The Loveliest Chocolate Shop in Paris (34 page)

“No,” I said.

“But now you can do anything, right? You compensated and made it better?”

I shrugged. “Yes, I suppose so.”

“Well. Just like that. And I will hold up this chocolate just like I will hold you up.”

“I'm not sure this metaphor is really hanging together,” I said, smiling, but he hushed me and kept on working feverishly.

Finally, he tried one last time, then immediately stopped the paddles from turning.

I opened my mouth obediently.

“That's what I like to see,” said Laurent, then let a drop cool and rest on my tongue.

I'd expected it to be awful, just weird, but it wasn't. The depths of the chocolate base were deepened by the pepper, giving it a dark edge, but then shot through with a sublime light sharpness. It was clean, delicious, and utterly moreish.

“Oh my God,” I said. “I have to eat more of that.”

“Yes!” said Laurent. “That's right.” He tried some himself. “Yes, exactly. Perfect. I am a genius.”

“Can you teach me how to make it?”

He looked me up and down. “Two months ago, I would have said no. Now, I think you can do anything.”

Frédéric interrupted us kissing to say that there was going to be a riot in the queue lining up outside and did we want him just to call the Bastille now? Everyone left in Paris knew that we reopened today and there was a rumor that Thierry was on the mend and would be here too—I knew the hotel was going to call a taxi for Claire and Thierry, but I wasn't sure when. I felt a momentary stab of concern, before remembering Claire chiding me to get on with things. They would be all right.

Frédéric set the chocolate in the freezer double quick and started slicing, as Laurent twirled off to start another batch of mint and bitterest aniseed. I started to clean up, then out of interest, went to see what happened when the lemon went on sale.

The first person to try some was M. Beausier, one of our regulars. He was small and slight, considering the amount of our chocolate he put away. Perhaps it was his staple diet. He took one bite and his eyes popped open.

“
Mon Dieu
,” he said. “Is Thierry back in the kitchen?”

Excitedly he turned around to the queue and started handing out little squares for people to taste.

“Try this, try this,” he was saying excitedly. “I must have some more!” he called over to Frédéric, who raised his eyebrows and sighed in a dramatic way. The people in the crowd who'd tried it started muttering excitedly and placing large orders.

“I think you'd better make some more,” I said, coming back to Laurent. “They're going to start a stampede out there.”

He straightened up. His face looked nervous and exhilarated at once.

“What do you mean? They're hating it?”

“Nooo,” I said. “They're loving it.”

“Really?”

“Of course really! Come on, my love, you know you can cook.”

“But in my father's kitchen…” he muttered, pushing his hair out of his eyes.

“Yes,” I said. “In your father's kitchen. You are also wonderful.”

He smiled, and I felt in that instant both immense love for him and a sudden immense rush of love for my own lovely father, who would love me no matter what, whatever I did and how. He wasn't famous or a brilliant genius or world-renowned. Except to me.

“Now, get on with it,” I said, but Laurent couldn't; he had to come and see for himself. The crowd was standing around in the shop, unable to disperse, telling each other how amazing it was. And of course because there were lots of people, other people had come up behind to see what was going on and were watching and adding themselves to the queue, and the entire stock had nearly sold out.

M. Beausier, who had known Thierry a long time, gasped when he saw Laurent. But everyone else's attention was diverted by a long car pulling up outside.

- - -

Thierry seemed stronger already than when she saw him yesterday, Claire thought, as she said “come in” to the soft knock at the door. He was very smartly dressed and carrying a large bunch of flowers. This would be how it would be, she supposed. He would get better and better and recover as she got worse and worse. She had had a very bad coughing fit in the bathroom that morning that, she knew, would have made her oncologist order her straight back to the hospital. For a moment, she nearly weakened, thinking suddenly how nice it would be to call an ambulance and let the professionals take over, slip into a drugged sleep, and let them clear her lungs and drain what they needed to drain to make her more comfortable…

But she knew, more than anything, that the next time she went into the hospital, she wasn't sure whether she would be coming out again. She had one chance, only one chance, to do this. Plucking up all her courage, her hand shaking, she managed to insert the tiny chips of emerald in her ears.

She didn't want to take too much morphine either; it helped, but it blurred the edges, made her feel as if she was walking through a cotton-wool dream, where nothing really mattered. This did matter; it mattered to her a lot. And it was only one more day. So she wanted to stay clear for it, even if she felt at any moment that her bones might shatter or her whole body might simply curl up and immolate, like a film she had once seen about nuclear war.

She had drunk some more water and did her best with her face. She could not, she found, walk across the bathroom to get back to the bedroom.

Cursing roundly in a way that would have surprised many of her ex-pupils, Claire crawled, very slowly, across the floor.

“How are you?” Thierry asked emphatically, covering her with kisses. “I have been ordered to walk about and take exercise so I walked to the lift to see you.”

Claire smiled.

“Can you take a walk with me?”

“No,” said Claire. “Not today.”

“Well, that is a shame,” said Thierry. “I always enjoyed our walks.”

“So did I,” said Claire. “But I have ordered tea. Now tell me everything.”

“And you too,” insisted Thierry. “Then I shall take you to the shop.”

“I would like that,” said Claire. “I would like that very much.”

- - -

I realized later that the taxi hadn't had space for a wheelchair, and the hotel had had to order a bigger car. But it did look a bit like a limo had drawn up, as Thierry stepped out of the big black car.

The crowd instantly burst into applause. Thierry looked incredibly jolly and better already than he had the day before, never mind those awful days in the hospital, and acknowledged their applause with his hand. Someone started taking photographs.

Then father and son saw each other. Thierry stood stock-still for an instant. I saw a look of fear and nerves and defiant pride pass over Laurent's features as clear as day; I could already read him so well. Someone handed Thierry a piece of the chocolate. Slowly, very slowly, Thierry placed it on his tongue and held it there, closing his mouth. There was absolute silence on the rue Chanoinesse. All the other shopkeepers had come out to see what was going on.

Thierry chewed, meditatively and carefully. Then he stopped and gave a short sharp nod.

“
Mon
fils
,” said Thierry simply, and he opened his arms. Laurent ran into them like a little boy.

- - -

I helped Claire out of the car and into the chair, which barely fit in the narrow shop, and through into the greenhouse beyond. Laurent went back to making his new chocolate and another batch of the lemon. Thierry kept a beady eye on him and remarked, as Laurent wielded the pepper grinder, that he was going to give him another heart attack, but mostly stayed out of the way. Claire sat comfortably by the plants and I took a couple of photos. It was funny to think she'd been here before. Had it changed?

“Not at all,” she said. “Benoît, I knew you here as a boy.”

Benoît merely grunted.

“That's what he was like as a boy,” she confided. Thierry went over to the sink and washed his hands.

“I am going to make you some medicine,” he said to Claire, who smiled.

“I would like that very much.”

I watched, fascinated, as he picked up a tiny whisk, which looked absurdly small in his huge hands, and a little metal pole and started working in his own way over a low heat, adding brandy and vanilla in tiny drops, tasting too as he went. I spotted Laurent watching him while pretending not to.

Eventually it was made and warmed and poured into a huge clay cup, slightly chipped. Thierry took a tiny knife and carved tiny, perfect scrolls of chocolate from a large plain bar to decorate the froth at the top. Then it was taken over to be presented to Claire as if it was on a silver salver.

“It's the same cup,” she exclaimed with pleasure.

“I kept everything that reminded me of you,” said Thierry simply. “When I returned from the fighting…ah, I had changed. Life had changed. It made everything more complicated and less free and…well. I liked to keep some things to remember.”

I watched as Claire drank. She closed her eyes briefly. We didn't serve hot chocolate in the summertime, but I knew how legendary it was because people kept telling me about it.

“Oh,” she said, and this will sound fanciful, but she really did look slightly restored after she drank it; more color in her cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes. And she drank the whole cup with obvious pleasure, the first time I had seen her eat or drink with real appetite in nearly a year.

“Did you come all this way for a cup of hot chocolate?” I asked, and she smiled slightly.

“Well, mostly.”

Thierry followed the exchange and burst into a huge grin.

“I still have it.”

“Of course.”

He poured the last dregs in her cup and she finished them regretfully.

“I shall make you another.”

“You can make me one tomorrow, before I go,” she said.

I looked at Thierry, who had nodded without trying to insist that she stay longer. She had obviously told him everything then.

“Now, Anna,” said Claire, turning her attention to me. “I want to see where you live.”

“Do you?” I said. I wondered who Sami would have staying over today from the
demimonde
. “No, don't. It's up loads of steps, and it's just a tiny apartment, just a box room really.”

“I've come here to see you and I'd like to see it,” said Claire in a “do your homework” voice, so I wheeled her around the corner over the cobbles, leaving the boys behind to work and deal with the lengthening line of excited customers.

- - -

It didn't take long, even though maneuvering the wheelchair on and off curbs was a tedious business. Paris is not a city built for wheelchairs. As usual, the hallway was in total darkness. Claire scanned the faded list of bells.

“I haven't put my name on it,” I said. “I'm only here temporarily.”

Claire looked at me with that penetrating gaze of hers.

“Are you?” she said. I squirmed and looked down.

“Uhm, I'm not sure.”

“Well, be careful of those Girard boys,” she said.

I pushed open the heavy door. She could walk if she held my arm.

“I wish…I wish I'd held on to mine,” she added. “I left.”

“I know.”

I found the light and squeezed it hard, then we progressed, very slowly. Upstairs I heard the mysterious door on the first landing open again. My heart sank. Oh no. That scary old woman. The last thing I needed now was for her to march out on the landing and start having a go at me because Sami's chums kept leaving the door on the latch and played music at unlikely times of day.

We ascended the stairs at a glacial pace, as the door creaked itself wide apart. Claire stopped still on the landing. I blinked. Just before the light went out, I saw the other woman standing there too. She was incredibly old, her hair white, her figure bent over.

“Claire?” she breathed.

- - -

Madame LeGuarde's apartment still contained much of the old furniture from the days when her family had owned the entire house. It was grand and baroque, but a little much for the space. It was, however, impeccably tidy and luxurious, a thick Persian rug in the spacious front room. There was even a maid, who sat us down and went off and brought back cups of lemon tea in bone china cups.

The two women were gazing at each other.

“I didn't know,” said the older woman.

Claire shook her head. “Why would you?”

She finally turned around to introduce me.

“Anna, this is Marie-Noelle LeGuarde. I lived here too when I first came to Paris.”

“Upstairs?”

“Yes, upstairs, but it was all one house then.”

“Before the socialists,” grimaced Mme. LeGuarde. “And of course, we all divorced. It was quite fashionable back then.”

“What about Arnaud and Claudette?”

“Both well. Claudette lives near here and comes around often; her children are wonderfully good to me. Arnaud is in Perpignan, getting a suntan.”

Claire smiled. “They were dear children.”

“They are,” said Mme. LeGuarde. “And they were very fond of you.”

A silence fell between them.

“With…with Thierry…”

Mme. LeGuarde lowered her head.

“I apologize. I am sorry. I thought it was a summer fling that would fizzle out and you would both be better for it. So did your mother.”

“My
mother
?”

Mme. LeGuarde nodded. “I miss her very much, you know. We were pen pals our whole lives.”

“My
mother
said you could take the letters?”

“I was Thierry's
poste
restante
when he was at the conflict, yes. We both thought it was the right thing to do. And you know, then the divorce and I will say, I had very little time for romance in my life just then.”