Devil's Food (12 page)

So I took a nice leisurely shower and carried my nice leisurely cup of coffee onto my balcony, where there is always something to look at in Calico Alley below. People crossed Flinders Lane and dived into my alley, intent on Kiko’s Japanese food or Babka’s Russian doughnuts or perhaps to buy stamps or coins or find the back way to Centreway Arcade. Or maybe to get in out of the rain. A fine, soft sleet had begun to fall, or rather float past. I appreciated my fleecy tracksuit and my furry boots and the heat of my drink. I finished the coffee and was just wondering whether I should go down to the shop when there was a ring at my bell and who should be at my door but Mrs Sylvia Dawson.

Mrs Dawson had been a famous society hostess, known for her good works and generous nature. Then her husband died. She got sick of being a public person and decided to come and be a private one in Insula, where she improves our education by wearing the most beautiful clothes. She was wearing a gorgeous bitter-chocolate cashmere sweater and ochre trousers over her signature Russian leather boots. She is a small, upright, elegant lady and I still find it hard to call her Sylvia.

‘Ah, Corinna. I have an invitation from Jon and Kepler for drinks this evening at six,’ she said. ‘They seem to have a problem which they want to share with us.’

‘Who us?’ I asked.

‘Meroe, Dion, Daniel, you and me,’ she replied crisply. ‘How are you, my dear? Jason said you were feeling … unwell.’

I hoped that Jason hadn’t told Mrs Dawson that I looked like shit. Not that she would have turned a hair if he had.

‘I’m fine now. I just had an overdose of other people’s misery and couldn’t sleep.’

‘Ah yes, it can take you like that sometimes,’ she said. ‘See you tonight, then.’

I made a note on the hall table diary, in case I did forget, and then I let myself out of my apartment and went down the stairs. Insula has a very impressive entry hall, called an atrium. It has Pompeiian red tiles and copies of wall paintings and a fishpond (an impluvium) with a rather artfully censored statue of Priapus. I sat down on the garden seat and watched the fish. Horatio likes doing this too, when he can slip out of my front door. He hasn’t managed to catch one yet but both he and the fish know that once he gets his paw in they are going to be entrees, and it makes them anxious.

I sat there until Trudi found me. She was on her lawful occasions, coming down to feed the fish. Lucifer was riding on her shoulder. He sighted a fish, leapt down, and slid sideways into the pond in a skilled and seamless piece of klutzery which Mack Sennet’s Keystone Cops could not have bettered. The waters closed over his furry little head, but in an instant he was up and cat-paddling after the fish, which, after a moment of astonishment, had decided that elsewhere was a good place to be. I was laughing so hard that my sides were beginning to ache. There was something so earnest about Lucifer. Whatever insane thing he did, he did with his whole heart and right now he was bent on being the first aquatic fishing feline in Australia. Even though he had to keep stopping to sneeze importunate water out of his delicate nostrils. When he stopped paddling, he started to sink, then paddled twice as hard to catch those fleeing, golden, impertinent tails always just out of claw-reach.

‘You think he could catch one?’ asked Trudi, grabbing for the end of the leash and preparing to drag, in the manner of a Japanese fisherperson and tame cormorant.

‘I really couldn’t say,’ I temporised.

The fish had worked out that this predator was confined to the surface and had dived, but who could say what Lucifer might take it into his head to do? Trudi hauled and Lucifer left the briny deep to hang dripping in the air, still swiping with both front paws. She put him down on the edge to drain. It’s amazing how much water even a small kitten’s coat can hold. Lucifer shook his head, sneezed an absurdly shrill sneeze, wiped at his bedraggled whiskers, then spun around to stare down into the water at the fish, who had risen to sneer at him.

‘No you don’t, my boy,’ said Trudi, restraining him before he dived in again. ‘You are wet enough for two cats. You hold him, I’ll get a towel.’

Trudi’s cart, a groaning wagon loaded with whatever might be needed in a building this old, was parked near the goods lift, which only she understood. Ever since Lucifer’s advent she had stocked her wagon with salad oil, for removing paint, chewing gum and tar from fur, betadine for scratches when Lucifer became overexcited, bandaids ditto, disinfectant and kitchen towels in case he forgot himself in a corner, towels and soft cloths and a cat cage for when she couldn’t secure him to anything solid and she had to do something dangerous — climbing a ladder with a Lucifer free to roam under the feet, she told me, gave a whole new meaning to the word ‘perilous’.

I wound the leash around my hand, for although Lucifer was a lightly built animal, he had a lot of torque when he threw himself into things. He had given up on the fish and was beginning a rather ineffectual wash when Trudi wrapped him in a coarse towel and began to rough-dry him. He took this as an invitation to play a few rounds of shred the towel. Just watching him was re-energising. I got up. Somehow I felt fine. I could remember the events of the day before but they no longer had that deadly weight which had borne me down. Look out, world, I thought, Corinna’s herself again.

Such was my faith in the Daniel and Jason partnership that I did not look into the bakery — well, I peeped around the corner and saw that people were going in and out, loaded with bags. The boys had obviously managed famously and I wasn’t going to bustle in at the last moment and take away their triumph. So I decided to visit the girls, who might, by now, have recovered from their collapse.

But first I had to do something about the pitiful relics we had found by the waterside. They were too revolting to take to a drycleaner in their present state. They were presently sulking in a black garbage bag in Calico Alley, where at any moment they might cause me to be summonsed for polluting the environment. I had an outside tap, didn’t I? In that very same alley.

I went around the building, emptied the garbage bag and rinsed it, then laid the handmade garments and blanket down in my gully-trap and rinsed them and soaped them with the stuff I use on the floor. The initial effluvium wasn’t pleasant but soon the cloth began to smell less like sewerage and more like wet wool. I wrung them out as best I could and went into the bakery through the unlocked alley door. I stuffed the waterlogged refuse into the washer without being noticed, added a large amount of wool wash and set the machine going.

I was pleased. That job had seemed just too hard before I was sent back to sleep off my attack of the horrors. Now I had done it without a hitch. Reminding myself not to be cross with the boys about the unlocked door, I let myself out again and went along the lane to see Meroe. Perhaps the girls ought not to be disturbed.

Belladonna waved a languid paw as I went into the Sibyl’s Cave. She was lying in the window, perfectly black, perfectly supine, batting at the Celtic charm for longevity which hung over her nose. I greeted her politely. It is never a good idea to treat a witch’s cat disrespectfully.

Meroe’s shop is very small and completely stuffed with occult paraphernalia. If, for your divination, you want a sheep’s shoulderblade or yarrow stalks or tarot cards or runes (three different types), beautifully bound copies of the I Ching, a computer program to cast horoscopes or a nib-tipped pelican feather to write spells to Poseidon in aquamarine ink, you will find it at the Sibyl’s Cave. At the sort of prices which make me feel that I am in the wrong business, I might add. Though this is justified by the expert advice you get along with the goods. Meroe would never let anyone use the wrong fern seed for their love potion. She was talking to a thin young man in a Metallica t-shirt.

‘Never heard of it,’ he was saying, in the the voice of someone who was scared enough to be punctilious with the truth. ‘Makes no sense, Lady Meroe. Look at the combinations.’

‘I know,’ said Meroe. ‘But it’s not entirely random. Not as though someone just grabbed a handful of herbs. There is the diuretic dandelion, the purgative cascara.’

‘ And the croton and the wormwood. Not to mention the aloes and the valerian.’

‘And the belladonna and the bearberry,’ concluded Meroe.

‘With just a touch of juniper berry. I never heard of the combination before,’ he said again. ‘But if I find out anything, you will be the first to know. Blessed part,’ he said. He took up a bag of herbs and passed me on the way out. He was just managing not to run.

‘No one has ever seen anything like it,’ said Meroe, blowing out a frustrated breath. ‘Hello, Corinna, you do feel better.’ Meroe always knows.

‘Yes, I do. One thing you know about this recipe, Meroe.’

‘And what is that?’

‘The girls will have taken an overdose of it. Their motto is if one drink is nice, two will be nicer. Ergo, if one pill is good, two must be better. How much is a wineglassful, anyway?’

‘Half a cup,’ said Meroe absently. ‘You are right. And that does date the recipe. After the Second World War people started analysing herbal medicine on a scientific basis. Standardising doses is a sensible thing to do if you want to test whether something works. So Europe went into teaspoon, tablespoon and cup measures or ounces, and America too. And now it is all in mls or mgs. Someone’s mother’s recipe, perhaps, badly copied from a grandmother’s handwriting, possibly translated from another language and some of the herbs misidentified.’ She fiddled with a tray of shining crystals, polishing them with the end of today’s bright yellow shawl. ‘That happens a lot, even now. And it’s worse if you are trying to use an ancient recipe. The Hippocrates school tended to say “everyone knows what this herb looks like” or if they were being really accurate, fine it down to “tall green marshland version of this herb which everyone knows”. It drives reconstructive archaeologists up the wall.’ Amethyst crystals cast tiny purple lights on her hands, green lights on the shawl.

‘And would they have taken an overdose?’ I asked, wanting my point accepted.

‘Is the Goddess powerful?’ asked Meroe.

Fortunately I didn’t have to answer that question. If she was, how could she defend her treatment of dying Sharelle, Nyrie and the baby?

Meroe went on. ‘Those two could believe that a wineglass was the size of one of those brandy balloons they have in their apartment. Blonde to the brainstem,’ she added. ‘Sadly.’

‘I was about to visit,’ I said. ‘Are they fit for callers?’

‘Yes. Take them some more ice cream. I’ve told them to stay in bed today and eat cool things. They have mint tea and Yai Yai Pandamus made them lettuce and pine nut eggplant rolls for lunch. All cooling things. They should be back at work tomorrow. Luckily it’s such a foul day that no one would want to be going out. Are you dining in?’

‘I thought of taking Daniel and Jason out to the Japanese place as a reward for all their hard work.’

‘A good idea. But we have drinks with Jon and Kepler at six, remember? You can take your helpers out tomorrow night. Have these salad leaves — you know they don’t taste as good the second day after they are picked.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. Meroe’s salad leaves are rushed into the city by express broom from some fairy garden. One day I must ask her where they come from. As I left the Sibyl’s Cave I noticed that Bella had turned over in her glass case and was now a perfect round cushion of black fur, with only a delicate thread of black whiskers to differentiate her from a construct, puppet or pyjama-case. Unless, of course, one was unwise enough to sit on her …

Goss answered the door, squeaked at the sight of a tub of double chocolate marshmallow fudge ice cream and led me into their parlour, where they were watching re-runs of
Buffy
.

They were a touching sight. They had shed their surface sophistication. On the huge white sofa Kylie reposed, teddy bear at her side, Tori on her lap, both the teddy and Kylie wearing pink flannelette pyjamas patterned with little red hearts. Goss, returning from the kitchen with three bowls and spoons, an ice cream scoop and the tub of ice cream on a tray, boasted identical jammies, though her teddy bear was clad in a frilly pinafore. Goss gave me the tray and laid herself down again. Tori stretched, got off Kylie’s lap and moved to Goss’s. The two girls were lying with their feet into the middle of the sofa, so that each of them had an arm to lean on. The coffee table in front of them was littered with DVDs, CDs, and a tea tray. I could smell the bracing scent of mint.

‘Tori is having a lovely day,’ I commented, digging out ice cream with the scoop and distributing it with a generous hand.

‘She sits on me for an hour,’ replied Kylie, ‘then she moves to Goss for an hour. She shares herself out equally and she really gets cross if one of us upsets her timetable. I tried to hang on to her last night and she scratched me and came out here and slept on the couch until it was Goss’s turn.’

‘You can’t compel cats,’ I agreed, handing over the ice cream. ‘How do you feel?’

‘All right,’ said Kylie. ‘Meroe says the poison is out of our systems and we just have to stay cool and we’ll be all right. She says that poison is hot.’

I thought about food poisoning I had contracted, about a mouthful of wasabi which had once unexpectedly infected my sushi, about how sea-sickness feels. Yes. All hot. Hot and nauseating. I nodded.

‘Meroe knows everything,’ said Goss dotingly.

‘Except where you got those herbs,’ I said. The two of them looked at each other and plied their spoons busily. They looked so delightful, little red tongues coming out to lick up the frozen treat, that I almost forgot about my question. But not quite.

‘Come on, ladies, this stuff is dangerous. People might die. You need to tell someone, so why not me?’

‘I s’pose …’ Kylie said, as though the words were being tortured out of her.

Goss was putting a spot of ice cream on Tori’s nose to see if she liked double chocolate marshmallow fudge. A lightning lick informed them that she did. I had to step in before Tori filled herself up with forbidden substances.