Devil's Food (30 page)

‘But that’s such a lot of work …’ I began, overwhelmed.

‘Oh no, dear,’ said Mrs Dawson. ‘How will he know we love him if we don’t look after him? Why don’t we just pop up there now and see what needs doing?’

So we popped. Apartment 7B, Pluto, was fully furnished and needed very little work to make it a nice cosy nest for a sick boy. Meroe and I moved the TV into the bedroom. The flat was supplied with all the usual luxuries. We made the bed, put on the electric blanket, renewed the toilet paper and Meroe laid out her stores. We left her there making infusions and went downstairs to claim poor Jason. He had a bag of clothes, a collection of pills, a bottle of that frightful medicine which is supposed to taste of cherries and a diagnosis of bronchitis. He was staggering.

Daniel half carried him into the lift and supported him into the flat. There we put him firmly to bed. With Mrs Dawson supervising, Jason found himself sponged clean, clad in the former owner’s blue silk pj’s, and bedded down with four pillows and a comforter. His medicines were within, washed down by a strong lemon and honey drink. Meroe’s sweet rose-scented tisane was on his bedside table. He had the remote control under one hand. He allowed me to feed him a cup of thin beef bouillon. His eyes closed and he snuggled back into the pillows.

We started to leave, but he croaked and we looked back.

‘I thought you had to be dead to feel this grouse,’ he said, and then started to cough again. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Just. Thanks, I guess.’

‘We’ll leave the door on the latch,’ Mrs Dawson decided. ‘Now, if you want to talk to Cherie about some baking, Corinna dear, I’ll just tell Trudi what we’ve done with Jason and arrange with Del to have some of the Pandamuses sit with him for a while. This can be managed,’ she said, and went off to manage it.

I looked at Daniel.

‘What a woman,’ he said, anticipating my very next words. ‘Come along, Corinna, you need to see Cherie, then we need some food. I slept through lunch, and so did you.’

Cherie said that she would be delighted to rise at four and help me until Jason was better. She had been reunited with her father after a long and desperate time. Now they were beginning, ever so slightly, to get on each other’s nerves. Andy was mostly off the bottle and had just got a part-time job with a real estate agent. Cherie also needed something to do until her RMIT fabric class started in September. Baking might fill in a small gap and would be good experience. Even if it just instructed her that the last thing she wanted to be was a baker.

She agreed to go right upstairs and sit with Jason until Mrs Dawson got back with a selection of Pandamuses. She took her constant companion, Pumpkin Bear, with her. I was sure that Jason would find Pumpkin Bear consoling.

Everyone was getting involved. Jon and Kepler, concerned, said that they would provide tomorrow’s soup and company.

Mistress Dread, encountered on the stairs, agreed to go up late evenings when she came home from her dungeon and listen for coughing. Therese Webb, calling to find out if I had located Sunlight yet, tutted and said that she could always take her knitting and sit with the poor boy, now that Jacqui was so much calmer.

And then I remembered that I had indeed found Sunlight, and I would have to decide how to arrange the meeting of my two irritating parents so that neither of them would fly off the handle again. I was utterly fed up with both of them.

I hadn’t the remotest idea how to arrange this touchy rendezvous. I swore Therese to secrecy, told her the situation, and begged her to think about it. She said she would and departed, taking the royal dog Carolus for a walk. I watched his magnificent tail sweep past me as Daniel and I finally got back into Hebe and shut the door. And locked it.

‘Food,’ he said avidly. ‘Silence and food.’

I could not have agreed more. We ate most of the Cafe Delicious leftovers with gusto. I had rather overdosed on wine and we drank apple juice.

Then we went to bed and slept all night in each other’s arms. Sometimes you have to leave the world to get on with it all by itself.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I woke in luxury and bathed and dressed in pleasure and even the toast tasted better than usual. Daniel came with me as unskilled labour and we let Cherie into the bakery at four to begin Wednesday.

She knew nothing whatever about the work but she was strong and willing and we managed. Better than I had on my own, anyway. I instructed and directed until everything was humming or chugging, then wondered what on earth I was going to do about the muffins. Cast your burden upon the lord, Grandma Chapman had said — though only as a last resort.

‘Cherie,’ I said. ‘Here is a recipe. Make it.’

Daniel gave me a conspiratorial glance. There was plenty of time to make another batch if Cherie turned out not to be able to make muffins.

I opened the door for the Mouse Police to go out, and Cherie giggled at their turn of speed in the rain. It was almost sleeting down. There were little bits of ice in that rain. Ma’ani loomed up suddenly, making my new staff member squeak. He collected the bread for the Soup Run, asked about Jason’s health, invoked a prayer for all poor souls abroad this morning, and trudged off. The Mouse Police skittered around his ankles as they returned and flung themselves panting up the stairs.

But I had shut the inner door. They sulked down again and slumped to wash themselves on their flour sacks, which were not as comfortable as my blue mohair rug. If they weren’t keeping Jason company then they could stay in the bakery and do an honest day’s mousing, was my view.

Bread was happening. Cherie was beginning to understand the magical, alchemical process by which all that pallid dough transformed itself into the staff of life. She had mixed her apple and spice muffins and was watching anxiously for them to rise. I was sorting deliveries and drinking coffee when the day returned, the drizzle stopped and there was my security man expecting another free roll. I dragged him into the warmth by one surprised arm.

‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Do tell me your name and your address so I can get the cops off my back. You’re my alibi. And in return I will give you a free roll. Or would you prefer a muffin?’

‘The muffins smell very good,’ he said greedily. I like greed in a customer. He gave me a card with all his details on it and Cherie tipped one of her muffins into his cupped hands. He tore off a bit and gave his little salute.

‘Very nice,’ he said, and walked out into the dimness again. His name was George Venn and he had a respectable address in Caroline Springs. Also, I now knew who he worked for. That ought to detach Kane and Reagan from their theory about my criminality.

I sampled Cherie’s muffin. It was a good, workmanlike muffin, perfectly saleable. Not a Jason muffin, but one could not expect that. I complimented her skill and she blushed.

‘I like feeding people,’ she said breathlessly. ‘It’s a real buzz when they smile like that.’

‘So it is,’ I said, feeling benevolent.

And we did the day’s baking in good time, without any dramas. Kylie and Gossamer came in to operate the shop. I went up to see how Jason was doing as Daniel counted off the deliveries to the sick Megan’s temporary replacement, a gormless little brother who needed to be told everything twice. I heard Daniel instructing him for the third time where William Street was as I went up the stairs. If that bread got where it was going it would be a miracle.

I heard coughing as I opened the door. A gust of eucalyptus vapour met me. I love that scent. Even so one can have too much of a good thing. The scent came from a humidifier. Jason had breakfasted on cereal, it seemed, and was now lying back and breathing like a broken-down horse. I hated to see him so ill.

Ellie Pandamus came in from the kitchen with a cup of hot infusion.

‘He looks bad,’ she whispered. She is seventeen and intensely motherly. Her older sisters have to struggle to get their babies back from her.

‘No, he’s going to get better,’ I said firmly. ‘This is very kind of you, Ellie. Make sure you get some breakfast, too,’ I said.

I watched her feed the tisane to Jason without spilling it on him. She is a very good girl. Del is worried that she wants to be a nurse and thus delay marriage, but I can’t see Ellie waiting too long to find someone to give her lots of babies. She loves having something to look after. ‘How will he know we love him if we don’t look after him?’ Mrs Dawson’s words echoed in my head. After this, Jason would have to know that we all loved him.

I left Jason and began to walk downstairs. Watching that gentle girl had triggered all the things which had not been otherwise triggered and gelled the ones which had refused to gel. But I did not run this time. Sometimes revelations require planning.

Shamelessly, I left Daniel and Cherie with the baking. Nothing left to make but extra muffins — cheese ones, for the soup. Cherie could do that. Daniel could grate the cheese for her. I had to get into some respectable clothes and go calling on a mission. I had to get my parents back together but there was something even more important than that and if I did not go right now, I might miss my chance. I was repeating that quote about the tide in the affairs of men all the way up the hill to Exhibition Street. As Tolkien said in the voice of the hobbit Merry, too late was worse than never.

Reverend Father Thomas Hungerford hurt all over. His eyes were swollen shut, his bruises caught and stung as well as ached, and his broken fingers and broken ribs throbbed. He bit his lip. No one must hear him complain. These things were sent by God. He had been collected from the hospital and conveyed back to the castle. He knew the scent of cold stone and dust, and the wooden smell of his own office. No one had spoken to him.

He lay and ached and contemplated the measureless abyss of his unforgivable folly. Pride, it had been his own puffed-up pride: not discipline and austerity but vanity, vanity. He had walked away from love and comfort and all things human, seeking ever greater union with God by denying all of God’s gifts. His punishment would have been just if all his bones had been broken. His punishment would have been just if he was now standing, bodiless, shivering, in the whistling gale before the judgment seat. He had forgotten mercy, and compassion, and love, and Christ himself, and his soul had shrivelled to the size of a pea. He had brought this assault upon himself and he deserved it. Feed my lambs, the lord had said, and what had he fed them on but dry bread and bitter gall? Only repentance could justify his continued existence. And he repented with all his heart.

But now he could smell something other than cold stone. Something sweet. Flowers. Roses, perhaps? He put out an experimental hand and found that he was lying on a springy mattress, rather than his camp bed. The covers over him were light and soft, not the scratchy blanket of his own bed. He listened. Someone was breathing, quite close to him.

‘Brother Simon?’ he tried.

‘Brother Simon is minding the acolytes,’ said a voice. A female voice. He struggled up on one elbow and groaned, battered by the pain.

‘No,’ he began. A firm hand came down on his shoulder and pressed him back against the pillows. He knew that strength, too.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You drove me away once, dear Thomas, but you won’t drive me away again. I never forgot you. You never forgot me, either. My picture is on your wall. I did not know that you had been hurt until Corinna the baker came and fetched me. “How will he know you love him if you don’t look after him?” she asked me, and I had no answer. So I am here to look after you and I will not leave you until you send me away. Do you want to send me away?’

The voice was perfectly calm. This, he knew, was his moment of decision. His body shrieked with pain. His austerity was under threat. He ought to demand his camp bed and his old blanket and send this loving woman away. But it all seemed faintly ridiculous now, since he had seen his attacker and realised the magnitude of his own vanity. Human nature could not be forced too far from its path. No, he would accept her kindness. Her scent of roses.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Don’t go.’ He gathered his resolve and said, ‘Never leave me.’

She gave a sharp gasp. He wondered that she had so little faith in her own virtues. Then Sister Blithe lifted him up on her broad shoulder and gave him first a kiss, and then a cup of strong sweet tea. He had drunk it like that once, with milk and sugar. She remembered.

Tears pricked his wounded eyes as he fell asleep.

‘But how did you know?’ asked Sister Blithe as we sat down to more tea in the small room into which she had imported a real bed and an electric fan heater. With the door shut one could hardly feel the chill winds which whipped around the gallery.

‘He had your picture on the wall,’ I said. ‘The milkmaid Madonna. But it was because you both said the same thing — from your own perspectives. You said sadly that he had gone where you could not follow. He said that all human love was vain, transitory, and unreliable. So I decided that he must have become more and more distant and more and more like Savonarola and you couldn’t do that, Sister Blithe, really you couldn’t. You’re one of the world’s optimists.’

‘I am,’ she said. ‘Though it’s a philosophy that takes a bit of a battering in the real world.’

‘No shit,’ I agreed. This wasn’t a good time for optimists, what with politics and cruelty and detention camps. ‘I’d better go,’ I said. ‘I’ve left my bakery in the hands of the willing but unskilled. Will you be all right?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she said, with a smile that Raphael would have painted. ‘He will moderate and perhaps I will acquire more discipline. We shall do well,’ she said. ‘Come back in a week and see how we are getting on.’

‘Sooner, sorry,’ I said. ‘I have to bring my mother to see my father, who is working in the kitchen here. And I have to talk to Thomas as soon as he can manage it.’

‘Three days,’ she said placidly. ‘It’s Wednesday. Come back on Saturday and we shall arrange things.’

‘Deal,’ I said, and went home, full of tea and relief.

I had taken a huge chance, dragging that good woman out of her sunflower bedecked life and into the cold world of the Discarnates. But it looked like it might work out after all. I was so relieved that I shouted Daniel dinner at the Japanese restaurant which makes the very best sushi and sashimi, and regaled myself with teriyaki chicken, one of the world’s great dishes.