Forbidden Fruit (4 page)

‘What is all this? And would you care for a drink? I’ve only got two glasses, though.’

‘Carol book,’ he replied, accepting Horatio’s offer of a chance to stroke a beautiful cat. ‘Bec’s assembling and Sarah’s stapling and I’m …’

‘Supervising?’ asked the blonde, Sarah.

‘Doing the covers,’ he finished the sentence. ‘The printer could have done it but it would have cost extra. No need for a
drink, thanks anyway, we’ve got iced mint tea.’ There was indeed a jug of something green reposing on the floor beside the assembly line.

Feeling unusually sophisticated, or possibly just old and corrupt, I poured a gin and tonic and opened my book as the workers returned to their task. Horatio, with one of those swift calculations at which cats are so adept, worked out the exact cynosure of all their attention and went and sat in it.

I was reading Beverley Nichols’
Cats’ A.B.C.,
one of my favourites. Even though he did number his cats rather than give them names, because he found naming so difficult. I had always got over the problem of the same name having to apply to a little ball of fluff and a grave and elderly signor by having a kitten name—Horatio had been called Squeak—and an adult name. He had been called Squeak because he had a habit of climbing to the top of a wardrobe, then looking over the edge at the vast gulf below and making an absurd little squeak which alerted me to the need to find the stepladder and get him down. Again. It was a relief all round when he found out his height limits.

The young people were quietly conversing about some musical question as they shuffled and rustled and clunked the stapler, a soothing set of noises. Horatio had gone to sleep on the rehearsal schedule.

Beverley was talking about meeting five elderly Siamese cats sitting on Compton Mackenzie’s stove in the Western Highlands when I drifted off into the light doze of one who has risen at four, done a hard day’s work, and sipped away a generous gin and tonic.

I drifted up into consciousness again and lay still, with my eyes shut, listening to the wind howl outside and three young voices discussing something very earnestly.

‘But he’s a companion animal!’ protested Rowan.

‘You know humans shouldn’t use animals as companions,’ said the blonde—Sarah, that was the name.

‘But he likes humans,’ protested Bec crisply. ‘You can see he’s a volunteer. Equity will not assist a volunteer,’ she added, revealing herself to be a law student.

‘He ought to be free,’ said Sarah.

‘Free to do what?’ demanded Bec, her voice rising. ‘Free to starve? Humans bred dogs and horses and cows to serve them, granted. But cats just walked in and stayed because they liked it. Didn’t you read the
Just So Stories
when you were a kid?’

‘You’re a romantic,’ sneered Sarah.

‘And you’re an idiot,’ responded Bec without rancour.

‘ADOA has more important things to do than argue about a cat who is—look at him—clean, groomed, well fed and happy,’ said Rowan.

‘What do you make of the Nichols guy?’ asked Bec, ruffling the pages—of my book, thank you so very much!—which must have slipped off my lap as I slept.

‘Romantic,’ sneered Sarah again. ‘Pretty piccies of little kitties.’

‘You use that word for everything you don’t like,’ observed Bec. ‘No, he’s all right. Listen to what he says about the circus.’

And she read aloud the pages on which Beverley denounces the circus, and imagines the animals in the audience and the ring-master gagged and flogged around the ring. I particularly liked his idea of elephants in tiaras.

‘Well, all right, then,’ said Rowan. ‘We can all approve of that.’

There was more rustling and clunking as the stapler went back into use. Charmingly, they began to sing. Rowan was a tenor, Bec an alto, and Sarah—as one might have expected—a soprano. They were singing a carol I vaguely knew, ‘In Dulci Jubilo’.

I hadn’t really woken up and I drifted off again, listening to the angelic voices. When I surfaced again the song had changed. They were singing to the tune of ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’:

I puzzled sleepily over this for awhile. Vargas Fish? Somehow he didn’t belong in a nursery rhyme, whoever he was, though some of the rhymes were fairly robust, not to say gruesome. After all, ‘Ring a Ring o’ Roses’ was about the black death …

I woke up properly as Horatio landed on my lap with all four feet. It is surprising how heavy a full-grown cat can be if it wants to make a point. He indicated it was time to go back to the flat for his before-dinner sleep. Rowan seemed pleased that he had moved of his own volition.

‘Now I can get the list back from the nice companion animal, we can box all the music and that’s us for the day,’ he announced. ‘Hello, Corinna! We like your book.’

‘Thank you, he is one of my favourite authors.’ I wasn’t going to offer to lend it, because Nichols was long out of print. ‘Must go, Horatio wants his afternoon sleep.’

‘Companion animals are wrong,’ Sarah told me, with that self-righteous tone which always rouses my worse nature.

‘Possibly they don’t know that,’ I informed her. ‘But as you see, Horatio is in complete control of his companion human.’

I picked up my impedimenta and moved towards the door. Bec laughed then bit her lip. Sarah glared at me. Rowan said hastily, ‘I’m going back to my apartment to watch
Doctor Who.
Anyone coming?’

I don’t know if they followed him or not. I carried my companion animal down to Hebe in an irritated frame of mind.

Two star-crossed lovers take their life

William Shakespeare
          
Romeo and Juliet     

Daniel had awoken and was improving the shining hour by recalibrating my DVD player, which had somehow got onto the wrong TV channel or something, doubtless due to Horatio’s habit of walking on remote controls.

Daniel completed his task, looked up, and held out his arms. I put Horatio down, dropped the junk and threw myself enthusiastically into his embrace. He smelt of soap and his signature smell, cinnamon.

‘
Metuka,
’ he said into my hair. Hebrew for ‘sweetie’. ‘You look flushed.’

‘I feel flushed. I have just been exposed to self-righteous youth and I have been very rude to a young woman.’

‘She probably deserved it,’ he said comfortingly. ‘Come, sit down and tell me all about it.’

‘It was nothing,’ I said, because it was, really. ‘Militant animal-rights people.’

‘This would be Rowan and his choristers?’ he guessed.

‘Good guess,’ I told him. ‘She told me that companion animals were wrong. In Horatio’s hearing!’

‘The insult seems to have passed him by,’ observed Daniel. He was right. Horatio had chosen his chair and curled up for another nap.

‘Indeed, and I will now stop thinking about it,’ I said firmly. ‘How are you?’

‘All right. I’m working on an odd case and tonight I must go out on the Soup Run. You too, I think.’

‘Yes. I’ve got a sack of bread and some of Jason’s rock cakes which didn’t entirely work to his satisfaction. What sort of odd case?’

‘A missing boy,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘A missing girl.’

‘Did they go missing together?’

‘That’s the problem,’ he said. ‘Her father thinks yes. His father thinks no. Each of them disapproves of the other. It’s tricky.’

‘You think? When you say disapprove, do you mean “mildly dislike” or “looking up the internet for hit men as we speak”?’

‘The latter. The girl is a sweet little evangelical miss from one of the best schools. Put the kettle on, eh, Corinna? If I am to stay awake I am going to need coffee.’

‘Kettle on,’ I reported, clicking the switch. ‘Have you got pictures?’

‘Here she is. Brigid Mary Rosamund O’Ryan. Sixteen years old.’

I looked at the professional photo. Dark hair, parted in the middle. Dark blue eyes with a shade under them—‘put in with a
sooty finger’, my grandma used to say. Pink and white complexion and a rosebud mouth. And a chin of uncommon determination, if I was any judge. I put down the picture and made the coffee. Daniel was having his hot. I moved to the fridge for my jug of coffee and milk. In this weather iced was the only way to go. My freezer was stuffed with ice-trays.

‘Daddy is the hereditary head of a big furniture company,’ Daniel told me, sipping at his dark arabica. ‘Been in the family since the Gold Rush. They live in Caulfield. Very devout. All of the other children are good girls and boys.’

‘How many children?’

‘Seven. Brigid is the second youngest. Six months ago she was withdrawn from school. The family stated that she had glandular fever. Her lessons have been delivered and marked by the school. She seems to be a bright girl, she’s good at maths and science. But no one’s seen her outside her house since May.’

‘Not glandular fever, you think?’ I added some ice cream to my iced coffee. Bliss.

‘Eventually the father confessed to me that she had been pregnant. Naturally an abortion was not to be thought of, so they kept her home.’

‘They locked her up,’ I said as indignantly as a mouthful of Charmaine’s finest would allow. ‘But she got out?’

‘With help, it is feared. She was living in an upper-floor suite, the door of which was always locked, so that she couldn’t get into the rest of the house, and of course she had no phone. But somehow she got out of a window, climbed down two storeys by way of a drainpipe and a rope, and got clean away. No one heard or saw a thing.’

‘Good for her,’ I said.

‘She also took her rabbit with her.’

‘Her rabbit.’

‘Called Bunny. It’s a big long-eared pedigreed rabbit.’

‘And you need to find her,’ I said to him.

‘Well, yes, Corinna, because on the street a pregnant sixteen-year-old convent girl carrying a long-eared Dutch bunny has the survival quotient of an ice sculpture in a blast furnace.’

‘True. But I bet she didn’t do that jailbreak alone. Who is her accomplice and father of the said child?’

‘Here he is,’ said Daniel, and laid out another picture. It was a school group. Daniel put a finger on the tallest and most snaggletoothed of what looked like the Youth Prisons Serious Offenders Outing. He had a scrubby complexion, much pimpled. He had pierced eyebrows and ears, and one could guess about the rest of him. Which would also be tattooed. Muddy brown eyes and dirty mousy hair—what there was of it, as he sported a convict haircut. He was not smiling.

‘Oops,’ I commented.

‘This is Manny Lake. Also sixteen years old. Apprentice landscape gardener. Worked for a firm which—’

‘Did the O’Ryan garden in Caulfield?’

‘Yes. Old tradition, I suppose: fall in love with the gardener’s boy.’

‘Generally they are prettier than this one, but yes, that is a tradition. Do you think they’re together?’

‘I hope so. Manny knows his way around. But Manny’s mum doesn’t think he will have dared to go near Brigid again after Mr O’Ryan’s private detective scared the life out of him.’

‘Not you, I take it.’

‘No,’ said Daniel absently. He was looking at the two faces. ‘Brigid hasn’t contacted any of her sisters, or any other relatives. I can’t get a lot of information about her school friends. I’ve got a few phone numbers from the little sister. She might have taken
refuge, but surely their parents wouldn’t approve of a pregnant school friend sleeping in the spare room?’

‘They might have hidden her,’ I told him. ‘Most of those parents aren’t home a lot. It could be managed, at least for a while. How long has she been missing?’

‘Ten days. Manny too. He told his boss he needed to travel, but asked him to keep his job open as long as he could. The landscape gardener told me that Manny was a good worker—“Not like most of these slack little bastards”—and he’d be pleased to have him back. The boss, by the way, thinks Manny is in jail. Occupational hazard among his workers.’

‘Is he?’

‘Not in Victoria.’

‘Oh.’ There seemed nothing else to suggest. Daniel put down his empty cup.

‘Now, we are going to need a nap,’ he said, ‘if we are going out at midnight. Shall we lie down before dinner, or after?’

His smile should have rated XXX. My dark angel was already taking off his shirt, to show the smooth muscle and the scar where the Palestinian shrapnel nearly killed him—a sight which always affects me viscerally.

‘How about an early dinner?’ I said hastily, before he took anything else off. ‘I’ve got Meroe’s salad leaves and cold chicken and so on. And fresh peaches. Then we won’t have to get up again until much later.’

‘With a glass of chateau collapseau, a feast,’ he said, smiling.

Fighting down a surge of lust, I assembled dinner. Meroe summons her salad leaves from some fairy paradise and has them conveyed by express broom. I had roasted the chicken myself, with sage, onion, lemon and butter. There were fresh tomatoes and fine asparagus and little potatoes made into salad with homemade mayonnaise.

We took the peaches to bed. It is always nice to have someone else to lick the peach juice off your breast.

We woke at eleven and had begun to dress when I heard the loud mutter of approaching thunder.

‘The storm!’ exclaimed Daniel, grabbing the minimum of garments and the keys. ‘Come on! I’ve been waiting for this all day!’

‘Me, too,’ I agreed, gathering more stuff—I am not comfortable without my backpack—and following him out the door, into the lift, and onto the roof, where we dashed into the shrine of the Mother Goddess amid the first drops of heavy, cold rain.

The mosquitos and flies whisked away like magic. The stifling air lifted like a lid. We stood at the door as the rain fell in a torrent, as though Aquarius was pouring his water jar straight down on our heads. If Guerlain could synthesise the scent of hot earth and rainwater and green grass and bruised flowers, the company would be able to buy France.

The cold air flowed over us and we laughed. Daniel was wearing green silk boxer shorts. I was wearing my old cotton caftan. We were getting wet and were scandalously underclad.

Not as underclad, however, as the figure dancing in the rain. Her black hair dampened and stuck to her laughing face. Her arms rose to curve gracefully as she looked up to the sky and the rain poured over her shoulders. Meroe was dancing to thank the Goddess for showing mercy on all thirsty hot inhabitants of the earth. She was eerie and beautiful, but I stepped back from the door and, as it happened, onto someone’s foot.