Devil's Food (21 page)

‘A terrible thing, starvation,’ said Damien gently, so as not to alarm the patient. ‘Sooner or later it destroys the mind. First you can’t think about anything but food, then the will is blunted, the body starts to consume itself, the mind becomes dull, the reflexes sluggish, the patient isn’t even hungry anymore. The urine is full of acetone from muscle destruction. Gradually the tissue wastes. Bruises form spontaneously …’

‘But how could anyone get that hungry in a city like Melbourne?’

‘Perhaps he was held in captivity. Perhaps he is in the terminal stages of anorexia, or liver failure. We just need to get him onto a drip before his arteries collapse … aha. Here comes the ambulance.’

With great efficiency, Toby was loaded onto a stretcher and Dr Damien instructed the paramedics in short sentences which they seemed to understand perfectly. As the ambulance drew away I saw a small hand waving from the soup bus window. Jacob was saying goodbye to Toby and the life of the streets.

We took Jacob with us on to the next stop, the most nerve-racking of our evening, though it wasn’t usually too rough this early in the night. King Street is not my favourite place. It is all nightclubs and rich kids making a statement about how free they are, which is always tiresome. They, however, are not our clientele. They just jeer at us and occasionally throw bottles as they pass on their way to being picked up by Daddy in the four-wheel drive and taken home to Toorak. God bless their little hearts and may their private school ties revolt, writhe around and strangle them one night.

Too early for the rowdies, thank God. One night I might leap down and do them some violence. They annoy me out of all charity, not that I ever had much.

Jacob sat inside the bus, next to Gina, while we handed out soup and sandwiches, coffee and muffins, to the working girls. There are few children and no old people in King Street. Mostly our clientele are professionals. They rather rely on us for supper and they love Sister Mary. One pimp who unwisely raised his hand to the sister, saying that she had reformed one of his girls, was smashed down and pounded into the pavement under the spike heels of all the prostitutes within hearing. They didn’t kill him only because Sister Mary made them stop. I gather that he recovered, but we never saw him again. And no one has objected to Sister Mary’s presence since.

Tonight the mood was sad; one of them had died. ‘Poor bitch fell under a bus,’ said Delia, the Prostitutes’ Collective rep for King Street. ‘Told her not to wear them bloody platforms on wet pavements.’

‘She will get her reward in heaven,’ said Sister Mary. ‘Her sins have been washed clean and she sits at the feet of the lamb in joy and content.’

‘Now?’ asked Delia, her voice like an old crow’s.

‘Now, this very moment,’ said Sister Mary with such complete conviction that just for a moment, even in King Street, we all believed.

It didn’t last, of course. I listened to the King Street gossip as the food left my hands. Which club was tolerating the sellers of various illegal substances. Which had cracked down. And one funny story.

‘She was picked up by the cops with a bag of leaves,’ said Ann, Delia’s best friend. ‘They charged her with possessing cannabis. But Mandy, she said, it isn’t cannabis, you just have to look at it, I demand an analyst’s certificate. She got legal aid onto it, they demanded an analyst’s certificate. So they finally got a bloody analyst’s certificate, with the cops bitching and moaning the whole way, of course it’s cannabis, you can’t trust whores. And you know it wasn’t leaf after all? No one had believed the poor cow.’

‘So what was it?’ I knew that it took almost six months to get an analyst’s bloody certificate — Gina had been complaining about it that very night.

‘Some sort of leaves.’ Ann shrugged. ‘Threw the case out. Cops were dark, I can tell you. Mandy’s gone home to Hamilton, she reckoned she wasn’t safe on the streets here. They’d get her for something, just for making fools out of them. Well, thanks for the soup. Gotta be going. Men to do. We’ve got a new motto: the customer always comes first.’

I laughed politely and the women drifted away. Leaves, eh? If they were the same sort of leaves as either that weight loss tea or the datura smuggled in the Fair Trade goods, someone ought to be told about it. But who? And what, in fact, would I say? And was that starving boy Bo’s Tobias?

I finally got Sister Mary by herself and asked the question that had been gnawing at me: ‘What are the Sunnies, Sister? You seemed to know what that cop meant.’

‘Oh,’ said Sister Mary, ‘yes, of course. They are the Sunshine Sisterhood, Mission to the Miserable. God bless their good hearts.’

‘You,’ I told her, ‘are pulling my leg.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ she said a little indignantly. ‘They have a centre in Flinders Lane, dear, up towards Exhibition Street. Haven’t you seen it? It has a big yellow sunflower painted on the door.’

‘Oh, yes, I suppose,’ I said, having vaguely noticed the painting on my forays in search of Chinese food. ‘I thought it was organic food or something healthy.’

‘Oh, they are terribly healthy,’ she said with a smile, ‘nothing but vegetables — and how the old men complain and demand roast beef ! Still, they make a wonderful carrot cake. You should ask for the recipe. You’ll be along to talk to them tomorrow, I guess? Give them my blessings. They are fine women.’

‘Yes, but what do they do?’

‘They feed the hungry,’ said Sister Mary. ‘Clothe the naked. You’ll see. Now, it’s time we took Jacob and the bus back to Flinders Street where, with the blessing of God, his father will be waiting to take him home. I have explained the situation. I think it will be all right.’

Nothing more to do than pack up, pick up the rubbish, start the bus and proceed very discreetly through the city and back to where we began. Ma’ani, the Maori who was rostered as driver and heavy on the next run, was there with the new crew and a fresh load of food and supplies. Ma’ani is over two metres tall and about the same wide, and somehow there’s never any trouble on his run. If there was, he might step on it and not notice, and Trouble has a way of knowing things like that.

We debussed, stretching. I always get a backache from stooping over the counter. I greeted Ma’ani, who gave me a hug. I emerged partly crushed in time to see a car skid around the corner and a frantic man throw himself out, run across to us, and drag Jacob into his arms.

‘You all right, son?’ he whispered, over and over. ‘You okay? We’ve been looking everywhere, everywhere. I swear he’ll never come near you again, son. The bastard. I never knew. But you’ll never see him again, son, I swear. I swear.’

Jacob, who had burst instantly into tears, began to calm down. Sister Mary beamed. The father looked up at her.

‘You brought him back, didn’t you?’

‘God did,’ she replied. ‘Now you can take him home and keep him safe.’

‘You want to come home, Jake?’ asked his father.

Jacob nodded, wiping his wet hand over his wet face.

‘I thought I’d lose his mum as well,’ said the father. He reached into his wallet and stuffed a handful of money into Sister Mary’s hands. ‘You give that to God and say thanks.’ Then he led Jacob into the waiting car, and drove away very quietly and carefully, as though he could buy off fate.

Daniel and I went home very silently and put ourselves quietly to bed. It had been quite a night. And tomorrow I was going to meet the Sunnies. I was in the middle of some profound remark about cannabis and datura when I fell heavily and instantly asleep.

The man who was becoming a murderer tried to walk away. He found himself in a dark alley before sunrise. None of them were watching him. He could escape. But then a boy on a bicycle nearly ran him down, and two cats rushed around him. He hated cats. He fell in with the others.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Sunday is not as much fun as Saturday because the following day is Monday, which means I have to get up at four, but it is a pleasant day nonetheless, for a woman with a silent breakfasting partner and a snuggly cat. Daniel made the toast, I made the coffee, Horatio supervised and drank milk. The jam was strawberry and the coffee Fair Trade East Timor Arabica.

Bliss. Silence. Only the rustle of the Sunday papers and the occasional exclamations of horror at the news. And the oddly loud Sunday morning purr of the stripy cat, who seated himself in loaf formation on the big kitchen table between us and radiated contentment, in the way that only a well-fed male cat can do.

After an hour, I padded off and had a shower. I dressed in suitable clothes to visit a Mission to the Miserable. A bright blue jumper with parrots on seemed to be the right thing. Daniel wore his usual leather coat but added a patterned scarf. We bade Horatio take care of the house and went down into the cold street.

Flinders Lane used to be the garment-making heart of Melbourne. You wanted schmutter — old clothes, new clothes, fur coats, tailored suits — Flinders Lane was the place to get it. Now there are a few tailor’s shops hanging on but most of it consists of strange little apartment buildings, the back of the cathedral, souvenir shops and little cafes selling odd ethnic specialities. It made a nice walk on a cold day, since it is uphill and exercise keeps you warm.

In my case, far too warm. I am built for endurance. I am not built for speed. I stopped at a corner to get my breath and saw it ahead of me. The Sunshine Mission to the Miserable. It had been a mechanics’ institute perhaps, or a school; it had an educational look about its stained red bricks and gothic windows. The sunflower on the door was big and bright yellow. I opened it into a hall. Everything was going to be bright, by the look of it. I put on my sunglasses. So did Daniel.

No one seemed to be about. But hark! In the distance I could hear singing. And I knew the song and found myself singing along.

‘Jesus loves me this I know, For the bible tells me so,’ carolled a mixed ensemble. The Kings Singers they were not. I was reminded of the old Salvo joke about drunks singing ‘stir up this stew — stir up this stew — stir up this stupid heart of mine’ as I listened to a choir of reluctant bass voices ruined by whisky and tobacco. Over them were firm female voices, alto, contralto and one very strong soprano, singing as though they weren’t singing something trite and foolish and written for children when people thought children were stupid.

‘Yes, Jesus loves me! Yes, Jesus loves me! Yes, Jesus loves me! The bible tells me so.’

Daniel was looking puzzled. As well he might. I explained. ‘This is a children’s song,’ I told him. ‘Not usually sung by adults. And not a lot of them sound too happy about singing it, anyway. This is an odd place. Shall we go on?’

‘By all means,’ he said. ‘As long as you promise to protect me from the Christians.’

I promised, crossing my heart and hoping to die, and we went further down the corridor towards the singing. It got louder, but not more tuneful. Boldly, I thrust open the door to a large room where a lot of men were seated on benches. Opposite them a lot of old women were sitting on identical benches. There was a brunch laid out on the tables: nice fresh fruit, muesli and toast with non-fat spread and organic jam, jugs of milk and, by the scent of it, steaming hot carob to drink with your healthy meal.

The hymn ended and there was a clatter of cutlery, an outbreak of grumbling and five of the women who had been singing moved through the crowd to greet us. They were wearing a sort of modified nun’s gown in the form of bright sunflower yellow smocks with JOY printed in blue on the bosom.

‘God bless you!’ exclaimed the first. ‘I am Sister Bliss. This is Sister Delight, Sister Content, Sister Joy, and Sister Blithe is just helping Mrs Gossens to cut up her apple. How can we be of service to you?’

‘Sister Mary sends her blessings,’ I said, to establish our credentials. Sister Blithe, having helped Mrs Gossens with her apple and rather markedly taken the knife with her, clasped her hands.

‘What a woman,’ she said. ‘She gives joy another meaning altogether.’

Sister Blithe was a stocky forty-ish woman with short, curly, butter coloured hair, bright blue eyes, a rosy face like one of her own apples and an air of honest pleasure in life which was very attractive. She was obviously as healthy as a horse, as strong as an ox, and as merry as a grig — whatever grigs are. There was something rustic about Sister Blithe. You could imagine her milking a cow and washing her face in the dew on the way home. Daniel was much taken with her.

‘We are Daniel and Corinna,’ he said, taking the offered hand. ‘We are looking for Corinna’s father. Two rather unpleasant policemen told Sister Mary that he might be here.’

‘Can you see him? These are all the men we have for the moment,’ said Sister Blithe, as though she was sorry not to have more specimens for our inspection. I really didn’t know if I would recognise my father immediately, so I gave Sister Blithe the picture. The other sisters went about their business, coaxing old grumps to eat the nice muesli and persuading them that carob was just the same as coffee but without that nasty caffeine.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Yes, I remember him. He’s not here now, I’m so sorry. Come along and sit down and have a cup of carob with me and I’ll explain.’