Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales &

by Anna Tambour

  "Shall I be Mum?"

  "Yes, please," Grace Dunphy answered politely. There were no crystal balls in evidence. In fact, this woman was more a cross between her adored old gran and her Nanny Fithers.

  "Aah, that's more like it," Miss Cassandra said, as she held the fragrantly steaming cup with both hands. "I can't think straight without a cup and a nibble, you know. Always been this way." The tea, smoky as lapsang but summery as freshly tramped clover, must have been this lady's own blend. The biscuits were also truly delightful. Coriander and cardamom, Grace thought. She looked at the woman and the woman looked back. The only sound was that of cups and delicate embibement.

  Cups finished, the last crumbs wiped from mouths, Miss Cassandra began.

  "Mrs. Smith," she again smiled, "if that is what you would like me to call you. You have come to me because you are troubled in your heart about your daughter. Is that not so?"

  Mrs. Dunphy nodded. She had told Miss Cassandra nothing except her "name" and the time she would arrive for her appointment.

  "Melissa—is that her name?"

  Grace looked a bit more hopefully at this "Miss Cassandra" woman. "Yes," she said. "Melissa is my daughter's name." Melissa was close enough. She'd agonized over the name for her child. She believed in symbolism, and the name would mark her child for a future, she was sure of it. Should it be Melissa (balm) or should she favour the calming properties of St. Johnswort—Hyperica? She'd tossed them over as well as Cicely, Gilead, Violet, Laurel. All known for their abilities to soothe, heal, restore. Cloudmere had left this important decision to his wife, as the symbolism was lost on him. And anyway, he was much more used to numbers. As things turned out, Grace might as well have called her daughter Wolfsbane.

  Miss Cassandra put both hands on the table and leaned towards Grace with intense concentration.

  "You are most concerned about your daughter living with you and your husband, are you not, Mrs. Smith." It was a statement, not a question, and was answered by a somewhat incredulous nod.

  Miss Cassandra could not help the briefest of smiles. "You are worried about how long she will be living with you?"

  If "Mrs. Smith" were American, she might have jumped up and hugged Miss Cassandra or yelled out, "You hit the nail right on the head."

  But being Grace Dunphy she did neither of these things, though she could not suppress the slight start to her otherwise rigid frame. "That is precisely what I am concerned about, Miss Cassandra."

  Miss Cassandra sat back in her comfortable chair, with a smile that was all chintz, flowers, and sun. "You should have no fear, Mrs. Smith. Your lovely daughter will live with you for the rest of your lives."

  ~

  That night was the first cold one. Rain lashed the last clinging leaves from the trees, and wind stuck them to the panes of the hothouse like theatre notices. Sheltered by the streaming glass walls and the friendly leafy plants, Professor and Mrs. Dunphy talked until the pallid morning light.

  Cloudmere was not a superstitious man, but then his own science had led him to believe that there are forces that are totally unexplainable. He'd toyed with religion, but found that institutionality killed the wonder which God could have had for him. This future prediction, though, made as much sense as wormholes, once Grace had gone over the evidence in her normal, logical way. His famous theories of parallel realities were now being challenged in a way that ripped him from the cosiness of his own mind's perambulations.

  Most startling was the conclusion that Grace had come to—that action must be taken, and by him.

  "What good is your physics if you can't do anything with it?" Grace asked.

  ~

  Over the next weeks, Grace and Cloudmere hardly spoke, each being so tied up in their private thoughts. Cloudmere felt guilty that he had no answers and could produce no magic of his own. And Grace felt, for the first time, an inner revolt at the oppressiveness of their daughter's presence.

  Cloudmere rang and left a message one afternoon that work would keep him late, and he would miss dinner.

  That evening, Grace sat down with Hyperica to the meal previously planned for three. Hyperica herself had been less at home, mostly gone during the day, and often gone for the evening, with no explanation. Sometimes lately, Hyperica had even missed dinner—previously an unknown event. When Grace thought about it now, she realized how she had absolutely no curiosity about how Hyperica spent her time.

  Grace watched her daughter eat and the feeling grew upon her that she simply hated the girl. Once the first bud of thought emerged, flowering was wildly luxuriant and no implement could have clipped the buds.

  Hyperica was innocent of awareness and deep into her own thoughts, as her mother gazed.

  ~

  The next day, Grace visited Miss Cassandra again. "You said my daughter would live with us for the rest of our lives ..."

  Miss Cassandra was taken aback. This woman did not seem happy at all. "Not exactly," she stalled.

  "What, then?"

  "She will live in that house forever. That's what I meant."

  Grace left her in a bit of a huff, and her next three stops were to Cambridge estate agents, inquiring about putting a house on the market.

  "We've got to move out from under her," she declared late that evening, after Cloudmere crept home. They were huddled together in the hothouse. She'd made a bowl of vanilla custard jewelled with diamonds of preserved quince, and was trying to repair their rift with this pudding and two spoons.

  Cloudmere felt disoriented. Grace had become much more forceful over the last few days.

  "I will not have her ruining our lives," she insisted.

  "But this is nonsense," he tried to sensibly remind his wife. "You want us to sell because some woman tells you she can foretell the future?"

  Grace obstinately nodded. "If she's right, it will work. And if she's wrong, maybe it will, too. Let's sell and buy a one-bedroom house."

  Cloudmere gave in, even though what he would miss, and he knew Grace would too, wasn't the house but the garden and the haven of this hothouse with its community of beloved plants.

  ~

  Grace visited Twester Heatherstone Estate Agents the next day, first looking for a house to move to. She spent the afternoon visiting four horrible little boxes, all eminently desirable according to Tony Twester. But then he would think a dog kennel was quite suitable for his own mother.

  On coming home, the Dunphy driveway was blocked by a pantechnicon, plain-sided as an expressionless face. Hyperica emerged from the front door, carrying two bulging carrybags. "Scuse," muttered Hyperica, scooting past her mother on the steps. Grace ran in the house and up to Hyperica's room. The only things left were walls punctuated with picture hangers where all the mirrors had been, a litter of magazines and an unmade bed.

  The front door slammed and Hyperica stood in the hall with a man with the body of a T-shirted and jeaned gladiator and the skin of an old lizard. "This is Angel, Mum."

  Angel moved his legs apart and rippled his muscles in the way other men smooth their hair back. Grace waited. Angel adjusted his cleft chin towards Grace like he would welcome an argument, and was used to winning.

  "Angel has this van business and we're getting married, aren't we, Angel?" Hyperica cringed up at him, as she took his arm and he shook her off.

  "Not here," he snapped. "Tole you that, dint I."

  Suddenly, Angel lifted a meaty arm to look at his watch.

  "Is your ladyship 'bout finished here?" he asked, looking at no one, but his voice dripping with the same syrupy bile that Hyperica had always dispensed.

  Hyperica's face flushed beet. She scuttled off like a trained cockroach, lugging the heavy carry bags and with difficulty, lifting them and herself into the lorry.

  She had barely installed herself before the pantechnicon leapt from the curb with never a look back from girl or man—just a black diesel fart for remembrance.

  Next week was the Nobel awards, and the Dunphys would have sent th
eir regrets if there had been an address to send them to, but there wasn't. Hyperica had disappeared just as completely as the jewellery in Grace Dunphy's jewel box. But that was a small price to pay for happiness.

  ~

  It was a cool spring evening when Cloudmere and Grace left the home of their new next-door neighbours.

  "Grusha and Irena have settled in well, haven't they?"

  "Almost as snug as we are," Cloudmere sighed, as he put his arm around Grace, nestled beside him on the floor of the hothouse, now the site of many romantic trysts instead of just escapes. "And you were going to abandon this. Lucky for us your clairvoyant friend turned wrong early enough. Superstitious piffle."

  Grace winced from the painful memory. "How would you explain her rightness?"

  "Close enough hits on some things that you papered over her wild misses yourself. That's how predictions work. Maybe I should take up the trade," Cloudmere concluded with only a half-gloat of I-told-you-so in his voice.

  Grace pulled out a tin from the base of the passionfruit vine. "Have a biscuit."

  Cloudmere took three, and was dipping in for another handful when Grace closed the box. "Maybe you're not a man," she smiled mischievously.

  "Hmm?" Cloudmere asked, his mouth full.

  "They're Miss Cassandra's recipe. She warned me that you would hate these biscuits, because all men dislike this taste."

  Cloudmere stood and pulled Grace up with him. "I predict you'll find Miss Cassandra wrong again ... but I'll let you count the ways."

  ~

  A tree fell against the front door. At least it sounded that loud, though no tree was close enough to make that bang. It was a dark and balmy night, and the Dunphys tensed against each other in bed. A second tree fell almightily against the solid oak, and then the polite doorbell tinkled, and tinkled again, followed by a series of bashes, and an "Open up!"

  "Do you think you should go?" Grace clutched Cloudmere, meaning "I think you should go, but ..."

  "I should think so!" the professor announced, now brave enough to get out of bed and put on his robe and slippers.

  He rushed reluctantly down the stairs. Choosing the most viciously pointed umbrella in the stand, he unlatched the door and put his foot behind, only to have the heavy oak bashed into his face as the door was violently pushed open.

  "Have me waiting here all night in the dark, would you! Well, get the rest of my stuff. It's on the curb."

  "Hyperica?"

  "Who'd you think it is? Get Mum up. I need a feed."

  It was indeed his daughter, looking and, ah, smelling amazingly unkempt. There was a huddle of bags around her, and another clump at the curb. Cloudmere marvelled at the loss of his daughter's looks. She'd always been so particular. And this new low-class talk? Was it an act? Maybe, because there were her mirrors, leaning against the bags at the curb. But she hadn't lost her manners or her acid-drop tongue.

  "Oy, Baldy! Wacher waitin for?" Hyperica prodded, literally by knocking her knuckles against his pate.

  He jerked his head away from her, and from contemplating the ramifications of another detail of her appearance— the ominous evidence, even to his unobservant eye, that his daughter was eating for two.

  "You're back?" Grace's stricken voice called down the stairs.

  Hyperica sneered up at her mother. "No, I'm front. What's it look like? Give you something to do with your life for a change."

  Grace grabbed the balustrade for support. "Miss Cassandra. Miss Cassandra," she moaned. "She was right. Cloudy!"

  "Gaw! This place! Eh, I'm hungr— eh, wachyer step!" Hyperica yowled as she crashed against the wall, pushed aside by her father.

  Grace ran down the stairs and out the door, grabbing him by the back of his robe.

  "Where are you going?"

  "To Grusha's."

  "You can't escape now! What about me?"

  "What about us? I'm not coming home until we solve it!"

  "Solve her? How? Murder?"

  "No. I wouldn't know how. Physics, Grace. Physics. You were right. What good am I if I can't do something useful?"

  He glanced over her shoulder to the doorway of their home. Then he took her hands in his. "I solemnly swear to you, Grace. In less than a month, she will be gone. Grusha and I will do something beyond any Nobel ever earned ... though won't be able to report our findings. " He snorted abruptly, as he sometimes did when he made an especially amusing calculation. "Or rather 'losings' ..."

  "Hey. Come back! I'm hungry!" wafted from the doorway behind, ignored by both.

  "And before? Why didn't you?"

  "I didn't realize we could. Or that we had to. Or that she... Grace, I ..."

  "Hate her?" Grace smiled.

  The professor blinked.

  "Join the club," Grace giggled.

  "You, too?"

  "Who not, Cloudy? But what about Miss Cassandra? Her prediction."

  "That fake? How can you believe ... Well, we shall have to send her, too. Won't take chances."

  Grace wrapped her arms around his neck. But then a new worry pulled her off. "Where? Where will you send them?"

  Cloudmere's mind was already yearning to get to work. This was an unpleasant interruption.

  "Somewhere! I promise. But for something no one has ever achieved, now you want to know where? Do you care?"

  "Hey! I'm starving!"

  " ... No, actually... but don't hurt her baby."

  "Her baby?"

  "Yes. I want it to live."

  "Why?"

  The pavement was suddenly crowded with Hyperica's presence. "Hey you olds, want me to report you for child abuse?" She grabbed Grace's arm. "I need food!"

  "Do you have to ask, Cloudy?" Grace smiled, and turning to Hyperica yet a different smile, she took her daughter's hand. "Welcome home, dear. Let's run you a bath first, shall we?"

  Temptation of the Seven Scientists

  Once there were, and perhaps still are: a certain seven scientists, each with a yearning heart. They lived by a forest so dense and vast that not one scientist knew another, though their spoor often met on the forest paths. The scientists were named S1, S2, S3 and so on, all the way to S7; and although some were M and some, F, we shall speak of them as M, for it matters not a hoot.

  Each scientist set off each morning on his own, hunting his prey—the Great Theory. Not to kill it, but to capture it, tame it, and display it for all to see.

  The forest teemed with Great Theories, no two alike. However, they were all very elusive beasts, and the hunters hardly ever caught one.

  S1 was an exception. When he was still a shock of greasy youth, he caught a Great Theory and became quickly renowned for his skill. Only he knew that he had fallen asleep in a glade, and the Great Theory had stumbled over him and woken him up. He leapt to his feet in fright, thereby jerking a line he had forgotten to tie up neatly, and the Theory, who was just rising to its feet, stumbled again, tangled in the mess of S1's sloppy work. It only remained for S1to properly hobble the beast and lead it back to S1's village, where the young hunter was immediately lauded as a great hero (it was indeed, a splendid Great Theory). S1 became known far and wide, and was feted by the King. No one except S1 and the Great Theory ever knew the true story of the capture, but to have netted such a magnificent catch at such an early age boded a brilliant future for the young scientist.

  But though S1 hunted diligently, the flame of his reputation dimmed a little with each passing season, as he made no other catches, saw no other Great Theories, and had not even heard a Theory's swishing as it rushed through the forest. And each year, S1 grew older, as we all do.

  One night, S1 had a dream so vivid that he remembered every detail when he woke, and he knew sure as he knew his own prowess, that the dream spoke the truth.

  And this is what the dream said:

  "Go to your most secret spot in the forest, and a Great Theory will be waiting for you there, roped to a tree. Take hold of her bridle and she will be yours."

  ~


  The second scientist, S2, was a curious sight in the forest. Tramping before the dew dried, braving wind, sleet, ice, fog, and pouring rain, S2's skill in tracking was only just exceeded by the graceful fleetness of the lovely Great Theory that he sought. They had been so close to each other for so many years that you would have thought they were almost on speaking terms. But he never quite caught her. Birds often shat on his head, but he never noticed. Fantastic flowers bloomed, but they were not to his interest. His eyes focussed only on the trail of the Great Theory. S2 praised his Great Theory to others, but as he was a puny fellow with skin like a toad, everyone only laughed at him, even his own mother and father, whose only words to him if they spoke to him at all, were "Why don't you do real work as we do!" So he rarely spoke now, except to himself.

  And one night, S2 had a dream, as real and convincing as the dream of S1. And this is what S2's dream said:

  "Go to your most secret spot in the forest, and the Great Theory that you have followed all these many years will waiting for you, roped to a tree. Take hold of her bridle and she will be yours. Lead her home and no one will ever laugh at you again."

  ~

  No one ever laughed at the third scientist. On the contrary, his whole village ran out to meet him when he strode wearily into sight of an evening. They led him to his house, where his wife tenderly massaged his feet while he ate and drank the good meal that she had laid before him. And after his wife had wiped the grease from his elbows, he spoke to the waiting throng. And all the village trembled at his day's exploits, including the latest thrilling slip of his fearsome prey. Although he was handsome as a new coin, many listeners closed their eyes so as to hear his voice better. For the voice of S3 could make the nightingale faint in envy. His tales were so exciting, the Great Theory always so near his grasp, its breath so terrifying, that wenches often did faint, and needed his reviving arm to be brought to life again.

  Between S3 and his imagination, only one of them had ever encountered any Great Theories. S3 knew that he should really have become a troubadour, but he had become a scientist instead, so he left it to his imagination to do all the work, and hoped that he could keep his looks and voice. However, lately his looks were beginning to fade.