Queen of Flowers (5 page)

I heard a voice within the tavern cry

‘Awake, my Little ones, and fill the cup
Before Life’s Liquor in its Cup be dry’.

Edward Fitzgerald

Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

Phryne saw the flower maidens on their way. Diane’s aunt arrived to collect her. Joannie’s father had sent a car which also took Marie. Rose gave a wave and walked off down Fitzroy Street toward the sea. Mr Butler, in the Hispano-Suiza, escorted Miss Fisher home.

‘How are things in the house?’ she asked him, catching the sensible hat before it took off for King Island.

‘Much better, Miss, quite quiet. The young ladies have completed their tasks and Miss Dot took them out for a brisk walk. The flowers are all settled and Mrs B thinks they are going to look very pretty. The aprons are all hemmed and ready to be delivered to the rectory. Oh, and Miss Jones left her reading glasses behind. Would you wish me to restore them to her?’

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‘If you please, Mr B. Poor woman, no wonder she loses things. I ought to buy her a nice handbag. One of those huge ones with steel bugle beads and bells and tassels, so she can’t misplace it.’

‘Where would you find a thing like that?’ asked Mr Butler, honestly puzzled.

‘Oh, I am sure that it will be found at the great bazaar,’ said Phryne. Mr Butler had never read Flecker. This had not incommoded him in life so far. He did not expect it to hinder his further career, either. Mr Butler did not approve of poetry.

He drove Miss Fisher home, sedately.

The brisk walk sounded like a good idea to Phryne, who had lunched well. She put on her walking shoes and made good time down to where the sideshows were set up, all along the sands outside Luna Park. The Catani Gardens were thronged with the gawping multitude and Phryne slipped through them like a knife through butter, gaining the pavement and slowing to a stroll. She took a deep sniff of that ozone which people went all the way to Skegness to inhale, and coughed on a lungful of what tasted like saccharine fog.

Ah, Turkey lolly. A child’s delight and a diabetic’s dark fantasy of spun, unnaturally pink sugar. Or unnaturally green.

The choice was up to the client. Both were probably equally venomous. She could also smell animal dung, ice cream, wet canvas, diesel exhaust, fresh paint, a shock of orange peel and—

yes, faintly, but there—the smell of the sea.

Voices clamoured around her. ‘Three shots a tanner!’ ‘See the Wild Man from Borneo!’ ‘Toffee apples! Toffee apples!’ It was like the street cries of Old London, without the ‘Gardy-loo!’ of falling ordure and the ‘Stop thief !’ which had enriched the originals. Phryne slowed, happy to walk off her lunch in such interesting environs. She halted by the ‘’ot pies! ’ot pies!’

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vendor to buy one for a thin, slavering child whom she judged had missed out on too many breakfasts.

The performers had set up rows of little ex-army tents to accommodate the extra staff and hangers-on, there for the festival, and from one of them, in the middle, someone was playing a tune on a violin. Not so much a violin as a fiddle and not so much a tune as a catch. Phryne had heard it before.

A long time ago and far away—no Australian or even English connection—a very simple little tune. Very evocative of—what?

Something emotional; the impact was the same as unexpectedly identifying the scent of a lost lover’s hair in a dark room.

She stood like a small, very fashionable statue in a sensible straw hat for several minutes, rummaging furiously in a mind which appeared to have entirely lost its card index.

And the unseen fiddler kept playing, the same little tune, over and over, and still Phryne could not remember where she had heard it, or what it meant. Except it meant something to her.

She came out of her trance at a tug on her elbow. It was the thin boy for whom she had bought a pie. His eyes were alight with faith and his grubby hand was attached to her sleeve. A smaller version of the same child was kept at his side by main force.

‘Miss? Miss?’ the child was asking. ‘Buy one for me brother too? Miss? Please?’

The violinist now swung into a sugary ragtime version of

‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’. The strange trance melted. Phryne shook herself into order.

‘What do you want?’ she asked the child. Then she surveyed the hopeful look in the hungry brother and handed over a sixpence. The children of the poor. Here they were, the objects of the Lord Mayor’s benevolence. Thin, whippy kids,
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hollow of eye and cheek, scrubby of hair, fast with a fallen apple or a misplaced penny, fleet on their hard little bare feet.

Phryne refrained from patting either of them, but nodded, and they nodded back. Someone had taught these two that they could catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. This boded well for their future as sellers of bridges and proprietors of three-card tricks.

‘Thanks, Miss, real nice of you,’ said the elder boy, before he dived on the pie vendor and demanded produce.

Phryne looked at her watch, realised that the admirable Mr Xavier must be awaiting her, and hurried away.

What was that tune? And why had it the power to stop a self-possessed young woman in her tracks like that? She tried to hum, and then to sing it, as she walked as briskly as any Swedish exercise manual might require back to her own house.

By the time she arrived at the door she was fairly sure that she had the tune, but it didn’t resemble any song which she had consciously heard in the last few years.

She took off her hat and went into her own parlour.

A young man rose easily to his feet as she entered.

Mr Xavier from Xavier’s Cellars was always worth looking at. He was a tall, willowy young man with carefully tamed dark hair who was invariably dressed in faultless gentlemen’s wear.

His suit today was grey, his shirt would have put a snowdrift to shame and one could have shaved in the gloss on his shoes.

His family owned a wine importing business which supplied both Phryne and most of the luxury hotels in Melbourne.

Compared to the Windsor, her orders were minuscule and could easily have been done by telephone from a catalogue.

But Xavier’s Cellars sent Mr Xavier himself every three months to restock Miss Fisher’s wines and spirits, and she appreciated this courtesy.

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Besides, they had the best wine and Mr Xavier gave the best advice. He might have been almost too exquisite a young man if it wasn’t for his infectious enthusiasm and unaffected love for his subject. As Phryne sat down he was already easing the cork from a bottle wrapped in a white cloth. Mr Butler was actually prepared to allow Mr Xavier to open a bottle of wine in Miss Fisher’s parlour (Mr Butler’s own particular domain), a signal mark of favour.

‘Do try this, Miss Fisher,’ he urged. Phryne, like the virgin sturgeon, needed little encouragement to drink French wine.

She took a refreshing sip. Ah, bliss. Oh, rich, golden, grapey, wonderful.

‘A mouthful of summer,’ she said, opening her eyes on his delighted smile. ‘Whatever is it?’

‘It’s sauterne, as you can tell, of course, and it’s the best I have ever tasted. Best my father has ever tasted, he says. The 1921, Miss Fisher, from Yquem. Take another sip. Just enough sharpness, not too sweet, but that honey scent . . .’

‘Exquisite. Ten dozen.’ Phryne paused to give a great wine its due. One could not rush a good sauterne. She noticed that Mr Butler had provided a large plate of salted nuts, sliced raw vegetables, water biscuits, cheese and sprigs of watercress.

Mr Xavier set down his glass and wrote down the order.

‘Our uncle in France has arranged the chateau bottled Bordeaux, as you requested, Miss Fisher. I entirely agree that there is all the difference in the world between mis à cave and exported in a tun. Terrible things happen to wine on its long voyage to Australia, Miss Fisher.’ He took another sip of sauterne to comfort himself. ‘Barrels get left in the sun in India.

They get rolled into icy warehouses in Europe. They get forgotten in shanties in the tropics. They get loaded under salted fish in the North Sea. Not to mention the pilferage and
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the chance of shipwreck. I’m always amazed that we get anything drinkable out of France at all. And of course, times are hard in the Champagne, there were the riots in 1911, of course, and now both the Russian Revolution and that obscene American social experiment mean that the farmers are tearing down the vines to plant potatoes. In fine
terroir
! In Champagne earth! Potatoes!’

‘Terrible,’ said Phryne. Given his profession and his passion, Mr Xavier could not be expected to approve of Prohi-bition. Of course, if the farmers could not sell the grapes, they could at least eat the potatoes, but that was no comfort to someone watching a century’s viniculture vanish behind the oxen and plough. Mr Xavier pulled himself together with the help of another sip of wine.

‘I think it was twenty of the Chateaux Margaux? If you were thinking of giving a small card party, say?’

‘Why would I do that?’ asked Phryne. ‘But a small party, yes. I have too small a house for large gatherings. I’ll need, say, three dozen of the Lafite—or maybe Latour?’

‘Both?’ suggested Mr Xavier, and Phryne laughed and agreed. She was always a sucker for chutzpah. One could hardly be overstocked with good wine and it was not going to go off for about fifty years. Phryne could drink a lot of wine in fifty years and intended to do so. With relish. She nibbled a piece of raw carrot.

‘Mr Butler will tell you all about the spirits. English gin, of course, the usual liqueurs. Whatever he wants. I never enquire into any trade’s secrets. What were you telling me about a new cognac?’

Mr Xavier brightened and went so far as to lean forward, preserving the immaculate creases in his trousers without apparent effort. This was a young man who would be able to
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slide down a mud bank in his long johns and arise without a stain. Phryne suppressed a giggle.

‘Oh, the ladies’ cognac? It was made during the War, when the men were away and some of the usual ingredients could not be had. The women ran the distilleries themselves with whatever labour and fuel they could find so as not to waste the vintage.’

Phryne nodded. Winemakers would much rather spill their own blood—or someone else’s, for preference—than their wine. And women did what women had always done when they were left with a farm or a vineyard or a castle to run. They did the best they could. And sometimes they found a better way, by the exercise of desperation and mother-wit.

‘Rumour says that it may be something quite extraordinary.

Perhaps an advance order? They should bottle it in about twenty years. And as for port, the 1878 Dow is absolutely excellent.’

‘I leave the port to Mr Butler. But if he chooses something else, put in a bottle of the Dow. Oh, yes. Courvoisier & Curlier Freres, do you have any more of their Grande Fine Champagne cognac?’

‘I may be able to find a bottle or so. For an especially favoured lady.’

This young man is definitely flirting with me, thought Phryne, and very nice too. Young men who said it with grande fine champagne cognac definitely had an edge over those who said it with mere chocolates.

‘And if you are packing a picnic for an evening’s pleasant gambling, Miss Fisher, you might like a case or so of the Pol Roger, a little less expensive and very palatable.’

‘I don’t gamble,’ said Phryne. ‘But I do have a picnic planned. Very well, the Pol, and if the guests don’t like it they
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can bring their own. Thank you so much for coming, Mr Xavier. It has been a pleasure, as always.’

Mr Xavier got to his feet easily, bent over Miss Fisher’s hand, and followed Mr Butler to the kitchen to discuss port.

Phryne was just slipping into an idle meditation on the sadness of having a whole open bottle of superb sauterne and no one to share it with when Mrs Butler showed Lin Chung into the room and the day improved markedly.

‘Do have a glass of this wine, Lin dear, it is really good,’

she said.

‘Thank you.’ Lin sank down onto the arm of Phryne’s chair and sipped. ‘Lovely!’

He leaned over and kissed her. His mouth tasted of wine.

His lips were soft. Phryne pulled harder and Lin slipped from the chair onto the floor, where she could put both arms around his neck and kiss him properly.

Or rather, improperly. Lin came up for air a few minutes later completely dazed.

‘If that is the effect which sauterne has on you, Jade Lady, I shall have to lay in a few thousand bottles.’

‘You didn’t even put down your glass,’ complained Phryne.

‘I was ambushed,’ explained Lin. He put down the glass.

‘I am now entirely at your ladyship’s disposal.’

‘Mmm,’ said Phryne. Flirting with Mr Xavier was pleasant, but Lin Chung was ravishing. He was slim and well dressed and beautiful and skilled, and he kissed extremely well. Also, he smelt exotic. Lin Chung’s skin always carried a faint hint of saffron and cinnamon as well as the Floris honeysuckle he wore to remind himself of Phryne. Phryne finally released him with a small nip to the throat, returned his glass, and allowed him to sit down in a chair.

‘The girls will be home soon,’ she explained.

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‘Where did this wonderful wine come from?’ asked Lin, smoothing his ruffled hair. ‘You wouldn’t open a bottle this good just for yourself.’