Heavenly Pleasures (6 page)

I opened it grumpily, swearing that if it was Trudi trying to return her kitten I would be cross, and was confronted by three people. One was a tall, willowy Chinese man of surpassing beauty. Another was a short Chinese boy with a cheeky smile. The third, who explained the other two, was Jon, the international charity exec. He was tall, too. And had red hair. And was an absolute darling, now looking slightly wounded at being scowled at for no reason.

‘Corinna? I’d like you to meet my friends. Have I come at a bad time?’

‘No, not at all, do come in,’ I said, slightly dazed. Gorgeous male persons were certainly parading my way today. First Heavenly Pleasures’ George and now this vision of loveliness. Where had they all been when I was eighteen? All the boys I had seen then made James look good. Only by comparison, I hasten to add.

Jon brought his friends in and I offered chairs and drinks.

‘This is Charles Li, known as Chas,’ he said, introducing the boy, who had scanned the apartment in one fast, comprehensive glance, and was now considering Horatio. Who was also considering him. Boy and cat looked at each other, not in a hostile but in a very feline, measuring way. Then they broke their mutual gaze, satisfied that the other was not a threat.

‘Hey,’ said Chas, in pure Australian. ‘Nice to meet you, Miss. You Daniel? I’ve heard about you.’

‘And I’ve heard about you.’ Daniel shook Chas’s hand gravely. ‘You sell stuff at the Queen Vic, don’t you?’

‘That’s me!’ said Chas, beaming. ‘Pile it on a barrow, gone in ten minutes, no problems.’

‘And this,’ said Jon, pausing for effect as well he might, ‘is Kepler Li.’

‘Miss Chapman,’ said Kepler in perfectly modulated English. ‘Mr Cohen.’

‘On these eight minutes …’ said Daniel, obscurely.

‘I will build a new theory of the universe,’ concluded Kepler.

It must have been some sort of code that they both recognised. Was Daniel a member of a secret society? Nothing would have surprised me about Daniel. I looked at Jon. He shrugged. Chas giggled.

‘We picked English names for ourselves,’ he said. ‘In the camp. I got mine off a book he was reading by Charles Dickens and found out he was also called Chas. He named himself after …’

‘Johann Kepler,’ said Daniel. ‘A very good choice. Do sit down. A glass of wine?’

‘Red for Kepler and me,’ said Jon, knowing that I always had red wine in the house. For medicinal purposes, like the brandy. ‘Chas will have mineral water if there is no Coke.’

‘As there isn’t,’ I said apologetically. About every six months I get an urge to drink Coke and then I drink the whole bottle.

‘We should have brought our own,’ said Jon. ‘You know, I never thought to ask you why your name was Kepler, Kep dear.’

‘I chose him,’ said Kepler, tossing his long, shiny, ebony hair out of his eyes, ‘because when I read about all the great scientists, Kepler was the only one who was both right most of the time and nice. Everyone liked him. Nice scientists are very rare. He had a medieval mind but a true understanding and when he was asked to accept either the Ptolemaic system with all its circles and deferents was wrong or that Tycho Brahe’s observations were wrong he chose to believe Tycho. He knew Tycho was a complete obsessive who would stay out in the freezing Danish night until his toes dropped off rather than fudge an observation.’

‘And he was right,’ said Daniel eagerly.

‘Even though he did think that the planets were swept into place by God’s celestial broom,’ said Kepler apologetically.

‘Well, he was right about the three laws,’ said Daniel, displaying a knowledge of astronomy of which I had not suspected him. ‘They were proved right by Newton. Especially R cubed over T squared. Newton proved that it had to be true because gravitational acceleration a equals GM over R squared which equals 4 pi squared R over T squared. Therefore R cubed over T squared equals GM over 4 pi squared, therefore Kepler was right.’

‘As these are all constants for our solar system,’ agreed Kepler, beaming at Daniel. He looked like a Chinese deity who had discovered especial acts of piety amongst his people. Except most Chinese deities didn’t wear handmade Mandarin-collared suits in fine shadow-grey shantung, which perfectly matched the streaks of grey in his hair. A least, as far as I know. I’ve never

actually met any Chinese deities. I’d have to ask Meroe.

‘Perhaps it’s a code,’ I said to Jon.

‘I have always thought so,’ he agreed. ‘Kepler has just arrived.’

‘Where from?’ I asked, as the words ‘five regular solids’ and ‘harmonia mundi’ were used in my parlour for the very first time.

‘I met him on a trip when we were dealing with famine relief in Cambodia. It was a terrible situation and he was very kind to me. He comes from Hong Kong, but from China initially. Chas came here when he was only five,’ he added, which explained Chas’s accent. I never saw two brothers more unlike. Chas was like Jason: bright, interested and, if I knew my artful dodgers, a player. Kepler had a vague air, as though his mind was in the sky and his thoughts on the planets. He and Daniel were having such fun that I didn’t like to interrupt.

‘He’s a computer genius,’ said Jon fondly. ‘Microsoft Games Division pay him a huge retainer in case he comes up with anything. The rest of the time he teaches tai kwon do.’

‘And he’s useless on the stall,’ put in his brother with scorn. ‘He gives stuff away to people because they look poor.’

‘And you would never do that,’ teased Jon. Chas scowled fondly at him. ‘I’ve got a month’s leave, that last Cambodian placement was a bit hairy. So I thought I’d show Kep around Melbourne.’

‘A nice idea,’ I agreed, sipping. ‘What is he interested in?’

‘Everything,’ said Chas. ‘I’m just here to help him carry his stuff. And see the apartment so I can tell Mum. Then I got to get back, I got a load of t-shirts coming in tonight.’

This counted as a delicate hint, and Jon obediently drank up and put down his glass. Kepler had hardly tasted his. Jon touched his shoulder.

‘We had better get going, Kep,’ he said. ‘Nice to meet you, Daniel.’

‘Perhaps you would like to visit us for a game of chess?’ asked Kepler Li. He cast such a loving, confiding look at Jon that I was taken aback. ‘When we are settled.’

‘I’d really like that,’ said Daniel, shaking the long, slim hand. Kepler smiled ravishingly at both of us and went out, ushered by Chas, who was clearly in a hurry to get back to his load of t-shirts. Jon took Kepler’s hand as they went out. The door closed.

‘Weren’t they just so sweet together?’ said Daniel. ‘Come along, ketschele, if we are going out let’s go, or I shall just have to propose other ways of passing the time.’

I kissed his soft, silky mouth, then pulled myself out of his arms. I liked the way they automatically closed around me.

‘Clothes,’ I said, and went into my bedroom to dress. I chose black trousers, comfortable shoes, a bright blue silk shirt and a black jacket. If it worked for Mrs Dawson, it might work for me. I took up the backpack without which I never travel, and we went out into the cooling darkness.

We caught the tram in Collins Street. I love trams. I like the new super-quiet air conditioned ones which whisper along the tracks. I also like the old clacky ones which bump and grind like a Las Vegas showgirl. There is something about sailing through the traffic in a machine which weighs nine tons and can hold its own against anything except a tank which engenders a feeling of superiority. I had a bunch of tickets, because attempting to co-ordinate the money, the movement of the tram and the slots in the machine is not to be attempted by any but the ballet trained.

It was, as it happened, a clacky old tram, and Daniel and I validated two tickets and sat down in the middle to watch the city flee past. We chugged up Collins Street past the bulk of the town hall and the sad statue of that pair of utter losers, Burke and Wills. I love Collins Street. The chestnuts were losing their leaves and flurries scraped across the road under the traffic. The white holiness of the Baptist Church flashed past, Greek and pure. The tram laboured up further, past Scots Church and rows of genteel buildings, to the awful cliff of the Australia Hotel, and then we paused as a flood of traffic shouldered past us along Spring Street.

Then, with a feline wriggle, we were sliding past Parliament, the home of lost clauses, the trees almost meeting over the roof of the tram.

‘What was all that about Kepler?’ I asked Daniel, his hand warm in mine, resting on my thigh and sending little wriggles of sensation along my spine.

‘He was a remarkable man,’ said Daniel. ‘But the theory I love best was the harmonia mundi.’

‘I haven’t got time to nick back and ask the Prof what it means, so you will have to translate,’ I said comfortably.

‘The music of the spheres,’ said Daniel. ‘Each planet, he thought, must have its own note, and as the planets move, they generate music. The cosmos sounds continually with the grave, slow fugue of the planets, the music of the spheres.’

‘What a beautiful idea,’ I said, thinking about it as the tram wriggled through the mass of tracks and, having made up its mind, swooped down Brunswick Street at last. I tried to imagine what such music might be like; so slow and deep that we could not hear it.

‘Like trees,’ I said, as we clattered past the Housing Commission flats, going downhill and faster.

‘Trees?’

‘If we were listening to what trees had to say, their language would be too slow to hear,’ I explained. Daniel thought about it.

‘Nice,’ he approved. We sat in silence for a while and then he said, ‘Where are we going, Corinna?’

‘We get off here,’ I said, as the tram slammed to a halt at the corner of Johnston street. ‘Up there,’ I pointed, ‘is the Night Cat, a good place if you are feeling like grunge and ex-garage floors. Along here,’ I took his hand, ‘is the best secondhand bookshop in the city. And we pass the fashionable cafe,’ I said, passing it, ‘because I do not go to a cafe to be seen where other people go to see celebrities. Poor things ought to be allowed to have their cafe latte in peace.’

‘I do agree,’ said Daniel as we fell into the Brunswick Street amble, a slow passegiata stroll which did not conflict with the people, dogs, skateboarders, small children and cafe tables which littered the pavement. The night was cool, not yet cold, and the street was thronged.

‘You must have been here before,’ I said to Daniel. He was walking directly behind me as we slid past a large board advertising shiatsu massage and aromatherapy.

‘Certainly,’ he said. ‘On business. But never—as it happens—for fun. I’m trying not to look for homeless kids, drug deals or missing children. If you would come back and hug me it would materially assist this process,’ he suggested.

I fitted exactly under Daniel’s arm. Somehow we had not discovered this before. Not just easily—exactly. To embrace me he did not have to stoop or stretch. It was almost as easy to walk along entwined with him as it was to walk by myself, and that was another thing which had never happened to me before. I felt a little light headed and giggled. I do not usually giggle.

Past the gorgeous Grub Street Bookshop and a little further on and there were the second-hand iron tables outside my favourite cafe.

‘Vertigo?’ asked Daniel. ‘Why here, more than any other?’

‘It has no celeb watchers,’ I told him. ‘And the staff are genuinely glad to see us, and that doesn’t happen very often. Hello,’ I said, pushing open the door.

The young man in the long white apron smiled and ushered us toward the back of the cafe, where it was warmer. I liked Vertigo. I liked their Parisian bar, with the ranked bottles behind it. I liked their style and I really liked their pasta. But it wasn’t just the food. No one survived on Brunswick Street for long selling indifferent food. One got the feeling that Vertigo liked feeding people. I had been sneered at by head waiters in enough expensive restaurants when I had been married to James to be super sensitive to snubs from food handlers. If it was slung across the table with an unvoiced ‘I hope it chokes you’ then I suddenly wasn’t hungry.

‘Pasta,’ said Daniel, reading the menu. ‘Something simple, I think. Fettucine with tomato and basil sauce, that sounds good. What about you?’

‘You’ve already made up your mind?’ I was astonished. James had taken classes in advanced menu study. He always cross-examined the waiter as to all ingredients, too. It had driven me mad, actually, now I came to think of it. I knew what I wanted, already.

‘Tagliatelli with smoked salmon and cream,’ I said hungrily.

‘And a nice bottle of …?’ asked the waiter, who had seen me before.

‘Red,’ I said, naming a very good one. ‘We’re celebrating.’

‘So I see,’ said the waiter, grinning. ‘Half your luck.’

I looked around, indulging in the sport of ‘eavesdropping’, which has always been one of my guilty pleasures. There was a big group at the back. There was the table of girls on a girls’ night out, drinking house champagne and eating their own negligible weight in Cafe Vertigo cakes, which tend to be exceptionally rich in exceptionally large serves. With King Island cream. They were talking about a club they were going to later, where all the boys were cute.

‘And other dreams,’ said Daniel. I had met a fellow eavesdropper! And I had thought I was the only one. No pervert who finally found someone who shared his own unique vice involving boiled eggs, leather straps and raspberry ice cream could possibly have been more gratified.

‘But you have to admire The Herd,’ said a young man at an adjoining table dressed in a red Midnight Oil t-shirt which had seen better years. ‘They’ve introduced politics into hip-hop.’

‘Political hip-hop,’ sneered his friend. ‘It was always political. Now if you want philosophy, you want McLusky. No one does it better than McLusky.’

‘Crap! I don’t know how you can say that,’ said his friend, and I lost interest.

The big group were intent on solving something. Suggestions were being called out and shouted down. They were all eating cake and drinking coffee.

‘Could it be in Austria?’ asked a ravishing brunette with a short, shiny bob and a biro in her hand, which she twiddled as though it was a cigarette.