Forbidden Fruit (13 page)

‘Hang on,’ I told her retreating tail. ‘You shouldn’t be wandering around late at night all by yourself. Someone might steal you. You might be hit by a car!’

Serena did not care. She kicked up her heels and set off at a brisk trot and was soon out of sight.

The Mouse Police, woken from their sleep on the flour sacks, demanded breakfast. I fed them. Then I took the loaf, locked up the bakery again, and went upstairs to make myself some toast. I wasn’t going to get back to bed, and I was hungry. Toast and honey would be just as acceptable as bread and rosewater. And, of course, some coffee.

I got back into the apartment without waking Daniel. Horatio drifted into the kitchen to request his statutory dab of my butter. He never asks for more than one. It’s like Danegeld. The city was silent, the whole of Insula was silent. Sunday morning. Lovely.

I didn’t even want to crunch my toast too loudly. The coffee was excellent and I sipped quietly. Horatio ate his cat nibbles with impossible discretion.

Which is when someone began banging on the bakery door, of course. I grabbed a slice of bread and ran down the bakery stairs. The caller was, naturally, Mr Pahlevi, angry, red-faced, panting, and about to start yelling. I didn’t have any backup this time. But I was in my own bakery and in no mood to be affronted.

‘She went that-a-way,’ I pointed.

‘Why didn’t you stop her?’ he yelled.

‘Because she got away,’ I told him, direct into those strange flat black eyes. ‘Here …’ I poured rosewater over the bread. ‘Take this with you, and tie her up tighter tomorrow!’

For a moment I thought he was going to slap me, and my hand closed on the broom handle. He was going to get a serious belting with it if he showed fight. But he took the bread and ran down Flinders Lane, and I bolted the door behind him with a great deal of relief. Mrs Pemberthy had not woken. I just could not deal with her at this hour. And a homicide trial cuts into your reading time.

I went back up the stairs. It was odd to be so awake when I didn’t have to work. I put on the desk lamp and drew over the pile of text messages between the sisters. Now would be a good time to read them.

The first one said
How goes it Little Sis?
, and that rather set the tone for the rest. I had told Daniel that girls read between the lines, but there didn’t seem to be any space in these communications for subtlety.

Sale at DJ pity we cant go
, said one.

Dad pain
, said the next. I could agree with that.

Awful trouble climb up tnt
, pleaded another. This must be news of the pregnancy. Dolly must have been able to climb up to Brigid’s prison.

Talk to S at sch
, commanded another. Sister, perhaps? Putting herself into the hands of a strong-minded nun might have been the best that Brigid could do. But she hadn’t.

Bring maths hwork up & I’ll fix
, promised another.

Hate Rev P hate him. Fell aslp X3 nites.

And so it went. The messages were dated. Nothing but lamentation and homework and the distasteful demands of their
religion. I read them all, starred the ones which directly preceded the escape, and put them aside.

Perhaps a little nap might be good. I snuggled in beside Daniel, placed my head firmly on my very own pillow before Horatio got back, and closed my eyes. I was cool. I was relaxed. And I remained obstinately awake until I was suddenly obstinately asleep and was woken, at ten, by the sound of the doorbell.

‘They’re pretty good,’ Daniel was saying with his mouth full.

‘But not right,’ insisted Jason. Cherries again? I yawned my way into the parlour.

‘Have a taste, Corinna.’ Jason offered me a plate on which reposed some pretty good glacé cherries. I inspected one carefully. That strange translucence, yes. A little sticky, certainly. I bit it and got a mouthful of the most glorious cherry taste.

‘And the syrup will make great tarts,’ said my apprentice. ‘But I reckon they’re still a bit chewy.’

‘Perhaps,’ I said, marvelling at Jason’s quest for perfection in all things culinary. ‘Try them in one of those nice little cakes. Then you can buy some more cherries tomorrow and try the other recipe. Want some coffee?’ I asked, sitting down and pouring myself a cup from the filter pot.

‘Nah,’ said Jason. ‘I’ll get myself a Coke later. Did you hear Mrs Dawson squish Mrs P last night?’

‘Certainly. One of the best all-round squishes I have ever heard.’

‘The singing was nice,’ said Jason. ‘I don’t know why she had to stop it.’

‘Because it was nice,’ Daniel commented. ‘Want some breakfast, Jason?’

Silly question. Jason was born hungry and had been feeding his inner famine ever since. ‘Your choice of eggs, tomatoes, bacon, English muffins?’

‘All of them,’ said Jason.

‘Sounds wonderful,’ I concurred. ‘You toast the muffins, Jason, and tell us about the singers. There was an extra voice or two last night, I fancy.’

‘Yeah, old dude with a beard. Also a Russian bloke. Two more girls, Janeen and Emma. They’re having a carol concert and they can’t work out what to sing. Britten or Vaughan Williams. I never heard of ’em but they’re real famous musical dudes. I took the rest of the failed cherries and that small cake to rehearsal and they sang me a cherry tree carol. It was nice.’

‘I heard it,’ I told him.

Daniel was frying up a storm. His time as a short-order cook had not been wasted. He could frizzle bacon, fry eggs to exact parameters and singe tomatoes faster than anyone I had ever met. Horatio demanded, and got, his statutory bacon rind. He likes to play with it and chew it and store it under the kitchen table for later resumption of games. The last is the only undesirable part of the routine.

Jason’s muffins popped and he began to butter them. There was something on his mind apart from cherries. I guessed at what it might have been.

‘How have you been getting on with Bunny?’

‘Oh, all right. I’ve never had a pet before. He’s eating the rabbit pellets and I found out he loves celery. I thought it would be carrots. But it’s celery. He sits up and holds it between both front paws and nibbles it like he’s playing a flute. It’s sort of cute. But he spends a lot of time asleep or washing his face and ears.’ Jason ducked his head and imitated a round brushing motion with both hands which covered his face and ruffled his hair. For a moment, he looked just like a rabbit, morphing into lagomorph in a way which would only have seemed usual to the
Fortean Times
.

‘Good,’ I told him. ‘Poor Bunny has had a hard time. If the vet hadn’t put that frozen bottle of water into his crate he might have died of heatstroke. Rabbits can’t handle heat.’

‘Yeah, it says in this bunny book I bought.
The Wonderful World of Pet Rabbits
by Christine Carter. I’m reading it,’ he told me proudly.

Well, it wasn’t worries about Bunny which were concerning my apprentice.

‘So Bunny is all right,’ I prompted. ‘What’s bothering you?’

‘Rowan’s girls,’ he said slowly. ‘They’re mad keen on all this vegan stuff.’

‘Yes, I know. My parents were the same. Only prepared to eat an apple if they had a signed suicide note from the tree. But there’s no harm in them.’

‘These ones are animal rights. I just didn’t like the way they talked. About Bunny. And Horatio. They said the Mouse Police were exploited and companion animals were wrong and the best thing they could do was …’

‘Hmm?’ I prompted again, as Jason dried up.

‘Put them out of their misery,’ he said. ‘But they aren’t miserable, are they?’

‘Ask Horatio,’ I suggested, as food arrived on the plates from Daniel’s pan.

Jason took me at my word.

‘Are you unhappy, Horatio?’ he asked, as Horatio sped past him, flicking the bacon rind, catching it, shaking it, and then sitting down for a brief chew. ‘Didn’t think so,’ said Jason, and grabbed for a knife and fork.

I was just breaking the yolk of my second egg when Jason got up, put his cleaned and polished plate into the sink, and took his leave. The bunny book, apparently, said that rabbits should be allowed to exercise and he was off to bunny-proof the bathroom
for this purpose. I wished him luck. In my experience an animal which really wishes to do something objectionable, such as shred the newspaper you are trying to read, will do so unless firmly locked into another room. And even then Bunny might chew through the door.

I gave up on that part of the newspaper, folding it so that Horatio could sit on it and wash his bacon-greasy whiskers. Which was what he had had in mind all along. For an exploited animal, he was doing rather well. Then again, a wealthy Roman might say that about his Greek-reading slave …

The wind was picking up again. I hate north winds. I sipped my (hot) coffee and read the less miserable bits of the paper as visible around tabby paws. Then I found a pencil and the other pages and Daniel and I started trying to do that dreadful general knowledge crossword which reminds me what an ignoramus I am.

‘
Turkish premier, 1980
,’ read Daniel.

‘Haven’t the faintest.’

‘Me, neither. How about
Old Iranian word for tenant
?’

‘You’re making this up!’ I accused.

‘No, really,’ he protested. I read over his shoulder. It was a very nice shoulder, muscular and warm … But we have a rule of at least going through all the questions, as though it was a quiz, because only once have we even come near finishing that crossword.

‘No, Daniel, I do not know the old Iranian word for tenant,’ I confessed, dropping a kiss on his neck.

‘
Southern American stew with okra
,’ he read. I clasped my hands. I might actually know this one!

‘How many letters?’

‘Five.’

‘Gumbo!’ I crowed.

‘Fantastic. It fits, too. Okra. Now there’s an unnecessary vegetable.’

‘Slimy,’ I agreed. ‘Greeks love it, too. It’s a vegetable thickener when you can’t use eggs because of religious reasons.’

‘Then why not use cornflour or rice?’ he asked reasonably. ‘No need to introduce okra into an otherwise unobjectionable dish.
Legendary Rumanian King
.’

‘No idea.’

‘Me neither.
Title of Estonian prince?
’

‘Nope,’ I said. ‘You know, I really am an uneducated woman.’

Daniel grinned. ‘Not as pig-ignorant as me. Any more coffee in the pot?’

‘I’ll make another. One cannot have too much coffee. Go on,’ I said, getting up and filling the kettle again.

‘Oh, really,’ said Daniel. ‘I don’t know where they get all these questions!
Flowering tree of the genus Tilia
, four letters, third letter
m
.’

‘We know that one! Trudi planted it. The lime. She wanted to be
Unter den Linden
. If the summer doesn’t slay the poor little thing she’s got a reasonable chance in a few years.’

‘And we can sit under it and read Coleridge, “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison”. He did go on, though,’ remarked Daniel, filling in the four hard-won letters.

‘Poets are like that. Have some more coffee. What’s next?’

He boggled briefly, then read, ‘
Diamond-shaped plane figure with four equal sides and no internal right angles
. That ought to be a rhombus.’

‘Well, isn’t it a rhombus?’ I asked, ransacking my mind for the remains of my geometry.

‘A square is just a term of a rhombus,’ he said.

‘Does rhombus fit?’ I demanded, pouring coffee.

‘It fits,’ he said.

‘Then put it in and don’t press your luck,’ I instructed.

He grumbled, but put it in. ‘
One of the spellings of the ancient Sumerian god of war
.’

‘Sorry, my Sumerian isn’t what it was.’

‘
Established the Botany Department at Queensland University in 1893
.’

‘Not the faintest.’

‘
Floral emblem of the American state of Wisconsin.
’

‘No,’ I said sadly.

‘Only a few more to go, thank God. In four letters,
Shade of brown
.’

‘I know that. It’s ecru, which it isn’t, as ecru is ivory, but let it pass.’

‘And here is another old favourite,’ Daniel told me, biting the end of the pencil. ‘
Otherwise known as an etui
.’

‘How many letters?’

‘Six, with an
f
at the end.’

‘Hussif, which is of course short for housewife, which is a little package of sewing things to repair uniforms and so on. Therese Webb collects them. Is that it?’

‘That’s it,’ he said, giving the pencil a final munch before he slipped it back into the pencil case and turned to the sudoku, which he always—heroic man—does in biro.

‘We did no worse than usual,’ I observed, and found my novel. I was rereading Jade Forrester’s memoirs. The first time through I had been so enthralled and horrified that I hadn’t taken in any fine detail. I was just chuckling at her description of her foray into cross-dressing—tweed coat with leather elbows, white shirt, khaki trousers and army boots with steel toes—when the doorbell rang. Horatio woke and cursed, then resumed his nap. Poor exploited beast.

There was no one there when I opened the door but a
leaflet lay on the doormat (a rather fetching coir mat from Oxfam). When I saw that it was from Against Domination Over Animals I took it between thumb and forefinger and laid it on the table. I knew about opening those leaflets from animal-rights people. Pictures of tortured animals made my stomach turn and proved indelible in the memory. I tried not to see them if I could avoid it. Moral cowardice, thy name is Chapman. Daniel looked up, his eyes abstracted, staring into the esoteric field of numbers.

‘What’s this? Junk mail?’

‘From our student friends, I suspect. Can you bear to look at it?’

‘Do I need to?’

‘Just tell me if I can read it without throwing up.’

‘For you,’ he quoted Uncle Solly, ‘the world. No, this is all text, and my, what drivel it is. You can read it—if you wish,’ he told me, and dived back into the puzzle.

So I did, and drivel was too kind a word. Eating meat, it appeared, was responsible for all the problems of the world. War. Famine. Climate change. Menopause. Illiteracy. Blimey.