Earthly Delights (3 page)

Absolutely no reason why that gorgeous man should find me attractive and I stomped firmly on the idea before it made me unhappy with myself. I can’t afford to spend days in self loathing as everyone expects fat women to do. Self loathing eats your life. Being fat isn’t my fault or even my sin, despite what all those TV ads say. I was myself and that was what I was and the matter could safely be left to a reasonable assortment
of whatever gods happened to be paying attention to my shop on this bright morning. They might easily be visiting Meroe at the Sibyl’s Cave next door.

I love autumn in Melbourne. The nights are cold and the days are sunny and the temperature is just right for someone who spent her whole adolescent Beach Baby phase sitting under a tree, trying not to melt. The sun was now slanting down between the buildings and the morning rush was over. The poor huddled masses, clutching their coffee and thinking of their overextended finances, had bought muffins fresh from the oven, croissants au beurre, pasta douro rolls with cheese inside and bacon-topped flat rolls as a substitute for what the civilised world calls breakfast. I watched them scurry away, from Gucci to Armani, heels tapping, briefcases under one arm and expressions harried. I was meanly and profoundly glad that I was no longer part of the Gadarene rush to get to the office before the boss got in. Poor bastards! They would have to stay there until the day was all gone and the boss finally went home. Whereas I got to close after lunch and tonight I had a possible assignation with a gorgeous man. Things were, indeed, looking up.

Horatio was, as usual, sitting in a dignified posture next to the cash register, which he likes because I pat him every time I make a sale. Or possibly he is lurking. It is hard to tell with cats. Some ailurophobe complained to the health inspectors about him, but the man who came to check him out spent half an hour telling him what a fine, what a very fine cat he was, yes indeed (although Horatio knows that, he does like to be told again and again), and dismissed the complaint. As long as he doesn’t stretch out for a snooze on the actual bread I think we are safe. At least with that inspector.

The rush had died down and I could leave the shop to
Kylie (her mother was a fan, poor girl), my shop assistant of the day. Kylie and her friend Gossamer (another victim of a fanciful parent) live one floor above me in 2A, an apartment belonging to Kylie’s father. They are nice girls, most of the time, though they do have a tendency to appear tipsy in the evening. This is, I ascertained, due to their discovery that they could only stay as thin as Kate Moss or whoever is the latest highly paid anorexic by giving up either drinking or eating. I fear daily for their metabolisms and live in hope that they finally do get that major soapie part for which they are hanging out. One which requires them to gain two stone. That would about bring them up to a human weight.

Until that happens, Kylie and Goss help out in the shop and since they confine their drinking to evenings and I have an electronic cash register which tells you how much change to hand out, they are very helpful. And at least they won’t eat the stock. Also, Horatio likes them and they adore him. And sending them along to a corporate lunch with the Health Loaf makes all the yuppies eat up the nice sawdust like little lambkins, hoping thus to look like Kylie and Gossamer. They wish.

I made up a nice basket of different rolls and went back inside Insula, my apartment building. It was built in 1920 by an architect who had either studied the classics or was, as Professor Monk suggests, completely insane. He decided that what the city of Melbourne really needed was a Roman apartment building, which is what Insula means. And in the best materials and with great attention to detail, he built one. All eight storeys of it. It is covered on the outside with peacock blue tiles. We have the
tesserae
, the tiled mosaics of various gods and goddesses on both walls and floors. We have the
impluvium
, an indoor pool with goldfish in it, beside which Horatio likes to sit and meditate—and, incidentally, drive the
fish crazy. We have an entirely un-Roman elevator, though it does have Medusa-head bosses all over the ironwork. We have a roof garden which is open to all tenants, where we can sit in the shadow of the glass towers and drink a gin and tonic at three in the afternoon, aware of the massed envy from every office window. Every apartment has the name of a Roman god embossed over the door. And like the Roman original, the bottom floor houses shops, stores and my bakery.

I came here because I loved the place the moment I set eyes on the artfully censored Priapus next to the
impluvium
. It has a strange, mad charm. Also, the apartments are big. In the twenties an apartment was the size of a small house. There are only two to each upper floor. My apartment is tucked into a corner so I am on two levels, the bakery and shop underneath and two bedrooms, a parlour, a bathroom (with dolphin frieze) and a kitchen above. The Professor’s flat on the third floor is probably the nicest in the whole building, because his furniture is also Roman.

When he retired and his wife died he probably felt like curling up and dying too. But instead he found himself a flat in Insula, sold his house and most of his possessions and had suitable furniture made. He is a darling and the sexiest seventy-six year old I am ever likely to meet.

Just now he is laid up with a bruised leg from falling down the authentically hard Roman steps. At his age one has to be careful so I am bringing him bread, Kylie does his shopping and Goss has gone to the Athaeneum to change his books. He gave her a long list which I hope and trust she just gives to the librarian. She may be able to sing all the lyrics of any Justin Timberlake song but she is not, I am confident, going to be able to pronounce Suetonius without serious tongue damage.

The elevator goes up. It’s one of those ones with folding
metal doors. Medusa stares into my eyes as I fold them back to get out. So far I have not turned to stone. I never learned all this stuff at university. Living in Insula is a real education.

Professor Dionysus Monk, it says on the door, and I knock. He got this particular apartment because the
tesserae
over the door shows us Dionysus, god of wine, leaning on a convenient leopard, cup in hand and lecherous eye contemplating a couple of nymphs retreating into the middle distance. One senses that they are not intending to run fast—at least only fast enough to be caught by the softest available moss. I suspect that in his youth the Professor took after his namesake. He still has a gleam in his eye.

The door was open and I went in and paused. It really was lovely. The walls are painted in ochre and terracotta and have prints from Pompeii on them. The tables are low, with carved animal legs, and the couches are covered with throws and cushions. Even the light fittings resemble oil lamps.

Professor Monk was reclining on his (Roman, naturally) couch with his bruised leg elevated on a red cushion. An entirely anachronistic television set sat on a stand in front of him and he clicked it off as I entered. He had ruffled his thin white hair and I noticed that both his book table and his glasses were out of reach.

‘Corinna! Sweet nymph!’ he declaimed. ‘Seconds before I expired of ennui. How people can watch television for hours I cannot imagine.’

‘Why were you?’ I asked. He ruffled his hair again so that it stood on end like a cocky’s crest. His blue eyes looked sad.

‘That nice district nurse came in this morning to settle me for the day and wheeled the wretched thing up and I really didn’t feel I could protest, when she had gone to all that trouble,’ he said. ‘And if this leg is to get better I really mustn’t
move unnecessarily. I was watching the oddest thing,’ he said. ‘A women’s program. Her name was … Oprah, I believe. The things that people were saying! It was most indelicate.’

I resolved never to tell Dionysus Monk about Jerry Springer or Jenny Jones.

‘I’ve got bread and you have breakfast,’ I said. ‘Tea?’

‘If you please,’ he said hungrily. I cursed that nurse. Feeding her patient TV instead of breakfast seemed to show that her priorities were in entirely the wrong order. The Professor caught my thought, something he does which is occasionally unnerving. He chuckled.

‘
Panem et circenses
,’ he said. ‘Bread and circuses. I think I would rather have the bread than the circus. And perhaps you could move that table closer so that I can get to my Aristophanes? It’s been beckoning to me for hours, poor thing.’

I did as he asked then took my bread with me out of the parlour. His kitchen is modern, thankfully. I warmed the rolls, found the butter and the Oxford marmalade he favours and made a big pot of weak tea. Why was I doing this? When I first came to Insula I was lonely. I had broken up with my husband James and there seemed to be nothing in the world for me but work (and cats). Professor Dion had taken me out to dinner at amusing little cafes, lent me books, and listened to my woes without saying a word about his Aristophanes translation cooling on his desk. I owed him, as Kylie would say, big-time.

While he ate his breakfast I told him about the junkie in the alley and Daniel of the Soup Run. He smoothed marmalade over a crust and remarked, ‘Juvenal knew a lot about wickedness in cities. Let me lend you his
Satire III: On Rome
. This Daniel sounds like a good man. What do you think?’

I muttered something about handsome is as handsome does and he gave me a very knowing look.

‘Ah,’ he remarked and ate the crust. ‘That was really an excellent breakfast,’ he added. ‘Thank you so much, nymph.’

I left him with all his papers within reach and collected a copy of the Satires from the big bookcase which lines one wall.

On the way down in the lift I found I was blushing. I haven’t done that since I was a teenager. Must be hormones. Early onset peri-menopause. Or something.

My shop was not busy when I got back to it so I decided to take some good-morning bread to my neighbour and co-tenant, Meroe of the Sibyl’s Cave. She is a Wiccan witch and was going to call the place The Magic Box, but after what happened to all the proprietors of the Magic Box on
Buffy
, she decided to take Professor Dion’s advice. Anyway, call a place the Magic Box and you run the risk of customers who are looking not for inner enlightenment and oneness with the goddess but whoopee cushions and plastic dog turds with which to Amaze their Friends, should they ever find any. Not the right kind of ambiance at all.

The Sibyl’s Cave sells anything you might need for casting spells: crystals, dream-catchers, chi-enhancing exercises, visualisation CDs and fresh herbs. (But not voodoo dolls; Meroe says that practitioners of voodoo are just going to have to sew their own.) If you want to make an oracle from a sheep’s shoulder blade, mix up a love potion, consult the spirits by any one of eleven fortune-telling methods or buy some very pretty postcards, the Sibyl’s Cave is your shop. Here you can register for any form of magic training, purchase fresh motherwort and fern seed, and catch up on the occult news with a copy of
Wiccan Times
. The shop is small and cramped and stuffed with things, all of them fascinating. I believe in absolutely nothing except yeast and the inevitability of politicians, so Meroe and I have agreed not to discuss it. Thus we have stayed friends.

As always, I wondered about the little model of a woman enclosed in a bottle, hung up by the door. It was marked ‘A Present from Cumae’ and it always made Professor Dion laugh. One day I must ask him about it.

I knelt to greet Belladonna, Meroe’s cat (or as she says, familiar). Belladonna is entirely black from nose to tail-tip, as befits a witch’s cat. She is a dignified, slim, very beautiful creature. Meroe says that she brings Meroe luck by reposing gracefully among the junk in the window, occasionally batting at a hanging crystal with a languid paw. I think that she brings her more customers by lying there being so decorative that people stop to look at her and are then lured inside by the astounding eclecticism of the stock. Meroe herself matches the shop. She wears, usually, a long skirt and a loose blouse, and then throws over it some length of embroidered silk or fine wool. With her long black hair and dark eyes she can appear perfectly uncanny. Also, she has an unexpectedly deep voice for a woman. I have never asked how old she is and I really can’t guess. Sometimes she looks no more than thirty, especially when she laughs. On days when the cold wind whistles down Calico Alley and she wraps her shawl around herself, she could be a hundred.

Today she was wearing a length of yellow Chinese silk patterned with dragons and her hair was loose on her shoulders. I offered my bread and she gave me a hand to stand up. She has thin hands, elegant and strong.

‘You looked like an Egyptian making an offering to Basht,’ she said in her deep voice. ‘Come in, have some tea.’

‘What sort?’ I asked with deep suspicion. I do not approve of herbal tea. If I want to stew weeds, there are plenty in the garden.

‘English breakfast,’ she said. ‘Will that do? Come in, Bella. Nasty cars out there.’

Belladonna gave her a scornful look, shook the paw she was about to place on the threshold, and poured herself up onto the back of Meroe’s fortune-telling chair. It is considerably shredded. Meroe says that it adds to her credibility and Bella lives for the day when she can scrape down to wood. She stropped her claws busily as we sat down. The tea was definitely real tea, and I sipped, breathing in the steam. Meroe sliced the date bread and nibbled at it.

‘Good bread, as usual, Corinna, thank you. So, what’s the news?’ asked Meroe comfortably.

‘I thought you would already know,’ I teased.

‘You summoned an ambulance at five this morning for a young woman dying in the alley,’ she said in her low tones. ‘Then you met a tall dark man of mystery. More I cannot tell you.’

‘How did you know?’ I asked.

‘The cards do not lie,’ she said. I spotted the logical flaw.

‘But did you consult them?’

‘No need. We do not use magic unless we have to use magic,’ she said, grinning. ‘Kylie told me when I nipped into your shop for a cheese roll. Who is this tall dark man?’