Forbidden Fruit (30 page)

He broke. He scuttled round the corner like an insect and was out of sight in moments.

‘I am tired of their surveillance,’ she told me, allowing Serena to turn again.

‘Oh, so am I, and aren’t you glad Mr Pahlevi didn’t see that? He might douse you again.’

‘I am not going to actually curse him,’ she said. ‘His own fear did the work. For me? How very kind of you.’

‘My pleasure,’ I said, handing over the packet. There are days when I do not know what to say to Meroe and this was one of them.

Presently my witch went back to Belladonna and, just as I ran out of rosewater, Mr Pahlevi arrived and very humbly took the rein from my hand, undid and returned my rope, and led Serena away without a word or a slap for her unaccountable absence. I did wonder where Serena went, when she was on the loose.

The nearest rose garden, probably. If this brutal summer had left us any roses to bloom.

And Sunday went quietly on. Daniel read Pratchett aloud as I finished up all my presents, for this week would give me Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and the end of work for four weeks. I had not even thought what I might do. Would Daniel have to stay in the city? Could we find Horatio a sitter and run away together?

Then again, where else did I want to be other than here?

All was calm and bright in my apartment, though the chaos was growing outside, until Daniel’s phone rang around four pm.

I could hear the voice shrieking from where I sat.

‘What’s happened?’ I asked, prepared to start stiffening my sinews.

‘Brigid’s gone,’ said Daniel. ‘That was Meroe’s witch friend; she and Meroe are at the Sibyl’s Cave and want to come up for a cup of tea and a conference.’

‘Fine,’ I said, getting up to put on the kettle. I really would have to get some serious groceries delivered on Monday. I was running out of everything. I put out the pad to write a full list which I could then email. Stalwart persons would then haul it all the way up to my apartment, only asking money in return. I found the box containing a variety of herbal teas but the witches, when they arrived, demanded brandy and tall, icy glasses of lemon cordial.

‘It was very strange, and I don’t know if you have an explanation,’ said Meroe, introducing Kate, witch name Abraxas. She was short and plump with a bun of white hair and twinkling blue eyes, looking like the sort of midwife whom everyone would prefer. I noticed her hands as I supplied the drinks. Small and very strong, with clipped nails, the skin red with years of antiseptic. She didn’t look at all like a witch, but most of them don’t.

‘Thank you, dear,’ she said in a nice cosy grandmotherly voice, then downed her brandy in a gulp and held out the glass.

Daniel refilled it. He was always careful around witches, not wishing to indulge a misplaced sense of humour and end up sitting in a pond going ‘ribbet’.

‘Phew! I thought I’d seen it all. And now,’ she added, sipping this time, ‘I have.’

‘What did you see?’ I had to know.

‘I was in the child’s room when her parents came in, pushing the nurses aside, demanding that she get up and bring the baby. I pressed the panic button for security but they’re slower than a wet week. Brigid started to cry and Manny stood in front of her and Mrs O’Ryan hit him—just like that—she belted him across the face and he fell. Then the two of them, with two henchmen—don’t look at me like that, Meroe dear, you know they were henchmen—just picked up Brigid and the baby and started to force their way out of the hospital. But by then there were doctors and nurses and a lot of people milling around so they had to shove and Brigid was screaming for help and I couldn’t get to her because of a great lump of an orderly standing there in front of me like a … lump. Not helping.’

‘We get the picture,’ I said.

Abraxas took a long gulp of her cold drink and blinked.

‘They progressed to the stairs with the poor girl screaming all the time and me trying to get through and the rest of them
behaving like sheep, when the most amazing thing happened. The henchmen got her and the baby to the foyer, where the reception desk is, when in through the door came a parade of people all wearing different costumes. I thought they might be clowns to entertain the mothers but there were no red noses. They were chanting. Nonsense.’

‘Hare wombat?’ I guessed.

‘Yes, dear.’ She turned her very bright eyes towards me. ‘Was this your arrangement?’

‘Not exactly,’ I demurred.

Abraxas resumed her narrative.

‘Manny caught up with the O’Ryans and hit Mr O’Ryan with a bedpan and knocked him down. Then the … clowns, I should call them, were upon them and all around them. The henchmen were confused and put Brigid and the baby down. Brigid kicked several shins, grabbed the baby and twisted out of their grasp. And when they tried to grab her the clowns began doing some sort of mime. The leader would shout “Monotreme!” and they would all wriggle and swim along or sort of stump with their fingers held spread out over their heads. They were good, their platypus and their echidna. I was reminded of some Koori dancers I have seen. Matter of belief, perhaps. I always thought that such was the explanation for werewolves and those African leopard men.’

‘Quite. What happened then?’ I asked, pouring more brandy. We were getting low on brandy, too. Abraxas looked worried and chewed at her thumbnail.

‘Mrs O’Ryan was stranded over my side of the throng and I used a Word on her, Meroe. I know we don’t like to do that, but I had to stop her in her tracks. She was the driving force.’

‘Perfectly correct, sister, and very restrained of you, Goddess have mercy,’ said Meroe. ‘I threatened to curse one of those watchers only this morning.’

‘Well, that’s all right, then. The Word held her for a minute or two. The leader shouted “Macropods!” and they all started bouncing like kangaroos. Mr O’Ryan and the henchmen got rather trodden on, I’m glad to say. The kangaroos must have found the terrain lumpy underpaw. When they all bounced out of the foyer, Manny, Brigid and the baby were gone.’

‘I wonder how difficult it is going to be to reward the freegans?’ asked Daniel.

‘I bought them a lot of ice cream,’ I told him. ‘Food is always acceptable.’

‘That’s their name? Freegans?’ asked Abraxas.

‘That’s them,’ I said.

‘The Goddess’s blessing on the freegans and may they flourish and be rewarded,’ said Abraxas prayerfully.

‘Amen,’ I agreed. ‘Nigel did tell me not to worry.’

‘What a getaway,’ said Daniel. ‘But it does not solve the underlying problem, you know. Brigid and the child Shiloh.’

‘Didn’t a certain person not two metres from me tell me that “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof”?’ I demanded.

‘And that’s true,’ said Meroe. ‘Come, Abraxas, you could do with a cleansing ceremony, if you had to use a Word.’

‘Thanks for the drink, dear,’ said Abraxas, getting up. ‘We just thought you ought to hear it from our own lips, or you wouldn’t believe it.’

The door shut behind them. We were silent for a space. Then Daniel asked, ‘What’s a Word?’

‘I hope I never find out.’

‘Indeed.’

‘You never did get to see the baby,’ he said wistfully.

I had to tell him. It was my dreadful secret: the one thing a woman Must Never Say, even now. One can confess to all manner of interesting fetishes, one can change gender, one can declare a
passion for the Prince of Wales or George Bush and only attract a moderate amount of denunciation. But I had something much worse than that to tell him and he had better know now.

‘I don’t like babies,’ I confessed.

‘Really?’

‘And I don’t like children,’ I completed my confession.

‘You don’t have to, you know,’ he told me.

‘You don’t understand! I don’t like pictures of small children! I don’t coo over other people’s rotten slobbery offspring! I find the creatures egotistic, noisy, and lacking in interest until they grow manners! I don’t like children!’

‘I understand,’ said Daniel carefully, seeing how much in earnest I was. ‘That’s allowed. That’s all right. You don’t have to have anything to do with them. And I have no intention of having any, so it doesn’t bother me.’

‘You don’t want children?’ I asked, almost in tears of relief.

‘No,’ he said. ‘This is no world to bring them into. Tell you what,’ he said, lifting my chin and kissing me.

‘What?’ I quavered.

‘Let’s have cats instead.’

And we laughed, and drank the rest of the brandy, and went to bed.

Bring me flesh and bring me wine,
Bring me pine logs hither.
Thou and I shall see him dine
When we bear them thither.

John Mason Neale
‘Good King Wenceslas’        

Four am and I hoped that, in view of the recent history, it would be a nice boring day full of hard work and baking. I had emailed the list to the grocer last night and I left Daniel asleep to rise in due course and welcome in the heavies bringing the boxes of food. I had even managed to run out of things which one always has in the back of a cupboard somewhere, like molasses and rolled oats. That would have been those Anzac biscuits, of course. Coffee. Feed Horatio. Monday. But this week would end with a feast and after that, rest. I was shutting Earthly
Delights for the month of January. I had agreed to bake bread for the Soup Run, just for the Soup Run, and on lazy days I might even buy it. The prospect was intoxicating. I had not had a holiday for three years, except for a nervous week when the Health Department had closed the bakery, and that wasn’t at all restful.

Cheered, an overalled and booted Corinna went down into the industrial-strength air conditioning to find Jason already taking some of those wonderful little fruitcakes out of the oven. They have to rest for twenty-four hours in their tins, doused with good-quality brandy, before they can be packaged. The air smelt fruity and winy, very pleasant.

‘Cap’n on deck!’ He jumped to his feet and saluted.

‘How goes the ship?’ I asked.

‘Steady she goes, sir.’

‘Carry on,’ I ordered.

Then we mixed and pummelled and baked and cooked. Jason had a recipe for a cake called barmbrack that he wanted to try, which was why he was so early. I did the bulk of the ordinary bread. It rolled into the oven pallid and came out shiny. I had decided to do a little experimentation of my own and tried, once again, to make croissants. I had the original French recipe, the best butter, the finest flour. But they still disappointed. Perfectly good croissants, yes, but not the ones I remembered from the artisan
boulangeries
of Paris.

Megan arrived early for the shop bread, just as the Mouse Police returned, smelling of tuna scraps. Heckle took a good look at her rickshaw and decided it would be too hard to tip over. He hadn’t taken down a runner for weeks. I hoped he might have run out of vengeful feelings about the paperboy who had caused his tail to be abbreviated, though I didn’t think this at all likely. But lately there had just been too many people on foot for him
to practise his trick. He would have been trodden on in his turn, which was not part of the joke at all.

I paused to think glowingly of Mr O’Ryan and his henchmen falling under freegan feet. I bet they hadn’t enjoyed being bounced on by all those people channelling macropods. The freegans were slender, but there were a lot of them. I hoped the bad guys were bruised to the bone.

And Meroe’s curse had worked. For the first time since Thursday, we had no uncomfortable sentry suit on the corner, sweating into his white shirt. The morning had already improved.

Megan and I loaded a huge amount of bread. I asked her where the freegans were hanging out when not dancing their Hare Wombat dance.

‘Down by the river, as far as I know,’ she replied. ‘The old men are complaining about them still. You knew I work the Soup Bus every month or so, didn’t you? I was on it last night, with Ma’ani as heavy. That Sister Mary, she’s a very persuasive woman.’

‘She certainly is,’ I agreed.

‘On the other hand, I noticed that you have Janeen visiting,’ she said, tying up the last load with Serena’s rope. ‘Good luck with that.’

‘Why?’

‘She gives me the creeps,’ said Megan frankly. ‘I’m glad she’s not my doctor. She’s got a hungry look. Cut off your leg and eat it, my Irish grandpa used to say. Well, I’m off. Look out for your tail, puss.’

And she went. Horatio descended to the shop, Goss arrived, the Mouse Police sought their flour sacks for a well-earned nap, and Jason and I kept baking, at full stretch, as Kylie agreed to take over the shop tomorrow so that Goss could finish her Christmas tasks.

‘She has to find presents for all these horrible old aunts,’ Kylie told me.

‘Lavender water?’

I was about to recommend Potter & Moore, when Kylie added, ‘They’re all real fit and go in for mountain climbing and stuff.’

And I left Goss to her fate. She would manage. The girls have a genius for shopping.

‘So I’m going to Mum’s and poor Kylie’s going to her dad’s, because it’s his turn, and she hates his new girlfriend. And she isn’t all that keen on him, either. I don’t know why he’s making her go; he never really paid much attention to her until they split. It’s like that with men,’ said Goss in her most sophisticated tone.

‘Yes, poor Brigid’s father didn’t seem very interested in her,’ I said, as I reached into the oven for another set of loaves.

I clanged the tray down to dislodge the loaves and slotted it into the washing-up rack. ‘That’s the last of the shop bread, thank God. Let’s open the door.’

‘There’s a queue,’ Goss told me, and I fled upstairs to change my work clothes for something fit to be seen. One of Jason’s slightly overfilled jam muffins had exploded all down my front, making me look like a minor cast member of
CSI
. Four days before Christmas and either a shop is doing well, in which case it is hell, or it is doing badly, which is worse.

Earthly Delights was doing well and Goss and I were run off our feet. I let Jason go out for his breakfast—otherwise the poor boy might have expired before two pm—but Goss and I only achieved two ten-minute breaks all day, and that was by shoehorning Jason into the shop while we went into the bakery to sit down. Even Horatio was weary. But we sold bread, cakes, muffins, rolls and everything we had except the fittings and the curtains.