While David was away, Maude stepped up her pie-baking business. She pinned notices to community bulletin boards, and visited several cake shops. But it was only by chance, looking for a new vacuum cleaner one day, that she found the ad in the Trading Post: ‘WANTED: Twelve Pie Chefs for Short-Term/Full-Time Baking’.
It is well known that Nikolai Valerio’s second movie, Pie in the Sky, was secretly filmed in the western suburbs of Sydney. Indeed, despite careful secrecy, news of the shoot leaked to the press as filming neared completion, and mobs of hysterical fans began to form. They had to whisk the cast away to Lord Howe Island to wrap up.
The movie is a timeless classic – gentle, yet ambitious; dangerous, yet ineffably sweet. As with all of Nikolai’s movies, it swept the pool at Cannes and at the Oscars that year, and many Valerio critics rate it as his best. He had been polished and toughened by his first movie – yet he still exuded the naiveté of the oil-smeared motor mechanic. Later, he lost some of the innocence and, although his acting remained superb, Pie in the Sky was vintage Valerio.
Of course, Maude knew who Nikolai Valerio was and, like most women, had seen his first movie several times. Like most women also, she had engaged in secret fantasies in which she imagined Nikolai, the famous smudge of motor oil on his nose, greeting her at the auto shop. But when she auditioned for the pie chef position, she had no idea it was for a Valerio film – that was still a secret. She thought she was going to help with a series of TV ads for Mama’s Frozen Desserts.
Eighty pie chefs auditioned for the job, and twelve were selected. Maude was asked to pass a national security check and told to sign five separate Confidentiality Agreements. She began to suspect that this might be more than a series of ads for Mama’s Frozen Desserts.
Maude was wearing a silver Alice band in her hair. Her daughters were asleep and she was sitting in the living room, watching through the window. Her husband, David, had been away (in Ireland, writing a novel) for almost a year, and she, Maude, was having an affair. Specifically, she was having an affair with Nikolai Valerio.
Technically, Nikolai Valerio was also having an affair with her: he had recently married Rebekka. But, really, Maude thought, when you are as famous as all that, the same rules do not apply.
The affair consisted of odd fragments: messages in code; a fireplace in a sandstone pub; wet shaking hair; a compliment about a cherry pie; a frangipani flower which she pressed between the pages of a magazine; kisses in a claw-foot tub; silk sheets; Egyptian cotton bathrobes.
In her living room now, Maude was recalling her first days on the film set. All twelve pie chefs had been jittery with excitement until it emerged that their days would be spent in one dark trailer, seated together around a long table, ingredients and cooking utensils set out at each place, sweltering in the heat of baking ovens.
At break times, they stood around on the dry, dusty grass, trying to get a glimpse of Nikolai. Only it turned out that movie stars were rarely there when movies were made. Most of the day, the dull film crew walked around, measured things, talked to each other, set up equipment, looked at papers, frowned at the sky, shouted commands – as if building an imaginary skyscraper.
Nikolai and the other stars were whisked onto the field in dark-windowed cars only when the sets were ready for them. Even then, you could only see fragments – the top of a head, an arm reaching out – through the clusters of cameras and assistants.
It was not until the third week of shooting that Maude saw Nikolai’s face. She had been asked to help place some pies in the shot – Pie in the Sky called for a general backdrop of pies. As any film student will tell you, apple pies, pumpkin pies, cherry pies and pecan pies, each with golden crust, were artfully scattered in the distant background of every camera shot in the film.
Maude was carrying a steaming cherry pie in each hand when the limousine paused beside her. A window was rolled down. Nikolai Valerio was smiling at her.
A woman seated beside Nikolai leaned around him. ‘He wants a piece of your pie,’ she called. ‘Can you give him a piece?’
Everyone in the car laughed, while Nikolai continued to smile at Maude.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said in his movie star accent, ‘I’m sorry, I keep seeing these pies everywhere I look. You make all these pies?’
Maude explained that she was only one of twelve pie chefs. He tilted his head to the side, interested, and asked, ‘Do you think I may have a piece of one? It doesn’t have walnuts, does it? I am allergic and my lips will swell to the size of a balloon!’
She shook her head about the walnuts, but then she didn’t know what to do: she had no knife for cutting, and no saucer or spoon on which to place a slice of pie.
‘Here,’ he said, reaching his hand out of the car window. ‘I’ll just tear off a corner if you – ow, this is a very hot – and I’ll just – oh, this is cherry pie, I cannot explain how happy that – my godfather this is a beautiful pie! – and now, I will just straighten the edge, and so! It is still fine now . . . like nobody has touched it.’
The people in the car quietly watched all this, and then they laughed and said, ‘All right, Nikolai?’
‘All right,’ said Nikolai, smiling at Maude again. ‘And the best cherry pie I ever ate, did you make this cherry pie or was it one of the other eleven?’
‘Me,’ said Maude.
‘And you are?’
‘Maude,’ she said. ‘Maude Zing.’
Then the car moved away from her again.
She did not see any more than fragments of him for the next few days, until one night, when most of the cast and crew had left. Nikolai and the leading lady remained for the long, leisurely, midnight boating scene. Maude also remained – she had left her girls with a neighbour for the night – along with one other pie chef, and the two were extremely busy. The river had to be lined with pies. Furthermore, each pie had to look freshly baked, a twirl of steam rising from the neatly scored lines in its lid.
It was exquisitely intimate, this filming with only the two main actors and a skeleton crew: for the first time, Maude was able to watch and hear the slow unfurling of a scene. Furthermore, she was part of that unfurling. She heard an assistant comment, ‘That coffee smells great,’ and he meant the coffee she herself had just brewed!
Then the two actors and the collection of crew wandered over to where Maude was laying out the pies.
‘Hello, Maude Zing,’ said Nikolai, remembering her name, and holding the name, for one breathless moment, in his accent.
The leading lady was less friendly, and seemed to be complaining to the director. ‘Come over here,’ said the director, in a low voice.
Nikolai and a make-up lady tried to persuade Maude to let them eat one of her pies, and she jauntily refused. She found she was no longer nervous of Nikolai. He was an ordinary person with an accent. She was chatting with him! She was making him laugh!
Then there was an angry shout from the leading lady and she strode into the distance.
‘Oh, come off it!’ called the director. ‘This is nothing. We’re fighting about nothing. Come on, you’ve got to be kidding me!’
But the leading lady refused to return, and disappeared in a long black car.
The director was distressed. The moonlight sprinkles were perfect on the river, and the scene was almost done.
Maude was trying to gather up her pies, to keep them hot in the oven, when she realised the director was staring at her. ‘Turn your head slightly,’ he instructed, ‘now back, now left, now right.’
It turned out that Maude’s hair, the back of Maude’s neck, the smooth curve of Maude’s cheek, all precisely matched that of the leading lady. She would be the double, they informed her.
Which is how it came to be that Maude spent most of the night in a long slender boat being punted up and down the river by Nikolai Valerio. Nikolai chatted as he punted, applying his disarming accent to every word he said. He asked questions about Maude’s daughters and about her life, and he told s
hort, witty anecdotes about Hollywood actors who were his close personal friends.
The night grew colder so the director let them drink glasses of port to keep warm; the port made them clumsy, so that when Nikolai tried to cross the boat toward Maude, to fix a strand of her hair, he capsized the punt. This resulted in shaking wet hair, huddling together under blankets, shivery giggles, and patient amusement from director and camera crew, all packing up to go home.
Nikolai suggested that Maude accompany him in the limousine to his hotel room, to bathe and to sit in a robe by his fireplace, and dry her hair with his towel. Which was how the affair got its start.
In her armchair now, some weeks later, Maude felt that she was floating just above the chair. Nikolai would visit any moment. They had spent several elaborately secret nights in his hotel suite. She had bathed in his claw-foot bath while he watched, turning the hot water tap with her toe. He had listened to her stories of hot air balloons, and had sworn he would fly her away in a gold-trimmed balloon one day. Now he was insisting on seeing her in her own home. He wanted to know everything about her, he said, as his hands traced the curves of her body. He seemed, genuinely, to love her body.
He had arranged to come in a plumber’s van, labelled ‘EMERGENCY – 24 HR PLUMBING SERVICES’, so the neighbours would not be suspicious. He was going to drive himself. He was going to wear a moustache and blond wig. She was going to make him pancakes in her kitchen while her daughters slept.
They were in love, she and Nikolai, but knew that their affair could not go on. Often, they spoke in wonder of the strangeness of the affair: it was essential but impossible. It must cease to exist for it floated between their two unbridgeable realities. His reality was his career and his beautiful wife. Hers was her pie-making, her daughters, and her husband, David, who had recently phoned to ask if she would take him back.
Yet, although Maude blinked tears from her eyes, knowing the affair had to end, she did not believe it ever would. The realm of the affair was too exquisite. Why, any moment he would arrive and help her make pancakes: he would watch in his reverent way as she cracked eggs, and measured out flour. That was all that their realm required. Such moments, with him, in her kitchen. She loved him so much she felt that they, together, would become the pancake batter. Intertwined, they would spill into the pan, and together they would breathe with slow new bubbles.
Now, waiting for Nikolai, she amused herself by comparing him to a man she had often read about, a hero of ballooning named Vincent Lunardi.
Vincent Lunardi was the dashing secretary to the Neapolitan Embassy in London, and was also, more or less, the first man to fly in English skies. His flight was made by blue-and-red balloon on 15 September 1784. In his balloon he carried a pigeon (which escaped), a cat, a dog, a bottle of wine, and a leg of chicken.
His courage, his excellent bone structure, the success of this flight, his ability to fly – all of this made Vincent Lunardi the subject of a thousand daydreams. Across England, hearts fluttered, eyes closed, and women took to wearing a specially designed bonnet called the Lunardi.
By winning the heart of Nikolai Valerio, Maude felt that she had, effectively, won the heart of the great balloonist, Lunardi. It was equally essential and impossible.
She, Maude, leaned into Lunardi’s shoulder (his face, in the fantasy, was Nikolai’s, of course), her right arm pressed against the edge of the basket (later, there would be interesting ridges pressed into that arm as a result), her left arm raised in a wave. Below, the other women wept and yearned, with only their bonnets to comfort them.
The moon tonight, Maude thought idly as she flew the night skies with Nikolai, was as round as a tablet. It would do very well for cutting pastry. As a matter of fact, so would Fancy’s hula hoop, which she could see through the window, luminescent on the lawn. Or her own watch face, here on her wrist, showing Nikolai to be an hour late.
The next day she received a note from the Set Decoration Supervisor. It was pinned to an artificial rose and it informed her that Pie in the Sky had been moved to a secret location. Although she would be missed (the note continued), her pies were no long required.
13
FRIDAY MORNING
Early Friday morning, the sun just touching the sky, Listen read the final spell by torchlight.
Here it is!
The Final Spell!
Once you have completed this Spell, all will be well!
It’s A Spell To Make Two People Fall In Love Again
Gather up the following things:
• An overnight bag
• Four candles
• Flowers
• A bottle of wine
• Bread, cheese, olives and chocolate brownies
That’s it! Just by gathering these things together you will make the Spell take effect. (And by the way, you will know when the time is right to use these things!)
Goodbye then. It’s been a lot of fun.
(In the next few hours, when you’ve completed this Spell, you should be sure to throw this Book some place you will never see it again.)
Listen crept out of bed and gathered everything on the list, packing them together in her overnight bag while Vernon slept. By lucky chance, she found bread, cheese and olives in the Banana Bar fridge, chocolate brownies in the caravan cupboard, and a bottle of wine in a crate underneath the table. She added the Spell Book to the overnight bag, so she could throw it away somewhere later that morning, and she got back into bed, trying to sleep while her heart beat wildly.
When she woke again, Vernon was already up and gone. She was so excited she could hardly dress or clean her teeth. Maybe he was already with Marbie! Maybe he had driven straight to her place when he woke up!
Walking from the caravan to the back door of the Banana Bar, she tried to stay calm but felt the sun on the back of her neck, saw the pale blue curve of the sky, and thought: it’s the beginning of everything!
As she walked into the shop, the phone was ringing, and she reached for it, but Vernon, who was behind the counter, called, ‘Just leave it.’
The answering machine switched on, and there, as Listen knew it would be, was Marbie’s voice. She reached for the phone again, but Vernon said, sharply, ‘Listen.’
So they both stood quietly while Marbie chatted: ‘Vernon! Sorry, it’s me. Sorry to bother you. Sorry, I’m sniffing, I’ve got a cold, and that’s why I’m calling you, not really, that’s not really why. But I decided I shouldn’t go to work today and then Mum called and said she and Dad are going away for the weekend, to this Festival of Balloons somewhere in the Hunter Valley, and I thought, seeing as I’m not going to work I might as well go away for the weekend with them, and I thought, well! maybe Vernon and Listen want to come along! I thought it could be fun for you guys to see the balloons, and you know, and anyway, give me a call if you’re interested. We’re leaving in the next hour or so, so it’s spontaneous. Okay? Great. Hear from you soon, I hope.’
The machine clicked and whirred backwards. Listen looked over at her brother with shining eyes. Here, now, it was going to happen.
‘All packed?’ said Vernon.
She raised her overnight bag and swung it around slightly.
‘You need to leave now or do you have time for breakfast?’ he asked next.
‘I guess I need to go now,’ she said. ‘But I’ve got a minute if you want to call Marbie back.’
‘That’s okay,’ he said, and switched the sign on the Banana Bar door to BACK IN TEN MINUTES. ‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘Left my keys in the caravan.’
Listen stood on the path in front of the Banana Bar, the hot wind brushing at her face. She leaned against the glass door to wait.
When Vernon pushed the door open again, jangling his keys in her face, she said, ‘So, are you going to call Marbie?’
‘Nope.’
She watched his back as he opened the car door.
‘What do you mean “nope”?’
‘Listen, I’m sorry, I’m not
going to call her.’ He was standing with the door open, waiting for her to come across to the car.
‘You should go to the balloon festival,’ she said, beginning to panic. ‘You have to go to the balloon festival. Don’t you get it? Vernon, it’s perfect. I’m going away for the weekend; what are you going to do if you don’t go to the balloon festival?’
‘Run the Banana Bar, for one thing,’ he said. ‘Listen, I’m sorry, baby, I thought you understood. I’m not getting back with Marbie. Not ever. It’s over. Finito.’ Then he slammed his car door closed.
They drove toward Redwood Primary, where coaches would collect the girls to take them to the mountains for their camp. Listen watched her brother’s profile, but it was set and calm. There was nothing she could do to change it.
She looked into her overnight bag, at her pyjamas, shorts, T-shirts, swimming costume, and beneath them, the glint of a bottle of wine, the lid of the jar of olives, the white of the candlesticks.
She was not going to the school camp.
And now she knew where she was going. It was just like the Spell Book had said. You will know when the time is right to use these things.
The time was now. She was supposed to hear Marbie’s message, not because it meant Vernon and Marbie would fall in love again, but because it told her that the Zings were going away. She would hide in their place for the weekend. She would hide in their garden shed. She would live on olives, bread, cheese and chocolate brownies for the next few days.
But what were the candles, flowers and wine for? They suggested some kind of ritual. Did she have to perform some ritual? She pictured the Zings’ back garden: the large green shed, the sagging trampoline, the scribbly gum with its old rope swing. She thought of the old rope swing, how it swayed sometimes, white against the night time, when she watched through the Zings’ kitchen window. She thought of rituals with candles and flowers.
I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes Page 31