Penny Rogers
hot chocolate, with a measure of brandy
Christophe Pichon was still
there. The blurry glow emanating from the gas lights in the dairy across La
Place de la Republique made him look so handsome. Amelie sighed; she was in
love.
The October
afternoon had turned into a chilly evening; by 6.30 it was almost dark.
Christophe shuffled in his badly fitting boots. His left foot hurt. He had
broken it in 1906 when he had tried to ride the greengrocer’s horse as a dare
and it had never properly healed. On this cold afternoon he had been outside the
dairy for almost an hour. Mr Lemonier had told him to wait there; he had a job
for him. Christophe had no idea what sort of job. Work from Lemonier usually
involved long hours and little pay, but he needed any work that was
going.
Amelie wriggled
in her chair, willing her wasted legs to move. Soon Odille would come to put her
to bed. Oh the indignities of it all. She closed her eyes and imagined
Christophe carrying her downstairs and out into the world. He would take her to
Lourdes, she just knew he would. When she was cured and able to walk he would
marry her as soon as she was sixteen. They would always be happy together and
never ignore each other as her parents did.
Across the street
Mr and Mme Fischer were arguing. They usually had a row after the second or
third absinthe, but today they had at least four before the tension began to
build. Raymond Fischer had come to the town as a young man, running away from
something, or someone, in his native Alsace. He still spoke with a curious
accent that made the locals laugh. Behind his back they called him
choucroute, they never called him that to his face. He still had a temper
although the years and alcohol had slowed him down.
In the room above
the milliners shop, Amelie picked up her sewing. But it was too dark to see
properly, the parrot’s wing would have to wait until the morning.
In the shop below
Mme Gaudin was undecided. Should she go for an ostrich feather? She liked
ostrich, but she had seen in an illustrated paper that in Paris the ladies
preferred peacock feathers this year. Her indecision was taking time, and Mr and
Mme Lemonier were impatient to close the shop, they had other things to do. But
Mme Gaudin was a good customer, so there was nothing they could do except agree,
suggest, agree and suggest.
Outside the
tabac, relations between the Fischers were deteriorating in response to the
quantity of alcohol they had consumed. Marie-Pierre had married Raymond soon
after he appeared in the town. The red-haired son who arrived less than two
months later could not possibly have been his, but to his credit Raymond treated
the boy as his own. The epidemic of polio that claimed Clovis, and many of the
town’s children, broke his heart. Marie-Pierre’s heart broke too, but she hid
the pain in hard work and increasing amounts of absinthe.
Most evenings
Amelie watched the altercations between the Fischers with a combination of
horror and amusement, but tonight she paid them little attention. Her eyes were
fixed on the dairy until it was too dark for her to see the angelic profile of
her beloved. She vaguely wondered where Odille had got to, she wasn’t usually
late. Below she heard her mother saying ‘Au revoir’ and ‘Merci
beaucoup’ to Mme Gaudin. Then the sound of Mama coming up the stairs. She
saw Papa cross the street and hurry to the dairy. To her amazement he was soon
in conversation with the adored Christophe.
Her concentration
on the unusual sight of her father talking to the man she intended to marry was
broken by shouting from the tabac. Marie-Pierre Fischer picked up a chair and
smacked it across the head of the inebriated Raymond. Blood and invectives
flowed across the square.
Mama came into
the room. ‘Odille won’t be coming any more. I’ll have to care for you myself
until we can find someone else.’ Amelie’s heart sank. Her mother was never
gentle. ‘What’s the matter with Odille’ she ventured. Mama sniffed ‘No better
than she ought to be.’ She busied herself with her daughter’s nightwear,
muttering ‘catin’ and ‘prostituée.’ Amelie was none the wiser but
didn’t want to upset her mother even more by asking questions.
As the autumn
dusk turned rapidly to dark, a few more gas lights were lit. Amelie stayed glued
to the window until the last possible moment. It was just as well that she could
not hear the conversation between her father and the object of her
devotion.
Meanwhile outside
the tabac, Amelie noticed the Fischers preparing to make their way home.
Raymond could hardly walk; the arms of his wife, strengthened by a lifetime of
hard work, held him just about upright. The proprietor was telling them, as he
told them almost every day, that they weren’t to come back, that their custom
was not worth the fuss and that they would have to pay for the chair. In truth
the chair was fine. Raymond’s head less so.
Illuminated by
the feeble light coming from the dairy, the conversation between the milliner
and Christophe was reaching a crucial stage. Amelie’s father wanted a dogsbody,
or as he put it a bon à tout faire. He wanted someone on call all day and
every day, ready to do everything from looking after the Lemonier’s smallholding
to keeping the shop’s primitive drainage system working, as well as collecting
and delivering orders.
‘So, Pichon,
will you take the job or not?’ From her room above the shop Amelie saw the young
man step back and shake his head. She wished that she could hear what was being
said.
‘For all that
work it doesn’t pay enough. And I need day off at least once a month.’
Christophe knew he was beaten but thought he’d give it a try.
An exasperated
Lemonier shrugged his shoulders. ‘For what I am asking you to do it’s more than
enough. And don’t come to me asking for days off. If you don’t want it I’ll
soon get someone else’. He paused, waiting to play his trump card. ‘You’ll have
to marry her you know. If you don’t take this job you’ll all end up on the
street.’
Christophe
shrugged, there was nothing else to say and his foot hurt badly. ‘All right, all
right. I’ll start tomorrow.’
At 7.25 Amelie
was in bed with a cup of hot chocolate placed carefully on the table beside her
bed. Her mother had clearly resented the wiping, the washing, the holding, the
lifting and the dressing. But Amelie closed her eyes and dreamed of the future,
WALKING down the aisle with the man of her dreams. Christophe went off to find
Odille and tell her that he had a job; the wedding could go ahead next
week.
In her room above
her parents’ shop, Amelie drifted off to sleep. She wondered why her cup of
evening chocolate always tasted so much better than the insipid drink she had in
the morning, one day she’d pluck up the courage to ask her mother. But for now
she slept, dreaming of the day she would become Madame Pichon.
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