‘That,’ he said, drawing me into his embrace and kissing me with the tomato-flavoured kisses of his mouth, ‘hit the spot. Never let me go out again without a spare phone. And a satchel. In which I will carry emergency rations and water. God, I was so thirsty!’
‘They might have killed you,’ I muttered into his dusty hair.
‘Yes, but they didn’t think of that, they just panicked. They didn’t mean me any harm. But I couldn’t get out. I tried to dig and the earth was as hard as stone. So I just sat there and remembered Sterne. “
I can’t get out
, said the starling.” ’
He shuddered. When I picked up his hand I saw how the fingers’ ends were torn. I kissed them better.
‘If the freegans hadn’t found you, I would have,’ I lied. ‘I was thinking of combing the brewery site, security guard or no security guard. And that would have been embarrassing indeed, telling a magistrate what I was doing trespassing on someone else’s land.’
‘True. Now, a shower,’ he said, and I went with him to wash his back and various other parts. His clothes were stiff with dirt. His skin also. I smoothed it under my hands. My precious Daniel. I had nearly lost him.
What with one thing and another, I didn’t get to sleep until it was almost time for me to get up again. And that added a whole new horror to four in the morning.
I rose and drank coffee, wishing I could inject it into the vein. I made more coffee as I fed Horatio and myself and when I got to the bakery I put the bakery coffee pot on.
Jason was not there. I swore and put on the mixers, dragging sacks of flour across the floor in a very bad temper. After half an hour I had everything humming and I sat down for another cup of coffee. My feet hurt after all that dancing and my baker’s overall seemed constricting after my floaty clothes. Black dark outside and no apprentice. What had that Sarah done with him?
He arrived fully an hour late in time to drag the first load of loaves out of the oven and apologise abjectly.
‘My alarm didn’t go off,’ he whined.
‘Ah, but did you set it?’ I asked cunningly. I do not do very cunning at five o’clock in the morning.
‘I might’ve forgot,’ he admitted. ‘I was up late with the singers and …’ there was a starry-eyed pause ‘… Sarah.’
‘And what does Sarah want with you?’ I asked.
He looked up at me from the floor. ‘Why are you so pissed off? She was real interested in me,’ he said, hurt. ‘Wanted to know all about me. I reckon I’m going to try being a vego like her.’
‘Good,’ I said nastily. ‘That means your choice for breakfast is bread. With bread on it.’
‘Oh,’ he said blankly.
‘No ham, no cheese,’ I added, grating cheese vengefully, as though it was a personal enemy. ‘No eggs, no butter, no milk.’
‘Maybe not as vego as all that,’ he said hastily. ‘Maybe just no meat.’
‘Sensible,’ I said. ‘I was up late rescuing Daniel from durance vile and I’m very tired today, so help an old lady and grate this cheese for the cheese muffins, will you?’
He brightened a little. I repented of being so cross and ruffled his hair. He pulled away and smoothed his curls back into place.
‘Yes, sir, ma’am,’ he said, and took over the implement.
We made bread and gradually the daylight happened outside. The Mouse Police zoomed out into the alley and stood over Kiko at the Japanese restaurant for the tuna scraps. When they came back they were just ahead of Serena and her load of flowers.
I zapped a couple of frozen rosewater muffins in the microwave oven and greeted the donkey with affection. She stood so uncomplainingly under a solid weight of buckets. Water is very heavy. I waved the muffins in the air to cool them and she nickered and stamped impatiently. A flowered hat came into view.
‘Good morning, lady,’ said Mr Pahlevi, handing me the money for the muffins. ‘Hey, you know you got an evil woman in your building?’
I thought instantly of Mrs Pemberthy.
‘I know,’ I told him. ‘And there is nothing to be done about it until she dies of old age.’
‘That’ll take awhile,’ he said. ‘That Meroe, she’s a friend of the devil.’
‘Is she?’ I did not feel friendly towards Mr Pahlevi anyway, and traducing and slandering my friend wasn’t improving my opinion of him.
‘Black witch,’ he told me.
‘Go away,’ I said.
‘There are people who’d love to know where she is,’ he insinuated. Was he asking me for a bribe? If so he had a sad penniless future to look forward to.
‘And you’re the man to tell them, eh?’ I demanded. My fists were on my hips. Behind me Jason picked up the heavy slide we use to remove bread from the big oven. It would make a very handy weapon. I wondered what kind of dent it would make in the flowered hat. Quite a sizeable one, I judged.
‘Maybe,’ he said, sensing that this interview was not going as he had expected.
‘Take your donkey and go away,’ I said as menacingly as I could. ‘Meroe has friends who will not appreciate you making trouble for her.’
He slid away from me, somehow seeming to become distant without actually moving, took the muffins, and led Serena down the alley into Flinders Lane.
‘That wasn’t nice!’ Jason stuffed a ham roll into his mouth, forgetting his recent conversion to the cause of Meat is Murder.
‘Certainly wasn’t.’ There we were in complete agreement.
‘He shouldn’t say things like that about Meroe!’ protested Jason.
‘That, too. I’ll go and see her later, find out if he’s a real threat or just flapping his mouth.’
‘And if he’s a real threat?’
‘Then you get to smack him with the slide.’
‘Wicked,’ said my apprentice, with relish.
We seemed be friends again, Jason and me, and we went on with the baking in relative amity. I told him about Daniel being locked into the brewery building and he whistled.
‘I slept there once,’ he told me. ‘Before they put up the big fence. Not a safe place. Didn’t like the dudes who were crashing there. I used to stay in Flagstaff, feed off the Soup Run. They weren’t good times,’ he told me, gazing into his muffin mixture.
‘These times are better,’ I agreed.
He hugged me briefly.
‘Muffins at five o’clock, Cap’n,’ he informed me, and I felt so much better at the return of the old Jason that I almost forgot how tired I was.
Almost, as Uncle Solly would say, isn’t quite. By the time Goss arrived to open the shop I was drooping and the bright day was hurting my eyes. Kylie, who had come downstairs with her flatmate, eyed me with concern.
‘Like, Corinna, you look terrible,’ she told me candidly. ‘You partying hard?’
‘Not so much,’ I said.
‘We can do the shop,’ she told me. ‘You want to go upstairs again?’
Hardly had the suggestion passed her lips, pearly with Dewy Rose lip gloss, than I was on the stairs and on the way out of the bakery. Sleep. What a wonderful idea. Jason was explaining about the rescue of Daniel as I ascended out of hearing. Horatio remained staunchly at his post, which he wasn’t going to desert for such a paltry reason. Sometimes I feel that I cannot live up to his elevated standards.
Safely inside my own apartment, I tore off my baking clothes, shucked my heavy shoes and flung myself into bed next to the divine Daniel, who was still deeply asleep. I closed my eyes with great thankfulness. I did not deserve such excellent and enthusiastic assistants. I must think of something nice to do for them …
That was my last thought for some hours. Even an heroic consumption of coffee was not going to keep me awake. But I was not displeased when I woke gently to smell the god-like scent. Daniel had gone. Horatio had returned, which argued that it was afternoon. A thin ray of very bright light speared through a hole in my blackout curtains which I ought to mend before the day was out. Daniel, in the kitchen, was cooking something and talking on the phone.
I heaved myself out of the octopus-like embrace of my bed and sat up. I felt all right. Definitely awake. My clothes were in a heap on the floor. Standards slipping, Ms Chapman! I put on a clean caftan. I had no plans to go anywhere today.
Daniel nodded at me and put another sandwich under the griller. Cheese and tomato, yum. He concluded his conversation and hung up.
‘I have to get another phone,’ he told me. ‘Coffee?’
‘Please,’ I said. I examined him as he stood, naked to the waist, in the half-light. I had never seen such a beautiful back. His front was pretty special, too.
‘I feel all right,’ he answered my unspoken question. ‘How about you?’
‘I shamelessly handed over my bakery and livelihood to my apprentice and two assistants and went back to bed,’ I told him. He laughed.
‘Oh, yes. They were very pleased with themselves. They did the deliveries, sold out the shop, cashed up, and Jason should have finished the cleaning by now. He asked permission to borrow some of your old cookbooks. I said that would be all right. Some new project. Have a sandwich. I’m still starving.’
‘Then you should not wait for yours,’ I said, moving to take his place at the griller and constructing a few more sandwiches. ‘Plenty of bread.’
‘And I can recommend the bakery,’ he capped. I wondered how my profit margin would cope with another Jason to feed but he only ate three sandwiches. They, however, were perfect of their kind; crisp bread, gooey cheese and well-cooked tomato. I also ate a cheese muffin and a strawberry one. They were not as celestial as usual. I hoped that love would not dim Jason’s genius forever.
‘Your plans for the day?’ I asked my beloved. He stretched.
‘I get to take today off,’ he said. ‘I’m stiff and bruised and still a little shocked and I wish to spend the day with my own true love, perhaps taking in a little Terry Pratchett.’
‘Admirable plan,’ I said. ‘You can read to me as I mend the curtains.’
So we did that. We had tea at a civilised hour: real tea. Earl Grey. With scones. We were reading aloud to each other when
the bell rang and there were Kepler and Jon, two of our favourite people.
Jon is tall and handsome. His red hair is greying now. He works for a charity which means that he spends a lot of his time in tropical hellholes, fighting off the leeches and avoiding death squads, bringing light, trade and clean water to the benighted and lost. His reward for this virtue is Kepler, a transcendently beautiful Chinese man who solves horrendous computer problems and who adores Jon with a very touching wholehearted devotion, exactly matching Jon’s. They are extremely sweet together. They live in Neptune. Apposite, in view of the amount of travelling they do. Kepler had been everywhere recently, taking pictures.
‘Corinna,’ said Jon, ‘Kepler’s photos are ready.’
‘Come in,’ I invited, clearing the table of cups and sewing materials and papers. ‘Show me!’
They did as requested. Daniel smiled at them. They made a picture. Jon is so very Caucasian, and Kepler is exceptionally Asian. He favours flowing clothes and was presently wearing a completely outrageous pair of purple brocade pyjamas.
‘Kep’s been up all night,’ explained Jon. ‘Some fearsome North Korean virus. Which he defeated because his heart is pure. And you wanted to see the finished product, Corinna.’
I did. Kepler is a very skilled photographer and he had been taking pictures of Insula for some weeks. He was always popping up. Now he had had the photos made into a panorama, the tall building with its eight floors, with one iconic image for each apartment. They were never what one expected them to be, either. He had a wonderful eye. Mrs Pemberthy had complained about him, demanding that she should edit her photo, but the one of her was merciful. It was a long-distance shot of a bent old lady caressing that rotten little doggie, Traddles, under the chin. Thus
we got a figure of age and a portrait of the dog and didn’t have to look at Mrs Pemberthy, which was all to the good.
Jon had a bottle of champagne and I fetched some glasses. I leant the panorama up against my blackout curtains and sipped as I examined it. It was a marvellous piece of work.
There we all were. Beginning at the far right corner, Cafe Delicious. The cafe was crowded, people were talking and eating, and there were Del and Yai Yai in the middle, caught serving Greek coffee. The arc of the falling coffee was precise and beautiful. Del was scowling with effort, and Yai Yai was actually smiling.
Then there were the nerds. Kepler had managed to catch them when they were all playing some game. All the eyes were concentrated on one point and they looked alike, although they are actually very different.
The Sibyl’s Cave was stuffed with magical stuff, and in the corner, sitting in her big chair, was Meroe enthroned, long hands lying flat on the armrests, and Belladonna stretched across the top like the ornament on the Isle of Man chess queen. Meroe was thinking deeply. Her eyes were closed. She was formidable.
In Earthly Delights we were all action. Jason hefted a rack of bread to one shoulder, I was wiping my hands on my overall, and Kylie was laughing at something which Daniel, lounging by the door, had said. Horatio presided from the counter. We looked busy and prosperous.
I took a gulp of my champagne.
‘Wonderful work,’ said Daniel.
‘Thank you,’ said Kepler modestly.
‘Look, there’s Kylie and Goss,’ said Daniel, as we went up a floor. The girls were lying on their white couch in their pyjamas printed with little elephants, half asleep, each with her teddy bear on one side and Tori curled photogenically on Goss’ lap. Kepler
had caught their innocence and their sensuality. Whereas Mistress Dread, who runs a very strict dungeon, was attired in her plain tweeds and drinking tea from a porcelain cup, the Royal Doulton tea set on the lacy wrought-iron table. Professor Monk was talking to someone, expounding a difficult point, with one beautiful hand raised. His white hair and classical profile floated against his Roman frescos like a cameo. Andy and Cherie Holliday were cooking together. Cherie was chopping parsley, her father was stirring something in a basin, and Calico sat patiently on the corner of the table, waiting for tidbits. It was as compelling as a Vermeer Dutch kitchen.
‘How do you do it?’ I asked Kepler. ‘You must see the world differently from the rest of us.’