‘The sample chapters were good,’ he said through a mouthful of cereal, his spoon chasing an errant raisin around the bowl. ‘But we think you might benefit from a co-author.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Lincoln asked, taken aback. ‘As in a ghost writer?’

  ‘No, not at all. A co-author. An equal partner. Someone who can bring an extra dimension to your writing. You’ve got all this amazing scientific knowledge of cacao and heaps of great history and wonderful street cred, having travelled Africa and the Amazon and all, it’s just that, sometimes—and only occasionally—the facts get in the way of a good story.’

  ‘You want me to lie?’ In the background, Lincoln could see Jez’s partner carrying a load of washing through the lounge room.

  ‘No, no!’ Jez gulped down tea from a mug, the teabag string and label stuck to the side. ‘We want all your fabulous knowledge of cacao tree courtship rituals; we just want someone who knows how to spin it, weave it, into something that’s so irresistible, so marketable, it will be the hottest non-fiction book of the year.’

  Lincoln squirmed at the implicit criticism but managed to keep his cool. Jez was a graphic designer who’d crossed over to publishing five years ago. He thought visually. He thought in colour and with pop! When he read books he saw them as movies. Apparently, Lincoln’s chapters had been a little black and white and grainy and Jez was looking for rich, surround-sound, multidimensional words. Words that could be eaten off the page.

  ‘Your last book was different. It was a textbook, really. Which is why universities and TAFEs across the country have snapped it up as course reading material. But this is different. With the huge renaissance chocolate is enjoying right now, the general public is our target audience. They’re the people who watch MasterChef.’

  ‘But it’s not a cookbook.’

  ‘No. But it could be both. We could straddle two worlds, you with your botanical knowledge and emphasis on the economic, social and environmental aspects of sustainable cacao farming, and this other author focusing on the stuff we all love. The flavour. The smell. The colour. We want pictures. We want to vicariously taste all this wonderful chocolate that comes from the jungles of which you’re so fond.’

  ‘This is a different brief than we originally discussed,’ Lincoln said, a needle of irritation in his tone.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Jeremy said, pausing to offer the remains of the milk at the bottom of his cereal bowl to a Siamese cat who had just landed neatly on his lap, winding its tail up under his nose. ‘And it’s not your fault. Please don’t think that. It’s just that we’re in the business of selling books and we react to what the market wants. And the market is voraciously consuming books about food.’ He held up a finger and nodded sagely. ‘Food is the new vampire.’

  Lincoln snorted.

  ‘But rest assured, we too want to go deeper than a how-to-temper-chocolate book. People have a thirst for knowledge now. They’ve moved on from that dashing devil in a purple coat.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Cadbury.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘They want to feel connected to where their food comes from. And that’s what you do so well.’

  Lincoln’s hackles lowered. He could see the sense in what Jez was saying. ‘Do you have someone in mind?’

  Jez shrugged. ‘We’ve always got good writers floating around that could help out. If you like we can approach some, see how they feel. Unless you know someone already?’

  ‘Leave it with me for a week or so to digest and I’ll see if anything comes to mind.’

  ‘Excellent. Well then, I’m off to Tokes.’ Jeremy kissed the top of his cat’s head. ‘Let’s chat when I get back. Sayonara!’ He waved enthusiastically at Lincoln and disconnected from the call.

  Lincoln sat in the chair for a while, staring at the blank screen. He felt deflated and tetchy. His grandmother’s house, with its pastel furnishings and outdated laminate, felt empty and uninspiring.

  Rousing himself, he texted his mate Rubble, arranging to meet him at the pub on Thursday, so that was something to look forward to. But right now he needed to get out of the house.

  He grabbed a woollen jumper and the car keys and drove out of the driveway with no plan except to get some fresh air and clear his head. But it wasn’t long before he found himself heading towards Evandale.

  •

  If Christmas hadn’t been working so hard, running between the shop, where Abigail was managing the floor for the day, and The Chocolate Apothecary’s tent at the
garden expo, where Cheyenne was in charge, she’d have loved to wander around and look at the displays. There were trickling and bubbling water features; tiers of potted colour; bursts of fragrant herbs; shiny bronze garden ornaments; shovels and mowers, irrigation systems and chainsaws; neem oil for pest control; bird baths and feeders; beehives; and worm gardens. The Apothecary’s tent was up next to the food vans, and the aromas of sizzling onion and wood-fired pizza drifted effortlessly on the wind and made her stomach rumble every time she scooted past.

  Cheyenne’s flower displays were elegant and simple, in white and pale pink, and she’d draped fine white gauze around the tent so it looked romantic and rather wedding-like. Christmas’s handmade chocolates, all of them in the shape of flowers or boxes with flowers on top, sat in tiers on silver plates and attracted a lot of interest. She’d already received several orders for special occasions, and many people had taken photos and uploaded them to social media sites. She was also pleased to see that Cheyenne’s flowers were generating plenty of interest too and she was fielding queries for special orders from the same people.

  ‘What?’ Cheyenne said, grinning, as she waved goodbye to a young couple who’d taken her business card with them.

  ‘I was just thinking how much you deserve this,’ Christmas said. ‘You work so hard and you’re such a great mum, your displays for The Apothecary are always sensational and add so much to my business. And you work in the convenience store as well. I don’t know how you do it. It’s great that people are finally seeing your true talent.’

  Cheyenne fiddled with the silver bracelet on her wrist. ‘Well, you just have to get on and do what you need to do. I’m lucky to have free space in your shop to sell my flowers.’

  ‘It’s not exactly free.’ Christmas gestured around at the tent and the expo grounds. ‘I couldn’t get by without you stepping in to help out.’

  ‘We need each other.’