Heavenly Pleasures (8 page)

‘And she’s a very small black kitten in a building which abounds in shadows, set in a dark alley?’

‘Yes,’ I sighed.

‘We will check,’ he said. ‘Later. I need to look over my notes about the chocolate shop, and you need to sleep some more.’

‘I do?’ I asked, yawning for the fourth time.

‘You do,’ he said, leading me gently back to my bed, where Horatio was now sprawled. I lay down. I closed my eyes. Daniel was right. I drifted off into gentle slumber.

I woke gently, too. It was Daniel kissing me, not Horatio. The absence of whiskers gave it away. He whispered the word guaranteed to bring me out of any coma short of actual death.

‘Coffee,’ he said. I woke up and kissed him back.

‘What time is it?’ I stretched.

‘It is noon on Sunday,’ he said. ‘I suggest that we have a little light lunch—I observe that you have made vichyssoise, a good soup for a rainy day—and then you decide if you want to come with me to talk to Sister Mary.’

‘About?’

‘Darren the messiah. Sister Mary told me where poor Belinda was, though she didn’t tell me how she knew. If Darren is responsible for that little joke last night I will need to talk to him, and so will Lepidoptera White.’

‘Indeed, that might have been a real bomb,’ I said, shuddering slightly.

‘Or it might be a real bomb next time,’ said Daniel.

‘I expect that Darren was rather cross with you,’ I said. ‘I mean, you stole his slave.’

‘And I punched his nose,’ agreed Daniel. ‘Few messiahs can let that sort of thing pass. ‘

‘So, are we going to Ballarat?’ I asked.

‘No, we are going to MAP—the Melbourne Assessment Prison,’ he said. ‘Just down the road in Spencer Street. Darren breached his probation and is in custody; I believe that he has quite a lot of time left to serve.’

‘Why should he talk to you?’ I asked. ‘You’re the reason he’s back in jail.’

‘Actually, if you think about it, he’s the reason that he’s back in jail,’ said Daniel. ‘If he’d done as he was asked, got a job and stayed out of trouble, he wouldn’t be there. He is back in jail because he had to go out and seduce some more followers. And mistreat them.’

‘Yes, I agree, but I don’t put Darren down as one of history’s clear thinkers,’ I responded, getting up and finding some socks. Because my socks are always attempting to wriggle off to find a more sock-centred existence, I used to have trouble matching them. Now I just buy a lot of black socks, and it doesn’t matter if the pairs stay true to each other. Undies and trousers and shoes, shirt and jacket. Right. Corinna was ready to face the world.

‘Sister Mary will meet us there,’ said Daniel. ‘I rang her. Are you sure you want to come?’

‘Yes,’ I said, not sure.

Daniel carefully took his small Swiss army knife off his key ring and laid it on the table. ‘Have you got a pocket knife? Leave it at home,’ he advised.

I removed my pocket knife from my backpack. I use it for opening bottles. From the number of attachments I could also build a small house and remove stones from horses’ hooves.

‘And off we go,’ he said.

Because it was Sunday and trams were few and far between, we walked down Flinders Street, past the Gothic bulk of the station, which went on far longer than one thought, past the Banana Vaults and the new walkways along the river, then across to the remade end of the city. It used to be agreeably broken down. Now even the wharfies’ pubs have gone upmarket, sporting new paint and a small supermarket next to the tattoo parlour.

‘I hardly know the city these days,’ I sighed as we struggled up past Spencer Street station with its fleet of country buses, lost tourists, people hauling wheeled suitcases up over kerbs and drivers reading newspapers.

And there was the Melbourne Assessment Prison. It was made of red brick, still unfaded and raw, and tastefully surrounded by aluminium barrels on high fences looped with razor wire. Very hospitable.

But there, deep in conversation with a scruffy woman festooned with children, was Sister Mary, one of the world’s Forces for Good. She saw us, said, ‘God bless you,’ to the woman with such deep conviction that even the brats were impressed, wiped one child’s nose and turned to greet us.

‘Corinna! Daniel! How nice to see you. Thank you for coming. Visiting the prisoners and captives is one of the corporeal works of mercy, and God is well aware of what you do. Come along,’ she said, and we followed her small, plump, determined back into the prison.

I had never been into a prison before, though I had seen this one every time I had taken Spencer Street beyond the confines of the city. It was ugly without and I found that it was ugly within, though not in the deep-pit-with-scorpions— Chateau D’If—aha-Lord-Monte-Christo-you’ll-never-escape way of, for instance, the Old Melbourne Jail. In that dank bluestone building I had had my very first and only attack of claustrophobia and had to demand to be let out before we got to the high point of the tour: the gallows on which Ned Kelly had personally expired.

This was a sort of bureaucratic ugliness, a bought-cheap by the contractor ugliness. To be imprisoned here would be like being stranded for life in the waiting room of a not very successful dentist. The walls were painted cream, there were security guards everywhere, all talking to one another, and the place smelt of—I tried to analyse it with a nose badly damaged by years of heated steam—yes, male urine, disinfectant, and despair. In about equal parts.

The disinfectant was pine scented. This did not make it better. I took Daniel’s hand.

‘You can smell it?’ he asked. I nodded. ‘It never gets better and you never get used to it,’ he said consolingly. ‘It’s the same whatever sort of prison it is. Desert camp, new inner-city building, old dungeon. Misery soaks into the walls. Just come along,’ he said, following Sister Mary, who had already persuaded the guards to let her through to the first gate.

‘Daniel,’ said the guard. ‘You on business?’

‘With the sister,’ Daniel replied. ‘So is the lady.’

I got the impression that the guard might have said something else if it wasn’t for the growing impatience of Sister Mary, who was beginning to swing her rosary beads. I was patted down by a short female guard and sent through a metal detector a few times, and they took my backpack and most of the stuff in Daniel’s pockets, but we weren’t a lot of fun. A big sign said ‘Sharps, knives, syringes or pointed objects
PROHIBITED’ and I saw that Daniel had been wise to leave his Swiss army knife at home. The guards kept up their conversation about some TV show which had been on the previous night. ‘They got it better than us in LA’ observed the small woman in the big uniform. I wondered if they would have been so casual if I had been that scruffy woman with those screaming children.

The place was giving me the creeps, as Jason would say, big time. We got to the first sliding door and a guard with a radio signalled someone beyond us to open it.

This let us into a shiny empty corridor worthy of Kafka. We walked along it.

‘Daniel?’ I asked. He understood the implied question.

‘We’re on camera,’ he said, pointing out the telltale black disks. ‘When we get to the other end they will open another door.’

‘If they don’t?’ I quavered. This was hi-tech terror I was feeling. Trapped inside the machine. And I have never liked machines.

‘Then we ask Sister Mary to call down divine wrath. Everyone here knows she’s in damn big with God,’ he said easily. His hand felt comforting and warm in mine. Nevertheless, that walk is not going to make it into my memoirs as one of the great promenades.

We got to the end of the corridor, facing another featureless door. It hissed open promptly, to my unspeakable pleasure. There was a human on the other side. A cheerful human. He had a red face which spoke of whiskey, and scant reddish hair. And he was smiling. He came as such a relief that I could have hugged him.

‘Sister, is it you indeed,’ he said in a strong Irish accent. ‘Which of our malefactors and bad boys are you interested in today?’

‘Darren Smith, Mr Halloran,’ she said.

‘Darren the God Boy? You’ll have your work cut out with that one,’ he said dubiously. ‘But come into this nice little room and I’ll have him brought right to you. And you’re the woman to deal with him, so you are,’ he added, taking comfort.

We went into the room, which was not nice, though it was little. Plastic chairs creaked under our weight. There was a huge
NO SMOKING sign on the wall but no other decoration.

‘Daniel, I doubt that Darren is going to be pleased with you,’ said Sister Mary. ‘Why don’t you sit behind me?’

‘Is that a slur on my masculinity, Sister?’ asked Daniel, grinning.

‘No, dear, but if he attacks you he’ll be in even more trouble,’ she said practically. Daniel sat behind Sister Mary and the guard brought Darren in. Darren was in chains and leg irons. Halloran sat the prisoner down in a chair then retreated to lean against the wall in the corridor, out of easy earshot but in constant eye contact. Darren shook his handcuffs at Daniel.

‘You cunt!’ he snarled.

This was my first look at Darren the God Boy and he did not impress at first sight. He was tall, yes, but running to fat around the waist. The prison jumpsuit did not emphasise any of his good points. It strained over his belly and draped his slack chest and thin arms. He had long brown hair, now in need of a good wash. The prison smell had been augmented by unwashed human, never my favourite scent. His face appeared extensively bruised.

‘You shouldn’t have beaten her,’ said Daniel quietly. ‘You had a good thing going; hot and cold running girls, never had to lift a hand. Why did you have to beat her?’

‘She didn’t know her place,’ growled Darren, and turned the full force of his dark eyes on me. ‘Women should know their place.’

Oh, my. They were compelling, those eyes. For a moment I could not look away from them. I was being sucked down into them, weakening as I went. I dragged my gaze away and re-read the
NO SMOKING sign. But I was thirty-eight and had considerable strength of will, or I could never get up at four every morning. What effect would those eyes have on an already traumatised girl?’

‘No tricks,’ said Daniel unpleasantly. ‘Have you given your little friends any orders about me?’

‘Hah!’ Darren didn’t so much laugh as choke. ‘Been making your life difficult, have they?’

‘Then it has to stop,’ said Sister Mary firmly. ‘You’re in enough trouble, God knows. More will just mean that you stay here longer. You know that I’ll speak on your behalf. But you must call off your friends, Darren, or they will also be in trouble.’

For a moment I thought she would prevail. For the flicker of an eyelash, Darren faltered, exerting his own evil will which bounced off against the stainless steel sanctity of Sister Mary.

But the moment passed. Darren coughed and spat on the floor close to Daniel’s foot. Then he began to chant, but he was chanting nonsense. At least, it sounded like nonsense to me, but it meant something to Sister Mary. Darren’s eyes rolled back in his head, leaving only a flickering glimpse of white. It was very disconcerting. He began to shake, one muscle at a time, beginning with his thighs and working both upwards to his head and downwards to his feet. I thought that he must be having an epileptic fit.

‘Stop that at once,’ said Sister Mary, springing to her feet.

‘What do we do?’ I asked.

Halloran came in, shouting into his mobile phone. An alarm started to ring.

‘Lay him on the floor,’ said Daniel. ‘Put something between his teeth.’

‘Don’t you go anywhere near him, either of you,’ said Sister Mary firmly. ‘He might bite. This is not disease, this is hysteria. You need to call the psychiatrist, and put him on twenty-four hour suicide watch,’ she told the guard. ‘I fear for the state of his miserable body, but more for the state of his soul. Do you hear what he is saying now?’ she asked me.

‘Sounds like bzzz, bzzz,’ I replied, astonished.

‘He is calling on Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies,’ said Sister Mary. ‘Christ have mercy upon us! The last thing we need is a Satanic scandal. Take him away, Halloran, lock him up on bread and water, and don’t listen to a word he says. He has no power. It is all fake, to get attention.’

‘If you say so, Sister,’ said Halloran, not seeming very convinced.

‘He’s not the messiah,’ said Sister Mary unexpectedly, and I concluded the quote from the
Life of Brian
. I didn’t know they let nuns watch movies. Except
The Sound of Music
, of course.

‘He’s just a very naughty boy.’

This got a reluctant laugh from Halloran. The inner door hissed opened and two men with a stretcher came in. They loaded Darren the God Boy onto it and went out. We could hear him screaming and calling on Satan all the way down the corridor, where Halloran let us out.

‘You’re sure, now?’ he asked Sister Mary. ‘The lad’s got no contact with Him Below?’

‘May God have mercy on you and give you more sense,’ she said brusquely. ‘He’s a bad man and he was a bad boy and he’s faking it all. You watch him, Halloran, and if you see one thing which you can’t explain, you call me and I’ll bring a priest. But there won’t be anything,’ she said, and sailed out. Daniel and I followed in her magnificent wake.

When we were out on the street and I was wishing that I hadn’t stopped smoking, she gave Daniel a brisk pat on the arm.

‘Don’t you worry,’ she said. ‘I’ll get to the bottom of this. Satan is only involved here in tempting a foolish boy to play games with his captors. I’ll spread the word to his friends that Darren has no power over them. Now, God bless you,’ she said, and walked off down Spencer Street.

We stood and watched her go. If there was some diabolic intervention in Darren’s fit, I’d back Sister Mary to sever the line to Hell, even if she had to do it with her own scissors.

I said so to Daniel. He agreed.

‘Of course, they’d have to be the good scissors,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘Haven’t you heard that call in every household: “Where’s the good scissors?”. That presupposes there must be evil scissors,’ he said. ‘Darren may have the evil scissors, but I bet Sister Mary has the good scissors.’