Forbidden Fruit (17 page)

‘Go to it,’ I encouraged. There were always spoiled or slightly burnt muffins for the assembler. I hoped she might eat a few. I turned away to tidy the ranks of bread in their metal racks and heard the door open with its little tinkle.

‘Do you have vegan bread?’ asked someone just appearing in a shaft of sunlight, like an angel.

She wasn’t, but she was beautiful. Reed-slim Sarah with her mermaid hair arrayed around her. It fell to her waist in a golden cascade. I was in no mood for her.

‘I can do you spelt,’ I said. ‘Low gluten. No animal products.’

‘Thank you,’ she said. Had she come to apologise, too? Horatio looked at her and turned his head away in a pointed snub which she did not notice. I fancy that Sarah didn’t notice much that didn’t support her views.

‘Four-fifty,’ I said, and held out my hand for the money. She rummaged in her jeans pocket. Designer jeans, I noticed.

‘I’m right, you know,’ she told me.

‘That must be nice for you,’ I said.

‘But maybe I should have read those pamphlets before I gave them out,’ she temporised.

‘And maybe a merry round of “ring and run” isn’t the height of moral courage,’ I replied.

She toyed with her hair. She wasn’t looking at me anymore. She was looking at Jason. And Jason, thunderstruck, was looking right back at her. Sarah smiled a Mona Lisa smile that I just wanted to belt with a baguette. Seduce my apprentice, would she? The hussy!

‘Come up to rehearsal tonight?’ she cooed at him. He nodded, unable to speak. Then the vision of loveliness left the shop.

There was really nothing I could say, though I wanted to
warn him about reed-slim fanatics and I could not imagine what she wanted with Jason and it couldn’t be good, so instead I asked, ‘How is Bunny?’

Jason still exhibited the blithe indifference of the recently smitten.

‘Oh, he’s good. The bunny book said that I should lie down on the floor next to him. Bunnies like to snuggle but they don’t like to lie on your lap like a cat does. So I did and he hopped up beside me and sniffed me a bit and then he just lay down. We’re getting on fine,’ he said, still exalted.

‘And your muffins?’ I asked, sniffing in my turn.

‘Oh, shit!’ He ran back into the bakery.

Just what I needed. A complication. Horatio twitched an ear. He was right. We had bread to sell.

‘Oh, and we need to put up the decorations,’ I called into the bakery.

‘Ooh,’ came back Goss’s voice. ‘Fantastic! Have you got some groovy ones?’

Groovy, my lord; I missed out on groovy the first time and now it is back—and I’ve missed out on it again. Still, I am not feeling robbed about that. There are a lot of other words for ‘good’.

‘Very groovy,’ I yelled back. ‘I got some from Mrs Dawson and the rest online from Oxfam. They just arrived.’

‘Corinna, what’s wrong with Jason?’

‘I don’t know, what’s he doing?’ Luckily, there were no patrons in the shop at present.

‘Standing in front of a lot of muffins and looking stupid.’

‘It’s all right, he’s just fallen in love with a blonde goddess.’

‘What, the skinny blonde bitch?’ demanded Goss.

‘Moderate your tone for a young man in his first infatuation,’ I told her, going to the door. ‘Have you done those platters yet?’

‘All done.’ She showed me artistically displayed muffins, carefully set around with sprigs of Christmas greenery (edible: you never know with corporate parties, and I didn’t want anyone to develop holly poisoning and sue the shop).

‘Lovely,’ I said sincerely. ‘You have a real talent for design. Why don’t you tag along with Cherie next year when she goes to RMIT and does that fashion and fabric course?’

‘Might,’ said Goss. ‘Our acting career hasn’t taken off yet and Dad will pay the fees. He’d love it if I went back to school.’

‘Well, there you are,’ I said, far too soon.

‘But I wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘I’m too old.’

‘Cherie’s older than you,’ I told her, than abandoned the subject before it became a sore point. ‘Come advise me where to put all these lovely things.’

Jason was packing his muffins into boxes for the fridge, carefully, though his eyes were still abstracted. I had preferred him when he was obsessing about glacé cherries, but that just shows, as the Professor would say, the vanity of human wishes.

Actually, decorating the shop was quite fun. Goss has an excellent eye for where things will look their best. We hung the ice-drops and the glittering balls where they could not be knocked or broken by a careless shopper, and the plastic snowflakes from Guatemala and the other delicate things from the ceiling. The Oxfam crib sat on the counter. It was made of solid carved wood and probably wouldn’t fracture if it fell. There were the animals who attended the birth of the child: the ox, the ass, the sleeping dog, the sheep and goats, the chickens and the ducks.

‘Invented by St Francis of Assisi,’ said a cultivated voice. It was Dion, our professor, the most charming and erudite man, except he won’t explain the joke about the little doll in the bottle at Meroe’s shop. One day I shall pin him down and tickle him until he tells me.

One day. Not today. He came in under the swag of artistically crafted ivy and holly, which hung so low that it brushed his white hair.

‘St Francis of Assisi?’ Goss asked, speaking from her shoeless height atop the counter.

‘He wanted the Italians to be nicer to his friends the animals, so he reminded them that Christ had been born in a stable, because there was no room in the inn,’ said the Professor. ‘He built the first one—you know, Corinna dear, my memory really is failing—yes, it was in Greccio, I believe, in about 1223; St Francis set up a manger in the snow in the mountains of Umbria. Then, of course, the painters started painting it, and soon everyone had a wooden—this is a very nice piece of carving—or a pottery or a painted manger to remember, or perhaps I mean appreciate, that the first attendants of the Christ child were animals, and the first visitors were shepherds … a lovely idea.’

‘It’s hand-carved,’ I said, caressing the wooden curve of the ass’s ears. ‘Mrs Dawson lent it to me.’

‘It all looks very seasonal,’ he said, pleased.

When his wife of many years left him all alone in the world, the Professor had sold his house and most of his possessions (except his library) and had bought his apartment in Insula outright. He had required Dionysus to be decorated in proper Roman fashion and had commissioned a lot of Roman furniture to be especially made for him. Insula, for instance, has the very first and probably only example of the Roman television and DVD player cabinet. He lined the walls with bookshelves (Western, because he has only a few scrolls) and moved in to complete his study of Juvenal, comforting his broken heart with red wine, cultural activities and lunches with his old friends on the faculty. He naturally acquired me and the other Insulae as friends. And then Nox arrived in his life, a small black kitten
with a whim of iron, who has him firmly under paw. But she is very nice to him as long as he does not come between her and anything resembling a prawn. I have seen her leap off high shelves onto the delivery man’s tray if there are prawns on the pizza. The advent of a determined little black furry missile always makes the delivery person drop the box and then Nox is free to hunt and guzzle. But otherwise she is a benevolent despot and has even been seen—but not in this weather—parading the roof in a rather fashionable red harness.

Lately, I have wondered about Professor Dion’s relationship with Mrs Dawson. They seem to get on very well and she is a widow in the same way he is a widower. Both of them were happily married for a long time. But they are both so old, and in any case it is none of my business. I shook myself.

‘Bread?’ I asked.

He smiled benevolently as Goss jumped down from the counter and dived back into the bakery for more loaves.

‘I am having a little gathering at Christmas,’ he told me, ‘for people who do not have any interest in the festival, or who perhaps might feel a little lonely, as I would. If you and Daniel have no plans, perhaps …’

‘Accepted,’ I said promptly. ‘Let me know the time and what I should bring. Thank you! Now, can I serve you?’ I asked.

‘If only you had asked that twenty years ago,’ he mused. ‘Yes, a loaf of the rye bread, please, if you have any left.’

‘Jason!’ I called into the bakery. No reply. Then Goss answered, ‘Yes?’

‘Rye bread?’

‘One left,’ she answered, producing it.

‘Is something wrong with Jason?’ asked Professor Dion, taking the wrapped bread and giving me a note.

‘A blonde,’ I explained.

He raised an eyebrow. His bright blue eyes twinkled. ‘Ah, blondes,’ he sighed reminiscently. ‘Fundamentally not a good idea, but decorative.’

‘He’s fallen in love.’ Goss was scornful.

The Professor patted her arm. ‘Ah, my dear young woman, with youth of that age, inadvisable never means undesirable.’

And with that he left, carrying his bread, still not explaining the doll in the bottle. I would have to get back to him on that.

Where, I wondered, speaking of desirable, was Daniel? The day was marching on. I said so. Goss was still scornful. She was in a scornful mood.

‘Well, duh, Corinna, you could always ring his mobile.’

‘So I could,’ I agreed. ‘But if he’s doing something secret, he won’t want a mobile phone ringing to give him away.’

‘He’ll have it on silent,’ she told me, ‘or vibrate. If he’s being sneaky.’

I rang the number. I got Daniel’s voicemail, so I left a message, and then Goss and I went on to sell more bread, to utter silence from the bakery. Damn, I thought, I was going to miss the charming Jason who made glacé cherries and played Hornblower with me and called me Cap’n. I suppose it was too good to last. He was sixteen, after all. He had spent such a lot of his life being abused and then being a heroin addict that he must have missed out on his first crush. Now he had it.

The trouble was, apart from being a jealous old hag, that I could not see what someone like Sarah, with her model looks, would see in Jason, who was surely too young and callow for her tastes. Therefore that fundamentally untrustworthy young woman wanted him for something other than his body, his company or his sparkling conversation, and I didn’t like it at all.

Neither did Goss, I could tell, but there was nothing we could do about it. I could hardly pin the girl against a wall and
demand to know if her intentions were honourable. So we sold bread. And admired the light twinkling through our Christmas decorations.

And when it came time to cash up and shut the shop, Daniel had not returned, and no message had been sent to my own phone, which is switched through to the shop. Phone calls, yes, several, including Mr Nobody who hangs up a lot, some peon from Bombay trying to sell insurance, and a real estate agent telling me that property prices were about to go up again, in defiance of all reason. And another corporate client requesting more of those amazing muffins for the board meeting. But not, as it happens, Daniel. Still, too early to worry about a full grown ex-soldier.

Just before we shut Janeen came in. She got the last loaf of the gluten-free. She wanted to talk and leant on a bread rack to do so, while I was trying to get the shop floor swept and would have preferred her room to her company, however loquacious.

‘People don’t have to give up meat,’ she told me, moving her feet as I motored around her with the broom. ‘Just meat produced by the present methods.’

‘What other methods are there?’ I asked. ‘Meat is animals, produced by other animals. Sexual reproduction. They told me about it at school,’ I added sarcastically, which made Goss giggle.

‘And meat is murder,’ she capped. ‘But what if it was vatgrown?’

‘Science fiction,’ I said.

‘No, really. The technology exists to take a strand of, say, chicken DNA, and suspend it in a nutrient solution. It will be immortal—there is no reason for a cell culture to die. It will differentiate, producing muscle and fat. Just not brain.’

‘You know, I don’t like the sound of this,’ I commented.

Goss seconded my opinion with ‘euw’.

‘But then, you see the advantage, huge amounts of chicken flesh can be produced without killing a single animal,’ she said earnestly.

I thought about this, leaning on my broom.

‘So if I want to make
pollo cacciatore
I just go along to the … chemist’s, I suppose, the laboratory, and buy a couple of kilos of living flesh with no mind.’

‘Superchicken,’ said Janeen.

‘Ingenious,’ I said, completing the sweeping and giving Goss the broom.

‘It’s a complete solution. Then people can be weaned off meat gradually.’

‘You’ve forgotten one question about your superchicken—the most important question,’ I told her, shoving her very gently towards the steps so I could close the shop. I was tired, even if she wasn’t.

‘What’s that?’ she said, clutching her spelt bread.

‘What does it taste like?’ I asked, and shut the door.

Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be unto
me according to thy word.

Luke 1:28
The Holy Bible        

I was feeling out of sorts and grumpy so, after I washed and changed, I took Horatio and my esky loaded with plastic glassware, a bottle of gin, a sliced lemon and some tonic water to the roof garden. There I was pleased to find Trudi taking a break from gardening. She was sitting on the bench, reweaving a straw garden seat. Therese Webb was advising.

‘No, the tension has to remain the same—you don’t need to pull so hard, Trudi dear. No, Lucifer, we do not want to appliqué you to the chair. Kitten chairs are so, so unfashionable. Though your fur would match very well,’ she added, for Therese sees the world in terms of colour and fabric.

‘Drinks,’ I announced. I opened the cooler, mixed a g and t for me and Therese and a plain gin for Trudi, who does not like adulterants in her national drink. I watched Lucifer give up on the chair and bounce over to touch noses with Horatio, who greeted him politely, if not warmly. Horatio does not like kittens but he is constrained by the Code of the Cats not to hurt them. In any case, attempting to hurt Lucifer might easily disarray Horatio’s whiskers.