Forbidden Fruit (10 page)

We parked in the car park in St Heliers Street and wound our way down to the Children’s Farm. Behind it the trees of Studley Park rose in rank. The air was heavy with eucalyptus. It was hot and quiet. Even the little birds who lived free of care in the thick hedges were quiet. I suppose even birds can have an afternoon nap. Despite the cookies I was hungry, conscious of missing lunch, and wondering what on earth I was going to do with a bunny as big and assertive as this one. For he must not go back to the house, not if Brigid’s dad had threatened to cook him. That sort of man might easily kill him. And he must not be killed.

‘Not us,’ said Goss, who was thinking along the same lines. ‘Not anyone who already has a cat or a dog. Which lets off Therese. And the Professor has Nox and Trudi has Lucifer and we have Tori and Cherie Holland has Calico and Mrs P has that gross little mongrel Traddles and you have the Mouse Police and Horatio.’

‘Nerds?’ asked Daniel.

‘They’d forget to feed him.’

‘What about the Cafe Delicious family?’ he asked.

‘They might forget and eat him. Del makes a really brilliant rabbit casserole.’

‘Which leaves Mrs Dawson and Jason,’ observed Goss.

‘I can’t see Mrs Dawson really taking to a rabbit, can you?’ asked Daniel.

‘No,’ I said. ‘She would look after him properly if he was foisted on her, but only out of a sense of duty.’

‘How about Rowan?’ asked Goss, who had rather taken to the student upstairs.

‘His group disapproves of companion animals,’ I told her. ‘They even disapproved of Horatio—to his face! He would not be safe or suitable. In any case, he isn’t in on this action.’

‘No, then it’s Jason, isn’t it?’ asked Goss, and giggled.

‘Then it is Jason,’ I agreed. ‘Jason will cope, especially if we sling him a reasonable emolument for rabbit-sitting. After all, we are going to find this girl, so it won’t be forever.’

‘Not forever,’ agreed Daniel.

We had been pacing down a hot, stony path between ranks of surprisingly green vegetation and had reached a hut. There we enquired of an enchantingly plump girl for the vet and Bunny. She opened the door and let us in.

The vet was a thin, wiry woman, who was concluding her examination of a really big rabbit. She lowered him into a crate.

‘He’s fine, Estelle, just get him some water. This is no climate in which to wear fur. Slip that frozen bottle of water in there with him. There, he’s draped himself over it. That’s the way, Bunny. Soon have you cool. You’ve come for Bunny? I’ve given him a calci booster. He’s not injured, though he’s hopped a fair way. His paws are sore. Here’s an ointment for the paws and a care sheet for rabbits, since you don’t look like the original owner.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘No, we know nothing about rabbits. How did he end up here?’

She shoved back her short straw-coloured hair and frowned.

‘We found him this morning, scavenging the guinea pigs’ food,’ she told me. ‘He was hungry but not starving. I’d say he hadn’t come too far without a meal. Heat-affected, though. The trouble is that tame rabbits get used to a highly nutritious diet. They aren’t used to eating grass. And he has a lot of rabbit to feed. Well, I am sure that you would like to leave a donation. We can sell you the carrier if you haven’t got one of your own. What happened to his owner?’

‘That’s what we would really like to know,’ said Daniel feelingly, leafing through his wallet for notes. ‘Can you give me a receipt?’

‘Certainly,’ said the vet. ‘If I was you, I’d have a look at the convent. Lots of places to hide there. A runaway?’

‘A heavily pregnant runaway.’

‘Ah,’ said the vet, writing out the receipt and handing over the carrier. ‘I saw a pregnant girl in the convent grounds, but it was a while ago. Estelle! When did the Shetland have that night of colic?’

‘Wednesday,’ said Estelle, who had been listening in the intervals of selling tickets and goat food to the populace.

‘Wednesday last week, I was up all night with the pony. I saw a heavily pregnant girl and a boy sneaking into the convent by the back door, the one which leads to the art place. Just along the street. I was going to offer them a drink of water, but they drifted along like smoke and I lost them. And I had the pony to care for, so I went back down the hill. You’re looking for her?’

‘Yes,’ said Daniel.

‘Better find her soon or she’ll drop,’ said the vet with the frankness of those who deal with animals. ‘Two weeks or less, I would have said, and she didn’t look well. Good luck with Bunny. Keep him cool,’ she said. We left, the comfortable sound of chooks foraging accompanying us up the hill.

‘Convent?’ I asked.

‘Better send Timbo to Jason with Bunny, if we have to keep the poor creature cool,’ said Daniel. ‘He can come back and pick us up. I’ll just write a note and tell Jason to buy a proper cage and some rabbit food. And give him his first rabbit-sitting payment, of course.’

‘You write the note,’ I offered, ‘and I’ll call him.’

Jason’s first scream of outrage when he was informed of his new role was greatly reduced and his feelings of oppression
assuaged by the offer of twenty dollars a day to mind the beast. Timbo chuckled and agreed to see Bunny settled in before he came back for us.

And then we were on our own with the convent.

It was vast.

The Sisters of the Good Shepherd, I recalled, were responsible for a lot of people: good girls to be educated, bad girls to be confined, orphaned girls to be turned into competent housemaids and cooks. They also looked after elderly female invalids and the insane. They ran a laundry. At one stage they had three schools. And when they acquired a new responsibility, they just built a new building. Despite the best efforts of the previous government, it had not been pulled down and turned into apartments. It was a working arts complex, with painters and dyers and sculptors and galleries and its own radio station and bakery.

It was to the bakery that my feet found themselves heading. I could smell bread. Good bread. And we had missed lunch.

The little cafe was crowded and I edged towards the front, looking at the ovens. They were wonderful, ancient bread ovens made of wrought iron, which holds the heat like nothing else can. I felt a pang of powerful acquisitiveness. Actually, it was plain greed. I wanted those ovens.

Daniel and Goss, in my wake, were amused. I tamped down the lust. These ovens weren’t going anywhere and it was suffocating in the little cafe.

I bought a selection of baguettes filled with cold roast beef and salad and cheese and other things, and we sat down in the shade to drink iced tea (with insufficient ice) and eat them while Goss enthused about the market—which was carried on, it seemed, just around a few unimportant corners, no more than a few k’s of convent territory, and could we have a little tiny peek at it?

Daniel was nodding. So I assented, even though I knew, with the fat woman’s resigned bitterness, that there would be nothing in the market which would fit me. And if by some strange chance there was, it would be blue crimplene, in which I have forbidden Daniel even to bury me.

The convent buildings were relatively modest. An L-shaped red-brick construction was fronted by a charming (but lightly baked, now) garden under a circular concrete gazebo which proclaimed that the protection of St Joseph was requested. Modern buildings fronted onto the huge outer wall. No one but an Olympic athlete was going to get into the convent. Or, I realised with a small shudder, out of it … The nuns had run a Magdalen laundry, in which the bad girls were employed. Some of them must have seen that wall as a barrier against all hope of escape.

And we were hunting an escapee, or a pair of escapees, so this might be a good place for them.

‘Bunny can’t have hopped a really long way,’ said Daniel, echoing my thought as he often did. ‘And this place has a lot of windows which would open and a lot of niches under the bushes.’

‘You’ve been looking at ways to break in?’

‘Certainly,’ he replied.

One thing to be said about the market was that it had no Christmas carols. A Peruvian band were hooting and thumping in the middle, spruiking their CD. I always listen for the Simon and Garfunkel song ‘El Condor Pasa’ in such music and never hear it. But at least it wasn’t ‘I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus’, for which I hope that someone will have to atone. What an evil old misanthropic bitch I am.

Goss slid into the market like a salmon into John West seas—easily, effortlessly. And she took me along with her for a
demonstration of Postgraduate Shopping. Daniel shoved both hands in his jeans pockets and mooched along after us, chatting to the stall holders, the picture of a reluctant male attendee.

Clever man. I had no intention of buying anything, anyway. But it was an interesting market, and following Goss was engrossing. She would drift along, talking idly of this and that—wondering, in fact, how Jason would get on with Bunny—and then suddenly stiffen like a pointer, dive into a mass of garments, and drag one forth. And it appeared that I was going to buy things.

‘Boho, that’s the look for you,’ Goss decided. ‘Long skirt, loose blouse, maybe a big belt.’

‘None of it will fit me!’ I protested, veteran of many humiliating attempts to shoehorn my curves into standard garments. Goss shot me a look so loaded with scorn that I suppressed further comment.

‘You’re a perfect size 20,’ she told me. I blinked. ‘Perfect’ had never been a term used with ‘size 20’ in my hearing before. But I continued to protest. Privately. Hell would freeze over—I spared a moment to apologise to any Sisters of the Good Shepherd who might still be around in spectral form—before I bought any of this overpriced tat, Goss or no Goss.

Actually it wasn’t tat. Not all of it. There were some lovely Chinese-influenced shirts with mandarin collars and some very elegant forties’ style Dior and Chanel suits, entirely unsuited to the Chapman figure. But Goss had been very helpful and I decided I could put up with some shopping once in a way. I was sure that she would be diverted into buying something for herself once she found, as she was going to find, that nothing was over size 10. And if I approved of what she was going to buy I would purchase it for her; she deserved a little present. The wind had died down, but it was still unacceptably hot, and the rows of hanging rails
and little tents seemed to go on forever. The Peruvians thumped and bubbled. Daniel sidled along, looking bored.

Then I found a seller who sold shaved ice with fruit cordial, which made me feel better. And then a stone cutter. That was more like it. Crystals and polished rocks of all colours sparkled in the sun. I didn’t dare buy a crystal without consulting Meroe, our local witch, but there was a large slice of opalescent shell which attracted my fingers. Goss wandered away as I bought it and hung it around my neck. Lovely.

I was just sucking down the last of my orange ice when both of my companions emerged from the crowd and grabbed an elbow each.

‘I got her first,’ Goss told Daniel.

‘All right, but I get her next,’ he grumbled.

I didn’t seem to be getting a lot of choice, but I was feeling full of icy fruitiness so I went along with Goss, who conducted me into a close, hot tent and started dragging off my garments. Over my head she threw a thin, lacy petticoat and then a floaty skirt in some sort of cheesecloth, perhaps, in varying shades of blue, from indigo at the hem to azure at the waist. Then she dropped over my head a smocked white cheesecloth blouse, with puffy sleeves and ribbon ties, as worn by Prince Caspian. She fastened round my waist a heavy leather belt with an ornate silver buckle. Then she turned me towards the mirror.

Oh, my, there I was, authentically bohemian, if that is a real term, perfectly comfortable, and delighted with the contrast of my new silver and shell pendant over my white top.

‘See?’ demanded Goss. ‘Now pay the lady, Daniel’s getting uptight.’

I paid the lady a surprisingly small sum. She packed my own clothes into a string bag. I replaced my straw hat, and I was out in the sunlight again.

Daniel whistled. I curtseyed, spreading my skirts. Goss beamed.

‘Now, come along this way,’ Daniel ordered, and we hurried after him. The skirts were well cut and easy to manage and flared around my ankles delightfully. Daniel led the way out of the market and around the convent. Quite a long way. I could see what he meant about the windows. Several of them did not quite fill their frames and could be jemmied. But Daniel was heading for a tree, a huge old oak which, being of weeping habit, had feathery branches going right down to the ground, like a living green cage. Daniel searched for an entrance and dived in and we followed.

‘It’s so cool,’ whispered Goss. I did not know if she referred to the air temperature or the beauty of the space under the tree but she was right about both.

‘I think they were both here,’ said Daniel. He scanned the ground. We all tracked around the green-walled haven.

‘You can’t see if anyone is here from the outside,’ I remarked. ‘And it is cool. And there’s water nearby. And a bunny was here.’ I pointed out rabbit droppings.

‘Bigger than the wild rabbits,’ said Daniel. ‘That was Bunny. And, see, if he was left here or hopped off, there’s the Children’s Farm, just down the hill. Also, this grass has been nibbled really short.’

‘I don’t like this,’ said Goss suddenly. ‘Something bad happened. Look, the grass is all torn up over here, and that’s blood on those leaves.’

‘It’s blood,’ agreed Daniel calmly, collecting a sample in a little plastic bag. ‘But I don’t know if it’s human. Not the girl, anyway, not the blood of labour, there isn’t enough of it.’

Goss shivered. We had to get her out of here. The atmosphere under the great tree had subtly changed and become threatening. I looked hard to see if there was anything else.

‘The bark of this branch has been cut,’ I said.

‘So it has,’ he agreed soberly. ‘What’s that under your foot, Goss?’

‘It’s a phone,’ she said, scrabbling in the thick soft leaf mould. ‘Been stood on,’ she added.

‘The Lone Gunmen can retrieve the data,’ Daniel said. ‘Dig a little more around there and see if there is anything else.’