Forbidden Fruit (32 page)

‘Sit down,’ Daniel ordered. ‘Shut up.’

She had really upset him, I could see. So could Janeen. She sat.

‘Give me the pamphlets,’ I said. Sarah, scared at last, gave me a posting box. I took one out. It was lettered in bright red on a black background.

‘You have just eaten human flesh,’ it proclaimed. I could imagine how this would have affected Mrs Pemberthy. Or me, for instance. I read on. The pamphlet suggested that if you couldn’t stomach human meat, how could you eat cow’s flesh, or sheep’s? From the same publisher as the last one, which had convinced at least one young girl that she had breast cancer.

‘I’m willing to make you an offer,’ I said.

‘What?’ asked Rupert. ‘We’ll entertain any way out of this terrible situation. Yes we will, Janeen. You studied all this time to get barred from the medical profession as though you had the plague? You want a career as a vegan model, don’t you, Sarah? They’ll never employ a cannibal—that’s not the sort of diet anyone wants to put in the
Women’s Weekly
. Rowan’s father will put him out on the street and I—I should have stopped this weeks ago. But I never thought you’d actually go through with it. What are you offering, Corinna?’

‘Those sausage rolls are made of tempeh. You are now going to eat them as I watch. I have the human flesh in my freezer and I will dispose of it. You will not breathe a word of this fiasco to Jason. You will, in fact, compliment him on his cooking and be very, very nice to him. I will take this vile propaganda and get rid of it. The matter will be ended there. If I hear of anything like this happening anywhere you might have been, I will reveal this to the
Herald Sun
. You can imagine the headlines …’

They shuddered. They could imagine. Rowan grabbed a sausage roll, shuddered again, and ate it. Rupert scoffed his and wiped his beard. Janeen ate, and so did Sarah. I smiled at them.

‘Right. Now, if I told you that I lied and you have just eaten human flesh, how would you feel?’

Rupert gave me a twinkling look and patted his stomach.

‘Full,’ he said.

Sarah just beat Janeen to the bathroom. We heard a fugue of retching.

Rowan gave me a startled look.

‘You aren’t sick?’ I asked. His freckles stood out on his white face.

‘No, because you weren’t lying,’ he said.

‘Come up to the party again,’ I said. ‘Sangria for all.’

Rupert gave me a large hug.

‘Thank you,’ he said. Gesturing towards the bathroom in which painful recriminations were now echoing, he added, ‘for all of us.’

Escorted by a grim Daniel, I took the pamphlets down to my apartment, and then carried them and the packet marked
Poison
out to the rubbish skip in the alley. I flung them in. The lid closed with a pleasantly final clang. I washed my hands with rose geranium soap and we returned to the roof garden.

It turned into quite a good party after that. The sangria went down well. Daniel gave up on the niceties and mixed it in a clean plastic bucket. Jason had made, bless his heart, several trays of vegetarian delights which were greatly appreciated. He had invented a little egg and herb pie which was good enough to sell in the shop.

‘It’s olive oil pastry,’ he told me. ‘Just have to keep it cold enough. Try the cheesy one.’

The cheesy one was also pretty good. Jon and Kepler produced a lot of little munchies, also meat-free—ricepaper rolls, dim sum, interesting mushrooms wrapped in wonton wrappers—which they had been preparing ever since Rupert had asked them to
provide some Asian delights. The sangria, made of cask red, was ice cold and just the thing for a hot night, though Trudi insisted on her usual tipple, gin. I had a new one for her to try, Hendrick’s, which she said tasted just like gin used to in the good old days before her national drink got so lily-livered. And Trudi insisted on her rollmops.

When Sarah and Janeen came back from their epic emesis, they were determined to be good. They did not recoil from Trudi’s fishiness. They hugged Jason and told him he was a wonderful cook. They even ate one of his cheesy tarts. They drank sangria, although that was perfectly acceptable in any case.

Then they all started to sing and we sang with them. The stars came out. The musicians had gone—musicians do not perform for free if they hope to be professionals. But we only needed voices. I suspect they were singing so well from sheer relief. Only Janeen and Sarah were fanatical enough to really carry out such a dreadful plan. Rupert was indulging a diseased sense of humour, and Rowan, Michael, Bec and Alexander did not figure in it. But they sang like angels, all of them, and even Daniel began to forgive them. I didn’t know what terrible events in his own or maybe his people’s past of which this had reminded him, but he had been greatly shaken. I hugged him as the voices rose to the stars.

The Professor wiped his eyes. Mrs Dawson was in tears. So was I. The girls fluttered. Sarah reached out an arm and drew Jason to her side. Rupert stood forth and bowed to the company with an elaborate eighteenth-century flourish which matched his white hair and beard.

‘Ladies, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Thank you for a wonderful evening. Merry Christmas, and good night.’

And we applauded them as they left.

Ein feines Kindelein liegt in dem Krippelein …
beim Öchslein und beim Eselein

Praetorius
     ‘Psallite’

Four am. Rise and shine but not for much longer. I rose, ate, drank, all the usual stuff. Today we would sell out the shop, because today was Christmas Eve, tomorrow was the actual Christmas itself, and after that it would all be forgotten until October next year. Now all I had to be prospectively annoyed about was Easter and even that was several months away. I just hate festivities, and this one grates on me like cake crumbs in bed. As you might have gathered.

But there you are and there we were. I had hired both Goss and Kylie for the day and we would work until we had nothing left to sell except possibly the Mouse Police, who were non-negotiable as employees.

By what Meroe would call the special mercy of the Goddess, it was quite cool outside as I released Heckle and Jekyll. The Rising Sun was also closing for January. They were just going to have to go cold tuna on the Southern Ocean endangered species until February.

Jason was looking ragged. The pile of cakes, the baskets of muffins, the stack of loaves testified to his industry. Surely we could never sell it all. It was a mountain of baking.

‘Have you been to bed at all?’ I asked severely.

He pushed back his cap and wiped his forehead, leaving a streak of flour.

‘Not really, Cap’n. Couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d catch a few Z’s this afternoon, maybe. It’s the concert tonight.’

‘So you shall,’ I said. ‘How is Bunny?’ I added idly, as I slid loaves into the oven.

‘Oh, he’s … he’s fine,’ stammered Jason, who is really a very bad liar considering his history. I wondered what had befallen that self-possessed rabbit, but we were busy, and got busier. Goss turned up at seven, when there was already a queue outside the shop. Lots of people had left their Christmas shopping to the last moment, hoping that it would miraculously solve itself. It hadn’t, and now they wanted not only bread and cakes, but Earthly Delight’s biscuits, wrapped in cellophane: Bosworth jumbles, hermits, molasses cookies with crinkled edges, Anzacs, gingerbread boys and girls, dogs and cats, ducks and geese. Shortbread in the shape of santas and half-moons and trees, decorated with silver cachous on red and green icing. Jason was developing into an adept with icing, which was not my favourite medium. We also sold out the glacé fruit, the fig and apricot dainties, the coconut-covered dried fruit rolls, the little Christmas cakes and mince pies and, of course, the muffins, pies, loaves, rolls, even yesterday’s not-quite-right croissants.

I hastily stuffed a big bag full of bread and dainties for the Professor’s luncheon party and stashed it in my apartment, where it could not get sold by mistake. At eleven Horatio indicated that he found all this commerce just too fatiguing and retreated to the sofa for a restorative nap. I sent Jason up to his own bed at twelve, when we were beginning to clear the shelves. Earthly Delights produce went out in pockets and handbags and string bags, all wrapped in our own cyclamen and moss-green tissue paper, presents for people who were hard to suit: aunts and distant cousins and post persons, and perhaps even to rescue an exhausted family cook, already wondering what to do about a turkey which was too large to go in the oven, from trying to bake cakes as well. It went to drinks parties and after-dinner coffee and the family lunch, and to placate screaming children there were Jason’s plate-sized cookies studded with Smarties, his gingerbread zebras, his jam fancies. There wasn’t a lot of room in the shop and it was shoulder to shoulder all morning.

Goss and Kylie were at their best in this situation. Always a smile, always a joke, slightly shaky on the change but the machine did that for them as it rang and chimed like Christmas bells. I noticed that the girls were keeping up their strength, which was excellent news. Goss was dipping into a box of slightly failed fruit rolls, Kylie was nibbling lopsided shortbread trees where the icing had slipped, as icing has a habit of doing if you are too impatient, which I always am. I reserved some of packets of bikkies for my own presents, including one for Megan, who came to pick up the last load of bread for the year.

‘Been good,’ she said, taking the package and giving me her new card in exchange. ‘I’m doing ice cream for the summer. What’s happened to your watcher?’

‘I hope,’ I replied, ‘that he has melted.’

‘I hear you,’ she said, wished me a merry Christmas, and sped away.

My fellow tenants also made their final purchases. Meroe fell in love with the coconut macaroons. My gamble on making a lot of chocolate crackles had paid off. People cooed with nostalgia and bought them all. Juliette from the chocolate shop Heavenly Pleasures brought us all little boxes of Best Assorted, though mine was coffee truffles, my favourite. Juliette reported that she would also have to close, probably before noon, as she had not a sweet left in the shop and was presently entertaining bids to sell her apprentice, George. I told her to raise the price. George’s character had improved, he made good chocolates, and he was very pretty.

I had not thought that we could possibly sell that ziggurat of cakes, but we did. And the mountain of muffins and the stack of bread. At one o’clock Goss, Kylie and I looked at one another over the last three gingerbread ladies, took one each, and closed the door on Earthly Delights for the year.

Even then there were pitiful tappings at the shutter as we poured our coffee and sat down to nibble our biscuits and catch our breath. There was silence for a few minutes. Coffee. Gingerbread. Silence.

‘These are really good,’ said Goss after a while. ‘Really spicy.’

‘Most people don’t put enough ginger in them,’ I said absently. ‘Well, that was a morning, wasn’t it?’

‘Fun, though,’ said Kylie. ‘Christmassy.’

They looked at each other and giggled. Something was up, but I was too tired to bother about it.

‘It’s been good,’ said Goss. ‘Working for you, Corinna. We okay for the new year?’

‘Certainly,’ I said. ‘Do you want to come back?’

‘Sure,’ they said, and giggled again.

‘Well, then, I’m going to start the cleaning,’ I said. ‘Poor Jason’s pooped.’

‘We can help,’ Kylie offered, unexpectedly. ‘You do the banking and we’ll start the washing up.’

This was unprecedented but it was probably Christmas spirit. People did go strange at this time of year, buying presents they couldn’t afford for people they didn’t like. I heard the clash of trays and the roar of water as they did as they had promised.

The banking added up to so great a sum that I was nervous as I went out with the money in my backpack. I almost called up to Daniel to escort me. But I hadn’t far to go and no one was interested in me; one does not expect a tired woman in a flour-spattered apron to be carrying any real money. In which you would be wrong.

Relieved of the cash, I dawdled back through the shuffling shoppers. End of the year. I hadn’t really noticed it in previous years because I had been so tired and so broke. Now I was affluent and I had Daniel. Things had greatly improved.

In fact, I was almost home and actually humming ‘In Dulci Jubilo’ under my breath when a tall man in a white shirt and dark suit grabbed my arm and swung me around to stand face to face with a thin woman.

Very thin. She was almost skeletal. Her hair was blonde by intention and cut in what Professor Dion calls a South Yarra bob, straight to the shoulders and curled in at the bottom. Her clothes were modest, with long sleeves and a decorous hemline: a linen suit in pale blue. Her makeup was impeccable, but her eyes, now, those eyes were blue and perfectly insane.

I shook the hand off my arm.

‘Corinna Chapman?’ she asked. Her voice was hoarse, as though she had been screaming.

‘Who wants to know?’ I demanded rudely.

‘I’m Mrs O’Ryan, Charlotte O’Ryan,’ she told me, in that accent which grates on my nerves. The St Katherine’s chirp, the
one which says, ‘I’m just a little girl, don’t hurt me. What does poor little me know about nuclear physics? You gweat big man you!’

‘So?’ I returned.

‘You know where my daughter is. I want her and the child back.’

‘Then want must be your master,’ I said, and started to walk away. The man grabbed again. I grabbed in turn and bent back his thumb. He winced in a most gratifying fashion. ‘If you want to use that hand again for the next six weeks, you’ll keep it to yourself,’ I snarled. He looked shocked. The Holy Reformed Temple of Shiloh was not used to female resistance. They considered all females to be nothing but breeding machines, anyway, to keep silent and do the housework and care for their husbands, adoring them as close to God. I had read their disgusting literature.