Devil's Food (15 page)
‘They never worry me,’ she said with blithe unconcern, ‘because I never worry them.’
I didn’t recognise it as a principle, but it certainly worked for Sylvia Dawson. She called out a thank-you to Jason for his muffins and walked serenely on, perfectly self-possessed, on her way to a luxurious breakfast with her conscience. I really ought to persuade her to adopt a cat. Once you have a cat, you don’t need a conscience.
On cue, Horatio appeared at the inner door, ready to sit on the counter and amuse the customers. I hurried through to open the shop door and take down the shutters and there was Goss on the doorstep, freezing in her pink coatee and short skirt, but otherwise looking very healthy.
‘How do you feel?’ I asked, examining her carefully. Her eyes were bright, but not too bright, and she seemed to be much as usual. That is, underdressed and blue of knee.
‘I’m fine,’ she said dismissively, handing me her mobile phone. I am not an unreasonable woman. I don’t ask that she does something unthinkable like leave the phone in her apartment. I just ask that it be switched to voicemail and stored on a high shelf in the shop. ‘Can I smell apricots? I love apricots. Jason? Gimme a muffin?’
I heard Jason’s slightly shocked, ‘Sure,’ as he handed one over, still warm from the oven.
‘All right if I have a cup of coffee?’ Goss asked, picking up a staff china cup in one hand and the coffee pot in the other.
I nodded, amazed. Usually those two eschewed the bakery’s produce as though it was carefully spiked with strychnine before it left the oven. Goss sipped her (admittedly black with no sugar) coffee and nibbled her muffin with evident enjoyment while Jason and I watched. Even Horatio seemed a little taken aback. He leapt up on the counter and began a complex operation which seemed to involve polishing each whisker separately. Goss finished the muffin and put down the empty cup.
‘We’ve been talking, Kyl and me,’ she explained. ‘We could have killed ourselves with those leaves, Meroe says. And we took too much. We really felt horrible. We’re used to feeling hungry but that was something else, it was gross. We were really sick. And so we thought, we’ll just follow the CSIRO diet. That says I can have a muffin if I want one. And I wanted one. And it was really nice,’ she added, a little defiantly. ‘The almonds taste real good with the apricots.’
‘Thanks,’ said Jason, sensing female emotions about to erupt and fading in to the bakery to do the orders. I heard Megan’s rickshaw bell in Calico Alley. I had to handle this very carefully. Any strong reaction might drive Goss right back onto the famine diet. Equally I was delighted that they had seen sense and the sight of Goss nibbling her way through that muffin had done my heart good. So I settled for a one-armed hug, which she accepted, and a ‘Well done, Goss!’, which didn’t seem to arouse any adverse response. People complain about the difficulty of taming bears and tigers. They should try adolescents. All a bear can do is bite off your arm in a friendly way. Adolescents can harrow your soul.
The soup steamed, the bread piled up on the shelves, the public arrived out of the chill street. It was one of those odd Melbourne days when early morning is bright and sunny, so that you need sunglasses for the glare. Late morning would bring clouds and by afternoon it would either be (1) raining or (2) freezing or (3) both. That’s why the sunnies and the mac are essential on any day in our great city, where there are four seasons in one day. If there were six seasons, there’d be six. It’s what makes Melburnians so quick on the uptake and resilient, able to adapt to change.
Though it still doesn’t explain or forgive Federation Square, the covering tiles of which are the exact same colour as the faded kitchen lino that Grandma Chapman kept thinking of replacing … years after year. And what sort of idiot would make such a space without any shelter from rain or shine, in a climate like ours? But I have never understood city planning, and I still haven’t recovered from what happened to the Paris end of Collins Street. I just know Mr Hoddle wouldn’t have stood for it.
People loved the apricot muffins, though there were demands for the chocolate orgasm ones, which were Jason’s masterpiece. I called in to the bakery and he promised them for Monday. Jason’s art is ever-expanding. I am in awe of his talent. Who would have thought that a genius for concocting new muffins lay under that scruffy ex-heroin addict exterior? While he was still having counselling every Saturday I knew that it was cooking that had salvaged Jason from the scrap-heap. That and his own strong will.
I could hear Megan’s engine as she hauled the rickshaw round into Flinders Lane. There went the orders, the rye bread for Cafe Vlad Tepes and Le Gourmet, the pasta douro for Ristorante Spoleto and Bistrot Provence and Taverna Prasima Ble. It was satisfying, imagining my bread being moved all over the city, supplying luncheons and dinners, mopping up every delicious sauce from squid ink to rich tomato to Greek lemon. However good the food, the restaurant must have good bread. In a pinch, one can do without the wine, but never without the bread.
I had been dreaming, I think, standing at the bakery door, when Jason backed abruptly into me and stood on my tenderest corn. This has been known to break a dream state and I shoved him off my foot.
‘What?’ I asked a little harshly, favouring the throbbing toe.
‘It’s them creepy dudes,’ he whispered.
‘All right, I’ll do the creepy dudes and you help Goss,’ I said. He was really disconcerted, I could see. I went to the alley door and saw his point.
Two people stood there. I could not tell if they were male or female, partly because they were so thin and draped in black robes but mostly because they had hoods over what I believed were shaved heads.
‘Yes?’ I asked briskly. I was not going to be outfaced by a costume. A rag, a bone, and as Kipling didn’t say, no hank of hair. So to speak.
The first person spoke in a low voice, neither masculine nor feminine. ‘Our order,’ it said.
‘Of course.’ I took out the seven loaves of famine bread and began to pack them in an Earthly Delights cardboard box. The two stood perfectly still, waiting. They were uncanny and I somehow did not want to turn my back on them, though I did. I packed carefully. If I hurry I get clumsy and I did not want to extend this visit by having to start again.
In a shiny window in front of me, I caught sight of the first robed person’s face. He had lifted his head, now my back was safely turned, and the hood had slid back. It was an arresting face. My hands faltered on the greaseproof paper as I looked at him. The face of an ascetic or a saint, I thought. Pale skin, not very lined. Dark brown eyes, impossible to read. A suave cheek and jaw, closely shaved. And the red mouth of a voluptuary, aching to be kissed. Dark shadows under the eyes. A compelling, beautiful, somehow tragic face. Then he caught me looking. The eyes flashed, the hood was pulled back into place, and I made my final knot and turned around to put the box into his hands.
If I still blushed I would have blushed, but I don’t so I didn’t, which was a mercy. The hoods inclined a little towards me, in what might have been a bow, and they went away down Calico Alley. From behind, the robes looked archaic and threatening. I don’t know why. I had seen monks’ robes before. I fanned myself with the order book and made another cup of coffee and sat down. Jason looked in from the shop.
‘You see what I mean?’ he asked. I nodded, still fanning.
‘Real creepy dudes,’ I agreed. What a face! What a tormented, tragic face! And what, yes, what had that Savonarola countenance to do with an order of monks?
The man who was not yet a murderer leaned against the wall and bit into his knuckle. It was too much. They couldn’t ask him to do it. No human could bear this. No one.
I had just recovered by the time Daniel arrived. He dead-heated two policemen. Well, well, what could they want? It was Kane and Reagan, slouching into the shop and ogling Goss. Who, admittedly, was ogling them back.
‘You keep bad company,’ one commented to me, glaring straight at Daniel.
‘A druggie and Daniel,’ said the other.
‘Yes, aren’t I lucky?’ I said cheerfully, aiming to annoy. Nothing drives a bully up the wall like not noticing that you are being bullied. ‘What can I do for you, gentlemen? Offer you a muffin?’
‘Nah,’ said Reagan. He was chewing a massive wad of gum like a cud. ‘Not going to eat anything made by a druggie. You been asking about a bloke called Chapman,’ he said to Daniel.
‘Yes,’ he agreed.
‘Why?’
‘He’s missing,’ said Daniel.
‘And he’s my father,’ I concluded.
They seemed a little taken aback.
‘Oh. Right. Well, he was in the Royal Melbourne overnight a while ago,’ said Kane, carefully not telling me the date. ‘Exposure and shock. From immersion. Know anything about that?’
‘Only that he was thrown in the river by some bad acquaintances,’ said Daniel.
They had not yet taken their eyes off each other. This was one of those coded conversations in which both sides knew and meant a great deal more than they were saying. Now was not a good time to ask for a decode.
‘Any chance of evidence?’ asked Kane.
‘Not a chance,’ said Daniel.
The cops shrugged. ‘Too bad.’
‘Yeah. Where did Chapman go when the hospital discharged him?’ asked Daniel.
‘Where d’you think?’ asked Reagan, giving his chewing gum an extra chomp.
‘If I knew, I wouldn’t have to ask,’ Daniel replied patiently.
‘I’d quite like to know as well,’ I put in. I had no patience with this
High Noon
dialogue. Unless Clint Eastwood walked in to continue it, of course. That would have been different. Both sides of the conversation, having forgotten I was there, jumped.
‘Oh, yeah, well,’ said Kane, the younger and more sensible. ‘The Salvos. Haven’t been able to trace him from there. Is he a nutcase, your old man?’ he asked me, not meaning any offence.
‘Oh yes,’ I said with resignation, ‘by now he almost certainly is.’
‘We’ll keep on it,’ Kane assured me. ‘When we got the time. So long,’ he added to Daniel. ‘Don’t get in our way.’
‘I’ll try not to,’ said Daniel politely.
Kane and Reagan left the shop, which immediately seemed larger. I was expecting Daniel to be angry but he only laughed. ‘Idiots,’ he said. ‘They’d be good investigators if they lost some of the attitude. Still, there it is. He who lives may learn. I just came in to remind you that we are going to that club tonight and Mistress Dread has your new dress.’
‘Oh, yes.’ I had forgotten. But nothing was going to make me miss a chance of wearing one of Mistress Dread’s dominance dresses. Every fat woman ought, once in her life, to wear one. I had worn the borrowed blood-red taffeta number to a vampire club and several times after, and it was remarkable. But I wanted a dress of my own and Mistress Dread had had her ‘little man’ make one for me. Oh, goody.
I was so cheered by this prospect that I decided to go and see how my mother and the admirable Therese were getting on, as soon as the shop closed, before the dress fitting and an afternoon potation and little nap. But when I rang the doorbell, it appeared that no one was at home. I wondered what Therese had done with Starshine, and decided that I didn’t care. Now for Mistress Dread and the dress.
For fat women, clothes are a constant pain and a constant reproach. Not for us the luxury of taking an armload of garments and working out which one flatters our figure or emphasises our broad beam. Not for us the plaintive ‘does my bum look big in this?’, a silly question because our bums look big in everything, because they are big. We are confined to the chain stores plus sizes, which tend to the blue crimplene in which, I have instructed, I am not even to be buried. Or the specialists, whose clothes are lovely but expensive. It would be so nice to join the crowds ferreting through the Dimmey’s sales and getting two dollar trousers. But it is not to be. A good general rule for fat women is, if you like it, it will be too small. Therefore, having a dress made expressly to one’s own measurements is a wonderful thing.
I gave Goss back her mobile phone, saw Jason off with a large goody bag to stave off night-time starvation, let Horatio into the apartment and went out into the lane, to the front door of Mistress Dread’s shop, which sells leather goods for the discerning customer.
The salon is hung with ivory and gold and looks like a very upmarket dressmaker’s. There are large books on the coffee table, the contents of which are rather R rated. There is a scent of leather in the air. Mistress Dread is fully six feet high, and her usual working attire consists of fishnets, spike heels, a red or black leather corset, spiked collar and whip. Oddly enough, she has never been robbed. Jason says that some of his erstwhile druggie friends broke in one night and all Mistress Dread had to do to utterly undo them was smile. They broke the land-speed record in the direction of Flinders Street and retired into private life, swearing to be good. But she is a firm friend to me and Daniel and I won’t hear a word against her. Today’s corset, I saw, was red, and her cascading wig was fire-engine red to match.