Devil's Food (13 page)

‘You mustn’t feed cats chocolate, it makes them sick. We’ll give her some cream in a moment. Where did you get the herbs, Kylie? Were you together?’ That was a silly question.

Goss raised her eyebrows and decided to answer. ‘Oh, all right. We were in the new goth site. Cafe … what’s the name, Kyl?’

‘Vlad,’ replied Kylie. ‘Vlad something.’

‘Tepes?’ I asked, pronouncing it correctly as Tepesh.

Goss swallowed her mouthful with voluptuous enjoyment which did the heart good to see. ‘That’s it. It’s a nice straight cafe by day and by night it goes all goth and dark and creepy and we like it because there are new people there. Gay boys. Lesbians. We make bread for them. Remember that weird little guy who came into the shop and wanted to check that you were … er …?’

‘Fat,’ I said. They might mouth obscenities but nothing was going to make either of them say the forbidden word. ‘I remember. So you were at Cafe Vlad Tepes and someone was selling this weight loss tea?’

‘Sort of like that,’ said Kylie. ‘Except not really.’

Well, that made everything crystal clear.

‘What happened, then?’ I asked, unwisely settling back into the white chair. It racheted backwards and a footrest came up and collected my ankles. Within moments I was reposing with the ice cream tray on my bosom.

I struggled upright to deposit the tray on the table, but then sank down into the octopus-like embrace of the chair again. I’d tried to hurry the story along and the girls had got confused. Better put it on track like a toy train and just lie back and wait for some facts to chunter past. Tori snuggled down between Goss and her teddy, which looked almost unbearably cute.

‘We were dancing,’ she said. ‘Me and Kyl. With a couple of gay boys. They were gorgeous, eh, Kyl? Gorgeous. Cut. Like they spent every day in the gym. Then I realised that we knew one of them.’

‘Went to school with my brother,’ affirmed Kylie. ‘Aaron. My brother is called Aaron, I mean. The gay guy was Tobias. Real slim. We got talking about ways to lose weight, and they said exercise every time, it wasn’t weight it was body mass, and we said we didn’t want to look like those body-building girls, and then Toby said he stayed thin with this weight loss tea, but you couldn’t buy it anywhere. So we said, how did you get it then, and he said you had to know a witch.’

‘Spooky,’ said Gossamer. ‘You’d think he was talking about drugs. So we asked a bit more, you know, and he wouldn’t tell us, and then he got cranky and went away. But his mate Bo was still dancing with us and he said he’d get us a packet and we could try it. But it was going to cost us.’

‘And the next night we were there and I handed over my fifty and he gave us the packet,’ said Goss. ‘Simple as that. We made up the infusion like it said and took it like the instructions said and it nearly killed us. Just wait till I see that Bo again! Or that Toby!’

‘Hang on,’ I said, soothingly. ‘How much of it did you take?’

They shifted uneasily. Tori looked from one girl to the other. They seemed to wither under her regard, or mine. Or maybe both.

‘Didn’t know how much a wineglassful was,’ confessed Goss, ‘so we just drank a cup each. A big cup. Or maybe two,’ she said shamefacedly.

‘So it might have been safe enough if you hadn’t OD’d on it,’ I said. ‘No need to go looking for Bo or Tobias. Meroe’s on their track and they’ll be really, really sorry when she lays hold of them. And she will. If it’s about herbs, she knows everyone in this town. They must be getting their ingredients somewhere and some of them are quite hard to find, she says. Well —’ I levered the controls so the chair let me sit up again — ‘it’s been fun. Stay warm and I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘After you give Tori her cream,’ Kylie reminded me. Tori had already sprung to the floor and was posing by the kitchen door, looking fluffy. She seemed to be able to do fluffy on demand. She was a cat of many talents, all photogenic. I fed Tori her cream and departed.

When I came downstairs again Earthly Delights was shut. My own apartment was empty. Missing also was the esky and Horatio. I gathered up the gin bottle and an extra glass and ascended to the roof garden where, in the Temple of Ceres, I saw two exhausted labourers recruiting their strength with beer, pickled onions and doorstop cheese sandwiches. Daniel was more than a touch floury round the edges of what must have been my big apron, and Jason was scrubbing one hand through his hair, recently freed from its cap. They were both slumped on the padded marble bench as though they had been stonecutting since dawn. Beer flowed down their parched throats.

One not at all exhausted cat rose politely to his paws and greeted me, his welcoming mew somewhat damped by his mouthful of cheese.

‘Corinna, I don’t know how you survive a day’s work,’ said Daniel, moving over on the bench. ‘Jason works like a slave but it is still a good day’s work for a wharfie or a moderately overloaded water buffalo.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, putting down the gin, finding some ice and tonic and pouring myself a drink. ‘You must have done very well — when I looked in the place was full of people.’

‘It was a good day, and I am extremely pleased that you are going to be doing it tomorrow. How are the girls?’

‘Sitting up and taking nourishment in the form of ice cream by the oodle,’ I replied, sipping my drink. It hit the spot. ‘They will be back tomorrow. Anything unusual happen?’ I asked Jason, trying not to sound like I was nagging him.

‘Nothing,’ he said, suppressing a yawn. He put the yawn in its place with a huge bite which comprised two pieces of bread, a chunk of cheese and a whole onion. ‘All the orders went out, the flavour of muffin was that peach one I’ve been working on — I added some almond essence and it tasted ace. I kept one for you. Daniel made me,’ he said, disarmingly. ‘The famine bread blokes came and collected the stuff. Two of them. In brown robes, hoodies, weird. Never saw their faces. They don’t like paying extra for delivery. You’ll see ’em tomorrow. Daniel didn’t take to them either.’

‘No, I didn’t,’ said my beloved, crunching a pickled onion. ‘Good onions, Corinna. Made or bought?’

‘Made. I have a pickled onion binge every autumn. Autumn just seems to say “pickles!”. Great-grandma Chapman’s recipe. Thank you for today, gentlemen. You did very well.’

‘Our pleasure,’ said Daniel. ‘Since it was my fault. And, as I say, it is probably just as well that I understand how hard you work.’

‘I was going to invite you out to dinner, Jason,’ I told my munching apprentice. ‘But we’ve been invited for drinks at Jon and Kepler’s. So how about a small donation so that you don’t have to cook tonight?’ I pressed a twenty into the hand which wasn’t full of sandwich.

Jason grinned. ‘Ace. I’ll go to that all-you-can-eat buffet, the Violet House. Last time they let me take a doggy bag home,’ he said.

I caught Daniel’s eye and laughed. The only way that an all-you-can-eat buffet could break even with my Jason in the dining room would be to send him home while there was still some food for the others. Cooks had been known to sob in the face of Jason’s appetite.

He finished his beer, put the bottle back into the esky, shook crumbs off himself and slapped Daniel on the shoulder. ‘We make a great team, dude,’ he said, and went out, fingering his twenty and envisioning just how many garlic prawns he could manage before either the supply gave out or the management begged for mercy.

I snuggled into Daniel’s side and pinched a piece of bread, cheese and pickle. Daniel hugged me. He smelt pleasantly of almond essence and honest toil, as well as his signature spicy scent. Horatio leaned against him from the other side. We were being kept balanced on that bench by harmonious forces alone. I bit into the pickle. Perfect. I must make some more next autumn.

‘I’m so sorry about that Braybrook house, Corinna,’ he said, his big voice rumbling against my ear, which was pressed to his chest.

‘You couldn’t know I’d react like that,’ I reassured him. ‘I didn’t know. Nothing to forgive. And very educational for me. Let’s change the subject. I’ve been talking to the girls, and they said they got the herbal tea from a man called Bo, who is the bosom friend of a man called Tobias, in Cafe Vlad Tepes. This is, as you will recall, a polite Rumanian cafe by day and a hangout of goths and vampires by night.’

I explained how the girls had obtained the tea. ‘And, of course, they took octuple doses, so maybe the stuff isn’t actually that toxic if you take it by the wineglassful,’ I added, listening to the odd gulp of Daniel finishing his beer, heard from chest level. ‘Meroe still thinks it’s an abomination and is trying to find out whose old family recipe it is. She suggests that it was inadequately translated from (possibly) Aramaic, using herbs which are (probably) now extinct.’

Daniel laughed gently. Then he stretched. So did Horatio, first front legs, then back legs, then curving tail. By pure emulation so did I. Much less gracefully.

‘We need a shower and a nap if we are to get to drinks with Jon and Kepler in our right minds,’ he suggested.

‘Nix on the shower, but I’ll join you in the nap,’ I said brazenly, running a hand up under the back of his baker’s sweater and against his matchless skin. He jumped in a gratifying fashion.

‘I’ll take the esky,’ he said.

‘And I’ll take the cat,’ I said, picking up Horatio so that he sat, paws over my arm, able to observe his surroundings.

‘And I’ll be in bed before you,’ he said.

But he wasn’t. Horatio and I had been lying in the soft gloom of our boudoir for quite ten minutes waiting for him to get the flour out of his hair. Then he came in and threw himself down beside me, and Horatio withdrew courteously. And my world was full of spicy scents and strong hands and deep kisses. No one could ask for more.

The man who was not yet a murderer slapped the elastic band against his wrist and it broke. It was the third one he had broken today.

CHAPTER EIGHT

We made it to Jon and Kepler’s door with seconds to spare. Suspiciously breathless, a little flushed, anyone would have known what we had been doing, but did I care? If I had met my mother on the stairs I might have found out how much I still cared for her opinion. But I took the lift and missed the chance and I was content enough to miss it. Meroe smiled, the Professor beamed, and Jon and Kepler welcomed us in.

I had always liked this apartment, which was draped, hung, painted and knick-knacked with fascinating things from Foreign, as I used to call it when I was a child. Wherever his strict conscience and donated money had taken him — landslides, earthquakes, collapsed bridges, civil wars, religious conflicts — Jon and his indefatigable workers had brought clean water, new livestock, seedlings, language lessons, kindness, compassion and understanding. And they had come home with trade agreements, garments woven in traditional patterns with traditional dyes, pots made of clay or wire or iron and intricate baskets to sell to the discriminating buyer. And on one such trip, Jon had encountered Kepler, a beautiful, elegant, willowy Chinese man who adored him, and was adored, on sight. Seldom does virtue get such a prompt and impressive reward.

They were so charming together that they even softened Mrs Pemberthy, who had looked sad, hauled in Traddles and gone away when she saw them sitting in the Temple of Ceres, holding hands and drinking tea from tiny little cups. No one had ever had that effect on her before and she had to conduct a shrill ten-minute argument with Trudi about where to plant her tulips to recover from it.

Professor Dion was already holding a glass of his favourite Côtes du Rhône wine, and Daniel and I hastened to join him. Mrs Dawson, in her chocolate coloured cashmere, was drinking sherry and Meroe was tarnishing her chakras with Marlborough Sound sauvignon blanc, nectar of the New Zealand gods. I almost regretted my Côtes du Rhône when I saw that bottle. Kepler was drinking something colourless in a small glass and Jon was in agreement with us on the value of red wine as an antioxidant. The table was covered with a turquoise, silver and black batik of butterflies and bore little dishes of cocktail munchies in mixed Asian and Mediterranean style.

Daniel and I rather hoed in to the treats. We had been exercising hard and making love always makes me hungry.

Mrs Dawson took a curry puff and bit it precisely in two without showering herself with crumbs, something which I would have put good money on as impossible. The old school of society hostesses learned hard lessons. I bet that she could get out of a sports car gracefully, too. And with her stockings intact. She was listening to Professor Dion, who was talking about Nox, his kitten.

‘What’s remarkable about cats,’ he said, ‘is how very flattered one must feel by their freely given affection. If they are not in the mood for a caress, they slide out from under it. If they don’t feel like being polite, they won’t be. I am always honoured when Nox decides that she wants to sleep on my lap, because she has a whole apartment to sleep in and perfect freedom of choice.’

I finished my spanakopita and told them about Tori refusing to allow Kylie any fraudulent extra cat time. Everyone laughed.

‘And they are so different from each other,’ marvelled Daniel, allowing Kepler to refill his glass. ‘I mean, there is Nox, as dignified a creature as would ever have graced a Roman household and sat on a senator’s shoulder. There is Tori, who makes a profession out of … well, l don’t want to be unkind …’