Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales & (5 page)

Grace watched her daughter eat and the feeling grew upon her that she simply hated the girl. Once the first bud of thought emerged, flowering was wildly luxuriant and no implement could have clipped the buds.

Hyperica was innocent of awareness and deep into her own thoughts, as her mother gazed.

~

The next day, Grace visited Miss Cassandra again. "You said my daughter would live with us for the rest of our lives ..."

Miss Cassandra was taken aback. This woman did not seem happy at all. "Not exactly," she stalled.

"What, then?"

"She will live in that house forever. That's what I meant."

Grace left her in a bit of a huff, and her next three stops were to Cambridge estate agents, inquiring about putting a house on the market.

"We've got to move out from under her," she declared late that evening, after Cloudmere crept home. They were huddled together in the hothouse. She'd made a bowl of vanilla custard jewelled with diamonds of preserved quince, and was trying to repair their rift with this pudding and two spoons.

Cloudmere felt disoriented. Grace had become much more forceful over the last few days.

"I will not have her ruining our lives," she insisted.

"But this is nonsense," he tried to sensibly remind his wife. "You want us to sell because some woman tells you she can foretell the future?"

Grace obstinately nodded. "If she's right, it will work. And if she's wrong, maybe it will, too. Let's sell and buy a one-bedroom house."

Cloudmere gave in, even though what he would miss, and he knew Grace would too, wasn't the house but the garden and the haven of this hothouse with its community of beloved plants.

~

Grace visited Twester Heatherstone Estate Agents the next day, first looking for a house to move to. She spent the afternoon visiting four horrible little boxes, all eminently desirable according to Tony Twester. But then he would think a dog kennel was quite suitable for his own mother.

On coming home, the Dunphy driveway was blocked by a pantechnicon, plain-sided as an expressionless face. Hyperica emerged from the front door, carrying two bulging carrybags. "Scuse," muttered Hyperica, scooting past her mother on the steps. Grace ran in the house and up to Hyperica's room. The only things left were walls punctuated with picture hangers where all the mirrors had been, a litter of magazines and an unmade bed.

The front door slammed and Hyperica stood in the hall with a man with the body of a T-shirted and jeaned gladiator and the skin of an old lizard. "This is Angel, Mum."

Angel moved his legs apart and rippled his muscles in the way other men smooth their hair back. Grace waited. Angel adjusted his cleft chin towards Grace like he would welcome an argument, and was used to winning.

"Angel has this van business and we're getting married, aren't we, Angel?" Hyperica cringed up at him, as she took his arm and he shook her off.

"Not here," he snapped. "Tole you that, dint I."

Suddenly, Angel lifted a meaty arm to look at his watch.

"Is your ladyship 'bout finished here?" he asked, looking at no one, but his voice dripping with the same syrupy bile that Hyperica had always dispensed.

Hyperica's face flushed beet. She scuttled off like a trained cockroach, lugging the heavy carry bags and with difficulty, lifting them and herself into the lorry.

She had barely installed herself before the pantechnicon leapt from the curb with never a look back from girl or man—just a black diesel fart for remembrance.

Next week was the Nobel awards, and the Dunphys would have sent their regrets if there had been an address to send them to, but there wasn't. Hyperica had disappeared just as completely as the jewellery in Grace Dunphy's jewel box. But that was a small price to pay for happiness.

~

It was a cool spring evening when Cloudmere and Grace left the home of their new next-door neighbours.

"Grusha and Irena have settled in well, haven't they?"

"Almost as snug as we are," Cloudmere sighed, as he put his arm around Grace, nestled beside him on the floor of the hothouse, now the site of many romantic trysts instead of just escapes. "And you were going to abandon this. Lucky for us your clairvoyant friend turned wrong early enough. Superstitious piffle."

Grace winced from the painful memory. "How would you explain her rightness?"

"Close enough hits on some things that you papered over her wild misses yourself. That's how predictions work. Maybe I should take up the trade," Cloudmere concluded with only a half-gloat of I-told-you-so in his voice.

Grace pulled out a tin from the base of the passionfruit vine. "Have a biscuit."

Cloudmere took three, and was dipping in for another handful when Grace closed the box. "Maybe you're not a man," she smiled mischievously.

"Hmm?" Cloudmere asked, his mouth full.

"They're Miss Cassandra's recipe. She warned me that you would hate these biscuits, because all men dislike this taste."

Cloudmere stood and pulled Grace up with him. "I predict you'll find Miss Cassandra wrong again ... but I'll let you count the ways."

~

A tree fell against the front door. At least it sounded that loud, though no tree was close enough to make that bang. It was a dark and balmy night, and the Dunphys tensed against each other in bed. A second tree fell almightily against the solid oak, and then the polite doorbell tinkled, and tinkled again, followed by a series of bashes, and an "Open up!"

"Do you think you should go?" Grace clutched Cloudmere, meaning "I think you should go, but ..."

"I should think so!" the professor announced, now brave enough to get out of bed and put on his robe and slippers.

He rushed reluctantly down the stairs. Choosing the most viciously pointed umbrella in the stand, he unlatched the door and put his foot behind, only to have the heavy oak bashed into his face as the door was violently pushed open.

"Have me waiting here all night in the dark, would you! Well, get the rest of my stuff. It's on the curb."

"Hyperica?"

"Who'd you think it is? Get Mum up. I need a feed."

It was indeed his daughter, looking and, ah, smelling amazingly unkempt. There was a huddle of bags around her, and another clump at the curb. Cloudmere marvelled at the loss of his daughter's looks. She'd always been so particular. And this new low-class talk? Was it an act? Maybe, because there were her mirrors, leaning against the bags at the curb. But she hadn't lost her manners or her acid-drop tongue.

"Oy, Baldy! Wacher waitin for?" Hyperica prodded, literally by knocking her knuckles against his pate.

He jerked his head away from her, and from contemplating the ramifications of another detail of her appearance— the ominous evidence, even to his unobservant eye, that his daughter was eating for two.

"You're back?" Grace's stricken voice called down the stairs.

Hyperica sneered up at her mother. "No, I'm front. What's it look like? Give you something to do with your life for a change."

Grace grabbed the balustrade for support. "Miss Cassandra. Miss Cassandra," she moaned. "She was right. Cloudy!"

"Gaw! This place! Eh, I'm hungr— eh, wachyer step!" Hyperica yowled as she crashed against the wall, pushed aside by her father.

Grace ran down the stairs and out the door, grabbing him by the back of his robe.

"Where are you going?"

"To Grusha's."

"You can't escape now! What about me?"

"What about us? I'm not coming home until we solve it!"

"Solve her? How? Murder?"

"No. I wouldn't know how. Physics, Grace. Physics. You were right. What good am I if I can't do something useful?"

He glanced over her shoulder to the doorway of their home. Then he took her hands in his. "I solemnly swear to you, Grace. In less than a month, she will be gone. Grusha and I will do something beyond any Nobel ever earned ... though won't be able to report our findings. " He snorted abruptly, as he sometimes did when he made an especially amusing calculation. "Or rather 'losings' ..."

"Hey. Come back! I'm hungry!" wafted from the doorway behind, ignored by both.

"And before? Why didn't you?"

"I didn't realize we could. Or that we had to. Or that she... Grace, I ..."

"Hate her?" Grace smiled.

The professor blinked.

"Join the club," Grace giggled.

"You, too?"

"Who not, Cloudy? But what about Miss Cassandra? Her prediction."

"That fake? How can you believe ... Well, we shall have to send her, too. Won't take chances."

Grace wrapped her arms around his neck. But then a new worry pulled her off. "Where? Where will you send them?"

Cloudmere's mind was already yearning to get to work. This was an unpleasant interruption.

"Somewhere! I promise. But for something no one has ever achieved, now you want to know where? Do you care?"

"Hey! I'm starving!"

" ... No, actually... but don't hurt her baby."

"Her baby?"

"Yes. I want it to live."

"Why?"

The pavement was suddenly crowded with Hyperica's presence. "Hey you olds, want me to report you for child abuse?" She grabbed Grace's arm. "I need food!"

"Do you have to ask, Cloudy?" Grace smiled, and turning to Hyperica yet a different smile, she took her daughter's hand. "Welcome home, dear. Let's run you a bath first, shall we?"

Temptation of the Seven Scientists

Once there were, and perhaps still are: a certain seven scientists, each with a yearning heart. They lived by a forest so dense and vast that not one scientist knew another, though their spoor often met on the forest paths. The scientists were named S1, S2, S3 and so on, all the way to S7; and although some were M and some, F, we shall speak of them as M, for it matters not a hoot.

Each scientist set off each morning on his own, hunting his prey—the Great Theory. Not to kill it, but to capture it, tame it, and display it for all to see.

The forest teemed with Great Theories, no two alike. However, they were all very elusive beasts, and the hunters hardly ever caught one.

S1 was an exception. When he was still a shock of greasy youth, he caught a Great Theory and became quickly renowned for his skill. Only he knew that he had fallen asleep in a glade, and the Great Theory had stumbled over him and woken him up. He leapt to his feet in fright, thereby jerking a line he had forgotten to tie up neatly, and the Theory, who was just rising to its feet, stumbled again, tangled in the mess of S1's sloppy work. It only remained for S1to properly hobble the beast and lead it back to S1's village, where the young hunter was immediately lauded as a great hero (it was indeed, a splendid Great Theory). S1 became known far and wide, and was feted by the King. No one except S1 and the Great Theory ever knew the true story of the capture, but to have netted such a magnificent catch at such an early age boded a brilliant future for the young scientist.

But though S1 hunted diligently, the flame of his reputation dimmed a little with each passing season, as he made no other catches, saw no other Great Theories, and had not even heard a Theory's swishing as it rushed through the forest. And each year, S1 grew older, as we all do.

One night, S1 had a dream so vivid that he remembered every detail when he woke, and he knew sure as he knew his own prowess, that the dream spoke the truth.

And this is what the dream said:

"Go to your most secret spot in the forest, and a Great Theory will be waiting for you there, roped to a tree. Take hold of her bridle and she will be yours."

~

The second scientist, S2, was a curious sight in the forest. Tramping before the dew dried, braving wind, sleet, ice, fog, and pouring rain, S2's skill in tracking was only just exceeded by the graceful fleetness of the lovely Great Theory that he sought. They had been so close to each other for so many years that you would have thought they were almost on speaking terms. But he never quite caught her. Birds often shat on his head, but he never noticed. Fantastic flowers bloomed, but they were not to his interest. His eyes focussed only on the trail of the Great Theory. S2 praised his Great Theory to others, but as he was a puny fellow with skin like a toad, everyone only laughed at him, even his own mother and father, whose only words to him if they spoke to him at all, were "Why don't you do real work as we do!" So he rarely spoke now, except to himself.

And one night, S2 had a dream, as real and convincing as the dream of S1. And this is what S2's dream said:

"Go to your most secret spot in the forest, and the Great Theory that you have followed all these many years will waiting for you, roped to a tree. Take hold of her bridle and she will be yours. Lead her home and no one will ever laugh at you again."

~

No one ever laughed at the third scientist. On the contrary, his whole village ran out to meet him when he strode wearily into sight of an evening. They led him to his house, where his wife tenderly massaged his feet while he ate and drank the good meal that she had laid before him. And after his wife had wiped the grease from his elbows, he spoke to the waiting throng. And all the village trembled at his day's exploits, including the latest thrilling slip of his fearsome prey. Although he was handsome as a new coin, many listeners closed their eyes so as to hear his voice better. For the voice of S3 could make the nightingale faint in envy. His tales were so exciting, the Great Theory always so near his grasp, its breath so terrifying, that wenches often did faint, and needed his reviving arm to be brought to life again.

Between S3 and his imagination, only one of them had ever encountered any Great Theories. S3 knew that he should really have become a troubadour, but he had become a scientist instead, so he left it to his imagination to do all the work, and hoped that he could keep his looks and voice. However, lately his looks were beginning to fade.

One night he had a dream, and he knew it to be real and true, just as S1 and S2 knew the same of their dreams. And this is what his dream said:

"Go to the secret place where you eat your morning meal, and tied to a bramble bush, you will see a real Great Theory, not formed by your imagination. You will know it to be a Great Theory because it will be wearing a halter. Untie it and lead it back to your village, and though your looks will fade and your voice will lose its sweetness, the villagers will still love you because you have brought them the Great Theory."

~

The fourth scientist had no loving wife nor adoring village wenches fainting at his words. He had no home hearth to go to, nor any comforts. The only fire in his life was the Great Theory, and if he met you on the road, you would soon wish he were a bandit who would only steal your jewels and victuals, and be off. Instead, S4 was famous for exhorting you to see his Great Theory in your mind's eye, whether you be a scientist or not, whether Great Theories stirred your blood, or not.

"Blue-headed, it is," he would tell you, with his face so close you could read his pores. "with black and white plates on it like floor tiles," and you'd have to nod agreement, even though you'd certainly never seen his Great Theory. Even then, he'd not let you escape without paying more of a toll, listening to all the characteristics of the beast as if he'd lived with it close as man and wife. And you'd have to exclaim, "Yes, yes!" as if you also knew the Great Theory to be exactly as he described, and found it as fascinating a creature. And finally, after you thought you could bear no more, he'd yell out, "There it is!" and be off running down the road, with you seeing nothing, but getting away from him as fast as if the forest were haunted.

And one night, S4 had a dream, as vivid as the dreams of S1, S2, and S3. And so real that when he woke, he cried out in agony. And this is what his dream said:

"The Great Theory you have chased and described in such detail to so many strangers these long years is not a Great Theory at all, but a bluejay sitting on the head of his friend, a spotted boar. Go to your most secret spot in the forest, and they will be waiting for you, roped to a tree. Take hold of the bridle, and they will turn into your Great Theory, in looks and character, exactly matching your belief."

~

The fifth scientist was a simple man, with only one goal in life: riches. If he could have paid a simpleton nothing to catch a Great Theory, and then sell the thing, he would have done it. The problem was, he didn't know a simpleton who could catch a Theory, and the smarter men would all want to be paid themselves, if they were to pass the prize on to him. So instead, S5 worked in a secret spot, making a Great Theory. He had to make it look convincing, with legs that flopped, a mouth that gaped, a tail that looked as if it had once slashed the air. His plan was to arrive at the King's court laden with his catch. Dead, unfortunately, but, he calculated, still worth quite a lot. By the time the King discovered the fraud, if ever, S5 would be raking his fingers through his riches, safe in a far-off kingdom.

S5 toiled alone, and was a great admirer of himself. So he cursed everything but himself, for his project was still unfinished, and was, moreover, becoming more difficult, costly and time-consuming than he'd ever considered.

And one night, S5 had a dream, more real than his constructed Theory would ever be, and so convincing that he believed the dream utterly. And this is what the dream said:

"When you awake, go to your secret place, and in the corner where you've propped your ragdoll Theory, will stand a real, live Great Theory, more magnificent than your wildest imagination. Take hold of its bridle and it will be yours."

~

The sixth scientist would have admired the flair of S5, as he had none of his own. Every day he ate his breakfast, and walked to the same spot in the forest, sat down in the same place, sharpened his pencil, polished his spectacles, opened his pad, and recorded what went past. He was the child of two scientists, and always knew he would grow up to be a scientist himself. But he never expected to find a Great Theory, so he didn't consider it worth wasting his time looking. He did his work dutifully and trudged home, every workday the same, hour for lunch, a space in his log for public holidays.

And one night he had a dream, and he was startled but he did believe it, and this is what it said:

"Go to the workplace where you sit, and a Great Theory will be waiting there. She is very tame. Take hold of her halter and she will be yours."

~

The last scientist was S7, and though he went to the forest every day, he never saw a Great Theory. He examined spoor from many beasts, including his fellow hunters. He listened to the birds' speech, and observed them at their rest, and when they suddenly took flight. He put his nose to the stones and sniffed, and crumbled droppings between his fingers and peered. He had heard many stories, but believed no tales except the tales that he observed, by adding up their own unspoken words.

He heard certain sounds, and some days he thought with a leap of heart, that they might be the sounds of a Great Theory. Odd wild smells woke him in the night with their strange vigour. He saw footprints like no other. Some days, a flash amongst the tree trunks left him breathless, his eyes throbbing.

He never spoke of these things. He had never seen a Great Theory.

Over the years, the forest taught him many things, as he looked and saw and listened and heard and observed all around him.

One day, deep in the woods, he reached a little bare patch of ground. He picked up a little stick and squatted down, and scratched a picture in the dirt. It was a picture of one Great Theory, as he thought it could possibly look. Its tracks had been fresh daily for a moon, and it almost seemed to be following him. Then there had been smells, leaf rustlings, flits of colour through the trees. When he was finished drawing the picture, he suddenly stood, and rubbed the dirt smooth with his boot. His cheeks were warm, and glowed red. He was embarrassed to have drawn the picture. After all, he had not SEEN any Great Theory.

And that night, he had a dream. And when he woke, he knew it to be real, and absolutely true. And this is what S7's dream said:

"The Great Theory that you have drawn is the Great Theory that has been watching you. When you wake, go to the place where you drew her picture, and she will be waiting for you. Take hold of her bridle, and she will be yours to parade for all to see."

~

And so, each scientist woke and knew his dream to be true.

And each scientist went to his own special place, and did as he was told, and a Great Theory was his.

Except for one scientist, who sat and gazed at the beast and marvelled.

And the beast gazed back at him and said, "Take hold of my bridle and I am yours."

And he took hold of the Great Theory's bridle, and she bowed down her head in acquiescence.

And he cried, for she was more beautiful to him than he ever thought any thing could be.

And with his two hands, he removed the bridle and left her naked as she was born.

"You are free," he said. "I will not capture you."

And at that, the Great Theory tossed back her head.

"Then I ..." she said, "will walk with you."