Raisins and Almonds

him into a reclining position with the puppy snuggled up to his side. He dipped his gaze and licked the top of its ragged black and white head, then began to wash its milky face.

'Ember, it's a dog, canis, you know, not felis,' Phryne informed him. Ember appeared unenlightened by this news. The kitchen began to warm. Phryne, fascinated, made herself some Dutch cocoa from the tin with the lady in a white cap on the front and sat sipping it, her bare feet on the hearth stone, the uncurtained windows as black as black glass, and listened to Ember's rising purr.

She put herself back to bed half an hour later, and the night seemed to have quieted so that she fell easily asleep.

All of which went close to explaining why, when Phryne woke suddenly to voices at her own front door, she was annoyed.

'Eight of the clock on a Sunday morning, what an hour!' she exclaimed, as Dot tentatively enquired if Miss Fisher wanted to see the apologetic young man now downstairs with a bunch of hyacinths (white) in his hand?

'Oh, all right, Dot dear, but I'm not getting up yet. Tell Mr Abrahams that if he cares to breakfast with me I will be delighted to see him in a quarter of an hour's time. Open the window, Dot dear, and bring me coffee, I want to see the spoon standing up in it.'

Phryne extracted herself from a tangle of green sheets and quilt, went into her own bathroom, made certain contraceptive preparations and washed her face. That was as far as she was intending to go in the way of hygiene, and her cream negligee which supplemented the remarkable appeal of her cream nightdress should be decent enough for a chat with a nice young man before Phryne went back to sleep. The insertion of her diaphragm was almost second nature now, with a young man in the offing. She stood at the window, looking out, until the rising wind chilled her and she wrestled the casement shut.

There were green leaves on the sill, recently broken, but whether they had been snapped off the parent stem by a climber or a possum or the weather, who could tell?

Simon Abrahams, who was escorted up the stairs to Miss Fisher's boudoir by a very respectable maid carrying a covered tray, stopped at the door and stared in a way which would have caused his mother to clip his ears. The room was lush, and the bed in which Miss Fisher reposed was hung about with cobweb-fine black gauze embroidered with ivy leaves and grapes. He looked aside and saw his own faun's face in a mirror wreathed with garlands. The bedchamber was opulent, unrestrained and entirely shameless he was glad to say, and he walked forward, his feet sinking into a velvety carpet like moss.

'Simon dear, do come in,' said the vision in the big bed. She was draped in milky Chinese silk and looked both sleepy and cross. He thought her very beautiful and dangerous, and sat down carefully on the edge of her bed and took her hand reverently between both of his own, raising it to his lips to kiss.

'Green leaves, lady?' he said in his lightly accented voice, noticing them on her pillow.

Tor spring,' she replied, and he presented his hyacinths. Phryne leaned forward and drank in the scent and he had a dizzying feeling that he was actually going to fall down her cleavage.

The maid uncovered the tray, taking the flowers and placing them in a vase of exactly the right dimensions. She poured Phryne a cup of coffee from the copper pot, opened the napkin to reveal freshly made bread rolls, and left. Miss Fisher buttered a roll lavishly and poured coffee for her fellow breakfaster. Then she seemed to be struck by a thought.

'Simon, I'm sorry—can you eat with me?'

'Yes, of course,' he said, 'unless you were responsible for dosing my co-religionist with rat poison,' he added, taking a roll and breaking it. 'In fact, even if you were I would presume that you haven't a reason for killing me, eh?'

'Aren't you supposed to only eat kosher food?'

'You've been researching us,' he said slowly. 'Yes, my mother keeps a kosher house. No, I see no reason why your coffee, your cherry jam and your bread should not be perfectly all right. I can't eat dairy food at the same time as meat, that's all, and I'm destined never to taste moules mariniere or bacon, but that's no great loss. And we keep the Sabbath, so we don't do anything but rest on Saturday, which is something of an impediment in a world which doesn't do anything on Sunday ... including get up early, I had forgotten. But my father taught me never to be negligent to beautiful ladies, so I came as soon as I decently could to apologize for not returning your call yesterday.'

He gave her a lopsided smile which was very hard to resist and Phryne's mood was already improving under the onslaught of real coffee, hyacinths and charm.

'I had a disturbed night, with all that wind, and the puppy which the girls have wished on me started howling. I shall go back to sleep presently, but for the moment I am pleased to see you,' said Phryne, sipping the black caffeine-rich brew and surveying the young man.

He was very decorative. His hair was curly, and she wondered idly what it might feel like under her hand. His bright brown eyes were as alert as a fox's; indeed there was something foxy about him, except that he had the unshakeable confidence of being his mother's favourite or only child. His close-shaven jaw was slightly shadowed, his tie pin was a little too emphatic, his suit a little too formal for so early in the morning, and his buttonhole of a pink rose quite outrageous according to the canons of public-school taste. Phryne was very pleased with her acquisition.

'Delighted,' he murmured, looking into her eyes. She bit into a crust and the young man dragged his gaze away and caught sight of her bedtime reading. He shuffled quickly through the books.

'Ah, yes. Mr Goldman.'

'Have you read it?' asked Phryne, spreading cherry jam on her roll.

'es, certainly. 'The Jewish problem is not a Jewish problem, but a gentile problem, and only the gentiles can solve it.' The trouble with being a Jew—apart from being Chosen and presumably God knew what he was doing when he Chose us—is that we have no home. There really is no place where the Jews have not lived for years and felt safe which has not turned against them. We exist everywhere on sufferance—here, for example.'

'Here?' Phryne sat up a little. 'There have been no pogroms here.'

'No, but immigration is restricted. If there was an emergency somewhere—Russia, for example—and the Jews had to flee, as they fled in 1492 from Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain, where would they go? Our own assimilationists would keep the Russians out, saying that there was no room in this country for the sweepings of the Soviet ghettos as they said about the immigrants fleeing the Czarist May laws in 1881. The Jews who have been here for a couple of generations—and Australia has only been settled for a few generations, you know—would keep the others away because they are afraid of turning even this laconic place against us. They are afraid of there being too many Jews attracting too much attention and envy. We have not forgotten Ikey Mo in the Bulletin in the nineties, you know'

'The Bulletin in the nineties hated everyone,' objected Phryne. 'Along with Ikey Mo there was Johnnie Chinaman and Jacky-Jacky the aborigine and Paddy the drunken Irishman and they weren't keen on women, either, looking on my own sex, as I understand, as the root of all evil. But what's the solution? If your own people want to restrict immigration, what is to be done?'

'A homeland,' said Simon, and his face shone with a pure light of dedication.

'Where?' asked Phryne, putting the tray on her bedside table.

'Palestine ...'

He looked so beautiful, his long lashes lowered over the bright eyes, that Phryne reached out and caressed the curly hair and the smooth cheek. Simon Abrahams nestled into the touch and kissed her palm, and Phryne gasped. Her hand dropped to the broadcloth lap, and Simon made the same noise. She undid his tie, shucked his coat, took the studs from his sleeves. 'Come and lie down with me,' she whispered.

He took the rose from his coat and shed the petals over Phryne. They slid down her shiny black hair and were scattered over her pillow and her breast.

From then on, it was simple. She lay and watched him undress, shedding broadcloth and linen, young enough to pull impatiently at the shirt where the buttons would not release their grip. The slim body emerged like a flower from a calyx: long legs, slim hands and feet, a wiry body used to some hard labour. He was entirely naked when he slid down alongside Phryne in her silken bed, and the cream nightdress was already cast aside.

Cool morning light made an icon, strangely religious, of the young man with the Middle Eastern face. Phryne felt him shiver as their bodies touched at a thousand points, and she ran both hands down his smooth back, her fingers curling over the muscular buttocks and sliding inward to cup the denuded genitalia in a gratifying state of