Cooking the Books (17 page)

‘Corinna! You open again? Got any bread?’ he asked.

‘Not open as such, just doing a little cooking for a friend. Sorry. But here’s a loaf of my special seed bread just for you.’

He demolished the whole loaf in two bites, said, ‘Sweet,’ and was about to wander away when I laid a hand on his forearm. I might as well have tried to detain a lorry but he stopped out of politeness.

‘How have things been going?’ I asked.

‘Good,’ he told me. ‘Daniel’s been out every night, looking for Pockets’ documents. Poor old Pockets! And Spazzo’s in the bin. Pockets is a bit lost without Spazzo. But he’s been trotting round the city lately. Seems to be on a mission. Well, most of them have missions. We do what we can, and God knows their poor minds,’ said Rui, channelling Sister Mary.

‘Have you got any idea where he hides his documents?’ I asked. Rui shrugged, an interesting movement which reminded me of tectonic plates colliding.

‘No notion,’ he said. ‘Could be anywhere. He gets about, the old Pockets does. Bye,’ he said, and went.

‘I didn’t know humans grew that big,’ breathed Bernie.

‘He must have eaten his carrots,’ I agreed. We finished up the baking. The Mouse Police resumed their nap on the old flour sacks which are their preferred bed. The carrier’s whistle—‘Hotel California’—sounded outside. We loaded up and were about to leave when Daniel hove into view. He drooped. I had never seen him droop. I embraced him.

‘What is the matter?’ I asked, concerned. He leant his head, briefly, on my shoulder, then I felt him nerve himself to stand up straight again.

‘My client is in hospital,’ he said evenly.

‘That’s bad, what happened?’ I asked.

‘She tried to kill herself,’ he said. ‘Luckily she wasn’t very good at that, either. Poor Lena. Not that she didn’t warn everyone. Posted her suicide note on Facebook. Poor girl! I’ve got to sit down.’

‘Shall I come too?’ I asked. ‘Bernie, can you get the stuff packed? Tell Tommy I’ve been detained by an emergency. Come on, Daniel, up we go.’

I hustled him inside and up the bakery steps towards my apartment. Behind me I heard Bernie ordering Hotel California to lend a hand with the bread. Tommy would just have to cope without me for today.

Daniel was protesting that he didn’t need any help but I ignored him. I stuffed him into the bathroom and, as I assembled comfort food, heard the shower going. Good. Washing did not cure anything, but it did make you feel better able to cope. What would assist in the way of comestibles?

I had the very thing. By the time he emerged, damp and sweet-smelling, I had chicken soup on the table. Just as his mother would have made it: luscious, delicately spiced and strong. I watched as he drank it, first reluctantly, then greedily. Greedily was good. I zapped another batch in the microwave. Chicken soup is a cultural artifact. Also, it tastes good, which is more than you can say about a lot of cultural artifacts. Cathedrals, say.

Daniel began to talk. At last. His voice was scratchy and reluctant.

‘I got the phone call just as I was coming back from another night trying to track Pockets. I swear he is as elusive as a whiff of ozone. I lost him several times. He just wanders, you see, even he doesn’t know where he is going, so I can’t guess and get ahead of him. Tiring. Still no idea where his depository is. Then Lena’s mother called me. She had no idea that Lena was in trouble. She was very angry.’

‘With you? It’s hardly your fault . . .’ I ventured.

‘Justice does not whisper to an angry and affronted mother. Lena took a whole lot of pills. It’ll be a couple of days before they know if her liver is affected. She hadn’t said a word to her parents about how unhappy and bullied she was.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s the same response as I’ve seen in women who have been raped. It’s the rape of the soul, not the body, bullying. The bullied are ashamed. The idea is that if someone manages to bully you, then you must be an unworthy person, at fault because you can be bullied. I know—not logical.’

I thought about this for a while as Daniel sopped up the last of his chicken soup with some of my sourdough.

‘Like beaten wives,’ I offered.

‘Exactly. Oh, if I could get her bosses to myself I’d . . .’

‘Tell me,’ I said, sitting down and folding my hands.

‘I’d remember some of my Israeli army training,’ he told me. ‘In unarmed combat. I was quite good at it,’ he added. ‘There are some holds which are exquisitely painful.’

‘It would do them good,’ I said.

‘Probably, but then they would just squeal the time-honoured bullies’ justification: “It was just a joke, can’t she take a joke?” And then—’ He stopped.

I prompted, ‘And then?’

‘I would have to kill them, and that is just so illegal. That was wonderful soup. I feel much better. Shouldn’t you be getting on with your job?’

‘Not for the present. Tommy will manage and I could do with a day off. I’m supposed to be on holiday, remember?’

‘You show very little sign of it,’ he observed. ‘Well, I’d better be going.’

‘Where?’

‘The hospital. I need to see my client. And with any luck I won’t encounter her mother.’

‘I’ll come too,’ I offered. ‘I can distract the raging parents.’

‘Corinna,’ he said. Then he put up a hand and stroked my cheek, very gently. ‘You don’t need to, you know.’

‘But I am going to,’ I said, kissing him.

I hate hospitals. Worthy places, of course, needed and valued. It’s the smell. They smell so clean, so unhuman, with that atmosphere of antiseptic hand cleaner. No smell, in fact, of bread. And the decor is depressing, institution green and cream . . .

This hospital was made up of an old building married to a new building. You can tell by the floors, which vary slightly according to their composition; old concrete or new concrete. I was trying not to read the signs on the walls when we came into the six-bed ward and saw Lena.

Despair had not treated her well. In complexion she was grey, with a tinge of green. She was connected up to a drip on a stand by the back of one hand and her eyes were closed.

Sitting beside her was a thin woman in a pink summer suit; impeccably accessorised, well-jewelled, with a Portsea bob and a pair of expensive shoes. Gucci handbag. Oh dear.

She rose when she saw us and scowled. I took her by the arm.

‘A word,’ I said. ‘I am Corinna Chapman and I need to talk to you about your daughter.’

‘Why?’ she snarled.

‘Because I have been in her position and I might be able to explain.’

‘All right,’ she said tightly. ‘It’s a mystery to me! Why didn’t she leave, if they were bullying her? Why didn’t she stand up to them? She’s always been soft, like her father. I always tried to make her stand on her own two feet. He always just hugged her and told her it would be all right.’

‘And her father . . .’ I left the sentence to trail off. She took it as a question.

‘Gone,’ she snapped. Excellent dentistry. Must have cost a fortune. ‘He fell in lust with his assistant and took off. Two years ago. Men! But I wasn’t going to let him have the pleasure of seeing me crack.’

‘No, of course not,’ I murmured, drawing her further away. Daniel had sat down next to Lena and taken her hand. She had opened her eyes and was crying. I could see the light reflected off the trails of tears on her face. So young. I turned my attention to her mother.

‘So she never told you anything about work?’

‘Just the usual. I have my own business—he didn’t get that in the settlement!—and I work long hours. I saw her occasionally. She spent most of her time in her room. She’s never been good at making friends. Not even girls from school, and that school cost us a fortune. And of course she’s—’ she lowered her voice as though about to impart some deep depravity ‘—fat. I tried. I took her to specialists and sent her to fat camp. Her father always used to feed her chocolates and cream cakes. Junk food. She still eats it when I’m not around to control her.’

I was beginning to dislike this woman. No wonder Lena had been easy to bully. Judgmental, controlling, emotionally distant mother. Missing father. Though I could understand why he had run away. I would have run, too. They tell me Patagonia is nice at this time of year.

‘She didn’t say a word?’ I probed. She didn’t even wince.

‘Not one word. But she’s always been weak. Not like me.’

‘No,’ I agreed. ‘Not like you. Well, I must be going.’ I edged away.

Just as I thought I had escaped the mother, in came Tony, the athlete from the night before at Lorca’s. He was wearing a suit but he was bouncing in his expensive handmade Italian loafers as though they were Reeboks. I greeted him and he looked at me out of the corners of his eyes, as though a full-size Corinna might be too much for his delicate sensibilities.

‘Camilla, is it?’ he mumbled. ‘What are you . . . ?’

‘Just visiting,’ I said. ‘You?’

‘Came to see how our young colleague is,’ he said uneasily. ‘Of course. We are a caring profession.’

At first I just didn’t know what to say to that, then I couldn’t say what I wanted to say, so I stood silent and hoped that he should find something organic swimming in his mung beans. Cockroaches, say. Doing breaststroke. He wouldn’t get fat- aversion shock from Mrs Lena, so I unashamedly handed him over to her.

‘Your daughter’s employer,’ I introduced him. ‘I’m sure you have a lot to say to each other.’

I left as the lady began on a rant which mentioned ‘anti-discrimination law’ and ‘workplace bullying’ in a very satisfactory manner and went over to Lena and Daniel.

‘I won’t stop looking until I find them,’ I heard Daniel say. He patted the girl’s hand. On impulse, I leant over and kissed her wet cheek.

‘You can live through this,’ I told her. ‘I know. Been there, done that.’

‘You have?’ she whispered.

‘I have,’ I told her. She closed her eyes and almost smiled.

Daniel and I left the Royal Melbourne and started to walk home. It was so good to be out of the hospital and into the street that relief kick-started my mind. I remembered the rest of ‘Rain, rain’.

‘Let’s pick up a taxi,’ I urged. ‘I’ve got an idea.’

‘Good, because I am all out of ideas,’ said Daniel. ‘That was kind of you.’

‘It was nothing,’ I told him. The taxi started in the direction of the art gallery to a merry litany from the driver on how dreadful it was to follow his profession. I listened respectfully because he was right. Taxi-driving is dangerous in the same way as being a prostitute is dangerous. No choice of clients and out on the street late at night. We wished him well in his media studies course and disembarked.

‘Well?’ asked Daniel. ‘Why are we here? Short course on European classical portraits? Actually, that might be rather interesting.’

‘Not today. Look at the main window.’

Water,’ he said. ‘It’s a water wall. Always flowing; water on glass. Generations of children have got soaked checking out that it is real wet water. And it is.’

‘Rain, rain, go away,’ I sang, ‘come again some other day. Rain, rain, go to Spain, never show your face again . . .’

And there was the parchment, swept into a neat pile by a uniformed labourer. He was a little taken aback when we dived on and scattered his pile of old leaves and litter.

‘I got lots more,’ he offered affably. ‘If that floats your boat.’

‘Just this one,’ Daniel told him. ‘Thanks anyway.’

We bought gelati from the van and unfolded the note.

‘Oh no,’ groaned my beloved. ‘More riddles!’

‘
You will find me on Pook’s Hill
,’ I read. ‘Pockets has abandoned nursery rhymes and advanced to Kipling. Puck of Pook’s Hill. Wonderful book. Have you read it?’

‘Of course. Along with
Just So Stories
,
Rewards and Fairies
,
Kim
and
Stalky and Co.
—a rather unnerving collection, by the way. Do you have a copy?’

‘Naturally. Come on home, and we shall have a light lunch, a rest, and Kipling. What could be better?’

‘I keep thinking about that poor girl,’ confessed Daniel. ‘Her despair. How she must have felt to do such a dreadful thing.’

‘I know you do,’ I said and stroked his cheek.

‘When you told her you had been there and done that, did you mean . . . ?’

‘Not suicide, no, not as such. But I thought about it,’ I told him. ‘I thought about it a lot. I was a lowly apprentice baker, and the boss was a darling, but his son—I still have nightmares about George. Though rarely,’ I assured him. It is easier to impart biographical details when eating lemon gelato, I found. I had never spoken to Daniel about this. Or anyone, really. I took a sustaining lick and went on. ‘George hated me because Papa liked me. He’s taken over that bakery now, I hear. That’s what he always wanted. He tormented me. He was powerful. Like Lena, I had an ambition. I wanted to be a baker more than anything. He would sabotage my recipes, put salt in my yeast cultures, fill my shoes with flour. He never went past me without a pinch or a tweak or a grab at a breast. There was nothing I could do about him. Papa would have believed me but George would have got me. He had powerful friends, he said; I should expect my grandparents to be tortured and killed if I crossed him. He might have done it, too, it might have been true . . . I have never felt so powerless.’