The Chocolate Promise

by Josephine Moon

She’d just responded to Dennis Chamberlain, giving advice on the choice of engagement ring (he’d emailed her pictures of twelve options to get her opinion), when her mobile phone rang. She checked the caller ID.

  ‘Lincoln van Luc,’ she murmured, and automatically responded to herself with ‘Just a Little Bit Cute.’ She was due to see him in a couple of days. What could he want?

  ‘A hairdryer,’ he said. ‘Do you have one?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would I be able to borrow it?’

  ‘Borrow it?’

  ‘Yes. Right now, actually. I have a . . . well, is there any chance you might be able to pop over with it?’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘It’s a hairdryer emergency, I’m afraid,’ he said, a smile in his tone.

  A hairdryer emergency. Christmas felt a flutter of excitement and the whiff of mirth. She couldn’t resist seeing that for herself. ‘I’ll be right over.’ She scribbled down the directions to his house.

  A five-minute drive later, Lincoln greeted her at the door with evident relief. ‘Thanks so much for coming,’ he said, ushering her in out of the wind.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asked, glancing around.

  ‘He’s this way,’ Lincoln said, leading her through the house.

  He?

  Lincoln’s grandmother’s house was a modest brick affair with a tiled roof, an ordinary (okay, somewhat scruffy) backyard and a plain but functional kitchen. It was typical of houses left behind by elderly owners, Christmas thought—solidly built, but untouched by any kind of facelift for at least twenty years. Floral-patterned furnishings throughout, dated green carpet, and framed photographs of family members from decades past: sideburns, flares, the muted colours of old photographic technology.

  And then they were standing in a room with a green pastel synthetic bedspread covering a queen-sized bed, and lying on the carpet was a bedraggled, bony old golden retriever.

  ‘Goodness, is he alright?’ Christmas said, bending down to stroke his head. The dog looked up at her mournfully, his lower eyelids drooping down to show the pink insides. ‘What happened?’

  ‘This is Caesar. We only just met today. I found him at my father’s place. Apparently he’s been abandoned.’

  Christmas gasped. ‘That’s awful!’

  ‘Agreed.’ Lincoln ran a hand through his own clipped mane. ‘I couldn’t leave him to starve out there in the cold so I brought him home.’

  The dog gave a single lethargic thump of his tail as Christmas stroked his sides. ‘Is he sick?’

  ‘I think he’s fine, just depressed.’

  ‘Because he was abandoned?’

  ‘No. Because I bathed him. He really didn’t like that. I don’t think he likes the smell of tea tree. I think he prefers his original smell of eau de bouse de vache.’

  Christmas looked up from where she was kneeling next to Caesar. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Cow manure.’

  ‘Oh.’ She laughed. ‘Do you speak French?’

  He sat on the corner of the bed with a sheepish grin and a scratch at his ear. ‘No. But I thought of it this afternoon and I just had to look up an online translator to find out how to say it in French.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m a bit of a geek, I guess.’

  A totally gorgeous geek.

  ‘I can’t leave him all wet like this,’ he went on. ‘He might get pneumonia or something. Hence the emergency hairdryer.’

  ‘Yes, I see. Let’s get you dry, Caesar, and see if we can’t lift your spirits a bit.’

  She plugged the dryer into a nearby socket and set it to a low, warm level, using her fingers to fluff up Caesar’s hair as she worked her way around his body. He twitched uneasily to begin with, then settled when he realised how lovely and warm it was, and started to relax. He had so much hair that it took a long time; Lincoln soon joined her on the ground and they passed the dryer back and forth to work each side of the dog, enjoying watching Caesar as he began to stretch and roll over onto his back so they could dry his belly.

  At last his tail began to wag, his mouth split into a goofy grin and his droopy eyelids magically sprang upwards again. He half sat up, then threw himself into Christmas’s lap, knocking her backwards onto the floor. She squealed as he snuffled around her ears and neck, licking her with his hot tongue. She tried to push him off but he was surprisingly heavy for such a scrawny specimen.

  ‘You could help me,’ she gasped at Lincoln, who was leaning back against the end of the bed and laughing at her.

  ‘Not a chance. You’re on your own. He loves you. He probably hasn’t had so much joy in years.’

  At last Christmas managed to pull herself back up to a sitting position and arrange Caesar so he was lying on the floor with just his shoulders and head in her lap, panting contentedly, his hair fluffed out so he looked at least twice the size. ‘Phew,’ she said, grinning at Lincoln. ‘That was hard work.’

  ‘You should see the bathroom.’ He raised his eyebrows in mock horror and reached out a hand to rub Caesar’s ears.

  ‘What are you going to do with him now?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t keep him.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I travel all the time for work. I can’t take on a commitment like that. It wouldn’t be fair to him.’

  Or me, she reminded herself, just in case some small part of her was being seduced by this whole knight-in-shining-armour thing.

  He looked at her. ‘What about you? Could you keep him?’

  ‘Me?’ She considered it for a moment as Caesar’s lovely grey muzzle sniffed around her jeans, looking for treats. ‘Unfortunately I can’t have a dog in the chocolate shop. It’s against health and safety rules.’ She thought guiltily of Mary Hauser and her schnauzer and all the other folk she let bring in their dogs to get a doggie choc. She didn’t let them stay inside for long, but she enjoyed their visits. It was a ridiculous rule, anyway. Heaps of places overseas allowed dogs in cafes. They couldn’t be any more dirty than some people’s children. That was a fact.

  But her heart lurched for Caesar. ‘Who’ll take him?’

  Lincoln shrugged. ‘Something will turn up. It always does. Life’s like that.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Christmas bit her lip. She didn’t trust life to take care of all the details. Rule number eight—Your destiny doesn’t happen to you; you make your destiny.

  She was contemplating all the options that lay ahead for Caesar—the pound, euthanasia, a rescue organisation, a friend, a family . . . perhaps she could play fairy godmother and find him a home?—when she suddenly felt Lincoln watching her. She looked up and held his eyes with her own for a moment before turning away.

  ‘Well, it looks like Caesar is all okay. I guess I should get going.’

  Lincoln made a noise in the back of his throat. ‘Yes. Thanks so much for bringing the hairdryer. I’m sure Caesar will get a much better night’s sleep now.’

  Christmas stood up and packed the hairdryer into her bag. ‘So then, I guess I’ll see you Monday for our first working session.’ She affected a bright, professional air.

  ‘Looking forward to it,’ he said, leading her to the door, Caesar trotting happily behind them.

  ‘Goodnight,’ she said, patting Caesar, deliberately avoiding hovering in Lincoln’s doorway for too long. She straightened quickly. ‘See you Monday.’

  ‘See you then.’ He smiled, and her legs trembled.

  10

  On Monday, Christmas and Lincoln sat together at the long wooden table in the centre of the shop. The air was intoxicatingly thick with the sweet perfume of the bridal white lutchuensis camellias Cheyenne grew on her property and had wrapped in ribbons for sale. The flowers stood in metal buckets on wooden trestles and nodded gently on the current of the air-conditioning. Picked on Friday because Cheyenne said they couldn’t wait another day, they’d kept quite well over the weekend, treated to filtered water and the constant temperature in the shop.

  Christmas had just finished booking he
r flights to France online, the realisation that it was truly going to happen filling her with a rush of adrenaline, excitement and nerves, when Lincoln had tapped gently on the door, the morning sun on his shoulders.

  ‘How’s Caesar this morning?’ she’d asked, letting him in.

  ‘Great. We went for a wander around the streets. He has no manners and bowls into anyone and everyone to say hello. He sniffed three human crotches and one dog’s bum, licked a cat’s face, and stole a plastic gnome from a garden and crushed it before I could save it.’

  ‘Did you knock on the owner’s door?’

  ‘No. Call me mean but I think the world’s a better place without gnomes, don’t you? They’re creepy.’

  Now, having poured Lincoln a cup of freshly brewed coffee, Christmas sat next to him clutching her cup of Piscean zodiac tea, with rose petals, orange peel, lavender and a dash of ginger, designed to complement the Piscean traits of compassionate femininity combined with a fiery disposition when provoked, or so the aqua box claimed. According to the description, Christmas should be a deeply romantic type, highly intuitive and emotional, but wearing an armour of wariness and independence to protect her from being hurt. She had to admit, it wasn’t far off the mark. And it was really lovely tea.

  As she sipped it, her mind drifted naturally to envisaging the types of recipes in which she could use the herbs in this tea. Medicinal herbs combined with medicinal chocolate.

  She eyed the botanist in the room. It was so obvious, she’d nearly missed it. Lincoln was the perfect person to talk to about her hopes for developing healing uses for chocolate.

  He passed her a sheaf of papers. ‘This is a sample chapter that my editor—sorry, our editor—Jeremy has already seen and which he thinks is a bit dry. Maybe you could have a read and see what you think.’

  Christmas replaced her teacup on its matching saucer and read the chapter, while Lincoln got up and wandered around the shop. He was awfully distracting with his long limbs moving about the space so freely. He didn’t look like the kind of person who had any tension in his body at all. He stopped to pick up a bundle of antique French love letters from a display. Penned in the late 1800s, the paper yellow, the ink faded but readable (if you could speak French), they were tied together with tightly woven raffia string, a paper-thin pressed flower tucked under the knot.

  ‘Where’d you get these?’ he asked.

  ‘I found them in an antiques shop. I thought they were so lovely. So intimate. Two people’s lives captured forever there on the page. Although I can’t read the words I think you can feel their passion on the page.’

  ‘It’s incredible,’ Lincoln said, holding the papers carefully in his large hand. ‘One day we won’t have anything like this anymore. Everyone just texts or emails now and the messages get deleted willy-nilly.’

  She snorted. ‘Willy-nilly?’

  He grinned and shrugged.

  She returned her attention to the pages. When she’d finished reading he joined her once more at the table, swinging his legs over the bench seat. He held up a bar of imported Rococo Earl Grey dark chocolate. ‘Does this have real tea in it?’

  ‘Yes. They grind the tea leaves to a fine powder and add bergamot oil to it. I’d like to offer a lot more chocolates like that—ones that combine unusual elements like herbs. It’s a small percentage of my overall chocolate stock but it’s the part I love most.’

  ‘You should always do what you love.’ He pointed to the pages. ‘What are your thoughts?’

  ‘Well,’ she said, pushing the manuscript to the side, ‘I always think the key rule of writing is to deliver your message as simply and directly as possible and speak from the heart. There’s a lot of passion here, I can tell, but it’s a bit, I don’t know, stuffy.’

  ‘Stuffy?’

  ‘Yes. Like a lecture.’

  ‘That’s no good at all. Do you think there’s hope for it?’ He fiddled with the pen in front of him, nervous.

  ‘Absolutely! Why don’t you tell me, right now, in your own words, some of the things you’d like to get across, and I’ll see how I can help.’

  Lincoln slipped his thumb under the wrapper of the Rococo bar and began to prise it open. He caught her watching him. ‘Don’t worry, I intend to buy it.’ He smiled.

  ‘Oh, no, I wasn’t worried about that.’ The truth was that she was thinking it was rather seductive watching him unwrapping that bar of chocolate, and a rush of heat had swept up her body from her toes. To distract herself, she jumped up and went to the iPod player sitting on the apothecary chest. She searched through the menu while Lincoln spoke.

  He bit into the chocolate. ‘The thing is,’ he began, his words slightly muffled, ‘sustainability is what it’s all about. Oh my God, that’s so good!’ He licked his finger. ‘I’m not normally into flavoured chocolate. I’m a bit of a puritan like that—I think in general you should simply appreciate the diversity of chocolate itself, getting the true rustic flavour of the cacao bean, whatever country, region, estate and tree it came from. I’m not a fan of uniform, mass-produced products where the true flavour is smothered by sugar and milk and vanilla. But this!’ He shoved another chunk of chocolate in his mouth. ‘Have you tried this?’

  Christmas laughed. ‘Of course I have. Rococo is one of my favourite suppliers. They inspire me.’ She settled on The Best of Edith Piaf, and the charming lyrics of ‘La Vie en Rose’ came tumbling out into The Apothecary.

  ‘What you just told me,’ she said, sitting down again, her mind back on the job, ‘that’s great information and it’s something I’m passionate about too.’

  ‘Really?’ He cast his eyes around the shop at all the marshmallows and jellies.

  ‘Confectionary sells. But the real fire in my belly is for my consultations. Because I believe that chocolate can be a bona fide medicine. And I want to find out how far I can take that. As you would know, the rainforest is renowned for producing medicines and I’m sure it’s no accident that cacao grows in the rainforest. And what you’re talking about here,’ she motioned over the manuscript, ‘is the kernel of that truth. We just need to make it sexier.’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘Sexier?’

  Christmas felt her ears redden but ploughed on regardless. ‘Tell me more about sustainability.’

  ‘Sustainability of cacao production is the key to long-term economic benefit, but this is always in conflict with the short-term needs of corporations to make a profit. What I’ve seen is that so much of the sustainability concern around cacao is actually at a social level. A cacao farm is typically only a couple of acres in size, run by the family who owns it. They work really hard, for a handful of dollars a day, and it’s all manual labour, every single step. Unlike other crops, no one’s yet come up with reliable, effective ways to mechanise the farming, so the whole industry relies on paying wages to the workers on the ground, and it would simply cost too much to grow it in a developed nation with appropriate remuneration, even if one had the right climate.’

  His eyes drifted off to the corner of the room as if he were recalling what he’d seen. ‘In Ghana, the workers sit in a circle and chant to urge each other on to work harder while they split open the pods with machetes, pull out the beans, put them in a pile and cover them with banana leaves to ferment for five days or so.’

  He looked back at her, enthusiasm animating his hands. ‘Cacao’s a cash crop, which means all their hard work doesn’t

  even result in food they can eat, and the trade price for cacao is set by a global stockmarket thousands of miles away. The farmers receive paltry financial rewards for their efforts, and given this and the high labour investment necessary to grow cacao, the younger generations are turning away and leaving the farms. And fair enough. But that means the farmers are ageing and so too are the cacao trees.’

  Christmas frowned. ‘Sounds dire. Is it really possible we’d end up in a world without chocolate?’

  ‘I think it’s unlikely. But at the same time, I think we’re g
oing to see some big changes. Attempts have been made to create faster-growing types of cacao trees, but all that happens is that those trees take more nutrients from the soil and more water from the water table than can be replaced in time for new crops. And the newer, faster-growing varieties don’t live as long as the traditional trees either. At the same time, if the farmer can actually produce more cacao with these new varieties, the world trade price actually falls. So they’re forever chasing their tail.’

  Christmas took a deep breath. ‘Heavy stuff.’

  ‘Yes, it is. Can I get another coffee?’

  ‘Sure.’ She led him to the coffee machine, which was her tool for providing fancy coffees for anyone who wanted more than the free plunger coffees on offer, and switched it on to heat up the water. They leaned with their backs on the apothecary chest and gazed at the rows of shiny chocolates lined up in the glass cabinet in front of them.

  ‘Do you know, many of the farmers who grow cacao to supply the gigantic chocolate trade have never even tasted chocolate?’ Lincoln said.

  ‘You’re kidding? That’s outrageous. I just want to post them a box full right now!’

  ‘Many of them say they just grow the beans for their broker but have no idea what the white people do with them after that,’ he explained. ‘Chocolate is one of the few gourmet foods where the ingredient is grown thousands of miles from where it’s processed and consumed.’

  Christmas considered her own part in chocolate’s journey. Her beans certainly racked up a lot of frequent-flyer points on their travels, and hers was one of the smaller supply chains in the world. At least she didn’t then export her chocolates again, like so many of the huge chocolate companies.

  She mentally adjusted her PR hat and tapped her brain for ideas on how to convey this information in a way that would be easy for readers to grasp. ‘I’ve got it,’ she said, snapping her fingers.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A way to combine all this heavy, political but ultimately important stuff about cacao production with wonderful pictures and stories about chocolate.’

  ‘Go on.’