Trick or Treat (13 page)

Georgie shed her high heels and draped herself over the

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sofa, long legs and short skirt. She was very beautiful. I sat next to her like a lump. Of what, I had not decided. Granite, perhaps? Or maybe just jelly. Envious jelly.

‘So, you are making a profit now?’ she asked cosily, twiddling a red-painted toenail and admiring the effect.

‘Yes, after a couple of years of very hard work,’ I told her.

‘You see, I am looking for a business—’ she said.

‘And you don’t want mine,’ I completed her sentence.

‘Oh, but I am beginning to think that I do,’ she cooed.

‘No, you don’t,’ I told her. ‘I don’t want a partner.’

‘But you’re working yourself to death, Danny says.’ She seemed concerned. ‘If you have a partner you can hire more help.’

‘I don’t need more help now that Jason is getting to be so skilled,’ I said. ‘Besides, if I have someone else making the bread, it isn’t Earthly Delights bread, it’s their bread, and that’s not what the customers pay for.’

‘Silly,’ she chided me. ‘Jason’s bread isn’t your bread, by that argument.’

‘Yes it is, because I am there watching him make it,’ I said, never actually having thought of this before but firming in my view that any partner would be better than Georgie and I didn’t want one anyway. ‘Would you be proposing to get up at four and make bread with me?’

‘No.’ Her nose wrinkled, ever so slightly. A woman who needed her beauty sleep, evidently. ‘I am thinking of being a silent partner. You’ll never know that I’m there. And when there is more capital, you can franchise.’

‘And destroy everything that people value in a niche market?’ I said. ‘People want to know who made the bread, they want to see—so to speak—my thumbprints in the dough. They want to talk to me about the weather and about yeast and about Jason’s latest muffin. Otherwise there’s no difference between Earthly Delights and Best Fresh, and they’re cheaper. My customers are not only paying for my quality flour and original sourdough and interesting recipes, they’re paying for me. Furthermore,’ I added, warming to my topic, ‘if I had a partner I’d need to put every important decision before her. What, for instance, would you say if I told you I was proposing to employ a recovering heroin addict, first as a cleaner and later as a baker?’

‘I’d say, not a chance, you can’t let someone like that into your kitchen,’ she replied honestly. For which, for a moment, I liked her.

‘Precisely. Jason might have worked out and he might not have worked out, but he was my risk and my decision. No, thank you, but you need to find another business. Plenty of them around! Have a look down at Docklands, there’re restaurants galore down there, and it would be a lovely place to live, too. You can see all the way across the bay.’

I got up, before I lost my temper. She put a manicured hand on my arm.

‘Is that your final word?’ she asked, blue eyes imploring.

‘Certainly,’ I said. I shook the hand. ‘Thank you for dinner. Sorry that I have to leave, but I have to get up early. Goodnight,’ I added, and went to the door, collecting my bag and calling farewell to Daniel on the way.

I didn’t draw breath until I was out in the street, at which point I sighed as if I had escaped from some terrible danger. Then I became aware of the fire below my girdle and realised that I would have to find something to eat and some antacids or I might actually burst into flame.

It wasn’t late, but somehow none of the cafes attracted me. Which meant that I washed up on the beach of Uncle Solly’s

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New York Deli, as many famished mariners have done before me, and he recognised my expression instantly.

‘Heartburn, dollink?’ he asked, gesturing at one of his nephews. Yossi, I think. The young man began to mix something in a small glass. ‘You drink down a glass of Uncle Solly’s Infallible Heartburn Cure and you feel better in a sprinkling.’

‘Twinkling, Uncle Solly,’ said Yossi patiently. ‘I’ve told you before.’

His uncle shrugged. ‘Sprinkling, twinkling! Then maybe we get you some real food, Corinna. You been eating that pagan stuff again?’

‘Not by my choice,’ I said, gulping down the chalky white mixture and then a sparkling red mixture. The result of which was to immediately damp the fire in my stomach and then to make me burp. Uncle Solly beamed all over his face and two of his chins wobbled with delight.

‘There! Good,
nu
? The cranberries give it body. Now, what you want? You eating alone?’

‘Yes,’ I said sadly.

‘No,’ said Yossi. The shop doorbell tinkled and Daniel came in.

‘I thought I might catch you here,’ he said, panting. ‘You walk fast!’

‘She was poisoned with pagan spices,’ reproved Uncle Solly. ‘You do that to a woman, she walks fast. And away from you,’ he added, pointedly.

‘I know, it’s all my fault,’ said Daniel impatiently. ‘I’m so sorry, Corinna.’

‘You wait a moment before you forgive him,’ advised Uncle Solly. ‘Let Yossi make you a malted. You want a milk-shake, Daniel?’

‘Yes,’ said Daniel, sinking down into one of the fancy wicker chairs which Uncle Solly says are good for the customer’s behind, which must be considered as well as his stomach and his soul. ‘Yes, please. And can Yossi make me a heartburn cure as well?’

‘For you,’ said Uncle Solly with a broad gesture, ‘the world.’

He went to the back of the shop to yell at another nephew. Yossi compounded drinks without comment. The city rushed by outside. I sat with Daniel and did not speak.

In due course I sipped my malted, which I had not tasted since I was at school. It was lovely. The embers of the spice-induced fires went out. Daniel was holding my hand in the one not occupied with a glass of chocolate milk and ice cream. I was suddenly, blindingly, happy. I did not trust my voice.

Finally Daniel ventured, ‘If you can actually forgive me, I can sort of explain.’

‘You don’t need to,’ I assured him.

‘Yes, but I want to,’ he said. ‘I have told Georgie that I am not coming back to sleep in the flat while she is there, so she should make some other arrangements as soon as she can. I didn’t realise that she wanted to buy into your business or I would have told her that she hadn’t a chance. But she didn’t ask me. I could have told her that she didn’t have a chance with me either, being spoken for, but nor did she ask me about that. She didn’t mean to insult you. She just doesn’t understand people at all. Never has. I think it’s part of being a Sloane. And I have let her hurt your feelings and scald you with wasabi and I am so sorry.’

‘Apology accepted,’ I said.

‘Nice phrasing,’ approved Uncle Solly, popping up from behind the tall fridge. ‘Spoken for—I haven’t heard that in

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years. Not since my Aunt Miriam told my father that she was spoken for and he said, spoken for what? You mean you talk too much? It took days to sort it out.
Nu
, lovebirds, to important matters. What you want for dinner?’

We settled for pimiento cheese sandwiches and salads and wedges of orange and poppyseed cake and ate them watching the city walk past. I began to feel tired as well as very happy.

‘Good night, Uncle Solly,’ I said gratefully. ‘I never had an uncle, can I adopt you?’

‘Gladly, an honour,’ he said. ‘Now, niece, you better let this lout walk you home. After,’ he added markedly, ‘he takes off his adornments.’

I looked at Daniel. Daniel looked down. We all began to laugh. He was wearing a frilly, blue-checked gingham apron.

When we got back to Insula the building was quiet, and we lingered in the atrium, watching Horatio watching the fish. He wanders out through his cat door occasionally and sits on the edge of the impluvium, favouring the goldfish with a stare which stops just short of being hungry. Unlike, for instance, Lucifer, who dives in to try and catch them on the fin, or the Professor’s delicate little black kitten Nox, who has a deep atavistic appetite for anything piscine. She has been known to dive from a height onto a seafood pizza and wrestle the prawns off even before the box was fully opened. The Professor does not like to risk her near the pool, in case she falls in. My personal view was that Nox was as tough a feline as one was likely to meet in these post-sabre-toothed times and that, if she fell in, she would come up with her sweet little fangs full of fish.

Horatio, of course, has no need to hunt. Unlike the Mouse Police, his job description is limited to amicable coexistence with the other tenants, pleasant companionship, not clawing the curtains unduly and, when necessary, beating up Mrs Pemberthy’s rotten little doggie Traddles. He stood up and greeted us politely and followed as we went up the stairs. I had tucked myself under Daniel’s shoulder, where I fitted as if measured by a Chinese tailor.

‘That was a dangerous thing I did,’ said Daniel slowly.

‘Hmm?’ I was watching Horatio absorbing his evening milk.

‘Introducing Georgie into the flat without warning you. I had forgotten what she’s like. But she never wanted me before,’ he said, a little plaintively.

‘Tough,’ I replied. ‘Perhaps she only wants you now because you are spoken for.’

‘Possibly. But I might have lost you,’ he said, hugging me closer.

‘No, not lost.’ I had thought about this and I held him at arm’s length while I explained. This was important. ‘You might have driven me away, but who is to say that I would have stayed away? Takes more than a six-foot supermodel with blue eyes and golden curls to defeat me. Unless I was sure that you wanted her, not me,’ I said, watching him closely. He made a mosquito-banishing gesture with his free hand. Georgie, had she seen it, would have folded her tents and gone to Docklands without further notice.

‘Corinna!’ He kissed me. ‘If you do not yet believe in your superiority over Georgiana Hope in every possible way, I shall have to convince you again.’

‘Convince me,’ I said, and held out my arms.

He slid forward, unwrapping my shawl, and kissed my bared throat. I shuddered with desire. We shed clothes as we ran for the bedroom, eager and laughing and gasping and

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laughing again. Tripping over knickers. Tearing off buttons. Oh my sweet Daniel.

The strange thing about sensuality is that it clears the mind. At least, it cleared my mind. Once I had recovered some breath and untangled myself from a sheet which was behaving like an amorous boa constrictor, I laid my cheek against my lover’s broad, spice-scented chest and suddenly everything was obvious and bright and the landscape of my mind was illuminated with understanding. Unfortunately, I then fell asleep, exhausted by passion and relief.

Sunday morning announced itself with the scent of coffee and the absence of both my lover and my cat. When I fumbled my way into the parlour I found that the two of them had been sleeping on the couch. Someone had been out and bought croissants and the Sunday paper and had put on the coffee. Then, presumably exhausted by all that effort, they had gone back to the couch for one of Horatio’s little naps. They were so decorative that I sat doting upon the footstool, watching them sleep. The snuggly cat under the outflung, relaxed hand of the man. Daniel’s other long, sensitive hand over his eyes. His bare chest and...mmm ... thigh exposed to the cool morning air. Long, smooth, muscular thigh . . . early sunlight glazing his shiny chestnut hair, growing out of its severe cut. So beautiful.

Today was a day for answering questions. But it was also a day for being happy. I wasn’t aware of how unhappy I had been until it was gone. It was like the absence of a backache to which one has become inured by years of ouches. Then one makes an unwary movement and is not immediately punished for it. Takes getting used to. Delightful.

I showered and dressed in a gown and floated out to eat croissants and apricot jam and read the paper until my cotenants woke up.

The paper was so depressing. Climate change, wars, pollution, logging catchments, using unrefined brown coal, all that stuff we told them about ages ago and only now was it sinking in with Catastrophe not just knocking but kicking the door down—oh, you mean no water? And we need this water stuff to survive? Duh, as Kylie might have said. Not to mention snipers, war in the Middle East looking like it might spread to the Far East, which is us, bombs, cruelty to immigrants, mean penny-pinching grudgingness worthy of the 1834 Poor Law which made Charles Dickens so incandescent, anti-terror laws more terrifying than the terror—aargh! I just want one grown-up in parliament, just one. Or maybe two. I wouldn’t want the only one to die of loneliness. One person who will not take a party line of safe in-between wishy-washiness, who will say, this is evil, this is wrong, not only that, this is silly, I won’t support it... And since I am not going to get a person like that, I turned to the literary pages and the film reviews instead. If fact wasn’t acceptable, what’s wrong with good old fiction?

I don’t go to films much, preferring to wait for the DVD so I can snuggle up on my own couch with my cat and stop the film when it gets scary or I need a loo break. Or speed it up if it gets boring. Cinemas almost never allow one to do this. Also, I have got into the very bad habit of commenting on the action and plot, and this can get one hissed at in a public place.

I was just wondering whether tickling a sleeping lover came under the heading of improper conduct when Horatio rolled over and yawned in that appealing tongue-curling way

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which means that a cat is extremely happy, and Daniel opened his eyes. He yawned too, but his tongue did not curl.

‘I fell asleep waiting for you to wake up,’ he explained drowsily, accepting my kiss and adding a few more for interest.

‘Why were you sleeping on the couch with Horatio?’ I asked, moving out of his embrace only as the desire for more coffee became paramount.

‘In case I had another nightmare,’ he said, very seriously. ‘I would never forgive myself if I did actually ...you know. React badly. Horatio will just scratch me to the bone if I startle him.’