Forbidden Fruit (22 page)

‘I wouldn’t worry about them,’ Jaye reassured me over the music. ‘Every movement has its fanatics. We just don’t eat our fellow animals, that’s all. Not only is it good for us, it’s good for the planet. It’s not too bad. We still have wine and chocolate. And goat’s milk cheese and figs. And we eat eggs and dairy. That would make us as bad as you, for some of the more extreme.’

‘It’s easier if you think of them as a religion,’ Vic put in, hefting the bag full of bread. ‘We are orthodox—in some ways …’ She smiled meaningly at Jaye. ‘Others are charismatics or enthusiasts.’

‘I’ve got them, too,’ I said, feeling overburdened.

They both hugged me. One cannot continue to feel downcast when hugged by such delightful women. They smelt, for some reason, of bluebells.

So I cheered up. When we came to the end of the first CD, the jingle jingle was silent, so we kept CD two in reserve in case it started again and went with quiet. I was starting to feel sort of guilty about this. ‘And of course there must be something wrong/In wanting to silence any song’ as the man who wrote ‘Good fences make good neighbours’ said. Who was he? Poem about stopping in the woods? Ah. Robert Frost.

Oh, well. Jason again requested the use of the big oven and I gladly left him with the cleaning. When Horatio and I arrived upstairs, Daniel was awake, clothed, and presumably in his right mind. It’s always hard to tell with chess people because they mutter a lot. He moved a pawn and looked up at me. He smiled.

‘The girl was good, really good,’ he told me. ‘Taking as her model the amazing Judith Polgár. When in doubt, she attacks. Her opponent is a mediocre player, but good enough to be worth beating.’

‘Any idea who he or she is?’

‘Not so far. I haven’t got the results of the search back yet. Lunch?’

‘Lovely,’ I commented, sitting down to a big bowl of tomatoes with chives, Uncle Solly’s potato salad with Thousand Island dressing and a plate of cheese and cold roast beef. Daniel allowed me to select what I wanted then started to wolf the rest.

‘You still haven’t caught up on your day of starvation,’ I said. I like watching people eat. He nodded with his mouth full. I made myself a sandwich out of cold meat and Gentleman’s Relish. Delicious.

There was lemon cordial to drink. This was to be a working afternoon.

‘Timbo will be outside by now,’ said Daniel.

‘I’ll change and be right there,’ I said.

I put on my loose boho garments, adding a pair of thin black trousers underneath. My inner thighs had been scraped by that rescue. I added my biggest hat. Horatio elected to curl up on my bed, which Daniel had made, complete with hospital corners. God love him.

Timbo was indeed waiting. He gave Daniel a large bag, and started the car.

‘To Footscray,’ said Daniel, and gave the bag to me. I looked
inside. It was full of old-fashioned sweets. Humbugs, mint leaves, jelly babies, boiled lollies, musk sticks. Lovely. I remembered some of them from my own youth. There was a packet of gummi bears and, my favourites, sour lemon drops, the expensive ones in a tin.

‘The Lake household has a lot of kids,’ Daniel observed. ‘No money to buy luxuries. So I am bringing sweets; the parents will accept presents for the kids.’

‘I remember Mr Lake,’ I said, recalling the red-faced men grunting and grappling, before Sister Mary put the mozz on them.

‘That was out of character,’ said Daniel. ‘He’s very worried about his son. You’ll see. He’s a shift worker; he ought to be home.’

‘Oh, goody,’ I said. I was not filled with enthusiasm.

The house was shabby. It was in a line of similar houses which must have been built for the factories, perhaps, or the railways. It had last been painted during the reign of Paul Keating, but that didn’t matter for the verandah had been enclosed and over it swagged, reading from left to right, a huge jasmine vine, a vivid bougainvillea, a wisteria and another flowery thing which I could not identify. This meant that the front door was in deep shade. On either side I could see hammocks and tightly made single beds.

The doorbell made a sad ratchety noise, but it summoned a large woman in a loose house dress. She stared at Daniel.

‘Any news?’

‘No, but no bad news,’ he told her. ‘And they were alive and well a couple of days ago.’

‘Come in,’ she invited.

The house smelt of fruit. Daniel introduced me and she shook my hand. Her own was as work-worn as mine. ‘I’m Mags. I’m just making jam,’ she said. ‘Come into the kitchen.’

The house was full of children. Two boys were playing snap on the drawing room floor, assisted by a toddler who kept grabbing the cards. They were putting up with her with great patience, for boys. Mags continued on into a small kitchen full of steam and two very good small girls, who were splitting plums. A preserving pan was boiling on the obsolete stove. Ranks of jars stood in the oven, drying out and sterilising.

‘We eat a lot of jam,’ explained Mags. ‘On toast and on scones and in pies. The bought stuff is expensive and who knows what is in it? Here, I know what’s in it.’

‘Fruit and sugar,’ said one of the little girls. She was muffled under an apron and was clearly very proud of it.

‘Good,’ said Mags, inspecting the halved plums. ‘Now Sue can fill the water jug and Ann can prepare the saucers for testing. I’ll put these plums into the basin to wait for the next batch. Good work, girls.’

Ann, the child with the apron, dived across the kitchen and opened a cupboard. She took out three saucers and put them in the fridge, a disproportionate monster of a thing with a freezer at the top. It was, I noticed, stuffed almost as full as my own.

‘And Sue can go out to help Daddy if she wants to,’ added Mags. Sue vanished out the back door, where something barked a lot. ‘Do sit down, would you like some tea?’

‘No, just had lunch. I wanted my colleague to meet you. And Sam.’

‘Delighted, I’m sure,’ replied Mags.

‘How many children do you have?’ I asked. I had counted five so far.

‘Two of my own,’ she told me. ‘Six others. Fosters. They send us the ones who have been abused. No one’s going to abuse them here. They can get used to a man who isn’t a fiend. And they seem to like being with other kids all the time, sleeping in
the same room, which is good, because we haven’t got a lot of space.’

I looked at her. She had mousy hair cut short with what I guessed was a pair of nail scissors, a broad face with small eyes and a wide mouth. She was almost as large as me. No one was going to give us fashion prizes. But her expression as she watched small Ann testing jam with religious care was meltingly tender.

‘Not yet,’ she told the child. ‘It needs to crinkle when you push it. Soon. You got to be patient when you’re a cook.’

‘Is Manny coming back?’ asked Ann.

‘Yes,’ said Mags with a steely note in her voice. ‘Soon.’

‘Indeed,’ said Daniel.

I hoped it was true.

‘Would you like us to go outside?’ I asked. ‘We’re rather clogging up your kitchen.

‘Just till I get this jam into jars,’ she said, smiling at me for the first time. ‘Tell Sam tea’ll be ready soon. Fresh bread and hot jam, yum.’

‘Yum,’ repeated Ann.

Sam was waiting for us. He was looking in through the kitchen window at his wife and the child.

‘She didn’t talk at all when she came,’ he told us. ‘Then she started repeating things. Then she started talking for herself. Manny was real good with her. Poor little mite. Her mother tied her to a bed for weeks at a time and left her all alone. Never really learnt to talk. Only reason she didn’t die was the dog. It’s a scraggy old mongrel, but she adores it. Scamp washed her and brought her food. Treated her as though she was his puppy. Here, Scamp!’

Scamp rushed to his feet. He was a strange mixture of, at a guess, labrador and maybe German shepherd? He licked Sam’s hand.

‘Eats like a pig, though. And a terrible thief, we have to keep him outside when Mags is cooking. You’re looking for Manny, eh?’

‘I am,’ I said.

He was examining me narrowly so I returned the compliment. He was a solid, stocky man with a red face, curly dark hair and work-ruined hands. His black singlet shifted a little, revealing milk-white skin underneath his mahogany weathering. Sue arrived and swarmed up him as though he was a tree. He cradled her carefully. She wrapped her arms around his neck in a choke hold. I smiled.

‘You’ll do,’ Sam Lake told me. ‘You want to know what Manny was like, why he left, eh?’

‘Whatever you can tell me,’ I said.

‘Let’s walk,’ he said.

The backyard was largeish and crammed with growing things. Two children were carrying water to the large plastic barrel under a plum tree. They ranged in age from about four to about ten, and they had suitable pots, from a milk saucepan for the smallest to a bucket for the largest. Ropy tendrils of pumpkin writhed along the far wall, along with a large lemon tree and a few others. I wished Meroe or Trudi was with me. They would really like this garden.

Because it wasn’t just vegetables and fruit. Someone had planted nasturtiums and they swarmed over everything. There was a bush of daisies. There were little plots which seemed less well cultivated, one of which had a bountiful harvest of radishes, and another of which had nothing at all except some dying lettuce.

‘The kids can plant whatever they like but they have to water it,’ he told me. ‘Looks like Kane’s forgotten again. You remind him, Susy?’

‘He’s cross,’ said Sue. ‘You tell him, Daddy!’

‘All right, maybe later, when he comes home. Kane’s got a job at the supermarket,’ he explained. ‘Bringing in the trolleys. It’s a job,’ he added. ‘He has to get up and go to work every day. He’s been doing it. He’s doing real well. Manny was doing real well, too. Natural gardener, that boy. There’s his tomatoes—look at them!’

I looked. Taller than me. Fruiting freely. There was a whole trellis loaded with cherry tomatoes, bowing under the weight.

‘They look fine!’ I agreed.

‘Taste fine, too.’ He plucked one, picked a leaf of basil, and gave them to me. I bit. Warm. Savoury. Gorgeous.

‘We mostly live off the garden,’ said Sam Lake, unwreathing Sue and putting her down. ‘You can go and help with the watering,’ he suggested. She scampered off. ‘Poor kid, her step-father’s doing seven years for what he did to her and her little sister, and it ain’t enough. Took her six months before she’d even talk to me. That’s Sue’s little sister, carrying water, bless her. They rely on each other. Cruel to split them up.’ I watched the children, bickering quietly because it was becoming very hot, replace their implements and go to ground under the lemon tree. Sam Lake went on, ‘Manny’s my natural son. Maggie had seven miscarriages, then Irene, then Manny. Manuel, his name is. After her grandfather. After that she couldn’t have any more, and she dearly loves kids. So we’re foster parents. Government pays us something for them.’

‘Not a lot, I’m guessing.’

‘If we were doing it for money it wouldn’t matter how much we were paid, we’d be ratshit,’ he opined, plucking a tomato for himself. ‘Mags, she’d be sad without kids. Her mother had seven. Mine had five. I like them all right. I’ve got the afternoon shift at the factory, so I’m home in the mornings. I can help with breakfast and getting them off to school, though Mags has to do
dinner on her own. Manny was quiet. Liked the plants. Talked to them. He was going to do an exam for a scholarship to the agricultural college. He would have got it, too. He wasn’t dumb. He just hated school. Then this girl came along and he buggered off. You reckon he’s all right?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Daniel saw him a couple of days ago and he was all right then.’

‘That silvertail wanker,’ he started.

‘My opinion exactly,’ I said, laying a hand on his arm.

‘I shoulda knocked his block off,’ muttered Sam.

‘No, because what would the children do with you in jail? So, no one here has heard anything? Phone message? Text?’

‘We only got one phone,’ said Sam. ‘It’s in the kitchen. He hasn’t rung. But I feel better about it now I know you’re on the case. You’re like Mags. You get things done.’

‘Thanks.’ I was very flattered. ‘I’m a baker.’

‘Working woman,’ he grinned. ‘Could tell from your hand.’

Mags called from the kitchen. ‘Here we go,’ said Sam. ‘Bread and hot jam. Come on, kids!’ he yelled, and the lurkers under the lemon tree raced across the garden.

There wasn’t room in the kitchen for all of us, so Daniel and I took our treat into the garden. It really was lovely. The beds bristled with fresh leaves, tall sunflowers, spears which meant onions, perhaps? Two boys joined us, jam smeared all over their faces.

‘You looking for Manny?’ asked one, very gruffly.

‘I am,’ said Daniel.

‘You tell him to come home and bring his girlfriend,’ said the boy. ‘Mags likes babies. He’d be all right here. I been here the longest. Tell him Talyn says come home.’

‘I’ll tell him, Talyn,’ said Daniel. He and the boy touched knuckles. It was one of those masculine bonding moments.

I finished my bread and jam, which was very good, though the bread was commercial. I went back into the parlour and retrieved the big bag of sweets.

‘Mags, we brought a present for the kids,’ I said, and handed them over. Mags grinned. The kitchen inhabitants cheered.

‘Good. Thanks. And you’ll take a pot of jam? And you’ll tell Manny that we love him and we want him to come home?’

‘If I see him, I’ll tell him,’ I assured her.

I hated depriving the children of even a spoonful of their jam, but I had no choice. As we left, Mags was organising a trip to the library.

‘Simple people,’ said Daniel as we got into the car.

‘As opposed to the complex and educated O’Ryans,’ I said sharply.

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘Nice people, the Lakes. Those kids are fortunate. They’ve got a lot of aunties and uncles, too. And they know that if anyone hurts them Sam Lake will punch the soul case out of them. He already did to the molesting stepfather who turned up to kidnap his daughter back. The local cops were very understanding and he didn’t do any permanent damage. That’s when the child started to talk again.’