Cooking the Books (34 page)

The driver was whistling ‘Go Down, Moses’, and was very surprised when Bernie and I joined in. Daniel would have to make his own way to Harbour Studios today. I left a note saying where I had gone and arranging to meet him in Docklands to convey Lena to her prospective new employer.

Everyone was in their accustomed places as we lugged the baskets and trays into the kitchen. Lance the Lettuce Guy unbent sufficiently to offer me a taste of his Thousand Island dressing, which was not as good as Uncle Solly’s. But a very pleasant dressing. I said so. He smiled.

The air was full of the smell of sizzling bacon, another of the premier scents of the universe. The usual cast was present. The usual things were being done. I settled down at the pastry table to make—as it were—pastry. Bernie was whisking her icing. All was well and went quietly until I went to the table to get a cup of coffee, which I felt that I had deserved.

Then I noticed a newcomer. He was very tall. He was dressed as a Great White Hunter (a type I have always despised), though he had doffed his solar topee, perhaps in deference to the ladies. He was in close conversation with Tash. I drifted across to offer refreshments. Actually, I was snooping.

The Great White Hunter was wearing khakis and a T shirt which was marked wildlife for hire. Unusual, even for a TV set. I came within the ambit of conversation and held up my tray.

‘Breakfast?’ I asked. His pale blue eyes examined me and dismissed me in an eye-blink. His offsider, however, grinned.

‘Yes, please,’ he said. ‘Whatever you’ve got.’

‘Tea, coffee, munchies,’ I replied. This man was as attractive as an iced gin and tonic on a hot day. He had long black hair, worn in a ponytail, dark eyes which snapped with intelligence, and curiously beautiful long hands. But his air was the most interesting thing about him. He was charismatic. Even among actors he was magnetic. He was small, shorter than me, and thin but wiry. A pleasant contrast to his tall aloof partner.

‘Leonidas Cohen,’ he introduced himself. ‘We’re bringing my tiger tomorrow. Have you got any anchovies?’

‘Yes, lots,’ I said. ‘Tiger?’

‘Tabitha,’ he said, hopping into the breakfast muffins, which contained bacon and tomato. ‘These are really good,’ he said through a mouthful of crumbs. ‘Tabitha. Beautiful girl,’ he enthused. ‘Most beautiful tiger I have ever had. Must get a cup of coffee, Sean,’ he said as an aside to the GWH.

I conducted him to the coffee machine. He was still talking.

‘Surely they’re not going to risk a tiger in a TV studio,’ I offered.

‘No risk,’ he told me. ‘Not much risk, anyway. She’s been with me since her mother rejected her when she was born. She thinks I’m her parent. Or at least her brother. Worked with tigers all my life. We used to be circus people until animal rights came along. Now we supply wild animals to films and so on.’

‘There’s a lot of demand for tigers?’ I asked.

‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘And bears and dogs and cats and even pigs. Very bright creatures, pigs. Brighter than most dogs.’

‘Really?’ I had not been so interested in a conversation for ages.

‘Sure. Sean mostly works with lions and his sister is parrots and birds generally.’

I should have guessed that the GWH was a lion tamer. He looked just like one.

‘I have cats,’ I said lamely. He patted me with an unoccupied hand.

‘Good on you! You’ll like Tabitha. Tigers are like cats. They are cats. Just very big, and if they get cross and scratch you, you need surgery.’ He grinned and drank his coffee. I considered this. I would never take a cat, as it might be Horatio, into a TV studio. He’d hate it.

‘But what about . . . the noise? The lights? Won’t she be scared?’

‘I’d never take Tabitha anywhere if I thought she was going to be scared,’ he said, suddenly solemn. ‘If she thinks I’m her brother, I think she’s my sister. But she’s been on film sets and in noisy places since she was a kitten. She was born in winter and I carried her around with me in a sling in case she took cold. She slept in my bed until she got too big. No, Tabitha will be fine provided everyone stays calm.’

‘What a hope,’ I said, gesturing at the crowd of babbling, arguing actors.

‘Oh, they’ll be all right,’ said Leonidas Cohen, giving me a forty-watt grin. ‘Amazing what a calming effect a tiger can have. We’ll bring her along tomorrow and be in and out in two hours. They just want her to walk through the set, one side to the other, as though she is following a bicycle courier. That young man.’ He pointed to Harrison, who was condescending to Emily and drinking herbal tea. ‘I’ll be concealed on that side.’

‘Sounds simple enough, I suppose,’ I admitted. ‘Why did you ask me if we had any anchovies?’

‘The reason I asked is that they are Tabitha’s favourite fruit. She adores anchovies.’

‘Really? Does she prefer the Spanish or the Portuguese?’ I was interested in a tiger’s view of this perennial contest.

‘Portuguese every time,’ he told me. ‘Any more of those muffins?’

‘I’ll get some,’ I promised, and did.

‘Of course, with cats you find that there are up cats and down cats,’ he observed. ‘You will have noticed that yourself.’

I had. Some cats elevate to a height as soon as they are startled and some dart under the furniture. I said so. He nodded approvingly.

‘Just so,’ he said. ‘You know your cats! So we use the cat’s natural tendency. If we have an up cat, then she does the climbing. If we have a down cat, then she does the crawling through tunnels. Training consists of rewarding the animal as soon as it does what we want it to do, every time.’

‘No punishment?’ I asked.

‘Never!’ He choked with indignation, swallowed some coffee and explained, ‘If you hit a cat it will just assume that you have gone mad and remove itself from your vicinity. Not only is punishment cruel, it’s stupid, and I try not to be stupid. They all have their favourite treats. Not the ones you would think of, either. I have had a tortoise who loved strawberries, a python who doted on chunks of mango—green mango, mind—and a wombat who would walk through walls for parsnips. Not carrots. Or potatoes. Just parsnips, lightly steamed, with butter.’

‘There’s no accounting for tastes,’ I said, interested. ‘My cat Horatio loves cheese but I have had cats who liked tomato and basil sauce or broccoli above all things.’

‘They’re all individuals with individual tastes. What was I talking about before? Oh yes, natural tendencies. Wombats will follow their trainer, like they followed their mum when they were babies. Kangaroos lie still when stressed. You have to know a lot. And you have to let the animal tell you what it wants to do. There are days when Tabitha has in mind a nice bask in the sun and then there’s no convincing her that she should get up and amuse the people. We’re partners. We both have to earn our living. But you can’t expect a tiger to know that.’

‘No,’ I agreed.

He smiled his sunny smile. ‘Better get back to Sean,’ he said. ‘Before his Great White Hunter act starts to get on that nice director lady’s nerves. It does, you know, after a while.’

He went away briskly.

‘I never thought we’d get the tiger past the board,’ said Gordon to me as I gathered some more muffins.

‘So I have been hearing,’ I replied.

‘It’s going to be massive,’ said Kendall, eyes glowing. ‘The tiger has been hired for a wildlife wedding. The van breaks down and the tiger gets loose. And she follows Harrison into the office.’

‘Then what happens?’ I asked.

‘Everyone freaks until Ms Atkins reproves the tiger and it lies down at her feet. Courtneigh Yronsyde is more feral than the tiger, you see.’

‘I see,’ I said.

‘Mind you, I still think that the skydiving sequence was a blast. Ethan was all for it but Tash said we couldn’t afford the insurance. So we had to rewrite it,’ said Kendall.

‘But the tiger stayed in,’ said Gordon complacently.

Tomorrow looked like being a really interesting day.

I made up a list of the actors whom Tabitha should consider selecting for her matutinal menu as I fed the crew and then went back to the kitchen. Somehow the prospect of a tiger made the day seem less dreary.

‘Tomorrow,’ said Tommy. ‘Thank God, it’s the very last day at Harbour Studios.’

I had to concur.

But meanwhile there was lunch to prepare. Bernie was working beside me. She seemed to be worried about something. She was biting her lip.

‘Corinna, can you read Middle English?’ she asked.

‘Sort of,’ I told her. I had read Chaucer for HSC Literature, after all.

‘What’s this funny sort of
d
thing?’

‘That is a thorn,’ I said, relieved that I had remembered something from all that study. ‘You pronounce it as a
th
. The rule with Middle English is to sound it out, say it aloud. Spelling was optional in the fourteenth century.’

‘I wish it was now,’ she muttered. She was reading a recipe for ‘Gyngerbrede’. It did not appear to be true bread, I found as I read it. It was more like a French confection called
pain perdu
. It involved boiling a quart of honey, for a start. That must have counted as conspicuous consumption in the old days.

‘For your shop?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ she said distractedly. ‘If I can make it work. I must ask Ethan. He didn’t come round last night,’ she told me.

Oh dear. I produced one of the Old Sayings.

‘He’s a very busy man,’ I said.

‘Of course he is,’ she replied.

We got on with the pastry. Emily had arrived with the Superbitch’s order for breakfast. She was still eating those little quiches which Bernie made so well. Bernie abandoned the intricacies of Middle English and started on the quiches.

‘There’s going to be a tiger tomorrow,’ Emily told us.

‘So I hear,’ I said. ‘I’ve been talking to Leonidas Cohen, the tiger person. The tiger’s name is Tabitha,’ I added.

‘I’m so scared,’ confided Emily. She put her little hand on my floury arm.

‘Why?’ I asked. I was confident that Mr Cohen and his tiger would be a good team.

‘What if anything happens?’ asked Emily in a little girl’s voice which rasped like a nettle on my patience.

‘It’s very unlikely,’ I responded.

‘Well, aren’t you scared? It’s a wild animal,’ said Emily.

‘Wild animals are a lot meeker than wild actors,’ I told her. ‘Bernie, how are those quiches coming along?’

‘Just about done,’ said Bernie. ‘She likes them a little wobbly in the middle. There we are,’ she said, deftly dishing up the tiny quiches and adding a handful of Lance the Lettuce Guy’s carefully selected spinach salad. Emily gave us a reproachful look and left.

‘What was she on about?’ asked Bernie.

‘Heaven knows. Seems to be trying to start a panic about the tiger for some reason. Who can tell with actors?’

‘What do you think this might be?’ asked Bernie, shrugging and returning to her recipe. ‘I guessed that “lech” must be “like” but what is “y-spyked”?’

‘The “y” is an “i”,’ I said, bending to the oven. ‘Sound it out.’

‘I-spi-k-ed,’ she said. ‘Oh, spiked. He means that you put a clove in each diagonal bit. Nice. Thank you, Corinna . . . Corinna?’ she said tentatively.

‘Hmm?’ I was snipping burnt bits off the edges of one of my quiches. This always happens and can easily be rectified.

‘There’s something I have to tell you.’

‘Spit it out,’ I suggested.

‘Tommy’s offered me a job.’

‘Great! Which job?’

‘Er, yours,’ she said.

‘Wonderful,’ I said. ‘When can you start?’

‘You don’t mind?’ she said, astonished.

‘Not in the least,’ I told her. ‘Never wanted to do this in the first place. What say I finish tomorrow and then you take over?’

‘Wonderful,’ she whispered.

It was, too. Now even if Ethan did his celebrated eel-wriggle to avoid commitment, Bernie would have a job. And I wouldn’t. The thought was delightful. Back to my own bakery, with Jason making muffins, singing merry spirituals in the morning. Wonderful, as Bernie said.