Heavenly Pleasures (4 page)

‘Goss, if you spat them all out, you haven’t eaten anything,’ I said patiently. ‘And you can’t fast and work in the shop. You’ll faint. Let me send Jason for a skinny milk latte and have a muffin. Or some of that nice nourishing Cafe Delicious salad.’

They really worry me, Kylie and Goss. Their adherence to the ‘famine’ diet, which allows them to eat no fat or starch, one steamed chicken leg a day and a few grapes, must be ruining their constitutions. I live for the day I can see them eat a square meal. The trouble with starving like they do is that now and again they just break out and eat a whole tub of ice cream and fifteen doughnuts and then they are ashamed and have to starve again. Since they are both naturally slender, it seems like a modern form of martyrdom of the flesh to me. And even the extreme Catholics have got over that. Goss nodded and I yelled into the bakery for some breakfast for my assistant. Then we opened the door and the hordes came in.

‘We’ve got a new person,’ said Goss, after she had eaten a salad roll without margarine and drunk a cup of decaf latte

with artificial sweetener.

‘I met her,’ I said. ‘Mrs Sylvia Dawson. Nice lady.’

‘No,’ said Goss. ‘It’s a man. He’s moved into 7B. Pluto. He came in yesterday. With just a suitcase. Who used to live in Pluto? It’s been empty as long as Kyl and me have been here.’

‘It belongs to a trust,’ I said. ‘Part of a big family trust. Squattocracy. Western District, I believe. They own Heracles, too, 7A. Sometimes they sublet it, sometimes the grandchildren or their friends live there. Both of the apartments are furnished. The grandfather bought them as a pied-à-terre for his children so they wouldn’t have to stay in hotels when they came to Melbourne for the races or the Show. He had some sort of quarrel with a hotel manager who wouldn’t let him keep his sheepdogs in the hotel, and went straight around and bought those two apartments, just after Insula was completed. What does this man look like?’

‘A man,’ shrugged Goss. ‘Oldish. Older than you,’ she clarified. ‘Not as old as the Prof. Looked boring. Sort of creepy. Had a suit.’

And that was about as much as I was going to get out of Goss. I’d know more when I next saw Meroe. She was in charge of orienting new inhabitants.

The day went on as Fridays usually did. I liked Fridays because tomorrow and Sunday I would not open. Nothing much happens in my end of the city on the weekend, when the action moves across the river to Southbank. Tomorrow morning I would get to sleep in and with any luck I would have company. And I didn’t mean Horatio.

When I shut at three I gave Goss and Jason their wages, left them to clean up and, escorted by an elegant cat, climbed my stairs for a bath.

There is nothing like a deep, hot, well-scented bath at the close of a long day. I was in the mood for lush violet foam, and sloshed around in it for some time. Just when I was thinking of getting out, a vision of male beauty, perfectly naked, slid into the tub beside me and kissed me on the mouth.

He was something out of a fever dream, my Daniel. Long limbs, a smooth torso only marred by the shrapnel scar, sweet mouth, strong arms and the most beautiful buttocks in captivity. I was flooded with heat and scent and grabbed, which you shouldn’t do in water. We rolled out of the bath onto the floor and coupled like seals.

When I became aware of my surroundings again I found that I was lying partly on Daniel and partly on a tiled floor and I was beginning to get cold. I disentangled some limbs and Daniel said, ‘Well,’ and sat up.

‘Well’ is equivocal. An expression of approval or disapproval? I wiped some wet hair out of my eyes and said ‘Hello,’ and Daniel began to laugh.

‘I love you,’ he said, dragging me to my feet. ‘I never ever met anyone like you,’ he said, and kissed me very gently and caressingly. I was melting again and my knees were becoming unreliable. I grabbed his shoulder. I had never ever met anyone like Daniel, either. For one thing, he was strong enough to hold me up.

‘Bed,’ I suggested.

‘Get dry first?’ he asked.

I found a towel. The bathroom floor is self-draining, which is lucky, because most of my bathwater was on it. Wrapped in towels, we sloshed into the parlour and dried ourselves. Horatio, from his resting place on Daniel’s clothes, eyed us benevolently. Cats, he seemed to be suggesting, did this sort of thing better.

‘Let’s not be greedy,’ I said, regaining my breath. ‘We’ve got tonight. And tomorrow night.’ Greedy indeed. I watched the towel slide across the admirable slopes of Daniel’s chest and along his thighs and had to look away. My whole body was tuned to him, as though we vibrated on one string.

Now I could see that his bruises had bloomed nicely into velvety dark patches, marring his olive skin. He caught me looking at them.

‘It’s all right, ketschele, they hurt most before they turn black. Shall we go up to the roof, then?’

‘Just let me put some clothes on,’ I said. He dropped to one knee and planted a soft kiss on my navel. Then I found a gown, put together the esky which contains the afternoon potation, and Daniel re-dressed.

We rose to the roof garden via the lift. I had the esky, Daniel had Horatio. We sat down in the roofed temple of Ceres in case of light rain and smiled at each other with perfect satisfaction. Horatio pottered off into the undergrowth on business of his own. I poured a gin and tonic for us both.

The roof garden had survived the mad demolitions of the sixties, when everyone in Melbourne was a property developer and most buildings like Insula were torn down in favour of a million square metres of office space which would never be sold. Some benefactor had chained the door and the vandals hadn’t noticed it. It ran wild, watered only by rainfall, for years before Trudi applied a taming hand (or machete) and brought it back into cultivation. It has Roman garden furniture, a rose bower and a small temple of Ceres with a statue of the earth mother, arms full of grain.

It is overlooked by a lot of tall buildings, and part of the compensation for getting up at four is sitting in the garden at three thirty in the afternoon, watching tongues hang out in all of the windows. And now I was sitting in the garden with an incredibly beautiful lover who also loved me, which is something I thought would never happen, basking in an afterglow that was still warming my face and breast. Bliss.

The sky was blue and cool. Trudi’s linden tree was losing its leaves. Soon the garden would be snuggled down for the winter. The roses would be cut back to prickly stumps, the bulbs which Trudi had persuaded us to buy would be poking little green noses through the ground, and the flowers would be gone. The bower would be a bare ruin’d choir where once the wisteria hung in scented garlands. Horatio and I would spend our garden time in this temple, which was weatherproof and a perfect place to watch storms, because it had a 360 degree view through the glass walls between the columns.

Horatio and I liked storms. I thought I’d ask our new friend.

‘Daniel? Do you like storms?’

He thought about it, sipping his drink.

‘Being in one, weighed down with a pack and no prospect of refuge, no. In a ship on the sea—no. In this place, with glass all around—it would be wonderful. Why is it warm in here?’

‘The architect circulated the waste heat from the building into pipes which run under the garden and keep the soil from freezing. That’s why Trudi has to put some of her bulbs in the fridge. Or so she says. And this temple was designed as a winter shelter. Professor Monk says it is a very Roman idea.’

‘Those Romans were smart,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we should forgive them for burning down the Temple of Jerusalem. You haven’t replied,’ he said, turning his brown eyes on me.

‘To what?’

‘Do you love me?”

‘I love you,’ I said. It was true. Had I a song, I would have sung it. As it was, I snuggled into Daniel’s side and watched the cool wind picking up the leaves and swirling them in little circles until it got tired and dropped them again.

Meroe arrived just as I ran out of gin, but that was all right, because unless events get atrociously bad, she doesn’t drink alcohol, which dulls the chakras. She was carrying a thermos of herbal tea and what appeared to be a furry orange yoyo. She sank down onto the bench next to us.

As it happened, it was not a furry yoyo but a kitten enmeshed in a blue harness and leash. He was wrapped up like a parcel and trying to chew his way out. ‘Lucifer is not yet used to his harness,’ she explained, unravelling the kitten and setting him down on his paws. He immediately dived onto Daniel, ascended him, and began chewing a shirt button with an expression of innocent enquiry. ‘He needs to explore,’ said Meroe, pouring herself a cup of what smelt like raspberries. ‘This way he can investigate the world without getting himself into too much trouble.’

‘You got all the flour off him, I see,’ I said. Lucifer was not only clean but shining. ‘How? It turned to instant glue on me.’

‘I had to wash him very thoroughly,’ said Meroe, a shade martyred. ‘And I found that he can swim, which is useful to know. He seems to like water. He joined me in my bath.’

Instantly, I blushed red. Meroe looked at me as benevolently as Horatio had. ‘Never know what you’ll find in your bath these days, eh, Corinna?’ she murmured. Daniel laughed and hugged me closer.

‘What did you make of Mrs Dawson?’ I asked, changing the subject with a wrench.

‘Just as you said, a nice lady. Her apartment is furnished with new furniture in perfect taste, a few antiques which must be family treasures and photographs of her children and her late husband. She wanted to know all about the city. For instance, she is off today to join the Athaeneum library, have a light lunch, go to a movie and dine out in Chinatown. She is determined to enjoy herself and I am sure that she will. Any woman who drinks the best gin, chooses linen sheets and wears Arpège is sure to appreciate the finer things in life. I liked her. I explained about the garden. I also asked her if she would like a kitten, but she refused.’

‘Good try,’ said Daniel. Lucifer abandoned his hope that the button would either (1) detach so that he could choke on it or (2) produce milk, ascended further and poked his nose down the collar of Daniel’s shirt.

‘But our other new tenant, that is another thing,’ said Meroe, dropping her voice.

‘Goss thinks he is creepy,’ I said.

‘I would not go that far, but he is strange,’ said Meroe, sipping her tea. ‘He was only interested in services which meant that he did not have to go out. Grocery delivery, for instance, takeaway menus, video hire. Pluto is already furnished, of course, mostly in the original art moderne stuff. All he seems to have brought are clothes, a few books, a laptop and a couple of awful sculptures. You know, those objets trouvés things which people build to exhibit their lack of any artistic talent? One has a bronze skeleton of a fish on it.’

‘Perhaps he has a broken heart,’ said Daniel. ‘And he is hiding until he feels ready to face the world again.’

‘Perhaps he is an artist,’ I said. ‘Preparing for a show.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Meroe in her best oracle’s voice. ‘But he is a man of secrets. There are shutters behind his eyes.’

‘What’s his name?’ I asked.

‘White,’ said Meroe. ‘Ben White.’

‘I wonder if he’s a relation of Lepidoptera’s?’ I suddenly remembered seeing her track him into the building.

‘The man is doing no harm,’ said Daniel. ‘Why not ask Letty when you see her again? If he’s her relative she’ll be visiting him. Now, can one of you kind ladies relieve me of this kitten? He seems to be trying to dig his way to my spine through my abdomen.’

We removed Lucifer from Daniel’s shirt and set him on the ground again. He sprang into Meroe’s lap and curled up, folding his tiny paws across his ginger nose.

‘So he does sleep sometimes,’ I marvelled.

‘Very lightly,’ warned Meroe, and, joined by Horatio, we tiptoed out.

C
_HA
PTER FOUR

We decided to cook dinner. Usually more than one cook in a kitchen leads to snarls, arguments, collisions, spills, and occasionally homicide by saucepan, but Daniel and I moved around each other and Horatio as though we had been working together for years. This so touched me that I was almost in tears by the time we had assembled chicken breasts with herb and garlic stuffing, a warm potato salad and a vivid tomato concasse. Then I cheered up, because I was hungry and dinner smelt fine.

‘The only thing I miss about summer is the tomatoes,’ said Daniel.

I sat down to eat astounded. He had just read my mind. I opened a bottle of red wine and we had a very civilised meal. When I am on my own I tend to take my plate to the TV, in which lazy habit I am encouraged by Horatio, who has a better chance at the food that way. Now I was sitting up and having to remember how to converse.

Of course, we talked about our neighbours. What else are neighbours for?

‘Mrs Dawson will be happy here,’ I said. ‘But what do you make of Mr White?’

43

‘Not enough data,’ said Daniel. ‘I’ve never seen the man. We need to know more about him before we can make any judgments. On another topic, I’ll slip down presently and get the tape from the chocolate shop. On fast forward it won’t take too long to scan. Not the viewing you had in mind, Corinna, but I do need to check. Or would you rather I did so in my own house?’

‘No, of course not, bring it here. I’ve never seen a surveillance tape.’

‘They are amazingly boring,’ he told me gravely. ‘Like watching an episode of
Big Brother
, but worse. This is the real Reality TV. Mind-bogglingly dull, just like the imitation. Then we can watch some more
Buffy
.’

‘Good.’ The chicken was very tasty. I ate some more.

‘Juliette seems subdued today. Often happens when you decide to call in a private investigator. You worry about what else he might find. But I did pick up some gossip. Jon is coming back, and they say he has a boyfriend.’

‘But I thought that Kylie … or was it Goss? … seduced him.’

‘If they did, it hasn’t taken,’ said Daniel. ‘Word is that he is a remarkably beautiful Asian man whom Jon met on his travels. Due in tomorrow, says Juliette. One thing about this place, ketschele, there’s always something happening. Oh, and I met Mistress Dread this morning. She wants to know when we are going back to the club.’

‘I hadn’t thought about it,’ I lied. I had. Mistress Dread, the leather queen who runs a costume shop in the lane, had lent me the most beautiful dress I had ever worn. I would love to wear it again. Daniel was not deceived for a moment.

‘We could go on Saturday night,’ he said. ‘The crypt is closed now that Lestat is in jail, but the dungeon is still open and I am sure that Mistress Dread runs a very well conducted dungeon.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ I replied, mopping up the last of the concasse with rye bread. I was sleepy with food and wine and sated lust. ‘Why don’t you go and get the tape and I’ll clear away? Are you on the Soup Run tonight?’

‘Yes,’ said Daniel. ‘But not tomorrow night. Very well. Back soon.’

He went. I washed dishes. Then I sat down on the sofa and just closed my eyes for a moment.

When I woke, the TV was on and Daniel was watching a grainy black and white film of a shop. A time clock ran along the bottom of the picture. There was no sound. It was an odd experience.

‘It’ll never replace Buster Keaton,’ I commented.

‘I agree,’ said Daniel absently. ‘There was that trick he did with a falling house which no one will ever surpass.’

‘I remember. The house just comes down and he is left standing in what would have been an open window. Must have had nerves of steel. What are we watching?’

‘A day’s trading in Heavenly Pleasures,’ said Daniel.

I curled up next to him. He radiated warmth. I could smell the cinnamon scent which was his signature.

‘What can we see?’ I asked.

‘That’s Selima,’ he said, pointing out a pretty girl in the chocolate shop’s elegant smock. ‘Behind the counter. Juliette is just out of the frame at the edge of the screen. Here she is.’

Juliette came into view, carrying a large stainless steel tray. With a pair of tongs she placed chocolates very gently into the display cabinet. I knew that the sweets were all ranked according to filling. These were all of one sort. ‘Orange creams,’ said Daniel. ‘I marked the placements on my chart.’ He scribbled the time on a list which already had several entries. I noticed that Selima, with another pair of tongs, was making up the little boxes of eight chocolates which had refreshed many an afternoon, farewelled many a personal assistant and made up many a quarrel. She ranged all over the displays, seemingly at random, filling the little boxes and then sealing each one with a sticky gold label before tying the ribbon.

‘She’s made ten boxes,’ said Daniel.

The boxes were piled artlessly on the end of the display case, for customers who were in too much of a hurry to select their own. Blue and gold packaging. Very dramatic. I remember someone saying that you couldn’t package food in blue or green because people wouldn’t like it, but this did not apply to Heavenly Pleasures choccies. I would personally buy them in brown paper and string. Or bright orange plastic. Or even bare in the palm of my hand.

People came in. Every person was greeted politely by Selima or Juliette, and every person bought something. Considering the prices of their wares, the sisters must be coining money hand over fist. Most customers gave themselves the pleasure of considering which fillings they would like and ranged up and down the glass case, pointing and, in two cases, slavering.

Each person was given a nickname and entered into Daniel’s log. The customers were varied. Men, women, children; well-dressed, ill-dressed, trackpants to Italian handmade suits and some tradesmen in overalls. The men were either hoping to heal a quarrel or intending to behave in such a way as to start one when they finally got home. Or they had forgotten someone’s birthday. They all looked rather apologetic and embarrassed at being in this dainty blue and gold palace of sweetness. Women, however, settled in for a good long conversation. Chocolate is a female birthright.

One elderly lady was definitely Mrs Sylvia Dawson. I pointed her out to Daniel. She must have been buying a box of eight chocolates for her own consumption and was indulged with several tastes by Juliette before she closed her eyes in ecstasy and purchased a whole box of one type, and another for good measure.

‘Caramel Delight,’ diagnosed Daniel, checking his list. ‘In milk chocolate. She likes hard centres. And the other box she bought was chocolate covered hazelnuts.’

‘A decided character,’ I said. ‘Oh dear,’ I added.

‘What?’

‘It’s Kylie,’ I said. ‘Or Goss.’

‘And they can’t eat chocolates?’ asked Daniel.

‘They’re on a famine diet,’ I explained. ‘It’s too much for flesh and blood to stand, all that chicken and grapes. They’ll eat all the choccies and then they’ll starve for two days to stay thin.’

‘Amongst your many virtues,’ said Daniel, noting down Kylie or Goss’s purchase of two boxes of soft centred chocolates, ‘is your total refusal to diet. I do admire it. What do you do when people say “just follow this diet and you’ll be thin”?’

‘If they said it,’ I said, snuggling, ‘I’d spit in their eye. But they don’t.’ I had heard from other fat women that perfect strangers came up to them in the street and offered them diet plans or magic herbs. No one had ever done that to me. Which is fortunate, of course, because I would not have been pleased and might have been armed. I assumed that people who left me alone had some elementary sense of self-protection.

Perhaps I didn’t give off the right air of being sorry for existing. Even when I was imprisoned in a tough girls school and forced to play hockey and ridiculed because I couldn’t, I have never been sorry that I existed. I have, of course, been sorry that a lot of other people existed, beginning with certain politicians (they know who they are; George, are you listening?)

and my ex, James, but not, as it happens, me. Daniel spoke

suddenly and I snapped myself out of my reverie.

‘Here’s Vivienne,’ he said.

Vivienne was a carbon copy of her sister except she wasn’t pretty. It was hard to say why. Especially in a black and white fast forward. But I made Daniel freeze the picture so that I could get a good look at her. She was tall; in Juliette tall was willowy, in Vivienne it was gawky. She was blonde, but her hair seemed paler than Juliette’s and was dragged back into an unbecoming ponytail. She was pale, but with Vivienne it looked pasty while Juliette was milk and roses.

The two of them were standing behind the counter as Selima took what must have been her lunch break. Vivienne was placing chocolates tenderly into their ranks. Juliette was trying to talk to her but each time she approached, Vivienne turned a bony shoulder and looked away. I could not see if she was speaking. Finally Juliette gave up and retreated to the far end of the cabinet and stared out of the window, biting her lip.

‘I get on fine with my sister,’ I quoted.

‘Doesn’t look like it, does it?’ asked Daniel.

‘No, but we don’t know the source of the quarrel. Could be she’s just grumpy because the chocolate isn’t setting. Cooks tend to be highly strung,’ I said.

‘Don’t I know it!’ said Daniel. ‘I worked in a hotel kitchen in Paris once and the chef used to throw pots. And that’s when he was in a good mood.’

‘And when he was in a bad mood?’

‘Knives, mostly,’ said Daniel. ‘Or choppers. All that army experience was useful. I ducked and took cover really well.’

I had to ask. ‘What were you doing in Paris?’

‘I got out of the army when my wife died,’ he said quietly.

‘I didn’t know what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go. So I went to Paris,’ he said, as though this was self-evident.

‘Ipso facto, as the Prof would say. Come to think of it, that’s how I ended up there, too.’

‘Paris is very good if you don’t know where you want to be,’ he told me. ‘I worked in a cafe which only made onion soup. I’ll make you French onion soup, ketschele. I’m really good at it. It was a nice job. I only quit when people started to move away from me on the metro. The onions had soaked into my skin, I swear. Ah. Vivienne has gone back to the kitchen and here we have—George.’

‘The apprentice?’

‘Just so,’ said Daniel. We stared. George was young, tall, dark, handsome, and really, really aware of it. He had an arm-load of boxes which he put down behind the counter. Juliette laughed at something he said and he gave her a fleeting pat on the cheek. Then we saw George jump at some summons from behind him, and he fled back into the kitchen.

‘Aha,’ said Daniel.

‘I second your “Aha!”,’ I said. ‘What a very decorative young man.’

‘Knows it, too,’ said Daniel.

‘Not my type,’ I said. ‘I have always found that that sort of young man is more interested in his mirror than any living female. They hang about in gyms, I believe,’ I said, never having entered one. If I want to be tortured, I’ll join the wrong political party in some benighted African republic. Actually, mostly just being female will do it in places like that.

‘More customers,’ said Daniel.

Several girls, giggling, bought wicked chocolates. An elderly gentleman with a stick came in and Juliette talked to him for ten minutes, going away to serve other people and coming back to him. He was given tastes of four different chocolates, more than anyone else, before he bought a box of the miscellaneous ones from the pile on the end of the counter. He was a magnificent talker, flourishing with his elegant hands rather than just waving them. I wondered if he was an actor.

‘Someone she knows,’ Daniel guessed.

‘A relative,’ I said.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘He didn’t pay for his chocolates,’ I said. ‘Relatives never pay. Neither do old friends. I had an uncle who went broke because his cafe was too successful.’

‘And that happened because …?’

‘All his old schoolfriends and relatives came in practically every day and he had to feed them all,’ I told Daniel. ‘There wasn’t room for paying clients. Mind you, he had a wonderful time while it lasted. The same could not be said for his wife, who was doing the cooking,’ I concluded.

‘You really are amazing,’ said Daniel.

‘It’s a gift,’ I said modestly. He laughed.

The elderly man left. Several customers bought sweets. Then a woman came in with an opened box of chocolates and slapped them on the counter.

‘Aha,’ said Daniel.

‘A complaint,’ I said.

‘A dissatisfied customer who has bitten into a mouthful of chili sauce,’ said Daniel.

Juliette did her best to placate the woman.The woman waved her arms. She was expressing just how ruined her evening had been. She clutched at her throat to demonstrate how shocking had been the taste which had insulted her innocent mouth. Juliette pleaded. She grovelled. She offered a new box. The woman gradually allowed herself to be pacified. She accepted two boxes, specially chosen, as compensation, and stalked out, still upset.

‘Oh dear,’ said Daniel. Selima had come back into the shop and Juliette had fled in tears.

‘I suspect she isn’t going to get a lot of sympathy from her sister,’ I commented.

‘Probably not,’ he agreed. ‘But maybe she isn’t expecting any from her sister.’

‘George?’ I asked.

‘They would be nice arms to throw yourself into, ketschele.’

‘George wouldn’t like it,’ I said nastily. ‘Tears might stain his shirt and emotion might disarrange his hair.’

‘You really haven’t taken to him, have you? All right, we are getting to the end. Shop is closed. Juliette and Selima do something to the cash register …’

‘Count the money apart from the float, write it all out on the bank voucher and put it into the bag for the night safe,’ I said, repeating what had to be done every day the bakery was open. Then someone will go to the bank … it appears to be Selima,’ I said, as the young woman doffed her smock, picked up her handbag and the bank bag and went out. ‘Now we clean the shop and then everyone gets to go home.’