by Jenny Colgan
Seconds or minutes later, thank God, I heard the ambulance. The nurse had told us to hang on, that he was breathing and that the guys who were coming would know a lot better than us, and sure enough they jumped out. Then they looked at Thierry and looked at the stretcher and shook their heads and there was some conversation. I still felt trapped in a nightmare, shouting at them to get him in, as they made increasingly clear that they couldn’t get him onto it.
Finally, one of the paramedics, taking over for the nurse, and the man with the beard called six strong-looking men out of the crowd. They wheeled the stretcher back into the ambulance and secured it there, then the men altogether carefully lifted Thierry’s enormous bulk inside, as I sobbed with relief and felt cross that Alice and Laurent between them hadn’t done something, hadn’t insisted on him curbing his appetites and his greed. Then I remembered that I myself that morning had watched him eat four cream buns and most of a loaf of bread and a glass of cider and smoke three cigarettes. I could no more have told him not to than fly to the moon.
The paramedic motioned me inside, and I was torn. I needed to get back to the shop to tell everyone what had happened and—oh God—contact Laurent. I didn’t even have his telephone number; he’d zoomed off into the night without warning. But of course I had to go with him. Someone had to.
- - -
The smell of hospitals doesn’t seem to change so much from country to country. The paramedics called ahead, and when we got there, they had a much larger stretcher brought down from somewhere already. I trailed along uselessly behind, then got sidelined by an administrator who needed all his insurance details, none of which, of course, I had. I didn’t even realize the medical system was different here, that you couldn’t just turn up. And there was nothing in my phone, not even the number of the shop. The administrator made it entirely plain and clear that I was a someone simply trying her luck who had no business snarling up her morning with my boss’s inconvenient heart attacks and I was fervently thankful that, despite its faults, the National Health Service would just fix you without shouting at you for paperwork first. Suddenly I became terrified they were going to ask for a credit card, until finally one of the nurses brought in his wallet, which she went through with practiced ease until she found a green card that was obviously what she was looking for. She then gave me the glad eye, as if I’d known all this and had been keeping it from her.
And after that, there wasn’t much to do but go in search of an Internet connection or a phone book or anything that could get me in touch with the shop. Except I didn’t want to travel too far from Thierry’s side in case something happened or he simply needed a hand to hold. From time to time, I would dart into a corridor in search of a phone box, as every so often a young doctor would come out and in polite and slow English ask me if I knew his blood type or whether he was diabetic or whether I could sign a consent form. It was horrible; I had no idea of the number for directory inquiries, and after a few stabs at it, I sighed and nearly threw the phone down, as it dropped another bar and came close to running out of charge.
Eventually, there was only one thing I could think of. I called.
- - -
Claire sounded half asleep and groggy when she picked up her home phone. It was a relief though, firstly that she was there, and secondly that she was obviously getting some sleep. At times in the treatment, she couldn’t sleep at all.
“Anna!” she said, clearly delighted to hear from me. “How are things? I’ve been thinking about you! How are you getting on? How are you settling in?”
I made a mental note to write her a long—very long—email as soon as I had the time, but right at that moment, I had no time.
“I’ll tell you everything,” I said quickly, “but right now I’m in a bit of a tight spot and first of all I need to ask you something really quickly and then I’ll call you back, okay?”
“Well, yes, all right,” she said, sounding a bit taken aback. “Is everything all right?”
“I’ll call you later,” I said. “But please, can I ask you—do you know the shop telephone number? Uhm, I’ve come out without it. Do you have any way you could track it down?”
There wasn’t even a moment’s pause. Not a second.
“54-67-89-12-15,” she rattled off.
I couldn’t hang up straightaway.
“You know it by heart?” I said.
“Oh yes,” she said, suddenly sounding far away. Then she pulled herself together. “Well, no mobiles in those days. You had to learn all your phone numbers by heart.”
“And you still remember all your phone numbers?”
There was a little pause.
“Not all of them, no.”
I swallowed.
“I really do have to go,” I said. “I’ll call you back, I promise.”
And I hung up before she could ask any more or get any more worried.
- - -
The phone in the shop rang for so long that I thought they’d closed up for the morning. I prayed they hadn’t. And that Frédéric would answer, not Benoît.
Thankfully, for once, my prayers were answered. I could hear Frédéric’s shock as I explained as well as I could—my French was all over the place suddenly; it was like something had shaken loose in my brain and I had completely forgotten how to talk. I realized when he asked me which hospital I was in that I didn’t even know and had to ask the grumpy administrator again, who looked at me like I was the biggest idiot ever to walk the face of the earth.
“Hôtel-Dieu,” I said.
“Fine,” said Frédéric. “It’s close by. I’ll shut the shop and let people know…”
He paused and his voice cracked a little.
“Is he…I mean, he’s going to be all right, isn’t he? They’re fixing him?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I really don’t know.”
The doctors invited me in to see him as he was prepped for surgery. It felt absurd, somehow, to care so much for someone I’d known for only a few weeks, but to see him there, unconscious, the great life force of him flat on the bed like a huge walrus, his mustache flopping sadly, covered by a tube inserted in his nose—I immediately burst into tears.
“We give him bypass,” said the young doctor in English. “We hope…we hope it will work. He is a difficult patient.”
“You mean he is too big?” I said.
The doctor nodded. “He is…it is difficult for us to do what we need to do.”
I nodded. It must be. I didn’t envy her, having to get down through all those layers.
“But,” I found myself saying, “he has…he has a big heart, you know? It is worth it.”
She nodded without smiling and snapped briskly, “It’s always worth it.”
- - -
After that and squeezing his hand once more, watching him go in the specially big bed, I sat in the foyer, idly leafing through a magazine I wasn’t even slightly interested in, trying to leave my phone alone, because it really would run completely out of charge if I even touched it once more. When everyone else came, I would go and call Claire and tell her. Although I worried slightly. Thierry had obviously been a friend of hers for a long time. Would it upset her more to know? I could just tell her I’d been lost or something, make some excuse. But then, would that be fair? And also, a little voice said to me again, it was still so very odd that she hadn’t seen him in such a long time. They couldn’t really be such good friends, could they?
I scanned the entrance, waiting for someone, anyone, to show up. I didn’t think I’d ever felt so lonely in my whole life.
- - -
1972
To Thierry, it seemed perfectly simple.
“You are my girl,” he said. “You come back, huh? At Christmas? We shall have a wonderful time; Paris is sensational then. They light up the boulevards with a hundred tiny candles
and the Tour Eiffel glows red and green. Perhaps it will snow, and I will keep you warm in my little garret, non? And I will make my hot chocolate for you. It is stirred one thousand times and filled with cream so that it melts down your neck like being embraced by a man who loves you, huh, cherie?”
She tried to smile, as she did so, kicking the first of the falling autumn leaves from the pathway. In four days’ time, she would be putting on a school uniform she had undoubtedly grown out of since last year. She had filled out, she knew. There was color in her cheeks. She had come to Paris a girl and now she felt, indubitably, a woman.
“I don’t know,” she said. Christmas in Kidinsborough involved a lot of helping the Reverend with his Christmas load: visiting the sick in hospital, giving Bibles as gifts to poor families who might, perhaps, have preferred food or toys. And homework, of course. She groaned. She’d brought a whole pile of textbooks with her, thinking she might get some revision done while the children were asleep. Of course, that had not happened. In terms of cause and effect, she did sometimes wonder if her choices might have been different for that very reason. But then of course if she had, she wouldn’t have met Thierry…it was a circular argument with no clear solution, and of course pointless to dwell on.
She clutched his big paw tightly as the first chilling winds of autumn breezed through her thin coat, making her shiver. As much as they were trying to pretend the summer wasn’t over, they both knew it was.
Thierry looked at her.
“Look at you, freezing, my little bird,” he said. “I have a new recipe for hot chocolate, and you are going to be my first customer. Come with me.”
Sitting where Thierry had lifted her onto the low wooden bar that shut off the counter into one single bar, he fussed around her, constantly stirring the huge mixing jug, adding more cream or taking some away, popping in the tiniest bit of rum, letting it smoke off then adding more. He was in a whirl that day, even though it wasn’t even that cold; he wouldn’t let her taste it until he had added tiny pinches of this and that, tasted it, thought about it, bounced in and out the back of the shop, shouted at Benoît, considered melting another batch of chocolate altogether, finally dribbling in a pinch of salt, and at last considering himself satisfied.
As soon as she took one sip, she knew he was right. It spread right through her body, warming every vein. It made her curl up her toes in delight. It tasted like something the White Witch of Narnia might have given Edmund to betray his family, and it tasted like it would have worked.
“Thierry,” she said, aghast.
“I know, I know,” he said distractedly. He was jotting notes on a piece of paper—he never wrote anything down normally, and he had found a small jar with a screw top, into which he was decanting some of the liquid.
“BENOÎT!” he growled through the back, as the burly man came running out. “Make this until it tastes like this. Then lock up the recipe in the safe.”
Benoît nodded, quickly, then took a sip. He stopped short then gazed at Thierry.
“Chef,” he said, in a tone of wonderment.
“I know,” said Thierry, a brief look of satisfaction crossing his face. “I know. I’ve done it.”
Claire smiled at him. He turned to her.
“And you!” he said. “You are my muse!” He kissed her, licking away the thick stain from her lips. “Oh, mixed with you, it is only more delicious,” he said, kissing her again.
“You see? You must stay. I need you. You have inspired possibly my greatest creation.”
One of the other customers in the shop turned around.
“May I try it?”
Thierry looked at him sternly. “I don’t know. Are you a good man? So far, this has only been tried by good people.”
“I don’t know if I’m a good man,” said the gentleman, who was wearing a Homburg hat and a yellow scarf against the encroaching colder weather. “But I am a journalist at Le Monde.”
Thierry filled him a huge cup to the brim. “My friend! Drink and be happy.”
The man did so. And then he took out his notebook.
Thierry gave Claire a happy glance. “You see? You have made me a genius.”
Laughing with delight, Claire had never been closer to ripping up her return ticket, packing up her bag, living in sin. She threw back her head and tossed down more of the astonishing hot chocolate. She was almost purely happy.
Except she remembered her mother’s last letter, which had details of her new uniform, asking if she’d grown much, passing on good wishes from friends and relatives, talking excitedly about the new youth club that had opened adjacent to the church, about having a little party for her eighteenth birthday, and she knew—a tiny little corner of her knew—that she would have to go back, of course she would.
- - -
The door to the waiting room flew open with a crash. I raised my head; I realized I’d been nodding off. It seemed an odd reaction to the stress, but I’d been here for over two hours, the battery on my phone was completely gone, and I seemed to have run out of other options.
I’d seen Laurent around from time to time, usually with quite a fast set of loud young chefs and models. Sami preferred artists and musicians, so he could be a bit snotty about them. Laurent often had a scrawny pouty-looking girl on his arm—not the same one, as far as I could tell, and would nod at me, but little more; I was clearly siding with the enemy, and I dismissed him as irritating and obviously shallow. He didn’t look shallow now though; he looked demented with worry.
His face struck me as being like his father’s more than ever, but without the heavy weight of the fatness. His skin was a darker olive, huge, expressive Bambi eyes now looking alarmed and worried, the mouth, wide and sensual. He still seemed very tall compared to other French men I’d seen, and with a solid bulk that wasn’t fat, just a kind of comforting size to him. I jumped up, wiping my mouth and wishing I had a stick of gum.
“What’s happening? What’s going on? Where is he?” shouted Laurent, sounding furious, as if it were my fault.
“He’s in surgery,” I said, trying to sound gentle and consolatory. “They said it might take a while.”
“Why? Why is it taking a while?”
I shrugged. “I think it’s difficult when…when the patient is a bit heavier than normal…”
“Is it because he’s so fat? Stupid bastard. He’s such a stupid bastard.” He glared around. “Where’s Alice?”
“Didn’t Frédéric ring her?”
“He probably wouldn’t; he hates her,” said Laurent.
“Not that much, surely.”
He ignored that. “What was he doing? What were you doing with him?”
“I wasn’t doing anything with him,” I said indignantly. I wasn’t the one who’d let him eat himself to death for over forty years. “He asked me to go for a walk, that’s all.”
“That’s all? Did he stop for brandy?”
“If it was my job to stop him drinking brandy, I think somebody should have made it a bit clearer to me!” I said, almost shouting.
He stopped short. “Sorry,” he said muttering. “Sorry, that’s not fair. I’m just…I’m just upset.”
“I know,” I said. “Of course you are. Hopefully they’ll let us know soon.”
He looked around. “He can’t…he can’t die…”
“Anna,” I added helpfully.
“I knew that,” he said, putting his hands distractedly through his thick brown hair.
“You know, we haven’t spoken for months,” he muttered. “He can’t…it can’t…”
I shook my head. “He spoke about you this morning,” I said.
“What, to say what an ignoramus I am?”
“Yes,” I said. “But in a loving way.”
Laurent’s face looked gray. “Christ,” he said, looking at his watch. “Where are those doctors?
”
I swallowed.
“What else?” he asked suddenly. “Why was he confiding in you? You’ve just gotten here…some English girl…” Then his eyes widened. “You’re not…you’re not connected to…”
I nodded slowly. “Claire sent me.”
He looked so feverishly furious I thought he was going to spit. “That woman!” he cursed.
“I don’t think she did anything wrong,” I said quickly.
“Tell that to my mother,” he said. “When he walked out on her for some scrawny English witch that reminded him of the first one.”
“Alice is nothing like Claire,” I said stoutly.
“Well, he found that out a bit late, didn’t he?” said Laurent. “He’d already wrecked our family. Too scared to mess it up again. Thank God they didn’t have any children.” He snorted. Then he looked sad.
He stared again at the door, as if gazing at it might make something happen, then sighed.
“Oh God.”
Finally the door swung open. Laurent was halfway to his feet before he realized it was Alice.
She looked absolutely white, the black scarf she was wearing a slash against her pale neck, her lips devoid of lipstick and looking naked and thin, stretched in her face. A vein stood out in her throat. For the first time, I thought, she looked old.
“What have you done?” was the first thing she said, almost hissed. It wasn’t clear if this was directed at either or both of us.
“What have you done?” said Laurent, standing up completely this time. “You’re the one who punted him around so many boring dinners and lunches with your beau monde chums to show him off, where he had nothing to do but get bored and eat and drink too much. You couldn’t just leave him alone, could you, doing what he did best—creating and enjoying himself.”
“How would you know?” said Alice, sneering. “We never see you. You’re off too busy ‘making it on your own,’ except of course, oh how convenient, you appear to have a very useful last name.”
Laurent looked utterly furious for a second and a half, then turned away.