My Chocolate Redeemer

Title page

My Chocolate Redeemer

Christopher Hope

Atlantic Books

L
ondon

Dedication

For Balthus

Epigraph

Seek ye first the political kingdom …

Kwame Nkrumah

(known as ‘The Redeemer')

– listen: there's a hell of a good
universe next door; let's go

e.e. cummings

Contents

Prologue

La Frisette

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Zanj

About the Author

Prologue

Atkins International Airport, outside the city of Waq, in the country of Zanj, is something of a surprise. The traveller who steps down onto the tarmac after bouncing over hot air currents for hours in a racketing, shivering turboprop has been buffeted into grimfaced acceptance and deafened. This happens to those who have tried putting their hands over their ears during the flight, only to find that this sets up a vibration running from the elbows through the wrist bones to the finger tips, as if the nerves have turned to ants which march along the neural pathways into the brain via the ears. Waq is a ‘request' stop where the pilot's door, which sags on its hinges and flaps during flight, gapes shamelessly as the plane taxis to a halt to show you the Jordanian pilot leaning back from his controls, yawning and scratching his grizzled grey hair while the Taiwanese stewardess says, ‘Hurry up, darling,' as she swings open the hatch. The passengers rouse themselves from their torpor and stare at the back of the departing passenger and one of them says quite distinctly, ‘Well, I hope she's got her head screwed on.' The air of Africa enters the plane, hot and dry, smelling memorably of dust and salt. A paper cup, still with a few drops of orange juice adhering to its sides, falls down the steps behind you and you wonder whether it has been thrown out deliberately.

And then you're on the ground and the spongy humidity wraps around you as you walk to the terminal building, passing a collection of planes parked on the tarmac with weird designs on their tails and names like Ba-rozwiland Air and Monomatapa Freight Services. Biggest of all is a jumbo jet of Zanj Air in the national colours of black and pink, a livery unexpectedly elegant in the bright winter sunshine, though as you get closer you see that the cockpit windscreen is broken and the plane is mounted on concrete blocks on one of which is written in white paint the words:
Crew Training Module
. You know that this plane is not a hive of activity – even before you arrive on the other side and see that it's propped up with poles of the sort used to stop walls from falling down.

Why am I telling you this? You know it all, you'll have been here before, you who direct and control my movements, you've thought this through. But you see those of us who have to visit out-of-the-way places for reasons of love or duty, or upon your iron whim, are not always prepared for the trials ahead. I take it that you're watching over me. At least I hope and pray so.

I dressed carefully before leaving Rome on my flight to Kinshasa, with a connection for Zanj. Whatever the occasion was to be, black seemed a suitable colour for funeral or feast. I chose to seem undecided, a straight black cotton skirt and turtle-neck top, a jaunty swing-coat in dogtooth check, a black straw picture hat and white gloves. That way, if I stood up as tall as possible I was a woman of the world, and if I crouched a bit I was just a little girl dressing up in Mummy's clothes, and if I tottered on my small heels and threw out my feet when I walked then I was just a crazy kid lost in the world and far from home. You looked at me and you took your pick. I was determined to be pliable.

I did not stay for the funerals – my grandmother's was to be used as a recruiting drive for the Party. André's cremation was to be presided over by Father Duval, naturally – with a squawk and a flap of his wings as the coffin entered the flames. My Uncle Claude, in his capacity as Mayor, demanded immediate disposal, as a health precaution. Twice-incinerated André, hoping no doubt for a third purging down below, entered his reward. Ambition for unhappiness is far stronger than longings for bliss. My uncle confiscated my silver chocolate trunk and had it dusted for fingerprints.

Please don't be surprised.

A man who kidnapped a crippled doll would stop at nothing.

Three months ago work began on the conversion of the Priory Hotel in La Frisette. It disappeared into a steel cage, a larger version of the kind they use for massive fractures of the skull. The old wooden beach by the lakeside burns ash-white in the autumn sun – empty forever of its load of oiled, expensive human flesh laid out for the inspecting hawks floating high above the headland of the little bay. The interior of the Priory has been ripped out and is being made ready for the new technology, which is the boast of the Party – only the façade remains. Our newspaper
Les Temps
celebrated the event:
a miracle at the priory
! By now they'll know where I've gone. They will whistle to discover I've left my music. They will find my silver trunk beneath my bed, still smelling of chocolate, stripped of its dollars – I guess Granny Gramus meeting Old Laveur at the bakery will say, ‘Madame Dresseur's granddaughter has fled to Africa!' and Old Laveur will say, ‘It serves her right!'

La Frisette

Chapter 1

I take my ease upon our private beach. ‘Relax Bella,' I tell myself, ‘you're among friends.' That's not quite true – but then if you can't tell yourself stories, who is there to talk to? You should know!

Although it's called, rather grandly, a
plage privée
it's really a semi-circular wooden platform, or jetty, by the lakeside, specially reserved for guests of the Priory Hotel. A notice warns trespassers to keep away. The wooden slats are grey with age, warm and deeply grooved, and through them I can see the baize-green water, striped with dusty silver where the sun falling between the slats strikes the surface. In the shade the green blackens and thickens but in the shallows where the sunshine pierces to the sandy floor, the water is brilliantly clear. Over to my right is a mountain covered with trees and scrub through which the grey rock shows. Rearing several hundred metres above the lake, it is part of the chain of mountains curving behind the hotel and the village of La Frisette. Jutting out into the water, this natural headland forms a small bay where the weekend yachts ride at anchor, stripped of their sails, each wagging a naked mast like a warning finger. To my left the lake opens up, stretching to the further shore and the distant mountains with which this vast reservoir is ringed, and behind those mountains are greater mountains still. Alps. In the distance power-boats rip the lake to tatters with skiers criss-crossing the foaming wakes. Closer to shore the windsurfers lean back pulling on the wishbone spar of the bellying sail, keeping their difficult balance; backwards and forwards they ride, displaying the remoteness of ploughmen. Nearest of all float the severed heads of the swimmers. With the hazy glitter of mid-morning the further shoreline vanishes and the mountains beyond are a smudged outline. This great stretch of water is a thoroughfare where all traffic rides, including the big ferries connecting the little towns around the lake.

Our corner of the lake is a backstreet, a parking lot, quiet and secluded. These qualities undoubtedly led the monks to found their monastery in the village of La Frisette. From its high point, the Church of the Immaculate Conception, the village curves delicately down the mountainside to the water's edge where the Priory stands looking out across the lake. All roads lead to the lake dipping between crumbling walls held together by climbing roses. Once it would have been difficult to reach this spot, except by water, in the days before the little road ran the length of the lakeside as it does now. Mountains behind, water before, a fine defensive position. The little road divides the hotel behind me from the wooden
plage privée
, continuing around in a curve which ends abruptly when it comes up against the rocky lower slopes of the headland. The little lakeside road gives access to the big houses carved into the mountainside, neighbours of the Old Priory, which was so fabulously wealthy before the Revolution that it took the wrecking parties, chosen from amongst the peasantry, three days and nights to burn its manuscripts, brocades, miniatures, its silver candlesticks and golden chalices. They spared the Priory, though, and allowed an empty house swept clean of monks and vanities to fall into gentle ruin. It must have made the rich really sad when the Priory closed down. All their pretty things were burnt. They had invested so much in the monks' house. It was like money in the bank, only it was better than money in the bank because it stored up treasures in heaven. The rich are still here, in their triple-storeyed summer houses set well back from the little shore road, with wonderful views across the lake. But the monks are long gone.

The Priory's the grandest hotel hereabouts. There has been a church on the spot since the ninth century when an unhappy queen, deserted by her husband, settled here and devoted herself to good works. At least that's the contention of André, its owner, who loves it like a mistress. Perhaps, considering its origins, it would be better to say he loves it like a wife. Or a sister. Or a madonna. For the Priory is after all holy ground and retains something of its odour of sanctity, thanks to André who has spent years preserving and refurbishing it. He wants to retain its monastic qualities, eased, but not overwhelmed, by certain comforts. Clearly this is an impossible task since there are demands made by guests who come to a luxury hotel groggy with dreams from the glossy magazines – which centrally heat the minds of the rich – stoking up expectations which the fabric of a sixteenth-century Carthusian Priory cannot provide. And it costs him too much.

André has fought off several attempts by Monsieur Cherubini to buy the Priory as a home for his political party, the
Parti National Populaire
. André's answer has been one stiff finger, an astonishingly violent gesture in a gentleman. Monsieur Cherubini's paper,
La Liberté
, has run hostile stories headlined:
what aliens bloom in the garden of the carthusians
? This despite the fact that the Priory has no gardens unless you count the inner courtyard with its old well and statue of a mother and child. But
La Liberté
has never let facts spoil a good story and, between you and me, it's an attitude I rather like.

André has the cheeks of a shelled boiled egg, full fleshed, tightly gleaming. His eyelashes are long and lovely. Although he modernises the interior little by little, he insists on preserving the spirit of the place. This is contradictory, as I'm sure he realises, yet he persists, giving that soft apologetic smile to all objections. André's need to avoid giving pain is so deep and genuine it actually encourages the feelings it is supposed to prevent: it makes you feel bad when you realise how hard he's trying to spare your feelings, and how many feelings there are to spare. For example, the old cloisters are glassed-in against the wind and dust so that the guests look out on the wild green courtyard in the centre of the building as if peering into a glasshouse. Here the priors of the monastery were buried though their graves have vanished. An old well, overgrown with climbing roses, stands in the corner. In the Priory's heyday it was the vegetable gardener's privilege to grow the roses. On a low wall, the life-size stone madonna presides with the sacred child. The baby redeemer plays with her rosary and she looks down at his foot which she holds in her hand – it's a fond yet professional glance. She might be examining it for injury or deformation – in fact the foot is very beautiful – or she might be a saleslady assessing his shoe-size. It would have been more sensible to cover the open courtyard, to put a roof on it, but that, says André, would have been to damage the architectural unity of the Priory. And this he will not have, he declares in the same quiet, sorrowful tones in which he told me he was once a Parisian stockbroker.

‘I was a monster of the Bourse.' And if that was not enough to shock a girl, he added, ‘With offices in Lyons.'

There was no mistaking the wistful note of regret, of shyness, of shame, with which this very ordinary statement of fact was offered. Please note: he said ‘offices'. At first I thought he must mean branches, and said so. But he was gently adamant.

‘With
offices
in Lyons,' he repeated.

These dread offices lay heavily on his mind. Did he mean perhaps that the geographical location of the offices reflected badly on the status of a Parisian stockbroker? Or was it because, though claiming Parisian attachments, in fact he had been based at Lyons and was forced to commute? That seemed unlikely. After thinking about it for some time it appeared more probable that André had, in his Parisian days as a monster of the Bourse, possessed offices in both Paris and Lyons and for some inexplicable reason the second set of offices caused him agony and humiliation. For the life of me I cannot think why this should be so. Does it mean that although he had turned away shuddering from his old life in Paris, he was always haunted by the knowledge that it had not been enough for him to yell, grab, stuff his pockets on the Market, that so great had been his greed and ambition that he had flung his net over half of France? Perhaps it is memories like these that make him confess: ‘I was a terror, once.' And then with a quiver of downcast lashes which give his face that eggy, Humpty Dumpty about-to-fall look, he adds, ‘Of course, you're too young to understand. I don't mean you're at all immature, quite the contrary. You're a young woman now, Bella –'

In my experience a middle-aged man who couples confessions of his former terrorism with compliments on my maturity is usually being dead bloody boring and is at the mercy of his erectile tissue. But there is nothing of this in André's pale blue eyes. He smoothes his hand across the few crispy grey hairs remaining on his shell of a head and looks at me as if I were the Virgin descending. Ferocity seems very unlikely in one such as André in his pink shirt and midnight-blue pants, his espadrilles and his gentle, apologetic smile. Indeed, he is so self-effacing and shy that he is frequently taken to be a member of the staff by guests visiting the Priory for the first time and is to be seen cheerfully carrying suitcases up the great stone staircase, passing the weeping wooden Nereids who guard the front door, with eyes averted. I shall also say it's probably unavoidable since the young cretins he employs as bellhops, baggage carriers and waiters have only the wispiest idea of their responsibilities and no great desire to sweat for their wages. The big, heavy suitcases having been unpacked from the boot of the Mercedes or the BMW in the dusty parking lot behind the hotel, the astonished guest will find the bellhop apparently inviting him to divide the load between them – always of course offering the guest first choice.

‘Will Monsieur take this case, and I the other? Or does he prefer the other?'

These boys, Armand, Tertius and Hyppolyte, are hired (need I reveal it?) in Lyons in the summer months when the hotel is full and the permanent staff cannot manage without extra help. They're not bad, if somewhat loutish and far too young to be really interesting. But what can André do? Though I know it embarrasses him horribly to see his guests treated in this cavalier fashion, he has no option but to run along behind the perspiring arrival, snatch the heavy case from him and glower at the young idiot so lacking in grace and consideration.

And yet he considers himself guilty of monstrous crimes. He seeks forgiveness for wolfish deeds. He shudders to think of himself in the days when he was a beast on the Paris Bourse, with offices in Lyons. He must have ravaged his private clients, or his clerks, or the buyers from the big institutions, or terrorised his staff in the office in Lyons and done something so horrible that it caused him burning shame. But what these crimes were, what blood was spilt, what scalps taken, what hideous dreams disturbed his sleep, no one can tell. He seeks salvation, he goes about in pink and blue, all gentleness and humility. He wishes to repent; the deeply appealing and sympathetic thing about André is his need to make an act of public contrition. Naturally this is virtually impossible in our age. What is one supposed to do if one wishes to proclaim one's penitence? Go on a pilgrimage, or fight in the crusades, or endow a monastery?

Well, not quite. But in taking over the old priory and converting it into a hotel, André has done the next best thing. And by being always so humble and self-effacing, talking as little as possible, eating sparingly, tolerating the whims and excesses of his guests and dealing with such exemplary kindness with his novice baggage boys, he does his best to reflect, in a modest way, the lifestyles of the former inhabitants of this old grey-stoned Carthusian retreat under its roof of pale red tiles. The milky flagstones of the cloisters are worn smooth by generations of patrolling monks.

‘I was a terror once.'

How those words of André's haunt me! What does he mean,
terror
? And where is it now? When you stop being its possessor or its victim what happens to this terror? Does it die? Or go into hiding? I know about terror in books. The Terror of Robespierre and Marat. Blood and more blood. I remember the leg of Princess Lamballe, after her body was ripped to pieces, stuffed in a cannon, her head on a pole, and her heart roasted and eaten. That was the official Terror – written up – from the books we knew it, always from the books. You visit it like a public monument. You walk around it. When you're tired you go home. Only when I begin to think, when I feel for the people pulled from their houses and accused by the Committee of Public Safety, when I hear their cries and screams as they were dragged to the guillotine, then I begin to be frightened. That was the Reign of Terror. How strange that there should be a reign during a revolution which killed a king! It's as if other people's terror is not open to us. We all need our own.

But first we must hear the call, and wake, alone, to face our fear. Through the wooden slats I can see shoals of tiny fish darting past. These little silver fish teem in the lake and are a local delicacy, fruit of the lake, fried and eaten sprinkled with lemon juice and black pepper. The shoal flicks this way and that, nervous, forever vigilant. No doubt they are programmed for this anxious slipperiness. At every moment extinction threatens. A state of useful terror developed by nature preserves the group. Quite right too. For at this moment they are being watched by one who would kill them and eat them. Cheerfully.

On this warm, wooden, private island human sun-lovers have no such fears. These naked, oily, delectable morsels of flesh fry gently. They know nothing will fall on them and tear their livers. No plague or brimstone will strike. No eagles will drop from the sky. The modern human animal is blithely self-confident. I must say too that the guests of the Priory this summer are more than usually fearless. They are healthy, they are enjoying themselves, they are on holiday and of course they're rich. They could not afford the Priory otherwise. Two elderly French lizards sit in deckchairs, facing one another, their heads thrown back, eyes closed. They are both excessively burnt and I suspect they have come on here from Sardinia or Monte Carlo. They know the tricks. They apply oil liberally to each other every hour or so. He even rubs some on his bald spot. Clever touch that. Their bodies are almost blue-black and deeply wrinkled after many summers spent tanning their hides. They must be in their late sixties, possibly in their seventies, though it's hard to tell for they have good crops of blue-white hair. Well versed in this pursuit they constantly move their chairs to catch the full force of the sun, then settle back again and close their eyes. They're awaiting the call, but it's only the call to lunch, a buffet in the garden beneath the chestnut trees, pink tablecloths and bottles of chilled rosé …