Шоколад / Chocolat

Харрис Джоанн

Her face worked with the effort of speaking. Her hands opened and closed.

I looked at her.

“Please, Josephine. Sit down. Have a drink.”

“I can’t!” She shook her head emphatically. Her wind, tangled hair blurred wildly around her face. “I told you I don’t have time. Just do as I say. Please.” She sounded strained and exhausted, looking towards the church door as if afraid of being seen with me. “He’s been preaching against them,” she told me in a fast, low tone. “And against you. Talking about you. Saying things.”

I shrugged indifferently.

“So? What do I care?”

Josephine put her fists to her temples in a gesture of frustration.

“You have to warn them,” she repeated. “Tell them to go. Warn Armande too. Tell her he read her name out this morning. And yours. He’ll read mine out as well if he sees me here, and Paul?”

“I don’t understand, Josephine. What can he do? And why should I care, anyway?”

“Just tell them, all right?” Her eyes flicked warily to the church again, from which a few people were drifting. “I can’t stay,” she said. “I have to go.”

She turned towards the door.

“Wait, Josephine?”

Her face as she turned back was a blur of misery. I could see that she was close to tears.

“This always happens,” she said in a harsh, unhappy voice. “Whenever I find a friend he manages to ruin it for me. It’ll happen the way it always does. You’ll be well out of it by then, but me?”

I took a step forward, meaning to steady her. Josephine pulled back with a clumsy gesture of warding.

“No! I can’t! I know you mean well, but I just – can’t!” She recovered with an effort. “You have to understand. I live here. I have to live here. You’re free, you can go where you like, you?”

“So can you,” I replied gently.

She looked at me then, touching my shoulder very briefly with the tips of her fingers.

“You don’t understand,” she said without resentment. “You’re different. For a while I thought maybe I could learn to be different too.” She turned, her agitation leaving her, to be replaced by a look of distant, almost sweet, abstraction. She dug her hands into her pockets once more. “I’m sorry, Vianne,” she said. “I really tried. I know it isn’t your fault.” For a moment I saw a brief return of animation to her features. “Tell the river people,” she urged. “Tell them they have to go. It isn’t their fault either – I just don’t want anyone to be hurt,” finished Josephine softly. “All right?”

I shrugged. “No-one is going to be hurt,” I told her.

“Good.” She gave a smile painful in its transparency. “And don’t worry about me. I’m fine. I really am.” Again that stretched, painful smile. As she edged past me through the door I caught a glimpse of something shiny in her hand, and saw that her coat pockets were stuffed with costume jewellery. Lipsticks, compacts, necklaces and rings spilled from between her fingers. “Here. This is for you,” she said brightly, pushing a handful of looted treasure at me. “It’s OK. I’ve got lots more.”

Then with a smile of dazzling sweetness she was off, leaving me with chains and earrings and pieces of bright plastic set in gilt weeping from my fingers onto the floor.

Later in the afternoon I took Anouk for a walk into Les Marauds. The travellers’ camp looked cheery in the new sunlight, with washing flapping on lines drawn between the boats, and all the glass and paint gleaming. Armande was sitting in a rocking-chair in her sheltered front garden, watching the river. Roux and Mahmed were perched on the roof’s steep incline, resetting the loose slates. I noticed that the rotten facia and the gable-ends had been replaced and repainted a bright yellow. I waved at the two men and sat on the garden wall next to Armande while Anouk raced off to the river bank to find her friends of last night.

The old lady looked tired and puffy-faced beneath the brim of a wide straw hat. The piece of tapestry in her lap looked listless, untouched. She nodded to me briefly, but did not speak. Her chair rocked almost imperceptibly, tick-tick-tick-tick, on the path. Her cat slept curled beneath it.

“Caro came over this morning,” she said at last. “I suppose I should feel honoured.” A movement of irritation. Rocking: tick-tick-tick-tick. “Who does she think she is?” snapped Armande abruptly. “Marie Bloody Antoinette?” She brooded fiercely for a moment, her rocking gaining momentum. “Trying to tell me what I can and can’t do. Bringing her doctor – ” She broke off to fix me with her piercing, birdlike gaze. “Interfering little busybody. She always was, you know. Always telling tales to her father.” She gave a short bark of laughter. “She doesn’t get these airs from me, in any case. Not on your life. I never needed any doctor – or any priest – to tell me what to think.”

Armande pushed out her chin defiantly and rocked even harder.

“Was Luc there?” I asked.

“No.” She shook her head. “Gone to Agen for a chess tournament.” Her fixed expression softened. “She doesn’t know he came over the other day,” she declared with satisfaction. “And she won’t get to know, either.” She smiled. “He’s a good lad, my grandson. Knows how to hold his tongue.”

“I hear we were both mentioned in church this morning,” I told her. “Consorting with undesirables, so I’m told.”

Armande snorted.

“What I do in my own house is my own business,” she said shortly. “I’ve told Reynaud, and I told Pere Antoine before him. They never learn, though. Always peddling the same old rubbish. Community spirit. Traditional values. Always the same tired old morality play.”

“So it’s happened before?” I was curious.

“Oh yes.” She nodded emphatically. “Years ago. Reynaud must have been Luc’s age in those days. Course, we’ve had travellers since then, but they never stayed. Not till now.” She glanced upwards at her half-painted house. “It’s going to look good, isn’t it?” she said with satisfaction. “Roux says he’ll have it finished by tonight.” She gave a sudden frown. “I can have him work for me all I choose.” she declared irritably. “He’s an honest man and a good worker. Georges has no right to tell me otherwise. No right at all.”

She picked up her unfinished tapestry, but put it down again without setting a stitch.

“I can’t concentrate,” she said crossly. “It’s bad enough being woken up by those bells at the crack of dawn without having to look at Caro’s simpering face first thing in the morning. “We pray for you every day, Mother,”’ she mimicked. “’We want you to understand why we worry so much about you.” Worry about their own standing with the neighbours, more like. It’s just too embarrassing to have a mother like me, reminding you all the time of how you began.” She gave a small, hard smile of satisfaction. “While I’m alive they know there’s someone who remembers everything,” she declared. “The trouble she got into with that boy. Who paid for that, eh? And him – Reynaud, Mr Whiter-than-White.” Her eyes were bright and malicious. “I bet I’m the only one still alive who remembers that old business. Not many knew in any case. Could have been the biggest scandal in the county if I’d not known how to hold my tongue.” She shot me a look of pure mischief. “And don’t go looking at me like that, girl. I can still keep a secret. Why d’you think he leaves me alone? Plenty of things he could do, if he put his mind to it. Caro knows. She tried already.”