Guillaume, on his way back from the butcher’s with a piece of boudin wrapped in paper.
“Charly likes boudin,” he tells me earnestly. “He hasn’t been eating very well recently, but I’m sure he’ll love this.”
“Don’t forget you have to eat too,” I remind him gently.
“Of course.” He gives his sweet, apologetic smile. “I eat like a horse. Really I do.” He gives me a sudden, stricken look. “Of course, it’s Lent,” he says. “You don’t think animals should observe the Lenten fast, do you?”
I shake my head at his dismayed expression: His face is small, delicately featured. He is the kind of man who breaks biscuits in two and saves the other half for later.
“I think you should both look after yourselves better.”
Guillaume scratches Charly’s ear. The dog seems listless, barely interested in the contents of the butcher’s package in the basket beside him.
“We manage.” His smile comes as automatically as the lie: “Really we do.” He finishes his cup of chocolat espresso. “That was excellent,” he says as he always does. “My compliments, Madame Rocher.”
I have long since stopped asking him to call me Vianne. His sense of propriety forbids it. He leaves the money on the counter, tips his old felt hat and opens the door. Charly scrambles to his feet and follows, lurching slightly to one side. Almost as soon as the door closes behind them, I see Guillaume stoop to pick him up and carry him.
At lunchtime I had another visitor. I recognized her at once in spite of the shapeless man’s overcoat she affects; the clever winter-apple face beneath the black straw – hat, the long black skirts over heavy workboots.
“Madame Voizin! You said you’d drop in, didn’t you? Let me get you a drink.”
Bright eyes flicked appreciatively from one side of the shop to another I sensed her taking everything in. Her gaze came to rest on Anouk’s menu:
chocolat chaud 10f
chocolat espresso 15f
chococcino 12f
mocha 12f
She nodded approvingly.
“It’s been years since I had anything like this,” she said. “I’d almost forgotten this sort of place existed.” There is an energy in her voice, a forcefulness to her movements, which belies her age. Her mouth has a humorous twist which reminds me of my mother. “I used to love chocolate,” she declared.
As I poured her, a tall glass of mocha and added a splash of kahlua to the froth she surveyed the bar stools with some suspicion.
“You don’t expect me to climb all the way up there, do you?”
I laughed.
“If I’d known you were coming I would have brought a ladder. Wait a moment.” Stepping into the kitchen I brought out Poitou’s old orange chair. “Try this.”
Armande plumped into the chair and took her glass in both hands. She looked eager as a child, her eyes shining, her expression rapt.
“Mmmm.” It was more than appreciation. It was almost reverence. “Mmmmmm.”
She had closed her eyes as she tasted the drink. Her pleasure was almost frightening.
“This is the real thing, isn’t it?” She paused for a moment, bright eyes speculatively half-closed. “There’s cream and – cinnamon, I think – and what else? Tia Maria?”
“Close enough,” I said.
“What’s forbidden always tastes better anyway,” declared Armande, wiping froth from her mouth in satisfaction. “But this”– she sipped again, greedily – “is better than anything I remember, even from childhood. I bet there are ten thousand calories in here. More.”
“Why should it be forbidden?” I was curious.
Small and round as a partridge, she seems as unlike her figure conscious daughter as can be.
“Oh, doctors.” Armande was dismissive. “You know what they’re like. They’ll say anything.” She paused to drink again through her straw. “Oh, this is good. Good. Caro’s been trying to make me go into some kind of a home for years. Doesn’t like the idea of me living next door. Doesn’t like to be reminded where she comes from.” She gave a rich chuckle. “Says I’m sick. Can’t look after myself. Sends that miserable doctor of hers to tell me what I can eat and what I can’t. Anyone would think they wanted me to live for ever.”
I smiled.
“I’m sure Caroline cares very much about you,” I said.
Armande shot me a look of derision.
“Oh, you are?” She gave a vulgar cackle of laughter. “Don’t give me that, girl. You know perfectly well that my daughter doesn’t care for anyone but herself. I’m not a fool.” A pause as she narrowed her bright, challenging gaze at me. “It’s the boy I feel for,” she said.
“Boy?”
“Luc, his name is. My grandson. He’ll be fourteen in April. You may have seen him in the square.”
I remembered him vaguely; a colourless boy, too correct in his pressed flannel trousers and tweed jacket, cool green-grey eyes beneath a lank fringe. I nodded.
“I’ve made him the beneficiary of my will,” Armande told me. “Half a million francs. In trust until his eighteenth birthday.” She shrugged. “I never see him,” she added shortly. “Caro won’t allow it.”
I’ve seen them together. I remember now; the boy supporting his mother’s arm as they passed on their way to church. Alone of all Lansquenet’s children, he has never bought chocolates from La Praline, though I think I may have seen him looking in at the window once or twice.
“The last time he came to see me was when he was ten.” Armande’s voice was unusually flat. “A hundred years ago, as far as he’s concerned.” She finished her chocolate and put the glass back onto the counter with a sharp final sound. “It was his birthday, as I recall. I gave him a book of Rimbaud’s poetry. He was very – polite.” There was bitterness in her tone. “Of course ‘I’ve seen him in the street a few times since,” she said. “I can’t complain.”
“Why don’t you call?” I asked curiously. “Take him out, talk, get to know him?”
Armande shook her head.
“We fell out, Caro and I…” Her voice was suddenly querulous. The illusion of youth had left with her smile, and she looked suddenly, shockingly old. “She’s ashamed of me. God knows what she’s been telling the boy.” She shook her head. “No. It’s too late. I can tell by the look on his face – that polite look – the polite meaningless little messages in his Christmas cards. Such a well-mannered boy.” Her laughter was bitter.
“Such a polite, well-mannered boy.” She turned to me and gave me a bright, brave smile. “If I could know what he was doing,” she said. “Know what he reads, what teams he supports, who his friends are, how well he does at school. If I could know that-”
“If?”
“I could pretend to myself-”
For a second I saw her close to tears. Then a pause, an effort, a gathering of the will.
“Do you know, I think I might manage another of those chocolate specials of yours. How about another?” It was bravado, but I admired it more than I could say. That she can still play the rebel through her misery, the suspicion of a swagger in her movements as she props her elbows on the bar, slurping. “ Sodom and Gomorrah through a straw. Mmmm. I think I just died and went to heaven. Close as I’m going to get, anyway.”
“I could get news of Luc, if you wanted. I could pass it on to you:”
Armande