‘Who’s with you?’ The voice was hard with suspicion. ‘I can hear people.’
‘Meroe the witch and Corinna the baker.’
‘My dad says you’re all right,’ said the voice, and the door opened.
So here was our fugitive from that crowded house in Footscray. He still had spots. But otherwise he greatly resembled his mother. He had the same air of brisk efficiency and the same mousy hair and small, clever eyes.
‘Corinna.’ I extended a hand. He shook. His hand was solid, muscular and calloused.
‘Blessed be,’ said Meroe, and patted his cheek. He took a step back.
‘I’m Manny,’ he told us. ‘Brigie’s in here.’
Meroe went in to see the young woman, shutting the door firmly behind her. Daniel and I examined the flat. It was spacious and largely empty. The kitchen, one of those really expensive ones, had been augmented with a box for a table and a couple of cushions.
‘You want some tea?’ asked Manny. ‘I can do tea.’
We accepted tea and Manny put the kettle on. A sense of dread was growing on me. I shook myself.
‘This looks cosy,’ I said for something to say.
‘So nice and cool,’ Manny replied. ‘We can have a shower every day, twice a day. Brigie gets real overheated. Freegans found us a big old chair and she’s been sleeping in it. She can’t lie flat anymore. And we can wash and dry all our stuff. Freegans found us a lot of food. It’s been ace.’
Jason’s word. How strong had this young person been, to elude pursuit with the added burden of a pregnant, gently reared girl to protect? The bruises from his nasty encounter in Collingwood had mostly faded. I was lost in admiration.
‘Daniel says you found Bunny and he’s all right,’ Manny said.
‘Yes, presently hopping around my apprentice’s flat and in the rudest of health.’
‘That’s good. Thanks! Brigie’s been real upset about Bunny. He ran away when we got jumped and I couldn’t find him anywhere. I was afraid he’d be stew by now, or that some fox’d get him.’
He poured tea into one china cup, one plastic cup and one large mug emblazoned with
World’s Greatest Grandpa.
Grandpa had not appreciated his present, it seemed. Someone had put in the correct apostrophe with a black felt pen. This must be freegan loot. No one else would do that.
‘Bunny hopped downhill to the Collingwood Children’s Farm and was identified by his microchip.’
‘He’s a bright rabbit,’ said Manny.
‘Certainly is.’
We sipped tea in silence. It was Earl Grey. Manny took his with long-life milk fished out of a big cardboard box on the counter. Therein were also tins and packets and a collection of fresh fruit and vegetables, a paring knife, two saucepans and a frying pan. Those freegans were efficient.
‘But what are we going to do?’ Manny asked suddenly, grasping Daniel by the arm. ‘You can’t keep her family away from her.’
‘You watch me,’ said Daniel.
‘Really?’
‘Trust me,’ said Daniel. Manny stared into his eyes. Daniel stared back. One of those Clint Eastwood moments which infuriate women to screaming point.
I had heard the door open and Meroe was beckoning me to come in. I left the boys to their unspoken conversation.
‘This is Corinna,’ she introduced me to a girl lying back in a big chair. I dropped to one knee beside her.
She was beautiful still, though so tired that the heart ached to look at her. Black smudges underlined her blue eyes. She was clean. Her hair had been recently washed and plaited to keep it off her face. She still had her exquisite beauty but the swelling of her belly was almost a deformity. Her wrists and ankles were swollen and looked sore, the skin shiny. She was wearing a freegan-supplied white crimplene maternity dress of hideous cut which someone must have been very glad to discard.
‘Hello, Brigid,’ I said, taking her hand. She gave mine a little squeeze and then the exhausted grip fell away.
‘Bunny?’ she whispered.
‘Bunny is fine. He’s living with my apprentice until you can come back and get him.’
‘That’s good,’ she whispered. ‘I was so worried about …’
Then she drifted off. I raised my eyebrows at Meroe.
‘We have to get her to hospital fast,’ said my witch. ‘I’ve just massaged her belly with mint oil and that child is moving to be born. Any time. She told me that she wet herself about an hour ago. That was her water breaking. She’s already in the early stages of labour.’
‘No!’ the girl roused herself. ‘Not hospital! My mother …’
‘No, no one is going to come near you, not if I have to personally fell them with a bedpan,’ I assured her. ‘You can trust Daniel and Daniel has a plan. Don’t upset yourself.’
‘You trust him?’ she appealed to Meroe.
‘Yes,’ said Meroe. ‘I trust him. I’ll come with you. I won’t leave you.’
‘All right,’ the girl assented.
No time to lose. I went back to the male half of the situation and reported. They had stopped staring at each other and were drinking tea while Daniel made phone calls.
‘We need to go to hospital now,’ I said.
‘Right now?’
‘Yes, really, right now—Meroe says so.’
‘The trouble is …’ said Daniel.
‘What?’
‘Well, we were going to have a freegan escort,’ he told me. ‘Like the escort that got me out of the brewery site. But last night the freegans got into a bit of bother with the police and most of them are in jail.’
‘What happened?’
‘They were dumpster diving outside a supermarket and the night packers called the cops,’ he said slowly. ‘The patrol turned up and the freegans danced around them delivering their lecture on how much food is wasted in Melbourne every
night. They probably would have been all right even then if Nigel hadn’t wreathed the nearest cop in sausages. And kissed him.’
I laughed, even though the situation was not funny. Daniel and Manny were standing near the window and I looked out.
‘They’ll be released later today, I expect, because what are the cops going to do with them?’ Daniel went on.
‘But we can’t wait until later,’ I said. And pointed. ‘And the situation has just got more complicated.’
Down in the alley there were men in suits. At least four of them. Watching the door.
‘And more,’ said Manny.
There in the street were several roughly dressed men and a donkey.
‘Lord, the gypsies. They must have followed Meroe.’
Meroe joined me at the window.
‘Yes, that’s Pahlevi and his brothers.’
‘Why are they carrying a bucket?’ I asked.
‘It’s full of holy water and various herbs. They want to throw it over me. I am expected to sizzle and boil away.’
‘Like the witch in Oz? “I’m melting, I’m melting?” ’ asked Manny with interest.
‘Just like that,’ affirmed Meroe.
‘And will it hurt you?’ asked Daniel.
‘Not unless I get hit in the eye with a clove of garlic.’ She smiled grimly.
There was a silence. Brigid moaned. Manny chewed fingernails. I ordered my mind to think of something. It obliged.
‘I’m remembering a Flambeau story,’ I said. ‘We might be able to do this. It will take split-second timing, though. First we have to get Brigid downstairs. Then you have to be prepared to be drenched,’ I told Meroe.
They listened to my exposition. There were few questions. This was either going to work, or not work. Manny packed the things he would need, Meroe took up her basket and I donned my backpack. Then we carried Brigid to the lift and emerged into the immaculate foyer. Meroe flung her azure shawl over Brigid’s head so that it should not get soaked and we surveyed the crowd. Gypsies to the right. Men of God to the left. Serena in the street, idly chewing. Daniel at the door, opening it.
‘Go!’ I yelled, and we hauled the poor girl to the door and then several things happened at once.
Meroe ran into the middle of the suits and grabbed one around the neck, embracing him. Manny and I heaved Brigid towards the donkey while I grabbed up the buckets of water and the few remaining flowers from the panniers and threw them at the gypsies. The gypsies, with a collective howl of rage, grabbed for Meroe. One of the Men of God punched a gypsy. One of the gypsies returned the compliment. Meroe danced in between the suits, just out of grabbing range, teasing her exorcists.
Once I had emptied out the panniers, Manny and I hoisted Brigid onto Serena’s back and I shook the leading rein.
‘Come along,’ I told the donkey. ‘There’s a precedent for this.’
Manny on one side, Daniel on the other, me in the lead, Brigid hanging onto the harness, we began to hurry along Rathdowne Street towards the Women’s Hospital. We left the sounds of the cultural studies lesson—that gypsies do not tolerate being thumped, even by men in suits, when they were on an important magical errand—behind as we scuttled along. I didn’t dare run, even if I could have run that far, but Serena had an easy lope which ate up the distance and she did not seem distressed by the weight. I suppose that, even pregnant, little Brigie didn’t weigh much more than six buckets of water.
She was managing gamely, head bowed under the drape of blue silk, one hand on her belly, one hand clutching the harness. We slowed a little as no one was pursuing us, though there were shouts of ‘Son of Peace! Shiloh!’ from the alley.
‘All right?’ Daniel asked me. ‘I ought to go back and rescue Meroe.’
‘All right,’ I told him. It was all right. My plan had worked. Just like in the Father Brown story. Let no one tell me again that reading detective stories was frivolous. Flambeau, a criminal, had fooled two sets of policemen into arresting each other. I had set two antithetical groups together and used Meroe as the bait.
I hoped she was all right. I hoped that Mr Pahlevi hadn’t ensured that the bad witch would sizzle by using, say, battery acid instead of water in that bucket. But Daniel was looking after Meroe and I was leading a donkey down Rathdowne Street. A donkey carrying a pregnant girl, attended by the devoted.
We were getting away with it. It was exhilarating. People we almost ran down did not object but threw coins and compliments. They thought we were a Christmas pageant. And so, in fact, we were.
Serena cooperated with splendid aplomb. Her ears were forward, her pace was deft. She seemed to be trying not to jolt her rider. We climbed the hill without trouble from the donkey, though I was panting and so hot that I thought I might burst into flame. Brigid was clinging like a monkey. Manny was shouting encouragement to the donkey and me.
‘Come on, Corinna! Come on, Serena! Hang on, Brigie! Good girls! You can do it!’
We crossed the road with the lights to the tooting of appreciative horns and carried our burden right through the double doors and into casualty.
The triage nurse did not flicker an eyelash. Triage nurses have seen everything. We unloaded Brigid and she was hustled away into an examination cubicle. As the established donkey wrangler, I reversed Serena with some difficulty—every child in the department had flung themselves at her—and took her outside. There I fed her all the flowers which remained in her panniers. After this the children took over and supplied her with a frightful selection of sweets, some pre-sucked. As I was thus engaged, Daniel ran past me with a soaking Meroe by his side. He was licking cut knuckles. I tethered Serena to the stork sculpture and went in to find out what was happening.
Meroe was drying her hair with a hospital towel. As always she had complete self-possession, even soaking wet and bedraggled. No one ever challenged her right to be wherever she was. The sister summoned a wheelchair and Brigid, Meroe and Manny were borne off into the depths of the hospital. Daniel and I, panting and very hot, were left at a curiously loose end. We embraced briefly.
‘It worked,’ my darling congratulated me.
‘So it did,’ I said. ‘What do we do now?’
‘The nurse said it would be hours before she has any news.’
‘Shall we go home?’ I asked.
‘Let’s shall.’
So we went outside, unhitched our donkey, and walked her back to Earthly Delights, where there were a lot of rosewater muffins with her name on.
A virgin most pure as the prophets do tell
Hath brought forth a baby as it hath befell
Trad.
Daniel drew first go at the shower in my apartment, so I stayed in the alley with Serena. The problems of what to do with the heroic donkey were compounded when she was discovered by, first of all, Kylie and Goss, returning hot but sated from their shopping expedition, and then by the choir.
Serena had devoured several hastily defrosted rosewater muffins, half a bucket of lukewarm water, and I was feeding her some leftover carrots from Jason’s carrot cake experiment when both girls arrived, squealed with joy, flung their bags into the bakery and then flung themselves at the donkey with a delighted cooing such as is heard from one dove who has just been reunited with its favourite other dove after a long absence. Serena stood up
to this very well, allowing them to stroke her silky ears, kiss her nose and straighten her straw hat, which had rather suffered from the pace of events in Rathdowne Street recently. I handed over the rest of the carrots and went in search of some more supplies. Fortunately I had just ordered in a lot of celery and leafy greens and the outer leaves of the cabbage seemed to be just what Serena liked. For what she had just done, she was entitled to wade knee-deep in the produce of the whole Victoria Market.
When I returned loaded with leaves, the confrontation in the alley was advancing nicely towards total war.
‘What are you doing with that donkey?’ demanded Sarah. Jason was with her, and Rowan, and several other people in severe black and white, carrying folders. Carol singers, I presumed. Bec looked cross, Rowan nervous, Jason agonised and Janeen fascinated. The others looked bored. This must have happened with tedious frequency before.
‘I’m feeding her cabbage,’ said Goss with complete truth. ‘What does it look like I’m doing, girlfriend? And what business is it of yours?’
Goss was on the warpath. Kylie joined her on the front-line.
‘Yeah, what she said,’ she agreed.
‘You are exploiting the labour of that innocent beast,’ declaimed Sarah. ‘Just like she does with those miserable cats!’