The Loveliest Chocolate Shop in Paris (18 page)

So
she
had
had
to
sit, in the old dowdy traveling clothes she had last worn at the beginning of the summer—now too short in the leg and too tight in the bust, and try to choke down the overboiled carrots and mushy potato, try not to think about melting camembert that came in its own little wooden basket, baked in the oven with herbs and served on a crisp green salad (the only salad that had hit Kidinsborough in the early seventies was a couple of leaves of damp iceberg lettuce served with tasteless quartered tomatoes and salad dressing). Or the golden roasted chickens they bought from a man who sold them on a spit that tasted so hot and salty that they had let the grease run down their chins, and Thierry had licked it off, and she had laughed and laughed, and they had mopped up the rest of the juices with the most incredible fresh bread, still warm from the oven. Thierry had shown her how to know when bread was at its freshest by the crackling noise it made when you broke into it, adding smugly, “But Pierre would never give me second bread.”

She
could
barely
remember
that
girl. And as the days grew shorter, and school started again, she felt like she was trapped, trapped in the body of a child who needed to do what she was told.

Every
day, she woke up early, terrified she might miss the postman. Her father wouldn't understand Thierry's letters but her mother could, and her father would get the gist, surely, or just disapprove in general. She watched him like a hawk; she couldn't trust the Reverend not to block any incoming post, but he seemed his normal irascible self, grumbling over his newspaper about the terrible state of everything and how Britain was going to the dogs and how the union men were “wicked, wicked.”

He
started
preaching
this, too, from his pulpit, which did not go down at all well with the local population of Kidinsborough, who were hanging on to their steelworks by the skin of their teeth. His congregation dwindled, and men came from the bishopric in the evening, talking to him in low voices.

Every
day, Claire got up early to make sure her father didn't make it to the post before her, but he never did. So as the days went by, it became stranger and stranger that she had received no letters. She had returned to school, gazing at the stranger she had become in the mirror—not the carefree girl striding happily down the Bois de Boulogne, but a sullen teenager in a short gray skirt and a too-tight tie, looking just like anyone else.

In
class
she
barely
paid
attention, except in French, instead writing endless letters to Thierry, circular in tone, about how much she missed him and how much she hated Kidinsborough and how next summer she would find another position and come back to Paris and this time they couldn't make her go back, nobody could, sending it to the shop, although who knew where he was now, where he was posted.

There
was
no
response.

In
November, they moved.

Claire
cried. She begged. She pleaded. She ran the whole gamut of teenage rebellion, slamming doors, staying out late, sulking, but nothing worked. Complaints against her father were growing; his old-school, fire-and-brimstone sermons had fallen out of fashion. “Hippies,” the Reverend complained. “Nothing but g-damned hippies getting into everything. They're going to ruin everything.”

As
a
result
of
this, Claire went out and bought incense, which turned him practically apoplectic with rage.

Claire
sent
one
last
letter, not to the garret but to the shop, where she knew for an absolute fact he would receive it.

Cheri,

Mes parents horribles insistent que nous déménageons. Je les déteste. Alors, si tu penses de moi du tout, s'il te plaît sauve-moi! Sauve-moi! Je suis à ‘the Pines, 14 Orchard Grove, Tillensley.'

Si tu ne réponds pas, je comprendrai que tu ne m'aimes pas et je ne te contacterai encore.

Mon coeur, mon amour, viens avec vitesse,

Claire.

Nothing.

I
do think there is something about the French psyche that can be incredibly useful. That solid practicality—it is very unusual for a French person to be over the top with excitement or laid low with misery—is useful. They do not feel it necessary to be cheery or even terribly polite if the occasion doesn't warrant it. Which means you can get a lot of necessary information in an unemotional way.

Laurent started up.

“How is he?”

Alice whipped around and, without saying a word, shut off her phone. The doctor's face was still completely impassive, and I could feel my heart beating a mile a minute, pounding my chest. I suddenly found I wished I could take Laurent's hand, squeeze it. Just to have someone there while we faced the worst. I looked at his large, hairy hand, hanging down by his jacket pocket. It was shaking.

“It's far from clear,” said the doctor, her voice impeccable, ringing out in the small dingy room. “We have operated, inserted stents. But his general condition…” The tone of her voice made it very clear that this was a reproach. “His general condition makes it very difficult to see what the outcome will be.”

“But he's still alive now,” said Laurent, his face an animated mixture of hope and terror.

She nodded curtly. “
Bah
oui
,” she said. “He will be unconscious for some time.”

“I want to see him,” said Laurent. She nodded and turned around. We all followed the clacking of her heels up the shiny linoleum floor, until she turned around.

“Not too many,” she instructed. Frédéric and Benoît immediately backed off, and I did too. But Laurent, almost without realizing what he was doing, tugged at my sleeve.

“You come,” he said quietly. I realized later, of course, that he just didn't want to be alone with her, with Alice, and all the unsaid things that passed between them, and that I was a witness; I'd been there. But at the time, it felt more than that; I felt like I'd been chosen. Although in the same way, I still felt that if he died, it would be my fault.

“Of course,” I said, trying not to betray the nerves in my voice.

“Why is she coming?” asked Alice loudly, but Laurent ignored her. I just stayed out of her way.

- - -

The recovery room was gloomy, the lights low. Machines bleeped and whirred to themselves; I looked around to make sure I wouldn't stumble over any essential tubes or wires. In the center, dimly lit by above, Thierry made a huge mound in the bed, like a gigantic Easter egg. They had, to my terrible sadness, shaved his mustache to insert the tubes up his nose. Without it, he looked odd, insulted somehow.

His skin was gray, absolutely gray. It was a horrible muddy color you couldn't look at for any length of time at all. Alice coughed and glanced down. Laurent though was just staring at Thierry's great barrel chest, still moving up and down.

“Papa,” he cried, stepping over to the bed, his arms open wide. He sounded like a child. The doctor gave a disapproving clicking noise and he stepped back, not wanting to disrupt anything, but there were tears in his eyes. Then he turned back to the doctor.

“Thank you,” he said.

The doctor shrugged. “Don't thank me yet,” she said.

She left after warning us for the fiftieth time not to touch anything, and we three, an odd company, were alone in the room, with Thierry, like a great beached walrus, spread out between us. There was a silence broken only by the bleeping and the great hiss of the respirator, which moved up and down like a broken accordion.

“So,” said Alice at last. Laurent wasn't listening; he was sitting forward hard in his chair, staring at his father. “This is what it takes to get you to visit your dad.”

I really wanted to knock her block off then. It was like she'd searched the world for the most unpleasant thing she could possibly say and then gone ahead and said it anyway.

Laurent must have noticed my horrified face, because he patted me on the arm.

“It's all right, she's always like this,” he said in English, which was clever, because Alice pretended all the time she didn't know any English or that she'd forgotten it all.

“Actually it wasn't my dad I was avoiding, it was you,” he said pleasantly. “Now would you like to smoke in here and make him worse? Or maybe you'd just like to lever him up and wheel him out to one of your soirées.”

Alice went very white again. “Actually, I'll have to go and organize the business you want no part of,” she said. “With two half-wits and whatever she is. By myself. Thanks though.”

I was struck with a hand of fear. It had never occurred to me I was going to have to work for Alice now, but of course she was right. Oh goodness. I hardly knew what I was doing yet, and now I was going to have to do it under the disapproving eye of this person who thought I'd try to kill myself.

“Of course, you'd ask if you needed help,” said Laurent.

There was a standoff then, neither of them prepared to move at all.

- - -

It became increasingly clear that neither of them wanted to be the first to leave, in case Thierry woke up. It was warm in the room, and with horror I realized I was becoming very drowsy. There must be loads of people they needed to contact, but both were sticking by the signs that there were no mobile phones allowed near the equipment. It was like a power struggle between the two of them, and it made me very cross. Eventually I snapped.

“I'm going to get coffee,” I said. “Does anyone want anything?”

Alice jumped up, obviously cross she hadn't thought of it.

“No, I'll go,” she said brusquely, her fingers already fumbling in her Hermès bag for her lighter and phone. “I'll be back in two minutes.”

After she had left the room and vanished down the long corridor, Laurent collapsed back onto the chair and let out a long sigh. He let his curly head continue on downward, until it was level with the bottom of the bed. Then he let it collapse into the soft sheets. After several moments of witnessing his shoulders shaking, I realized he was crying.

I stood up.

“There, there,” I said, rubbing his back. “There, there. He's going to be all right, isn't he? There, there. Look at him, all alive on the bed and everything.”

I was speaking absolute nonsense, I knew, just crooning reassuring nothings, but it seemed to do the trick. After another moment, without lifting his head, Laurent took my arm and held it.

“Thank you,” he said, his face muffled in the pillow.

I patted him. “It's all right,” I said again. “It's going to be all right.”

“It's never all right,” came the voice.

I knelt down beside him. “Well,” I said, “maybe this is a really good time to make it up with your dad.”

“What, before he passes his gun to his left?” said Laurent, turning his face toward me and half-smiling. “Yeah, right. Thanks.”

“Well, lots of people never get a chance to say good-bye,” I said. “You're going to be lucky. Be sure of it.”

“Are you my lucky charm?”

I smiled. I was the unluckiest person in the world, didn't he know?

“If you like.”

Laurent sat up and wiped his eyes, then ran his fingers through his hair. “Do I look red?” he asked. “I don't want the wicked witch to know I've been crying.”

“Maybe it'll soften her up,” I said. “She can see how much you really care.”

“You couldn't soften her up with a marshmallow massage,” said Laurent crossly. “I really do think she's made out of old leather.”

“She's panicking,” I said. “People say strange things when they're worried.”

“Then she's permanently worried,” he said.

“I rather think she is,” I said, patting him again. “Look, I haven't seen much, but I'm a fast learner, and I bet Frédéric and Benoît can do just about anything. Let's carry on with the shop for a bit until Thierry's better. It will cheer him up, I think, to know we've gone on in his absence.”

“Or completely ruin him by the fact that he's replaceable,” said Laurent with a twisted smile on his face. I noticed he was holding his father's empty-looking hand in his living one. Apart from the fact that Thierry's hand was more bloated and a paler color, they were the same hands.

“Well, we'll tell him it is obviously much, much worse,” I suggested.

“Oh, you won't have to do that,” said Laurent wryly. “He thinks everything is much, much worse without him in it.”

“Maybe he's right,” I said. Just then, Alice came back, with three tiny plastic cups of black liquid on a little tray. I squeezed Laurent's shoulder once more. “I'll get back to the shop,” I said. “I'm not much use here.”

Laurent nodded. “I know,” he said reluctantly. “Yes. Do. And answer the phone, do you mind?”

“Not at all,” I said. “I'll say he's…I'll say he's…”

“Say he is going to be
fine
,” said Alice in a voice that brooked no argument. “Say that he is going to be completely back to normal and that the shop will go on and everything will stay just as it is.”

Laurent would have probably said that this was just Alice seeking to preserve her investment. I didn't see it like that though. I saw Alice keeping Thierry alive just by saying she was going to. And even though I didn't want to be, I was slightly impressed.

- - -

It felt amazing to me that I stepped back out of the hospital on that same, beautiful June day. The sky had tiny ribbons of cloud floating across it, and the afternoon sun fell warmly on the backs and necks of shoppers and sightseers, every one of them, I speculated, happy and carefree without a problem in the world.

I realized I had no idea where I was, walked a long way, then figured out I could see the Eiffel Tower over my left shoulder and that therefore I was on the Left Bank, had gone the wrong way, and needed to cross the river again. Yes, I'd been on the Île de la Cité the whole time. If I craned my neck, I could just make out the familiar shape of Notre Dame, far away to my right. It would have been a lot quicker to take a cab or the Metro—everything in Paris is farther away than it looks—but I decided I needed the walk to clear my head. Incredibly careful when looking for traffic, I stepped out, my toes hurting again because they had responded badly to the smell of hospitals, I thought. Or bad weather was coming, but as far as I was concerned, all the bad things were already here. So I walked, slowing myself down to a tourist's pace instead of the bustling Parisian march, as the locals threaded themselves in and out of the visitors, occasionally huffing their displeasure. I zigged and zagged the roads. But as long as I could keep Notre Dame in my sights, I kept heading doggedly onward.

There was something about it—I knew; forever it had stood for sanctuary, back when the city was really no more than the island and its church. It was impossible not to think about the Hunchback, and Esmeralda, or to look at the gargoyles and shudder to think of a world where people believed in them absolutely, believed that hell was only a blink or a misstep away, that it was pain for all eternity and the monsters carved on the wall were literal and real and there to tear you apart.

At secondary school, there was a bit of religious education and it was quite fashionable for a while—don't ask me why—to go to church and pray and stuff. I don't know why except it was seen as quite a clever thing to do, or to match with the Muslim kids who prayed properly and were seen as much cooler, and church kind of turned into this big social event, and I toyed with it till I asked Mrs. Shawcourt about it and her face went a bit stiff and she just said, “Ooh, I have had a
lot
of church, believe me. Quite enough to be getting on with for this lifetime,” and I was a lot less committed after that.

Around Notre Dame though, I felt something else. Seeing the queues of people waiting to get in—most of them bored-looking Italian school kids larking about, or rich-looking young American students talking really loudly, or elderly couples dressed almost exactly alike, ticking things off in their books. But among them were different people—nuns and people on their own who didn't have a holiday look about them at all, but rather something very serious and grave. The distinctive twin towers at the front made it seem different, somehow special.

As I drew nearer, I realized you only had to queue if you wanted a tour or to go up and see the bells and things. If you just wanted to peek in, you could wander up. Even though my feet were killing me and I hadn't eaten a thing for hours and I just wanted to lie down and rest, I found myself mounting the steps.

Inside it was huge. It smelled faintly of flowers and floor polish and something else that I supposed was that incense-y stuff my gran says Catholics use. They were playing organ music gently through speakers, which was a bit confusing. The scale of it was massive. If I thought it was massive now, living in the days of skyscrapers and jumbo jets and cruise ships, I can't imagine what it must have felt like hundreds of years ago. The huge friezes of the Stations of the Cross covered the walls in intricate details, like the huge rose stained-glass window. It must have been like watching television.