Forbidden Fruit Read Online Free PDF Page A

…’
    ‘Supervising?’ asked the blonde, Sarah.
    ‘Doing the covers,’ he finished the sentence. ‘The printer could have done it but it would have cost extra. No need for adrink, thanks anyway, we’ve got iced mint tea.’ There was indeed a jug of something green reposing on the floor beside the assembly line.
    Feeling unusually sophisticated, or possibly just old and corrupt, I poured a gin and tonic and opened my book as the workers returned to their task. Horatio, with one of those swift calculations at which cats are so adept, worked out the exact cynosure of all their attention and went and sat in it.
    I was reading Beverley Nichols’
Cats’ A.B.C.,
one of my favourites. Even though he did number his cats rather than give them names, because he found naming so difficult. I had always got over the problem of the same name having to apply to a little ball of fluff and a grave and elderly signor by having a kitten name—Horatio had been called Squeak—and an adult name. He had been called Squeak because he had a habit of climbing to the top of a wardrobe, then looking over the edge at the vast gulf below and making an absurd little squeak which alerted me to the need to find the stepladder and get him down. Again. It was a relief all round when he found out his height limits.
    The young people were quietly conversing about some musical question as they shuffled and rustled and clunked the stapler, a soothing set of noises. Horatio had gone to sleep on the rehearsal schedule.
    Beverley was talking about meeting five elderly Siamese cats sitting on Compton Mackenzie’s stove in the Western Highlands when I drifted off into the light doze of one who has risen at four, done a hard day’s work, and sipped away a generous gin and tonic.
    I drifted up into consciousness again and lay still, with my eyes shut, listening to the wind howl outside and three young voices discussing something very earnestly.
    ‘But he’s a companion animal!’ protested Rowan.
    ‘You know humans shouldn’t use animals as companions,’ said the blonde—Sarah, that was the name.
    ‘But he likes humans,’ protested Bec crisply. ‘You can see he’s a volunteer. Equity will not assist a volunteer,’ she added, revealing herself to be a law student.
    ‘He ought to be free,’ said Sarah.
    ‘Free to do what?’ demanded Bec, her voice rising. ‘Free to starve? Humans bred dogs and horses and cows to serve them, granted. But cats just walked in and stayed because they liked it. Didn’t you read the
Just So Stories
when you were a kid?’
    ‘You’re a romantic,’ sneered Sarah.
    ‘And you’re an idiot,’ responded Bec without rancour.
    ‘ADOA has more important things to do than argue about a cat who is—look at him—clean, groomed, well fed and happy,’ said Rowan.
    ‘What do you make of the Nichols guy?’ asked Bec, ruffling the pages—of my book, thank you so very much!—which must have slipped off my lap as I slept.
    ‘Romantic,’ sneered Sarah again. ‘Pretty piccies of little kitties.’
    ‘You use that word for everything you don’t like,’ observed Bec. ‘No, he’s all right. Listen to what he says about the circus.’
    And she read aloud the pages on which Beverley denounces the circus, and imagines the animals in the audience and the ring-master gagged and flogged around the ring. I particularly liked his idea of elephants in tiaras.
    ‘Well, all right, then,’ said Rowan. ‘We can all approve of that.’
    There was more rustling and clunking as the stapler went back into use. Charmingly, they began to sing. Rowan was a tenor, Bec an alto, and Sarah—as one might have expected—a soprano. They were singing a carol I vaguely knew, ‘In Dulci Jubilo’.
    I hadn’t really woken up and I drifted off again, listening to the angelic voices. When I surfaced again the song had changed. They were singing to the tune of ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’:
    Haarmann Pearce and Soylent Green
Vargas Fish and