The Lollipop Shoes (9 page)

Is it, Vianne?
That’s my mother’s voice – sounding very like Roux these days.
I remember a time when you wanted more
.

As you did, Mother?
I told her silently. Dragging your child from place to place, always, for ever on the run. Living – just – from hand to mouth, stealing, lying, conjuring; six weeks, three weeks, four days in a place and then move on; no home, no school, peddling dreams, shuffling cards to map our journeys, wearing seam-stretched hand-me-downs, like tailors too busy to mend our own clothes.

At least we knew what we were, Vianne.

It was a cheap comeback, and one I would have expected from her. Besides, I know what I am. Don’t I?

We ordered noodles for Rosette and
plat du jour
for the rest of us. It was far from crowded, even for a weekday; but the air was stale with beer and Gitanes. Laurent Pinson is his own best customer; but for that, I really think he would have closed down years ago. Jowly, unshaven and bad-tempered, he views his customers as intruders on his free time, and makes no secret of his contempt for everyone but a handful of regulars who are also his friends.

He tolerates Thierry, who plays the brash Parisian for the occasion, erupting into the café with a ‘
Hé, Laurent, ça va, mon pote!
’ and the slap of a big banknote on the bar. Laurent knows him for a property man – has enquired about the price his own café might fetch, rebuilt and refurbished – and now calls him
M’sieur Thierry
and treats him with a deference that might be respect, or perhaps the hope of a deal to come.

I noticed he was looking more presentable today – shiny-suited and smelling of cologne, shirt collar buttoned over a tie that had first seen the light of day sometime in the late seventies. Thierry’s influence, I thought; though later I came to change my mind.

I left them to it and sat down, ordered coffee for myself and Coke for Anouk. Once we would have had hot chocolate, with cream and marshmallows and a tiny spoon with which to scoop it – but now it’s always Coke for Anouk. She doesn’t drink hot chocolate nowadays – some diet thing, I thought at first – and it feels so absurd to be hurt by that, like the first time she refused her bedtime story. Still such a sunny little girl; and yet increasingly I sense these shadows
in her, these places to which I am not invited. I know them well – I was the same – and isn’t a part of my fear just that: the knowledge that, at her age, I too wanted to run, to escape my mother in as many ways as I possibly could?

The waitress was new and looked vaguely familiar. Long legs, pencil skirt, hair tied up in a ponytail – I finally recognized her by her shoes.

‘It’s Zoë, isn’t it?’ I said.

‘Zozie.’ She grinned. ‘Some place, eh?’ She made a comic little gesture, as if ushering us in. ‘Still –’ she lowered her voice to a whisper – ‘I think the landlord’s sweet on me.’

Thierry laughed out loud at that, and Anouk gave her sideways smile.

‘It’s only a temporary job,’ Zozie said. ‘Until I come up with something better.’

The
plat du jour
was
choucroute garnie
– a dish I associate somehow with our time in Berlin. Surprisingly good for Le P’tit Pinson, which fact I attributed to Zozie and not to some renewed culinary zeal in Laurent.

‘With Christmas coming up, won’t you need some help in the shop?’ said Zozie, transferring sausages from the grill. ‘If so, then I’m a volunteer.’ She flung a glance over her shoulder at Laurent, feigning disinterest from his corner. ‘I mean, obviously I’d hate to leave all this—’

Laurent made a percussive sound, something between a sneeze and a call to attention –
mweh!
– and Zozie raised her eyebrows comically.

‘Just think about it,’ she said, grinning, then turned, picked up four beers with a deftness born of years of bar-work, and carried them, smiling, to the table.

She didn’t say much to us after that – the bar filled up, and as usual, I was busy with Rosette. Not that she’s such
a difficult child – she eats much better now, although she dribbles more than a normal child, and still prefers to use her hands – but she can behave oddly at times, looking fixedly at things that aren’t there, starting at imaginary sounds or laughing suddenly for no reason. I’m hoping she will grow out of it soon – it has been weeks since her last Accident – and although she still wakes up three or four times a night I can manage on only a few hours, and I’m hoping the sleeplessness will pass.

Thierry thinks I over-indulge her; more recently he has begun to speak of taking her to a doctor.

‘There’s no need. She’ll talk when she’s ready,’ I said, watching Rosette eat her noodles. She holds the fork with the wrong hand, though there are no other signs that she is left-handed. In fact, she is rather clever with her hands, and especially loves to draw. Little stick-men and women, monkeys – her favourite animal – houses, horses, butterflies, clumsy as yet, but recognizable, in every available colour—

‘Eat properly, Rosette,’ said Thierry. ‘Use your spoon.’

Rosette went on eating as if she hadn’t heard. There was a time I feared she was deaf; now I know she simply ignores what she feels to be unimportant. It’s a pity she does not pay more attention to Thierry; rarely laughs or smiles in his company; rarely shows her sweet side, or signs any more than absolutely necessary.

At home, with Anouk, she laughs and plays; sits for hours with her book; listens to the radio and dances like a dervish around the flat. At home, barring Accidents, she is well-behaved; at naptime we lie in bed together, as I used to with Anouk. I sing to her and tell her stories, and her eyes are bright and alert, lighter than Anouk’s, and
green and clever as a cat’s. She sings along – after a fashion – to my mother’s lullaby. She can just hold a tune, but still relies on me for the words:

V’là l’bon vent, v’là l’joli vent,

V’là l’bon vent, ma mie m’appelle.

V’là l’bon vent, v’là l’joli vent,

V’là l’bon vent, ma mie m’attend.

Thierry speaks of her being ‘a little slow’, or ‘a late developer’, and suggests that I get her ‘checked out’. He has not yet mentioned autism, but he will – like so many men of his age, he reads
Le Point
and believes that this makes him an expert on most things. I, on the other hand, am only a woman, besides being a mother, which has addled my sense of objective judgement.

‘Say
spoon
, Rosette,’ Thierry says.

Rosette picks up the spoon and looks at it curiously.

‘Come on, Rosette. Say
spoon
.’

Rosette hoots like an owl and makes the spoon perform an impertinent little dance on the tablecloth. Anyone would think she is making fun of Thierry. Quickly I take the spoon from Rosette. Anouk pinches her lips to stop herself from laughing.

Rosette looks at her and grins.

Quit it
, signs Anouk with her fingers.

Bullshit
, signs Rosette with hers.

I smile at Thierry. ‘She’s only three—’

‘Nearly four. That’s old enough.’ Thierry’s face takes on the bland expression he adopts when he feels I am being uncooperative. It makes him look older, less familiar, and I feel a sudden sting of irritation – unfair, I know,
but it can’t be helped. I don’t appreciate interference.

I am shocked at how close I come to actually saying it aloud – then I see the waitress – Zozie – watching me with a frown of amusement between her long blue eyes, and I bite my tongue and keep silent.

I tell myself that I have much to be grateful for in Thierry. It’s not just the shop, or the help that he has given us over the past year; or even the presents for myself and the children. It’s that Thierry is so much larger than life. His shadow covers the three of us; beneath it we are truly invisible.

But he seemed unusually restless today, fidgeting with something in his pocket. He looked at me quizzically over his
blonde
. ‘Something wrong?’

‘I’m just tired.’

‘What you need is a holiday.’

‘A holiday?’ I almost laughed. ‘Holidays are for selling chocolates.’

‘You’re going to keep on with the business, then?’

‘Of course I am. Why shouldn’t I? It’s less than two months to Christmas, and—’

‘Yanne,’ he interrupted me. ‘If I can help in any way – financial or otherwise—’ He reached out his hand to touch mine.

‘I’ll manage,’ I said.

‘Of course. Of course.’ The hand returned to his coat pocket. He means well, I told myself; and yet something in me rebels at the thought of intrusion, however well-meant. I have managed alone for so long that the need for help –
any
kind of help – seems like a dangerous weakness.

‘You’ll never run the shop alone. What about the kids?’ he said.

‘I’ll manage,’ I repeated. ‘I’m—’

‘You can’t do everything on your own.’ He was looking slightly annoyed now; shoulders hunched, hands jammed into his coat pockets.

‘I know that. I’ll find someone.’

Once more I glanced at Zozie, busy now with two platters of food in each hand, joking with the
belote
players at the back of the room. She looks so very much at ease, so independent, so very much
herself
as she hands out the plates, collects the glasses, fends off wandering hands with a laughing comment and a pretend-slap.

Why, I was like that
, I told myself.
That was me, ten years ago
.

Well, not even that, I thought, because surely Zozie could not be so much younger than me, but so much easier in her own skin, more thoroughly Zozie than I was ever Vianne.

Who
is
Zozie? I ask myself. Those eyes see much further than dishes to be washed, or a banknote folded under the rim of a plate. Blue eyes are easier to read, and yet the trick of the trade that has served me so often – if not so well – along the years, for some reason fails to work at all with her. Some people are like that, I tell myself. But dark or light, soft-centred or brittle, bitterest orange or rose cream or
Manon blanc
or vanilla truffle, I have no idea whether she even likes chocolate at all, still less her favourite.

So – why is it I think that she knows mine?

I looked back at Thierry, to find that he was watching her too.

‘You can’t afford to hire any help. You’re barely making ends meet as it is.’

Once more, I felt a flash of annoyance.
Who does he think he is?
I thought. As if I’d never managed alone, as if I were a child playing shop with my friends. Certainly, business in the
chocolaterie
has not been good over the past few months. But the rent is paid till the New Year, and surely we can turn it around. Christmas is coming, and with luck—

‘Yanne, perhaps we need to talk.’ The smile had gone, and now I could see the businessman in his face; the man who had started out at fourteen with his father to renovate a single derelict flat near Gare du Nord, and had become one of the most successful property dealers in Paris. ‘I know it’s hard. But really, it doesn’t have to be. There’s a solution to everything. I know you were devoted to Madame Poussin – you helped her a lot, and I appreciate that—’

He thinks that’s true. Perhaps it was; but I’m also aware that I used her, too, as I used my imagined widowhood, as an excuse to delay the inevitable; the terrible point of no return—

‘But perhaps there’s a way forward from here.’

‘Way forward?’ I said.

He gave me a smile. ‘I see this as an opportunity for you. I mean, obviously we’re all sorry about Madame Poussin, but in a way, this liberates you. You could do whatever you wanted, Yanne – although I think I’ve found a place you’ll like—’

‘You’re saying I should give up the
chocolaterie
?’ For a moment his words sounded like a foreign language.

‘Come on, Yanne. I’ve seen your accounts. I know what’s what. It’s not your fault, you’ve worked so hard, but business is terrible everywhere and—’

‘Thierry, please. I don’t want this now.’

‘Then what
do
you want?’ Thierry said with exasperation. ‘God knows, I’ve humoured you long enough. Why can’t you see I’m trying to help you? Why won’t you let me do what I can?’

‘I’m sorry, Thierry. I know you mean well. But—’

And then I saw something in my mind. It happens sometimes, at unguarded moments: a reflection in a coffee-cup; a glimpse in a mirror; an image floating its clouds across the glossy surface of a batch of newly tempered chocolate.

A box. A little sky-blue box—

What was in it? I couldn’t say. But a kind of panic bloomed in me; my throat was dry, I could hear the wind in the alleyway and I wanted nothing more at that moment than to take my children and run and run—

Pull yourself together, Vianne.

I made my voice as bland as I could. ‘Can’t this wait till I’ve sorted things out?’

But Thierry is like a hunting dog, cheery, determined, and impervious to argument. His hand was still in his coat pocket, fiddling with something inside.

‘I’m trying to
help
you sort it out. Don’t you see that? I don’t want you killing yourself with work. It isn’t worth it, just for a few miserable boxes of chocolates. Maybe it suited Madame Poussin. But you’re young, you’re bright, your life isn’t over—’

And now I knew what it was I’d seen. I could see it, quite clearly in my mind’s eye. A little blue box, from a Bond Street jeweller, a single gem, carefully chosen with the help of a female shop assistant, not too large but of perfect clarity, nestling against the velvet lining . . .

Oh, please, Thierry. Not here. Not now.

‘I don’t need any help right now.’ I gave him my most brilliant smile. ‘Now eat your
choucroute
. It’s delicious—’

‘You’ve hardly touched it,’ he pointed out.

I scooped a mouthful. ‘See?’ I said.

Thierry smiled. ‘Close your eyes.’

‘What, here?’

‘Close your eyes and hold out your hand.’