Cooking the Books (18 page)

‘So how did you survive?’ asked Daniel, slinging an arm around my shoulders and hugging me.

‘I had a profession already. I had other places to be. I was older, already at university. Lena is young, has no family support, and only one thing she wants to be. She’s trapped.’

‘Not anymore,’ said Daniel.

‘Yes, I don’t think that mother is going to let Mason’s off with a reprimand. A cheering thought,’ I said.

I ate the rest of the gelato. I felt oddly light. We collected a bento box—tori teriyaki, food of the gods, and sashimi for Daniel—and walked home to eat it and read
Puck of Pook’s Hill
. An enchanting prospect.

It was, too. Apart from the inevitable feline contingent who just knew that sashimi was designed by Basht to provide an essential food supplement for cats. Daniel did manage to get three-quarters of the delightful fish for himself. The cats got one piece each. Horatio ate his delicately, seeming to pause to murmur ‘From the Antarctic shoals, very acceptable,’ while the Mouse Police scoffed theirs with gusto and then polished their whiskers in case there might be a scrap left. To massed purring we completed our lunch and got down the book.

Puck of Pook’s Hill
was first published in 1906 and was written for the author’s children. I had visited Bateman’s, his house, and reading
Puck
now I could easily envisage the places. This added to our delight. I found that Daniel had been to Bateman’s too.

From the very moment that the children observed a ‘small, brown, broad-shouldered, pointy-eared person with a snub nose, slanting blue eyes and a grin that ran right across his freckled face’, the story caught and held the attention. We read through the book in the course of the afternoon, pausing only for tea and scones (we felt Dan and Una would have appreciated this) and occasional breaks for stretching. I wondered how Daniel—citizen of Israel—would react to Kipling’s Kadmiel, but he was not affronted. ‘Those were the bad old days,’ he told me. ‘With Kipling, you can always say that he wrote as he found. Like John Buchan. But Kipling was wrong about gorillas,’ he added. ‘He must have been reading Du Chaillu. It’s a lot easier to write travel books if you don’t actually have to travel.’

‘Just ask Sir John Mandeville,’ I agreed.

It was a lovely day. But it took us no closer to deciphering the clue which Pockets had left. Where was there a depiction of Puck in Melbourne? I could not think of a statue which might even approximate it.

Just as we were thinking about dinner, the doorbell sounded. Meroe looked surprised to see me.

‘Oh, Corinna, I didn’t think you’d be home,’ she said. Today’s wrap was bright red, always an ominous sign. ‘I would like you to deliver these to the girls, if you don’t mind.’ She thrust a wrapped package into my hands. ‘Apparently their part requires them to smoke, and I don’t want them started on cigarettes. These are herbal and they smell very sweet.’

I invited her in. She flopped down beside Horatio and ran her hands distractedly through her long, coarse black hair.

‘Tea?’ asked Daniel.

She nodded. He picked up one of her hands in passing and commented, ‘You’ve been in combat?’

Her knuckles were skinned and bleeding.

‘Just a little contretemps outside my shop,’ she answered. ‘Some boys were tormenting a poor old homeless man. I had to be quite firm with them. Fortunately the point police officer saw it all. He came along just as they were trying to be quite menacing, and swept them all up. He seemed amused.’

Daniel provided tea and I provided Betadine and Meroe allowed our attentions.

‘But, Meroe, weren’t you scared?’ I asked.

‘No,’ she said. ‘When you’ve been bullied as much as I have you cannot stand by and watch someone else being bullied, the Goddess would not expect it. And although I am firmly committed to pacifism, there are times when a right hook can solve many problems.’

‘True, true,’ agreed Daniel, also much amused. ‘Sometimes you have to make the offenders sorry; they gain merit by repenting their actions.’

‘I bet they’ve gained merit, then,’ I said.

Meroe is thin and not young, but she’s strong. And righteous rage can add strength to anyone. Spiritually aware Meroe in the zone could probably bench press a Volkswagen. Those little thugs would now know the meaning of pain, all right. I repressed an urge to cheer.

‘Who bullied you, Meroe?’ I asked. She sipped at her Earl Grey.

‘Everyone,’ she said flatly. ‘I was a gypsy. Daniel knows what I mean, don’t you, Daniel?’

‘Oh yes,’ he nodded. ‘Watch every shadow, examine every word before it comes out of your mouth. In case it gives offence. In case the bully is heavily armed.’

‘Whereas at school I worked out a method,’ I said.

‘Really?’

‘Yes, once they forced me to do their maths homework, I had them by the short and curlies. So I employed one bully to protect me from the other bullies.’

‘Ingenious. That’s why Kadmiel’s people lent money to the king,’ said Daniel.

‘It worked all right at school. Didn’t save me from George, though.’

‘It all depends on the nature of the bully,’ Meroe instructed.

‘That’s true,’ agreed Daniel. ‘I had a friend who was in Ravensbrück, darling woman, and when a Nazi hit her, she asked “Why did you hit me?” And then he hit her again, snarling, “Because you asked me why.” Under those circumstances there is nothing to be done but try to trust in God.’

This was becoming a little bleak for a summer after- noon. Meroe must have thought so too because she saw the copy of the book and said, ‘
Puck
? Why are you reading folk- lore, Corinna?’

‘It’s a book of stories for children which seems to relate to our treasure hunt.’ I explained about Pockets and his documents.

‘He has other names,’ said Meroe. ‘Robin Goodfellow, for example. I always thought that Ariel was a Puck figure. I shall think about it,’ she added. ‘Thanks for the tea.’

We farewelled Meroe and went to bed. I was shaken and in need of comfort and so was Daniel. We proved, in our flesh, that the world still contained delight. And hope.

Food and sex—such reliable pleasures. By the time we had risen, cooked pasta for dinner and discussed a couple of glasses of chateau collapseau, we were relaxed and able to think and then, of course, we thought of it. Puck. Of course. Not Kipling’s Puck but Shakespeare’s Puck. ‘I’ll put a girdle round about the earth.’ Not a statue but a mosaic. It was the work of a few moments to hustle into clothes and zoom down the elevator en route for Collins Street.

The peons were going home as we shoved against a tide of people, all connected to iPods or talking on mobile phones, all as unresponsive as that boy in
Woke Up Dead
. Above the street rose Ariel the Spirit from
The Tempest
, or was he Mercury? And the slogan, ‘I’ll put a girdle round about the earth’. Very impressive. Daniel found the parchment in the ironwork of a street tree. This time I was stumped.

‘
Old Mother Hubbard
,’ I read. I recited the rest to Daniel on the way home.

‘ “Old Mother Hubbard, she went to her cupboard to fetch her poor doggie a bone. When she got there, the cupboard was bare, and so the poor doggie got none.” ’

‘Sounds political,’ said Daniel. ‘Any ideas?’

‘No so much as a skerrick of an idea,’ I confessed.

‘Sufficient unto the day,’ he said, ‘is the brilliance thereof. What would I do without you?’

‘With any luck,’ I told him, ‘you won’t ever have to find that out.’

Then he created a traffic hazard by stopping and kissing me, in the middle of the street. The passers-by were not impressed and we were advised to find a room.

So we did. Luckily, it wasn’t far away.

We passed the evening pleasantly and Daniel went out into the hot darkness to follow Pockets. I put self and cat to bed and slept like a baby. Or perhaps a kitten. When kittens nap, they nap completely.

Morning announced itself in the usual way and I rose and did all the usual things. Bernie arrived and we began to bake bread and cakes; muffins and cupcakes of all kinds and stripes, which had to be done quickly because they had to be cool before Bernie could ice them. I shamelessly handed over the decoration. I have never had much patience with icing. I wasn’t any good at art class, either. And sugar is a difficult medium. When it doesn’t glaze, it crumbles.

Still, it tastes nice. I watched Bernie as she whipped fine sugar into egg whites. She was cool and efficient and her very clean hands moved with assurance. Yet she was so young! I was still dropping things at that age. She caught my glance.

‘Something wrong?’ she asked diffidently.

‘No, you are doing it right,’ I replied. ‘What have you in mind for the cupcakes?’

‘I made a lot of roses,’ she replied. I had wondered what those white cardboard trays contained. ‘They’re easy, really. I can show you if you like.’

‘Thanks for the offer, but I don’t get on with icing. Pity Jason isn’t here, he’d love to make flowers for his muffins.’

‘Your apprentice?’

‘Yes, he’s magic with muffins. But he’s on holiday. And, I hope, having a good time. He says he has a part-time job as a short-order cook.’

‘I’ve done that,’ said Bernie grimly. ‘It’s not cooking as we know it.’

‘So I’ve gathered. Tell me, how did yesterday go?’

‘All right, except for the bust-up.’

‘Which was?’

‘It wasn’t Ethan’s fault,’ she told me, placing sugar roses onto the shiny glaze with exquisite delicacy.

‘I’m sure it wasn’t,’ I assured her. ‘What happened?’

‘Wasabi in her lip gloss,’ whispered Bernie.

I couldn’t help it. I started to laugh. I loathe wasabi. ‘But why would anyone think of blaming Ethan?’

‘He had a tube of it. He likes hot tastes.’ Bernie blushed a pretty rose. ‘He brought it along for when we had fish. Then the fish chef went crook when he realised that Ethan was going to put wasabi on his
truite amandine
. So it was a noisy day.’ She placed an icing bud exactly on the centre of a cupcake. ‘Tommy nearly sacked everyone. I was so scared.’

‘I can imagine,’ I agreed. Bernie must be spending most of her life on tenterhooks. Employers demand experience, but refuse to risk providing it. Nasty. I realised that I had an authority on what it was like to be young and vulnerable. I started to tell Bernie about Lena. She listened carefully.

‘Cruel,’ she commented. ‘The trouble with bullies is that they pick on the person that no one likes much already. The unattractive ones. The strange ones. They already know that they’re out of it. They’ve already convinced themselves that they’re losers.’

‘You’ve seen this?’

‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘When I worked in the fast-food world. Not a nice world. I’m glad to be out of it. Corinna, will you give me a reference?’

‘A reference?’ I had never been asked for such a thing before.

‘Yes,’ said Bernie, pinkening again. ‘To say that I’m all right at cakes. I need references to get a job. And everyone knows you make the best bread in town.’

‘Of course,’ I said, and seeing her so small and neat and diminished by having to ask, I put an arm around her shoulders and hugged her.

And that moment, of course, was the one that Jason chose to make his re-entry into my world.

He came to the alley door and brushed inside, dropping a backpack on the floor, said, ‘Hi, Corinna,’ and then stop- ped dead.

‘Jason!’ I said, feeling like the classic ‘nymph surprised while bathing’. ‘How are you? Come in!’

‘They told me you’d replaced me,’ he said through a hard, thinned mouth. If looks could ignite Bernie would have been a combustion by-product in an eye-blink. ‘I didn’t believe them. But it’s true,’ he wailed.

‘No, it’s not true. This is Bernie, she belongs to Tommy’s kitchen. Don’t be silly!’ I said. In vain. He picked up his pack and stalked out the door. I heard the door of Insula open as he went into the atrium. Thence, I suppose, up to his flat to sulk. Bernie was mortified, almost in tears.