Forbidden Fruit (5 page)

They said something very rude in Dutch and I turned to apologise to Trudi and found that we had also been joined by the Prof and Mrs Dawson. Both of them were respectably if lightly
clad: a milky silk robe painted with Australian flowers at hem and sleeve (Mrs Dawson) and a pair of shorts and a shirt (Professor Dion Monk). And, of course, Trudi, in her blue shorts and blue T-shirt, who was rubbing her foot and scowling.

‘Sorry,’ I said again. She shrugged and put her foot down gingerly.

‘Is corn. If you have a corn, everyone always stands on it. No matter. Look at my garden! It rejoices!’

‘So it does,’ I agreed, wondering if she had not noticed a dancing naked woman in her anxiety about the pansies. I pointed her out. Trudi grunted in approval.

‘Her, she calls down the rain,’ said Trudi. Sitting on her shoulder-mounted kitten rest was her cat, Lucifer, a small demon-driven ginger creature in a strong harness, which was secured firmly to Trudi’s belt, lest he should get away and happen to someone. He watched the rain, listening to the thunder with cocked ears, unlike all other cats, who would be curled up in a safe place, like my bed (in the case of Horatio) or the bakery (in the case of the Mouse Police) or inside a stout wardrobe (in the case of poor sensitive Belladonna).

There was a flash of lightning which bleached garden, buildings, witch and all, and Mrs Dawson suggested that we sit down and have a warming drink, which she just happened to have brought along. Though now she is retired to live amongst us humble Insula dwellers, the old habits remain. She had a flask of hot coffee with an optional splosh of brandy. It was lovely. I began to feel a chill on my skin and cast around Daniel and myself the mink blanket which I had brought.

Thunder crashed. I recalled old Grandpa Chapman telling me that thunder was the god Thor riding his chariot over the roads of Valhalla, and it sounded just like that: a long, loud, thrilling rumble.

‘
Ave,
Jupiter Pluvius!’ exclaimed the Professor. ‘It is so agreeable to feel cool! Though I might, perhaps, just avail myself of that coat, my dear lady. May I?’

With a very pretty old-world gesture of courtesy he draped Mrs Dawson’s Indian cashmere shawl around her shoulders before he put on his coat. We sipped our coffee. It was heart-shaking. The flash came so unpredictably that I forgot to count until the thunder came, but it must have been very close. Lucifer was bouncing up and down on Trudi’s shoulder and squeaking with excitement. He was a well-named little cat.

And still Meroe danced. I saw that she was a crone. Her breasts were flat, her belly shrunken: an old witch as drawn by Cranach the Elder. But beautiful, elemental, powerful.

Finally she sagged and turned to the shrine. I wished Kepler, who had been photographing everyone in recent weeks, was here. Not at all abashed or surprised by our presence, Meroe walked into the shrine, water streaming from all her limbs. She picked up a towel which she must have left there. But she was not shivering: she was alight with vitality and joy. She allowed Daniel to dry her back and dragged on a loose woven black garment, then sat down to towel her hair.

‘The Goddess is good!’ she exclaimed.

‘She certainly is,’ agreed the Professor. ‘I hope we shall not suffer the fate of Actaeon.’ I racked my memory. Ah, yes. The poor young huntsman who spied on Aphrodite bathing and was turned into a deer, to be torn to pieces by his own hounds. Those old gods had a basic sense of humour.

‘It is unwise to spy on maidens,’ she told him. ‘Crones do not care.’

‘Oh, I do so agree,’ said Mrs Dawson warmly. ‘The older I get, the fewer things are really worth worrying about. Will you have coffee, Meroe?’

‘No, I will have rainwater from Trudi’s tank,’ she replied, crossing the shrine to the fountain and filling her cup. She drank deeply. ‘Divine! Have some!’ she urged.

Daniel and I drank. It tasted of earth and was wonderful, fresh out of the sky.

‘My woodbine, you can smell it now,’ Trudi remarked.

‘Will it keep raining?’ I asked. ‘The storm has gone.’

‘Till morning,’ she said. Trudi is an oracle with weather. She has been gardening all her life. Her father was a famous grower, she says, of tulips. How she ended up at sixty, out of a failed marriage, as steward, housekeeper, fixer-upper and only person whom the freight lift obeys, in Insula, I did not know. But we were very glad to have her. She stood up, hefted her bag, checked that her kitten was still attached, and left us. The Professor and Mrs Dawson took their leave. Meroe announced that she had to return to her own flat, Leucothea, to comfort Belladonna after her fright, and Daniel and I realised that we were due on the Soup Run, and that the storm which we had so enjoyed might not be a lot of fun if you were out on the street with no shelter.

We returned to Hebe, dressed, grabbed our stuff and went out through the bakery to carry with us the bread for the soup and a bundle of fliers with the pictures of the two missing lovers to distribute to the other lost and stolen and strayed.

O, star of wonder, star of night! … Following
yonder star.

Rev. John Henry Hopkins
            ‘We Three Kings’

The bus was waiting outside McDonald’s and was already surrounded by soaked petitioners. The storm had scoured and polished Flinders Street like one of those amazing cleaners called Crash! or Zoom!—the exclamation mark particularly annoys me—every surface was light-reflecting and shiny. But our clientele were not gleaming. They were dripping, soggy lumps of misery and needed immediate attention.

Fortunately they had Sister Mary. She bustled up, a small, plump, elderly, indomitable nun with innocent blue eyes and a spirit which could have outfaced the Inquisition. And given Torquemada a good scolding. She has kept the Soup Bus running
despite council opposition (they say it messes up the stopping areas and gives tourists the wrong idea about our fair city), continual crises in funding and the clients themselves, who are not reliable people and occasionally try to hold us up for the drugs which they think the nurse has in that black bag. Which is why the Soup Bus has a heavy person, to dissuade the reckless from such antisocial attempts. Ma’ani, Samoan mother and Maori father, over a metre across the shoulders and with the disposition of a large friendly dog, was scheduled for later. I heard that the kids had taken to calling him Shrek. He thought this was funny. Luckily. Ma’ani had missed out on the All Blacks by a whisker and it was not wise to trifle with him.

Tonight’s heavy, Daniel, heaved his sack of bread into the bus and went to the driver’s position to put the seat back. Sister Mary had been driving; she could only just reach the pedals and steered by divine guidance.

‘There you are, Corinna, God bless you!’ she exclaimed. ‘We have already got a lot of sandwiches from our admirable friend Uncle Solly. Jules is our lawyer tonight and Jorgen is our nurse.’

A large man with long lint-white hair nodded amicably. He exuded calm. Obviously Viking stock, and Vikings just did not panic. Our clients were not going to rattle him.

‘And we have Janeen as soup distributor along with you, so that’s everyone. Hand out those polythene sheets to everyone who hasn’t got a coat, will you, and give them a ticket to the Star—they’ve agreed to get everyone dry.’

‘That’s uncharacteristically nice of them!’ I exclaimed, climbing aboard, finding a ladle, and stepping to the strapped-down soup urns. The Star is an upmarket all-night laundrette decorated with hundreds of old movie posters, which shows the said old movies and has always been very firm about not letting the homeless in unless they had something to wash. Though
apparently one can gain a lot of shelter by putting twenty cents in the drier, forgetting to reload it until an attendant objects, then putting in another twenty cents.

‘I had a chat with the manager,’ said Sister Mary blithely. ‘They can wash the clothes and dry them easily enough. They’ve got a dry-cleaning machine that does sleeping bags. A charitable parishioner, God bless and save him, donated enough to hire the place on rainy nights—when hardly anyone comes in anyway, as I reminded the owner—and we’ve agreed to clean up after our people have gone. I’ve hired a few of the ladies to look after the process. There won’t be much business in King Street tonight.’

‘No, it’s wet enough to dampen anyone’s ardour,’ I agreed. Those ladies (of the night, in Sister Mary’s delicate phrase) were tough. There would be no trouble in the Star laundrette, or, if there was, they would finish it. And make it wish it had never been born.

The smell rolled over me, the warm fug trapped under the awning. Wet unwashed people smell worse than wet unwashed dogs. God forgive me. Janeen, a small meek pious girl who had tossed up between nuclear physics, medicine and social work, and chosen medicine, gave me a small meek nod and we started handing out blue plastic groundsheets, chicken noodle soup and Uncle Solly’s sandwiches, tickets to the laundrette and freebies to various restaurants and cafes which had agreed to feed a certain number of the homeless every day. At the back door, of course, but the food was excellent and would otherwise go to waste. The best of the Chinese and Malaysian had all agreed and were earning merit as we spoke. The tickets were freely swapped and bartered. Anyone who drew the Duke of Chin (three hats in the
Good Food Guide
) was able to secure at least four lesser restaurants in exchange. This crowd was mostly young and preferred the cafes. So far the fast-food outlets, with one notable example,
had not been susceptible to the sister’s rhetoric. But she would come back, week after week, with holy exhortations and charm and leaflets outlining our work (printed for free in Carlton by a nonplussed printer who still hadn’t worked out why she had agreed), and sooner or later the most obdurate manager would crumble, give in, and offer his whole establishment if Sister Mary would only go away and stop being nice to him. The kids bargained fiercely over the General Chicken Franchise tickets. Some came to see Jorgen for clean syringes and bleach fits and condoms. No one wanted to see Jules, who was therefore cutting bread with a certain flourish and insouciance. He was handsome, with dark hair and brown eyes, a swarthy lad who surely couldn’t be old enough to be a lawyer.

‘You cut bread very well,’ I commented.

‘My papa owned a bistro in Lyon,’ he replied. ‘When we came here I swore I would never work with food again. But I seem to have remembered how to cut bread,’ he said, faintly surprised to see a stack of perfect slices peel away from under his knife.

The crowd was wandering away, most of them going up the hill towards the Star, sheltering under the blue polythene sheets. First sitting was over.

Daniel started the engine and the bus thrummed along with the drumming of the rain. I found a seat. I also grabbed one of Uncle Solly’s sandwiches. Kosher and delicious from his New York Deli. Salt beef. Yum. I refrained from taking another, as depriving the hungry would undoubtedly get me a few extra centuries in hell and I had already had dinner.

Chug, chug, the bus sounded even more spavined than usual. I hoped that we still had brakes with all this water on the road. But if it broke down Sister Mary would know a devout mechanic or two who could lash the old girl together for one more mission. After all, she had direct orders from the Highest Authority.

To distract myself from the temptation of those salt beef sandwiches, I unwrapped Daniel’s bundle of pictures and showed them around the bus.

‘God have mercy on them,’ said Sister Mary, as I explained the plight of the runaway lovers and the girl’s extreme condition. ‘I’ll post the picture on the outside of the bus—no, that won’t do in this weather. I’ll post it next to the soup, and see if we can get any news. I don’t recall seeing either of them. I tend to notice pregnant girls. Anyone?’

Heads shook all round. Then Janeen ventured in her small meek voice, ‘I might have seen the boy. With the freegans.’

‘Freegans?’ I asked. ‘You mean vegans? Those austere vegos who don’t eat dairy food or eggs either?’

Janeen giggled. I had never heard her giggle before. ‘No, freegans. You’ll probably see them tonight, you can ask them. They got moved on from Fitzroy and now they’re in the city.’

‘You aren’t pulling my leg, by any chance, are you?’ I asked, though I couldn’t imagine Janeen going anywhere near anyone’s leg unless she was splinting it.

Sister Mary laughed. ‘You wait until you meet them,’ she said.

And we had arrived at our next stop. It was still raining. There was cover and it was crammed with sopping people. No one had imagined that sleeping out in Melbourne in December could give you heatstroke and hypothermia at almost the same time. Truly, ours is a marvellous city.

Janeen and I made more sandwiches as Daniel and Jules handed out soup—this was chicken and vegetable, almost solid with barley—and sandwiches to the old alcoholics who lived in or near the boathouse. This was practically a colony. Long-established and picky about newcomers, like most small towns. One whiskered grandfather expressed this to Jules as he came back for a refill.

‘We don’t like them blow-ins,’ he opined.

‘Which blow-ins would these be, Grandpa?’ asked Jules, unfazed by the gust of methanol and the stench of old cigar stubs which characterised this part of the route.

‘I don’t approve of long hair on men,’ said the old man prudishly. ‘Or them free love ways. Or them guitars all night when a man’s trying to sleep.’

‘No, indeed,’ agreed Jules politely, as the old man was shoved away by another almost indistinguishable old man.

‘Ar, shut yer trap,’ said the second old man. ‘The kids are all right. Give a man a few deeners for a drink, which is more’n I can say for you. Deep pockets and short arms, that’s you. Thanks, mister,’ he said to Jules, taking a big handful of sandwiches and a mug of soup. ‘Got any chock’late ternight?’

‘Yes, later,’ said Jules. Sister Mary hits up Haigh’s regularly for milk chocolate seconds, and those deformed bunnies and frogs go to a good home. I looked at Janeen, who was slicing cheese.

‘We’ve got hippies in the park?’ I asked incredulously.