The Lollipop Shoes

by Joanne Harris

  Today after school we went to the cemetery together. It’s one of my favourite places in Paris, and Jean-Loup says it’s one of his, too. Montmartre cemetery, with all its little houses and monuments and pointy-roofed chapels and skinny obelisks and streets and squares and alleys and flatblocks for the dead.

  There’s a word for it – necropolis. City of the dead. And it is a city; those tombs could almost be houses, I think, lined up side-by-side with their little gates neatly closed, and their gravel neatly raked, and flower-boxes in their mullioned windows. Neat little houses all the same, like a mini-suburbia for the dead. The thought made me shiver and laugh at the same time, and Jean-Loup looked up from his camera and asked me why.

  ‘You could almost live down here,’ I said. ‘A sleeping bag and a pillow – a fire – some food. You could hide away in one of these monuments. No one would know. The doors all shut. Warmer than sleeping under a bridge.’

  He grinned. ‘You ever slept under a bridge?’

  Well, of course I had – once or twice – but I didn’t want to tell him that. ‘No, but I’ve got a good imagination.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be scared?’

  ‘Why should I?’ I said.

  ‘The ghosts . . .’

  I shrugged. ‘They’re only ghosts.’

  A feral cat strolled out from one of the narrow stone lanes. Jean-Loup snapped it with his camera. The cat hissed and went skittering off between the tombs. Probably saw Pantoufle, I thought; cats and dogs are sometimes afraid of him, as if they know he shouldn’t be there.

  ‘One day I’m going to see a ghost. That’s why I bring my camera here.’

  I looked at him. His eyes were bright. He really believes – and he cares, too, which is what I like so much about him. I hate it when people don’t care; when they move through life without caring or believing in anything.

  ‘You’re really not scared of ghosts?’ he said.

  Well, when you’ve seen them as often as I have, you tend not to worry about that kind of thing – but I wasn’t going to tell Jean-Loup that, either. His mother’s quite the Catholic. She believes in the Holy Ghost. And exorcisms. And communion wine turning into blood – I mean, how gross is that? And always having fish on Friday. Oh, boy. Sometimes I think I’m a ghost myself. A walking, talking, breathing ghost.

  ‘The dead don’t do anything. That’s why they’re here. That’s why the little doors in these chapel-of-rest places don’t have handles on the inside.’

  ‘And dying?’ he said. ‘Are you scared of that?’

  I shrugged. ‘I guess. Isn’t everyone?’

  He kicked a stone. ‘Not everyone knows what it’s like,’ he said.

  I was curious. ‘So what is it like?’

  ‘Dying?’ He shrugged. ‘Well, there’s this corridor of light. And you see all your dead friends and relatives waiting for you. And they’re all smiling. And at the end of the corridor there’s a bright light, really bright and – holy, I guess, and it talks to you, and it says you have to go back to your life now, but not to worry, because you’ll be back one day and go into the light with all your friends and . . .’ He stopped. ‘Well, that’s what my mum thinks, anyway. That’s what I told her I saw.’

  I looked at him. ‘What did you see?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing at all.’

  There was a silence, as Jean-Loup looked through his viewfinder at the avenues of the cemetery with all their dead. Ping went the camera as he pressed the switch.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be a joke,’ he said, ‘if all of this was for nothing?’ Ping. ‘What if there’s no heaven after all?’ Ping. ‘What if all those people are just rotting?’

  His voice had got quite loud by then, and some birds that had been perching on one of the tombs went off in a sudden clap of wings.

  ‘They tell you they know it all,’ he said. ‘But they don’t. They lie. They always lie.’

  ‘Not always,’ I said. ‘Maman doesn’t lie.’

  He looked at me in a funny way, as if he were much, much older than me, with a wisdom born of years of pain and disappointment.

  ‘She will,’ he said. ‘They always do.’

  2

  Tuesday, 20th November

  ANOUK BROUGHT IN her new friend today. Jean-Loup Rimbault; a nice-looking boy a little older than she is, with an old-fashioned politeness that sets him apart. Today he came over directly from school – he lives on the other side of the Butte – and instead of going out straight away, sat in the shop for half an hour, talking to Anouk over biscuits and mocha.

  It’s good to see Anouk with a friend, although the pang it causes me is no less strong for being irrational. Pages of a lost book. Anouk at thirteen, the silent voice whispers; Anouk at sixteen, like a kite on the wind . . . Anouk at twenty, thirty and more—

  ‘A chocolate, Jean-Loup? On the house.’

  Jean-Loup. Not quite a usual name. Not quite a usual boy, either, with that dark, measuring look he shows to the world. His parents are divorced, I hear; he lives with his mother and sees his father three times a year. His favourite chocolate is bitter almond crisp – rather an adult taste, I thought; but then he is a curiously adult and self-possessed young man. His habit of watching everything through the viewfinder of his camera is slightly disconcerting; it’s as if he is trying to distance himself from the world outside, to find in the tiny digital screen a simpler, sweeter reality.

  ‘What’s that picture you’ve just taken?’

  Obediently, he showed me. At first sight it looked like an abstract; a dazzle of colours and geometric shapes. Then I saw it: Zozie’s shoes, shot at eye level, deliberately out of focus among a kaleidoscope of foil-wrapped chocolates.

  ‘I like it,’ I said. ‘What’s that in the corner?’ It looked as if something outside the frame had cast a shadow into the picture.

  He shrugged. ‘Maybe someone was standing too close.’ He levelled his camera at Zozie, standing behind the counter with a mass of coloured ribbons in her hands. ‘That’s nice,’ he said.

  ‘I’d rather not.’ She didn’t look up, but her voice was sharp.

  Jean-Loup faltered. ‘I was just—’

  ‘I know.’ She smiled at him and he relaxed. ‘I just don’t like being photographed. I find I rarely look like myself.’

  Now that, I thought, I could understand. But the sudden glimpse of insecurity – and in Zozie, of all people, whose cheery approach to everything makes any task look effortless – made me a little uneasy, and I began to wonder if I wasn’t relying too heavily on my friend, who must have her own problems and concerns, like everyone else.

  Well, if she does, she is hiding them well; learning fast, and with an ease that has surprised us both. She comes in at eight every day, just as Anouk leaves for school, and spends the hour before opening-time watching as I demonstrate the various chocolate-making techniques.

  She knows how to temper couverture; how to gauge the different blends; how to measure the temperatures and to keep them constant; how to achieve the best kind of gloss; how to pipe decorations on to a moulded figure or make chocolate curls with a potato peeler.

  She has a knack, as my mother would have said. But her real skill is with our customers. I’d noticed it before, of course: her knack for dealing with different people; her memory for names; the infectious nature of her smile and the way she manages to make everyone feel special – however crowded the shop may be.

  I’ve tried to thank her, but she just laughs, as if working here were a kind of game, something she does for fun, not money. I’ve offered to pay her properly, but so far she has always refused, although now the closure of Le P’tit Pinson means that once more she’s out of a job.

  I mentioned it again today.

  ‘You deserve a proper wage, Zozie,’ I said. ‘You’re doing far more now than just helping out occasionally.’

  She shrugged. ‘Right now you can’t afford to pay anyone a full wage.’

  ‘But seriously . . .’

>   ‘Seriously.’ She arched an eyebrow. ‘You, Madame Charbonneau, should stop worrying about other people and look after Number One for a change.’

  I laughed at that. ‘Zozie, you’re an angel.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ She grinned. ‘Now shall we get back to those chocolates?’

  3

  Wednesday, 21st November

  IT’S FUNNY, THE difference a sign can make. Of course, mine was more of a beacon, of sorts, shining out into the Paris streets.

  Try me. Taste me. Test me.

  It works; today we saw strangers and regulars alike, and no one left without something – a gift box, beribboned, or some little treat. A sugar mouse; a brandied plum; a handful of mendiants or a kilo of our bitterest truffles, packed loosely in their cocoa powder like chocolate bombs ready to explode.

  Of course it’s still too early to claim success. The locals, especially, will take longer to seduce. But already I sense a turn in the tide. By Christmas, we will own them all.

  And to think I first assumed there was nothing for me here. This place is a gift. It draws them in. And think of what we could collect – not just the money, but the stories, the people, the lives—

  We? Well, of course. I’m prepared to share. Three of us – four, if we count Rosette – each of us with our own special skills. We could be extraordinary. She’s done it before, in Lansquenet. She covered her trail, but not well enough. That name – Vianne Rocher – and the small details I have gleaned from Annie were enough to plot her trajectory. The rest was easy: a few long-distance telephone calls, some back editions of a local newspaper, dated four years ago; one of them showing a grainy, yellowed photograph of Vianne, smiling brashly from the doorway of a chocolate shop, while a tousled someone – Annie, of course – looks out from beneath her outstretched arm.

  La Céleste Praline. Intriguing name. Vianne Rocher enjoyed her share of whimsy; though you wouldn’t think it to see her now. In those days she was unafraid; wore red shoes and jangling bracelets and long, wild hair like a comic-book gypsy. Not entirely a beauty, perhaps – her mouth is too large, her eyes not entirely wide enough – but any witch worth her spell-book could tell that she was alight with glamours. Glamours to change the course of lives; glamours to charm, to heal, to hide.

  So – what happened?

  Witches don’t just quit, Vianne. Skills like ours beg to be used.

  I watch her as she works in the back, making her truffles, her chocolate liqueurs. Her colours have brightened since we first met, and now that I know where to look, I see the magic in everything she does. And yet she seems unaware of this, as if she could blind herself to what she is by simply ignoring it long enough, the way she ignores her children’s totems. Vianne is no fool – so why does she behave like one? And what will it take to open her eyes?

  She spent this morning in the back room; a scent of baking drifted through. In front – a pot of chocolate. In less than a week, the place has altered almost beyond recognition. Our table and chairs, hand-printed by the children, give the place a holiday look. There is something of the schoolyard in those primary colours, and however neatly they are aligned, there’s always a vague impression of disorder. There are pictures on the wall now: framed, embroidered sari squares in hot pink and lemon yellow. There are two old armchairs rescued from a skip; the springs are shot, and the legs are bowed. But I have made them comfortable, using nothing but a couple of metres of plush fabric, in a fuchsia leopard print, and some gold material from a charity shop.

  Annie loves them, and so do I. But for our size, we might almost be a little café from one of the trendier quarters of Paris – and the timing couldn’t be better for us.

  Two days ago, Le P’tit Pinson was closed down (not quite unexpectedly) following an unfortunate food-poisoning incident and a visit from the health inspector. I’ve heard say that Laurent has at least a month’s worth of cleaning and refurbishment before he’s allowed to reopen the café; which means that his Christmas clientèle is likely to suffer.

  So he ate the chocolates after all. Poor Laurent. The Hurakan works in mysterious ways. And some people bring these things down on themselves, as lightning-rods draw the lightning.

  Still, all the more for us, I say. We don’t have a licence for alcohol, but hot chocolate, cakes, biscuits, macaroons – and of course the siren-call of bitter truffle, mocha liqueurs, dipped strawberries, walnut cluster, apricot cup—

  Till now, our shopkeepers have stayed away, slightly wary of the changes here. They are so used to thinking of the chocolaterie as a tourist trap, a place where locals fear to tread, that it will take all my powers of persuasion to entice them to our door.

  But it helps that Laurent has been seen inside. Laurent, who detests any kind of change; who lives in a Paris of his own imagination where only native Parisians are allowed. Like all alcoholics, he has a sweet tooth – besides, where will he go, now that his café has closed down? Where will he find an audience for his endless catalogue of complaints?

  He came in yesterday lunchtime, sulky but palpably curious. It’s the first time he’s been here since we refurbished, and he took in the improvements with a sour look. As luck would have it, we had customers: Richard and Mathurin, who had dropped in on their way to their usual game of pétanque in the park. They looked slightly embarrassed to see Laurent – as well they might, being long-standing regulars of Le P’tit Pinson.

  Laurent shot them a look of disdain. ‘Someone’s doing well,’ he said. ‘What’s this supposed to be – a bloody café, or something?’

  I smiled. ‘Do you like it?’

  Laurent made his favourite noise. ‘Mweh! Everyone thinks they’re a bloody café. Everyone thinks they can do what I do.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ I said. ‘It’s not easy to create an authentic atmosphere nowadays.’

  Laurent snorted. ‘Don’t start me on that. There’s the Café des Artistes down the road – the owner’s a Turk, wouldn’t you guess – and the Italian coffee place next to it, and that English tea-shop, and any number of Costas and Starbucks – bloody Yanks think they invented coffee—’ He glared at me as if I too might harbour American ancestry. ‘I mean, what about loyalty?’ he bugled. ‘What about good, old-fashioned, French patriotism?’

  Mathurin is quite deaf, and genuinely may not have heard him, but I was pretty sure Richard was pretending.

  ‘That was nice, Yanne. Better go.’

  They left the money on the table and fled without looking back, as Laurent’s face grew slightly redder, and his eyes bulged alarmingly.

  ‘Those two old faggots,’ he began. ‘The number of times they’ve dropped in for a beer and a game of cards – and now, the minute things go wrong . . .’

  I gave him my most sympathetic smile. ‘I know, Laurent. But chocolate-houses are quite traditional, you know. In fact, I believe that historically they actually precede coffee-houses, which makes them totally authentic and Parisian.’ I guided him, still blustering, to the table the others had just vacated. ‘Why don’t you sit down and try a cup? On the house, of course, Laurent.’

  Well, that was only the start of it. For the price of a drink and chocolate praline, Laurent Pinson is on our side. It’s not that we need his custom, of course; he’s a parasite, filling his pockets with lump sugar from the bowl and sitting for hours over a single demitasse – but he’s the weak link in this little community, and where Laurent goes, the others will follow.

  Madame Pinot popped round this morning – she didn’t actually buy anything, but she did have a good look round, and left with a chocolate on the house. Jean-Louis and Paupaul did the same; and I happen to know that the girl who bought truffles from me this morning works in the boulangerie on the Rue des Trois Frères, and will spread the word to her customers.

  It’s not just the taste, she will try to explain. The rich dark truffle, flavoured with rum; the hint of chilli in the blend; the yielding smoothness of the centre and the bitterness of the cocoa-powder finish .
. . None of these explain the strange allure of Yanne Charbonneau’s chocolate truffles.

  Perhaps it’s the way they make you feel: stronger, perhaps; more powerful; more alert to the sounds and scents of the world; more aware of the colours and textures of things; more aware of yourself; of what’s under the skin; of the mouth, of the throat, of the sensitive tongue.

  Just one, I say.

  They try. They buy.

  They buy so many that Vianne was busy all day today, leaving me to run the shop and serve hot chocolate to those who came in. We can seat six, with a little goodwill – and it is a strangely attractive place; quiet and restful, yet cheery as well, where folk can come to forget their troubles, and sit and drink their chocolate, and talk.

  Talk? And how! The exception is Vianne. Still, there’s time. Start small, I say. Or rather, big, in Fat Nico’s case.

  ‘Hey, Shoe Lady! What’s for lunch?’

  ‘What do you want it to be?’ I said. ‘Rose creams, chilli squares, coconut macarooooons.’ I drew out the word suggestively, knowing his passion for coconut.

  ‘Whoa! I shouldn’t.’

  It’s an act, of course. He likes to put up a token resistance; grins sheepishly, knowing that I am not fooled.

  ‘Try one,’ I say.

  ‘I’ll just have half.’

  Broken sweets, of course, don’t count. Nor does a small cup of chocolate, with four more macaroons on the side, or the coffee cake that Vianne brings in, or the frosting he cleans from the mixing bowl.

  ‘My ma always used to make extra,’ he said. ‘So I’d have more to lick from the bowl at the end. Some days she’d make so much frosting that even I couldn’t eat it all—’ He stopped abruptly.

  ‘Your ma?’

  ‘She died.’ His baby face drooped.

  ‘You miss her,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘I guess.’

  ‘When did she die?’

  ‘Three years ago. She fell down the stairs. I guess she was a little overweight.’