He spoke again, in a shaky voice. ‘You owe me the truth, Yanne,’ he said. ‘I’ve let this go for much too long. I don’t even know who you are, for God’s sake. I just took you on trust, you and your kids – and have you ever heard me complain? A spoilt brat and a retard—’
Abruptly he stopped.
I stared at him blankly. Finally, he’d crossed a line.
On the floor, Rosette looked up from the jigsaw she was playing with. A light flickered overhead. The plastic shapes that I use for making biscuits began to rattle against the table-top, as if an express train were going by.
‘Yanne, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ Thierry was trying to regain lost ground, like a door-to-door salesman who still sees a chance of nailing that elusive deal—
But the damage was done. The house of cards, so carefully built, now swept away at a single word. And now I can see what I’d missed before. For the first time, I can see Thierry. I’ve already seen his pettiness. His gloating contempt of the underling. His snobbery. His arrogance. But now I can see his colours, too; his hidden vulnerabilities; the uncertainty behind his smile; the tension in his shoulders; the odd stiffening of his posture whenever he has to look at Rosette.
That ugly word.
Of course I have always been aware that Rosette makes him slightly uncomfortable. As always, he over-compensates, but his cheeriness is a forced thing, like someone petting a dangerous dog.
And now I can see that it’s not just Rosette. This place makes him uncomfortable; this place we made without his help. Every batch of chocolates; every sale; every customer greeted by name; even the chair on which he sits – all of these things remind him that we three are independent, that we have a life outside of him, that we have a past in which Thierry le Tresset played no part at all—
But Thierry has a past of his own. Something that makes him what he is. All his fears are rooted there. His fears, his hopes, his secrets—
I look down at the familiar granite slab on which I temper my chocolates. It’s a very old piece, black with age; already worn when I acquired it and bearing the scars of repeated use. There are flecks of quartz in the stone that catch the light unexpectedly, and I watch them shine as the chocolate cools, ready to be heated and tempered again.
I don’t want to know your secrets, I think.
But the granite slab knows different. Spackled with mica, it winks and gleams, catching my eye, holding my gaze. I can almost see them now, images mirrored in the stone. As I watch, they take shape, they begin to make sense, glimpses of a life, a past that makes Thierry the man he is.
That’s Thierry in hospital. Younger by twenty years or more, he’s waiting outside a closed door. He has two gift packs of cigars in his hand, each tied with a ribbon – one pink, one blue. He has covered every base.
Now it’s another waiting-room. There are murals of cartoon characters on the walls. A woman sits close, with a child in her arms. The boy is maybe six years old. He stares vacantly at the ceiling throughout, and nothing – not Pooh or Tigger or Mickey Mouse – brings the smallest gleam to his eye.
A building, not quite a hospital. And a boy – no, a young man – on the arm of a pretty nurse. The young man looks about twenty-five. Bulky like his father, he stoops, his head too heavy for his neck, his smile as vacant as a sunflower’s.
And now at last I understand. This is the secret he has tried to hide. I understand that broad, bright smile, like a man selling false religion door-to-door; the way he never speaks of his son; his intense perfectionism; the way he sometimes looks at Rosette – or rather, how he doesn’t look at her—
I gave a sigh.
‘Thierry,’ I said. ‘It’s all right. You don’t have to lie to me any more.’
‘Lie to you?’
‘About your son.’
He stiffened then, and even without the granite slab I could see the agitation growing in him. His face was pale; he started to sweat, and the anger that his fear had displaced came rushing back like an evil wind. He stood up, bearlike suddenly, knocking over his coffee-cup and scattering the chocolates in their brightly coloured wrappers all over the table-top.
‘There’s nothing wrong with my son,’ he said, rather too loudly for the room. ‘Alan’s in the building trade. A real chip off the old block. I don’t see him much, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t respect me – doesn’t mean I’m not proud of him.’ He was shouting now, making Rosette cover her ears. ‘Who’s been saying anything else? Was it Roux? Has that bastard been snooping around?’
‘It’s nothing to do with Roux,’ I said. ‘If you’re ashamed of your own son, then how can you ever care for Rosette?’
‘Yanne, please. It’s not like that. I’m not ashamed. But he was my son, Sarah couldn’t have any more children, and I just wanted him to be . . .’
‘Perfect. I know.’
He took my hands. ‘I can live with it, Yanne. I promise I can. We’ll get a specialist on the case. She’ll have everything she could ever want. Nannies, toys—’
More gifts, I thought. As if that would change the way he feels. I shook my head. The heart doesn’t change. You can lie, hope, pretend to yourself – but in the end, can you ever escape the element to which you were born?
He must have seen it in my face; his own face fell, his shoulders slumped.
‘But everything’s arranged,’ he said.
Not I love you, but everything’s arranged.
And for all the bitter taste in my mouth I felt a sudden, soaring rush of joy. As if something poisoned in my throat had managed to dislodge itself—
Outside the wind-chimes sounded, once, and without thinking I forked the sign against bad luck. Old habits die hard, of course. I haven’t made that sign in years. But I couldn’t help feeling uncomfortable, as if even such a small thing might reawaken the changing wind. And when Thierry had gone, and I was alone, I thought I heard voices on the wind, the voices of the Kindly Ones, and the distant sound of laughter.
10
Monday, 17th December
SO THERE IT is. It’s off. Yippee. Some quarrel about Roux, I think, and I could hardly wait to tell him after school, except that I couldn’t find him anywhere.
I tried the hostel in Rue de Clichy, where Thierry says he’s been staying till now, but no one opened the door when I knocked, and there was an old man with a bottle of wine who shouted at me for making a noise. Roux wasn’t at the cemetery, and no one’s seen him at Rue de la Croix, so finally I had to give up, although I did leave a note marked Urgent for him at the hostel, so I guess he’ll see it when he gets back. If he goes back there, of course. Because by then, the police had arrived, and no one was going anywhere.
At first I thought they’d come for me. It was after dark – nearly seven o’clock – and Rosette and I were having dinner in the kitchen. Zozie had gone out somewhere, and Maman was wearing her red dress, and it was just the three of us for a change—
Then they came round, two officers, and my first stupid thought was that something awful had happened to Thierry, and that it was somehow my fault because of what we did on Friday night. But Thierry was with them, and he looked fine, except that he was even louder and cheerier and more salut-mon-pote than ever, but there was something in his colours that made me think that perhaps he was only pretending to be cheery, something to fool those people he was with, and that made me nervous all over again.
Turns out it was Roux they were looking for. They stayed in the shop about half an hour, and Maman sent me upstairs with Rosette, but all the same I managed to hear quite a lot of what was going on, though I’m not sure of all the details.
Apparently it’s about a cheque. Thierry says he gave it to Roux – he kept the stub and everything – and Roux tried to alter it before putting the money into his account, so that he’d get a lot more money than the cheque was actually for.
A thousand euros, they said. This is called fraud, Thierry says, and you can go to prison for it, especially if you use a diff
erent name to open the account and take out the money before anyone finds out, then disappear without a trace, not even leaving a forwarding address.
So that’s what they’re saying about Roux. Which is stupid, because everyone knows Roux doesn’t have a bank account, and would never steal anything, even from Thierry. But he has vanished without a trace. Apparently he hasn’t been seen in the hostel since Friday, and obviously he hasn’t been to work. That means I might be the last person to have seen him. It also means he can’t come back here, because if he does, he’ll be arrested. Stupid Thierry. I hate him. I wouldn’t put it past him to have made all this up just to get at Roux.
Maman and he quarrelled about it when the two policemen had gone. I could hear Thierry shouting all the way up the stairs. Maman was being reasonable – saying there must have been some mistake. And I could hear Thierry getting more and more worked up, saying: I don’t see how you can still take his side, and calling Roux a criminal and a degenerate – which means a layabout and not-to-be-trusted – and saying Yanne, it’s not too late. Until at last Maman told him to go, and he did, leaving a blurry cloud of his colours behind him in the front of the shop, like a bad smell.
Maman was crying when I came back downstairs. She said she wasn’t, but I knew. And her colours were all confused and dark, and her face was white except for two red spots under her eyes, and she said not to worry, that things were going to be OK, but I knew she was lying. I always know.
It’s funny, isn’t it, what adults tell kids? There’s nothing wrong. It’s going to be fine. I don’t blame you, it was an Accident – but all the time that Thierry was here I was thinking about the time I’d met Roux by Dalida’s tomb, and how grungy he’d looked, and how I’d given him the Ear of Maize to give him wealth and good fortune—
And now I wonder what I did. I can almost see it in my mind’s eye: the last cheque from Thierry’s bank, and Roux saying I’ve got a few things to sort out first, and just adding zero to the sum—
It’s stupid, of course. Roux isn’t a thief. A few potatoes from the edge of a field, apples from an orchard, maize from a verge, a fish from someone’s private pond – but never money. Not like this.
But now I’m beginning to wonder again. What if it was a kind of revenge? What if he was trying to get back at Thierry? Worse still, what if he did it for me and Rosette?
A thousand euros is a lot of money for someone like Roux. You could buy a boat with that, perhaps. You could settle down. Start an account. Put money aside for a family—
And then I remembered what Maman said. Roux does what he wants, he always has. 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.
And then I knew. It is my fault. With peg-dolls and wishing and symbols and signs, I’ve made Roux a criminal. And what if he’s arrested? What if he has to go to jail?
There’s a story Maman used to tell, about three faeries called Pic Blue, Pic Red and Colégram. Pic Blue looks after the sky, the stars, the rain, the sun and the birds of the air. Pic Red looks after the earth and everything that grows there: plants and trees and animals. And Colégram, who is the youngest, is supposed to look after the human heart. But Colégram can never get it right; whenever he tries to give anyone their heart’s desire, someone always gets hurt. One time he tries to help a poor old man by turning autumn leaves to gold, but the old man is so excited at seeing the money that he tries to get too much into his knapsack, and is crushed to death beneath the weight. I don’t remember how the story ends; just that I felt sorry for Colégram, who tries so hard and always gets it so wrong. Maybe I’m like that, too. Maybe I just can’t do hearts.
Boy, what a mess. It was going so well. But a lot can happen in seven days, and the wind hasn’t stopped changing yet. And anyway it’s too late. We can’t stop now. We’ve come too far to turn and run. Just one more working should do it, I think. One more call to the Changing Wind. Perhaps we got something wrong last time: a colour, a candle, a mark in the sand. This time we’re going to put it right, Rosette and me. Once and for all.
11
Tuesday, 18th December
THIERRY WAS HERE first thing this morning, asking after Roux again. He seems to think that this business will change things between us; that to discredit Roux will somehow restore my faith in him.
Things are not so easy, of course. I’ve tried to explain – this is not about Roux. But Thierry is immovable. He has several friends in the police force and has already used his influence to bring more attention than it deserves to this rather minor case of fraud. But Roux has vanished, as he always does, like the Pied Piper into the side of the hill.
As he left Thierry threw me one last, poisonous scrap of information, presumably from his friend in the gendarmerie—
‘That account he used to cash the cheque. It’s in a woman’s name,’ he said. He gave me a sly, triumphant smile. ‘Looks like your friend isn’t alone.’
Today I wore my red dress again. Not my usual, I know, but the scene with Thierry, Roux’s disappearance and the weather – still dull and charged with snow – made me long for a touch of something bright.
And maybe it was the dress itself, or maybe some wild trace on the wind, but for all my anxiety, in spite of everything – Thierry’s words; the ache in my heart when I think about Roux; my sleepless nights; my fears – I found myself singing as I worked.
It’s as if a page has somehow turned. I feel free for the first time in years, I think; free of Thierry; free even of Roux. Free to be whoever I want – though who that is, I do not know.
Zozie had gone out for the morning. I was alone for the first time in weeks, except for Rosette, fully occupied with her box of buttons and her drawing-book. I’d almost forgotten what it was like to stand behind the counter in a crowded chocolaterie, to talk to the customers, to find out their favourites.
It was startling, in a way, to see so many regulars. Of course I’m aware of comings and goings as I work in the kitchen at the back of the shop, but I hadn’t really noticed how many people come in here now. Madame Luzeron – though it isn’t her day. Then Jean-Louis and Paupaul, drawn by the promise of a warm place to sketch as well as their increasing appetite for my coffee-mocha layer cake. Nico – on a diet, now, but a diet that seems to involve eating lots of macaroons. Alice, with a bunch of holly for the shop and a request for her favourite, chocolate fudge. Madame Pinot, asking after Zozie—
She was not the only one. All of our regulars asked after Zozie, and Laurent Pinson, who came in all brushed and gleaming and greeted me with an exuberant bow, seemed to wilt when he saw who I was, as if that red dress had led him to expect someone else behind the till.
‘I hear you’re having a party,’ he said.
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.
The Lollipop Shoes Page 31