My Chocolate Redeemer (20 page)

‘Madame, how pleasant! Can it be that a whole year has passed since you took tea with us? And look at Miss Bella! My heavens, she is a young lady. I fear they are like clocks, Madame, these children, they measure the diminishing years of their elders.'

‘She lived in England for a time,' my grandmother replies drily, as if this is a far worse fate than the mortal ruin which we fleshy chronometers are said to measure. André and my grandmother examine me, their eyes sweeping my face like searchlights, or telescopes probing the black, cold and empty sky (empty of everything, if my Uncle Claude is to be believed, and warmed, if at all, only by the human imagination).

Our meeting with André is to be a contest, a trial, an excoriation, an inquisition; Grandmama is to thread his soft pink body with her spiky enquiries, he is to her now what the English were for Joan of Arc and she intends to do to him what they did to her. For his part, André is soft, smiling, charming sociability and his face gleams like a wrapped Easter egg. He orders a rather sullen Tertius to bring us coffee and insists that we sit beneath the chestnut trees in the garden. The wooden beach is clear now of its human freight, swept bare of golden, oiled bodies, and a few swans drift past with their poised, fastidious air of investigation. It is too hot to be out of doors and the guests are up in their rooms taking siestas. On the second floor, which Monsieur Brown occupies, all the green shutters are closed. Only the watchers at the gate in the Renault, the Citroën and the Deux-Chevaux are awake. In the face of my grandmother's coldness, André's smile deepens and warms: there is really something wonderful and terrible in his need to spread amiability and kindness, to make others feel better, stronger; to encourage, cheer and support wherever possible as if kindness were a kind of paint which you need only apply liberally to make the human picture smile and glow. As if by sheer will, by application alone, you can bring into the world the good, the right and the happy.

So we sit under the chestnut tree which throws grey shadows across the white iron table and coffee is served by Tertius who, it seems, is as tired and as grumpy as Hyppolyte was earlier. He now wears a pair of sky-blue shorts and his dark hair has been peroxided in patches which gives it a kind of basket-weave effect.

‘He's a good boy at heart, but he tires easily,' says André, as Tertius places the tray on the table. ‘These little confections you see are something that he has prepared for us. He is very clever that way.'

I can see by the expression of surprise on the boy's rather yellow face, which he does not bother to hide, that this compliment is unexpected and quite untrue.

André looks after him fondly, as Tertius slouches away. ‘I trust you had no trouble getting in?'

‘Who are the men at the gate, André?'

He shrugs unhappily. ‘They don't tell me, Bella. In fact we are not supposed to know about them. The man with the red ears, he is the one in the Renault, he said to me: “Just ignore us. We're invisible.” I don't know, I don't ask and I try not to see, but I can hardly be unaware of the fact that they won't let anybody pass the gates, except you, Bella. You seem to have the key, for some reason. Why they should let you pass and nobody else, I can't imagine. Mind you, you look lovely. Perhaps you appeal to their aesthetic sense? Pure peppermint you are today!'

But my grandmama has no time for pleasantries. She bangs her stick on the ground: ‘Why should anyone try and stop me? I saw no one, I would have stopped for no one. I have been walking this village for half a century – who would dare to stop me? This is still a free country, I believe, praise God. And it will remain so while there are men such as Monsieur Cherubini determined to protect the lovely heart of France! What I do know is this: last night a deputation called on you made up of Monsieur Cherubini, as well as the Mayor and Father Duval. They came to pay their respects to this new guest of yours, this Nubian, or Ethiopian, or Arab, or whatever he is. But you refused to allow them to see him. I don't understand. It was discourteous, it was unimaginative, it was unnecessary! Now it turns out that this man is connected to some African kingdom where my dear son lost his life, Bella's papa, trying to bring civilisation to the savages who inhabit that place. And yet we, his relatives, are not permitted to see this African chief. It seems you have in your house one of the last people on earth to see my son and yet you forbid us to meet him.'

She scans the closed shutters. ‘He's out of sight again. No doubt locked away in the thirty rooms he occupies, with his wives and his goats and his chickens and his hateful food.'

André, always anxious to please, seizes on the word food and pushes the plate of pastries towards me. ‘These are called Rigo Jancsi Squares. Try one.' He turns to Grandmama. ‘But I didn't prevent them, Madame. My guest refused to see them. He said he wouldn't receive delegations of officials. He's here on a private visit. I can't force him to see your son and his friends. Though I must say I am surprised that they wanted to see him. From what I learn of Monsieur Cherubini's new party, my guest is exactly the sort of man he doesn't want to see any more of in this part of France. And in this instance, and only in this instance, Cherubini and I see eye to eye, because I can assure you that the sooner I get rid of him the happier I will be. Anyway, your information isn't correct. Someone from your family has met my guest. And at his request. Isn't that so, Bella? You met him for tea.'

‘For chocolate.'

Now up to the front gates comes Clovis mounted on his new green bike. It is no faster than the others and more flatulent, but it is also somehow flashier, trimmed with chrome and blinking with mirrors, and he arrives in his perspex boot with Ria sitting on the pillion, her long bare legs stuck out on either side of the bike like a compass, in an apricot skirt and a dill-green bandana, shrieking and giggling, hanging on to him, and somehow she looks fatter with her clothes on. Clovis doesn't try and pass the guard at the gate but lets her off and watches admiringly as she flounces up the path and into the hotel.

‘Bella, is this true!' Grand-mère is scandalised. ‘You've seen this man – again. After we discussed the dangers? After your uncle spoke to you of Leda!'

Terrified now that he has given something away, André pushes over the plate of chocolate cakes towards me. ‘I can see you like them. Have another. See how she tucks in, Madame? I must tell Tertius, he'll be so pleased. Do you know the story of these cakes? They're named after a Hungarian violinist called Rigo Jancsi who played so beautifully and seductively that a princess eloped with him! They take simply ages to make and need the very best bitter chocolate, double cream, rum and vanilla. Yes, take another! Please, Madame, won't you try one?'

Grandmama, to my surprise, does so. She lifts the solid creamy cake to her thin blue lips and bites. There is so much violence in the action that I half expect to see blood spurt from her mouth. She turns to André.

‘You remember stories, of another hotel, some years ago? The Hotel Terminus in Lyons. Yes, I see you remember! It looked across the square, the Cours de Verdun. It was in this hotel that your late father, Monsieur, opened the Lyons branch of his offices. It's a chapter in the career of your family that few of us old enough to remember will ever forget.'

Suddenly he is hurt, angry and frightened all at once. But mostly he is angry. I watch as the fragile eggshell of his forehead fractures, he makes fists of his hands and rubs his fists across his pink shirt in an agitated manner. I can hear his nails clipping his shirt buttons.

‘Why do you bring this up?'

‘You wouldn't let my son enter your hotel. You insulted the village priest. You offended Monsieur Cherubini, the best friend our village has ever had. And now I discover that you have allowed my daughter to visit the Nubian. Why should I consider your feelings?'

‘You speak as if I were a dictator. I'm not a god to give permission or to refuse access. I am an hotelier, who has been told to accommodate this man. So why should I be blamed? If you want to spread stories then let me say, Madame Dresseur, you had better be careful. You of all people shouldn't talk of collaboration with the enemies of France. Or I may tell my story.'

Grandmama gets up. Her hand is on her heart and her lips are blue. She takes my arm and she shakes her silver-headed walking-stick in André's face.

‘Shout out your story! I glory in it!'

‘I can't think why. It's as shameful as mine. Please, Madame, let the dead sleep, let's not lay their corpses by the lakeside.'

‘Don't you dare mention your father in the same breath as my husband. What your father did was to lick the boots of the German monsters.'

‘And what did your husband do, Madame?'

My grandmother's smile of triumph is terrible.

‘He gave his life for France, for his beloved chief and for his faith!' And then, suddenly, she clutches her chest and seems to faint.

I run to stop her falling and I shout at André: ‘You've killed her!' My cry brings Tertius running.

It's not true but I can't help myself. I want it to be true. The watchers at the gate regard us steadily. Strangely, it is Tertius who keeps his head. ‘She's not dead, she's breathing. Get the doctor.'

‘Shall I call Dr Valléry?' André's eyes are wide with anguish.

Grandmama opens her eyes. ‘No. Call my son. Or Monsieur Cherubini. I wish to go home. I don't want to pass away in the garden of the Carthusians. Her face is chalky white and she grimaces with the pain in her chest.

A few minutes later Monsieur Cherubini arrives in his Mercedes with Father Duval. The watchers at the gate make no attempt to stop them. But nor do they make any attempt to help us. They must be under orders never to leave their posts, no matter what happens.

‘We were just about to leave for the rehearsal. For Saturday's rally,' says the priest. ‘You caught us just in time.'

We carry my grandmother to the car. Her reaction at seeing Monsieur Cherubini is profound. By the time we reach the house her colour is better and the pain seems to be easing. Her breathing is regular.

‘You are feeling a little easier, Madame?' asks the Angel.

‘Certainly. Though your rescue was only just in time,
patron
. I had my little talk with the owner of the hotel but possibly I did not allow for the evil atmosphere of the place. It affected me. However, I was determined that they had claimed enough victims, that family, with their offices in Lyons. They were not going to get me as well. Never!'

‘Bravo, Madame!' says the Angel.

Grand-mère's smile is pure delight, open and adoring. The miracles of faith are more awesome in our day-to-day business than anything the saints could comprehend.

Chapter 9

We gather in the dining room. As the sun sinks, the lake grows dark and heavy, closing down for the night, taking on a deserted, shuttered look like the old houses above the little lakeside road. Grandmama is helped to a chair by Father Duval. I want to call Dr Valléry but she won't have it.

‘My confessor is here, my family is here. And my
patron
! Enough. Onwards into battle, let's ride the English down, at last we have a general in the field!' She turns a softly affectionate glance on Monsieur Cherubini.

‘The
patron
has such information as makes the ears curl,' says Father Duval, ‘little scraps of knowledge, even if one needs to put on gloves before handling, the sort of thing that may help us to understand his game.'

‘I don't want to understand it,' Grandmama says. ‘The thing to do with Monsieur Brown is not to understand him, it's to get rid of him.'

‘Spoken like a philosopher!' Monsieur Cherubini approves.

Father Duval is dressed tonight like a master of ceremonies, or a campaign manager, which is one thing as sure as hell he wants to be. He's wearing a snappy dark wool suit and cream shirt with terracotta tie and ivory cuff-links. Tonight he's ringmaster, television floor manager and warm-up man rolled into one pink rotundity.

It is Monsieur Cherubini's gift and perhaps his genius that he applauds in others all the parts they wish to play. He stands now and acknowledges the applause he hears, though we do not, and acknowledges it with a modest wave and a smile. Part of him is already on the platform receiving the adulation of his followers.

‘I call on Monsieur Cherubini to speak to us!' announces Father Duval.

‘How pleasant to think that an angel should be deemed worthy of his own annunciation.'

This little jollity so entrances Father Duval that he can't help applauding. ‘Bravo, Monsieur! Bravo, chief!'

‘But where is the Mayor? We cannot begin without him,' the Angel says.

‘Upstairs catching comets,' says Father Duval. It seems that the weather will be perfect for viewing tonight. ‘Bella, please call your uncle. The
patron
is about to speak. The North African secrets of the funny guest at the Priory Hotel are to be revealed to us, one and all, tonight.'

Up in his attic laboratory at the top of the house, Uncle Claude takes an age to open his door to me. It has at least three locks on it and he makes a tremendous fuss before letting me in and even more of a fuss when I tell him he's wanted and he looks remarkably distracted, a little shy, almost angry, and oddly embarrassed.

‘Bella, I can't be disturbed. Tonight, two or three hours after sunset, will give me my best chance in years! I'm on the track of a comet, I think. I really do. I'm pretty sure it's not a globular cluster or just a faint elliptical galaxy. In a region around 36° of the western horizon. It doesn't have a tail, as far as I can see. But then on the other hand you don't always have to see a tail straight off because really what you're looking at is a kind of chalk mark on the blackboard of the heavens. If you're looking at a comet at all. But I've checked my sky atlas and there's nothing marked there. So who knows?'

‘Listen, you had better come down. Grand-mère was taken ill at the hotel.'

‘What? You see, I told you she should not have gone there. I knew it! What happened?'

‘She had words with André. She got really mad. I don't understand exactly what they were talking about, except that they both have stories about each other they'd rather not tell. Or hear. I don't know which. But they clashed, and then she collapsed and we called Monsieur Cherubini and he came and fetched her in the car. She's downstairs now and I think she must see the doctor but she won't let me call him. And now the Angel's going to tell her more stories about Monsieur Brown. It's bound to upset her because she thinks of Papa. Come down and put a stop to it.'

‘But Bella I must set up.'

‘Uncle Claude, she might die!'

‘Very well, I'll come down – but no one can stop this. It's a reaction which has to run its course. We must face the consequences. But I blame André. He will suffer for it.'

‘Something bad is going to happen.'

‘The truth is never bad.'

Here are his fat telescope, his books, his calculations and his experiments. In particular the thoroughly nasty job of work which stands in the corner and has stood in the corner for as long as I can remember. Some people have pot plants, Uncle Claude has his soup, his secret solutions in glass jars, his garden of molecular surprises, conspiracies of simple sugars, nucleotides and phosphates out of which he hopes to grow a living cell, the solutions changed every week according to a new formula, every week a little closer to the secret of life. It is, if you like, Uncle Claude's very own, very early version of the primal cosmic gruel out of which the microbes came that became us. Bionic fishtank aglow with hope. All Uncle Claude's life spreads before him in this den. Here he spies out comets, believing that it was in the tails of the comets, or in the arrival of meteorites, that the organic compounds and the lively molecules first migrated to our planet maybe three and a half billion years ago and the magic ingredients fraternized and became life, viruses, microbes. Inanimate salts combining, as he hopes they are combining even now in his fishtanks, tubes and retorts in the corner, and eventually these lucky organisms will grow up to be able to understand the secrets of the universe, relativity, the speed of light, gravity and the Grand Unification Theory which one day (‘I'm utterly confident of this, Bella. Mark my words. You watch and see') will satisfactorily describe, in mathematical form, the forces which bind the universe: gravity and electro-magnetism, as well as the strong and the weak nuclear forces. (‘Then you just watch and see what will happen to that old figment!') And my uncle dances across the room, boasting about the figment's fate, waving his fists like some skinny George Charpentier of the cosmos. My boring, bloody, abysmal, murderous Uncle Claude.

I can tell you that on my trip downstairs I stopped off and tucked into the supplies in the steel trunk beneath my bed and consumed in pretty short order two bars of
Côte d'Or Chocolate Extra Superior
and a handful of
Lindt Bittersweet
and thus geared up I prepared to expose myself to the Angel's sermon.

Downstairs we all assemble, my grandmother is the colour of icing sugar, hard and shining, her hand permanently to her heart. I think for a moment vaguely of plugging in my cans and spinning something like Thomas and the Apostles, you must know their really funky big one called ‘Jesus On The Cheap!', with their heavy lead guitarist, Raymond Whatsit, who made it big in ‘I Never Went to Paris' and who treats his instrument like a sailor who's just been forbidden shore leave. But then
of course
you know what I mean. And you'll know what I mean when I say that to complain that T. and the A.s are over the top just because T. tries to couple with his bass guitar is to believe that balls are only for bouncing … I don't believe that. And yet do I put on the cans, despite being Bella the one-woman walkman, because I can tell that my ears have been lent on my behalf to the Angel for his speech.

‘The man that we know as Brown, Brown according to Bella, not christened, I cannot say that in the presence of the clergy, not sanctified by the Church, no, no, especially not in the light of what is to follow, but named, for convenience, Brown, is as I told you before the dictator of an African country with which France once had dealings. That country has dwindled now to the status of a distant debtor. But until recently it was still a place to which government officials were posted for obscure reasons, some associated with the country for purposes of French prestige, others were there to see to the more mundane need of this client state to pay its way. Now the man that we know as Brown was, until a few years ago, known to his subjects, whom he ruled with whip and sword, as the Redeemer. I apologise to Father Duval for this blasphemy, but it seems the title is not unknown in Africa.'

My grandmama appears to have fallen asleep at this stage and only her flickering eyelids tell me that she is listening, though at what cost, I hate to imagine. Her concentration is quite horribly rewarded when the Angel, holding up his hands to silence, and then joining them together beneath his upper lip in a prayerful gesture, says softly:

‘The charges against him are very impressive: murder, corruption, anthropophagy.'

‘I don't understand the last,' says Father Duval.

‘Cannibalism,' says my uncle.

Grandmama opens her blue eyes, sits bolt upright in her chair and then shrieks and falls back again in a dead faint. There is no question of Monsieur Cherubini going on or of Grandmama being allowed to stay downstairs, but first we must revive her and make her put her head between her knees, her lips are now very white, she has a twitch in her cheek she cannot stop. Uncle Claude and I carry her to her bedroom and I put her to bed and sit with her while Uncle Claude calls the doctor. When her eyes open, she reaches out and strokes my cheek, then with the other hand she strokes her three pictures, her holy trinity, Marshal Pétain, her young husband in his military cap and Joan of Arc astride her horse, sword drawn, a look of ecstasy in her eyes. Taking my cheek between thumb and finger, she gently pulls me down to her and whispers fiercely in my ear, I feel her lips brush my earlobe:

‘If I die it will be another death that our little hotel-keeper will have on his conscience.'

‘Grandmama, what is this talk about the Hotel Terminus? What happened there, in the war?'

Her blue eyes now are full of rage. ‘It's best not to ask, my little Bella. Best not to know. There are horrible secrets of the Hotel Terminus. Third floor, suite fifty-eight. The father of our little hotelier knew it well. He was a knower of such things, a money man. You know he moved down from Paris after the Fall and he took root in our part of the world, like a weed. It was to Lyons that he came, because that was, until November 1942, part of Free France, the
zone libre
. The country of opportunity for some, of death for many. André's father came south when the Bourse closed in Paris and he found business to do in this part of the world. First as a
passeur
, one who arranged the flight of refugees across the Swiss border, frightened people, often loaded with gold and jewels; he took shares in their safe passage. Sometimes they didn't make it. And nor did their gold. Escaping was as dangerous as being caught. It was an expanding industry. Then, when the Germans marched into Lyons, the
zone libre
was finished, but the
passeurs
were busier than ever. And you must realise that the factories ran, and the offices and the industries. It was all business as usual and it needed managing. André's papa had shown himself to be a fine manager. It was not long before the new guests at the Hotel Terminus employed him.'

‘Germans?'

‘Gestapo. And when the war was over, what did he say to explain his role? He denied ever having collaborated with the Germans. Collaboration? Never! All he had done was to liaise. The reward of his profitable liaison was to die in bed with his socks on, leaving a fortune to his little son, while those who had given their lives for their country died like dogs in the early morning rain and people spat on their faces –'

And here she lets me go and sighs deeply and her eyes fix for a moment on the photograph of her young husband before filling with tears.

At last I begin to understand her anger and grief. Her husband in the Resistance, captured, and shot.

And André? I know now the riddle behind the Beast of the Bourse and his offices in Lyons. It was not in fact André but his father who was the monster, and the offices were not his, but belonged to the Gestapo, they were not for dealing in stocks and shares, but belonged to a business that ran on blood.

The doctor arrives, little Dr Valléry, our local socialist, a man of hair the colour of beer, and thick glasses. Entering our house is a trial for him: he's going into the lion's den; he pales visibly at the sight of Marshal Pétain in the silver frame and I know just by looking at him that his medical skills are undermined by his political shivers. He can't wait to leave. As it is, he is one of those who has tried to rally support against the Angel and his new party. But in the village of La Frisette, everybody worth mentioning is Angel-bound to a degree that nothing will shift and the voices of the opposition are faint, they may mock and jeer, but do not carry. Valléry's position is weakened still further by the fact that he has recently abandoned his wife and taken up with Louise, the brunette with the prodigious cleavage who works in the
tabac
. She's one of those women so utterly sexual that she resembles more a running stream than a person of flesh and bone, and she presented to the doctor something like the sight of a bubbling brook on a stifling day and he no sooner set eyes on her than he flung himself into her and was carried away. Since the good doctor drowned himself in liquid Louise, his wife has taken to attending the Church of the Resurrection like a reproachful, straight-backed ghost. Poor woman! As if angry virtue would somehow recompense her or punish the philanderer, when, in fact, his utter surrender to the lubricious Louise (legend holds she partnered Clovis at one time and is known as a watery wonder in whom even that demented boy once dipped a toe, or some other appendage) is enough to rust the doctor's political reputation, from which all other assessments in La Frisette proceed. To fall is one thing, to leap another and to drown something else entirely, and such was Dr Valléry's immersion, so utterly comprehensive his seduction, that it played hell with his standing as a socialist. Even now as he comes into the room and takes my grandmother's pulse, I can feel, tell, almost smell that he's come from the warmth of Louise and his tousled irritation signals that he yearns to be back there as soon as possible. I'll bet he floats in her the way Uncle Claude says the sea creatures do, who may be our real ancestors, the blind red tubeworms who cruise the sandy bottom of the Gulf of Mexico where the searing magma of the earth's hot heart bleeds and congeals, veiled in steam and gas, thousands of metres under the sea. Give the giant red tubeworm a pair of thick glasses and a cheesy wink and you've got Dr Valléry to the life. No wonder I go downstairs, no wonder I can't go on looking at him, his politics undermined, his doctoring deeply suspect, and all that remains a quivering desire so palpable it's positively embarrassing.