Ben Jonson 'Hymn to Diana'

She stood still, allowing her eyes to get used to the dimness.

Oddly enough, she felt sure that she could hear running water.

The air was cool and scented with sandalwood, a bracing, masculine scent. There was an overscent of hashish. The acolytes had started smoking early this evening. The flooring was soft under her hot feet. In the dim light she could see a figure occupying one of a pair of carved, throne-like chairs at the far end. She went towards him, suppressing the urge to genuflect.

Tarquin raced ahead of her and threw himself at Gerald Templar's feet. The seated man's hand came down and rested gently on his curly head with its winged cap.

'Good boy,' he said. 'Phryne, my dear.'

'Gerald,' said Phryne evenly. This took an effort. Gerald Templar's beauty struck her afresh each time she saw him, and 53 *54 it was extreme enough to take the breath away. He was not just made like a Greek boy, all long limbs and light muscles. It was not just that his face had the fine-cut purity of a marble by Michelangelo, though others spoke of a Canova Eros in Venice.

His eyes, admittedly, were like sapphires and his hair-a little too long, reaching his collarbones-like spun gold. He was a veritable masterpiece of the Divine art. But mere beauty alone would not have been enough to enchant a sceptical, irreligious city like Paris, as he had done. Gerald rose and came to take her hand, and Phryne felt it again. A flood of love, of attention, a focused wave of empathy. His charisma preceded his person by at least ten paces in every direction. Gerald could have led an army to free Jerusalem.

'How kind of you to come to my little party,' said Gerald.

He led Phryne forward, through a collection of semi-recumbent bodies. Their faces turned towards him as he moved, as fish turn towards a spring of fresh water in a stagnant pond.

The source of the coolness was now revealed. A fountain had been set up, spraying cold water into the humid air.

Gerald's acolytes were all dressed in white cotton shifts called, as Phryne remembered, caftans, embroidered round the neck and sleeves with pale arabesques. There were always thirty of them in the Unchanging Ones. When one died, dropped out, found marriage or God, or inherited his father's hog-slaughtering business or just got bored with adoring Gerald, he or she was instantly replaced. There had never been a dearth of devoted admirers of Gerald Templar.

To balance the Unchanging Ones, there were the Lady's Own, presently all spread out to provide a constant stream of cool air over the flawless body of Isabella Templar. She was lying supine in a string hammock, supported at each end by two of her admirers, and fanned by three others with Cecil B

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*55 DeMille peacock fans. And she was surpassingly beautiful, this sister of the aureate Gerald, in quite an opposite way. Where he glowed as golden as Apollo, she was as icy and severe as Artemis. His hair was Hyacinthine ringlets of precious metal; hers was as colourless as flax, hip length, perfectly straight and shining like the moon. Her eyes were the colour of a cold Scandinavian sky. Her skin was as pale as pearl and in the half-light she seemed to glow like an undersea creature, edged with phosphorescence. Phryne noticed that even her feet were perfect-high arched, glossy, with pinkly glowing rounded nails and not a scar or a bunion to deform their elegant shape.

It would be pointless to feel envy, Phryne thought, and didn't. As well envy a Botticelli madonna. Isabella waved a languid hand at Phryne and turned her face to the cool air again.

'Tarquin, a chair for Miss Fisher,' said Gerald. Making a fearful face, the boy fetched a chair and slammed it down at the foot of Gerald's throne. 'Naughty,' said Gerald.

'And if the wind changes your only prospect of employment will be as a gargoyle,' agreed Phryne. Tarquin scowled at her.

Gerald patted the boy on the shoulder.

'You should listen to Miss Fisher,' he told him. 'She's certainly the wisest person I know. Well, perhaps not the wisest,'

he added, 'but the cleverest.'

Tarquin scowled again but did not demur.

'So, you've imported the whole circus?' asked Phryne, observing the Unchanging Ones as they lay, half slain by heat and hashish.

'Unkind,' chided Gerald. 'You always were unkind.'

'But clever,' put in Phryne. 'Why did you come to Australia, Gerald? Not for the climate,' she said. 'Isabella hates the heat.

Some trouble in Paris, was there?'

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*56 'You are acute, and unkind, as I mentioned before,' said Gerald ruefully. 'Let us just say that we felt we needed some fresh woods and pastures new. Here, I suspect, there is great scope for us, and also living is less expensive. But the Unchanging came with me of their own free will.'

'And the Lady's Own of theirs,' scoffed Phryne gently. 'Let us have less talk of free will in that context! I hope you brought enough hash for all of them.'

'Suitable supplies have been organised,' said Gerald blandly.

'Will you smoke?'

'Just cigarettes,' said Phryne. 'I prefer my own.'

Tarquin, nudged by Gerald's bare foot, rose and lit Phryne's Virginian cigarette without setting fire to her hair or garments, much as she felt the little monster desired to see her burn. She had never felt such jealousy radiating off a human.

'And Tarquin?'

'He is an orphan,' said Gerald. 'I found him in the Infants Home in Melbourne on my first day here. He is my boy now, eh, Tarquin?'

Tarquin flung himself at Gerald's feet and embraced his legs. Phryne watched, a little uncomfortable at such a lavish display of devotion.

'I never suspected you of sentiment,' was all she said.

'I am many things which you have never suspected,' said Gerald grandly. 'My sister is still not speaking to me. She got a little girl at the same place, one Marigold, a sweet little thing, but she ran away as soon as we got here. Now Isabella grudges me my Tarquin.'

'Because she has lost her girl?' asked Phryne.

'Because Tarquin loves me,' said Gerald. 'Now, to business.'

'Business, Gerald?' she asked, astonished. 'You?'

'Go down to the kitchen,' Gerald instructed Tarquin, 56 *57 untangling him gently. 'Stay there until the housekeeper can give you her word that the menu will be strictly adhered to, then come back as quickly as you can. I am trusting you, Tarquin.'

'The Lady Isabella has already talked to the old bidd-the old chook-the old . . . woman,' protested Tarquin.

'Even so,' said Gerald. Tarquin poised on one foot, like the Eros of his costume, half inclined to argue some more and half inclined to show Gerald how fast he could run. Finally he took to his heels with no more noise than a large bird taking off, and was gone through the bamboo curtains in a breath.

'He's fast,' commented Phryne.

'Good thing too, or he might not have been able to outrun his alcoholic father or his beastly mother,' said a voice close to her ear.

'My dear,' said Phryne, patting a fat cheek with an affectionate hand. 'My dear old Sylvanus, I should have known that you would be here.'

'Just going to get a refill, darling girl. Can I get one for you, too? Gerald? Not smoking that vile weed, you see, I get terribly thirsty.' Sylvanus posed briefly, hand in waistcoat pocket, mouth drawn down, other hand extended in a begging gesture.

No one doubted that Sylvanus had modelled himself on his hero, Oscar Wilde. He had run to fat as Wilde had, conceal-ing the fact in loose robes or well cut gentleman's sporting waistcoats. Rumours that he wore a corset had never been disproved. Or proved, of course, Phryne conceded. He had less hair than Oscar, it was true, but more head to put it on.

His eyes were almost black, and could be very penetrating.

Most of the time he affected a lazy grace which competent critics might have thought overdone in a hibernating sloth.

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*58 Sylvanus Leigh was witty, acerbic, considerably older than the company's average age of twenty-five, and one of the kindest men Phryne had ever met-provided that he was not detected in his good deeds. When asked once why he was carrying two miserable Parisian kittens, rescued from a dog's jaws, in his pocket, he had taken them out, examined them carefully, and said, 'Mittens,' before returning them to their sanctuary. Phryne happened to know that they now ruled his tiny Montparnasse flat as royalty, but no one else ever suspected it. She smiled at him with real affection as he bowed elaborately over her hand.

'Sweet and adorable Miss Fisher, you walk in beauty like the night, though not this vile hot one,' he told her. 'I fly for some more nectar before the hearties wreck the tent.'

He ambled away.

Gerald sighed. 'It's like this,' he started the story again.

'Phryne!' squealed four female voices, and Phryne went down under an avalanche of Sapphic kisses. Sabine, Marie-Louise, Minou and Sad Alison. They were just as Phryne remembered, though Alison seemed to have got sadder. In that bright company she stood out like a blown bulb in a string of fairy lights. The girls from the Tea Shop of Sybaris, Rue de la Chat Qui Peche, Quartier Latin, Paris, stroked and hugged and pecked while peppering Phryne with questions-wasn't this a strange country, what on earth was she wearing under that silk shirt, was it always this hot, wasn't Gerald looking divine, had she seen that there were two girl riders in the polo team, how deliciously decadent!?

'Not now,' said Gerald, shedding an atom of his carefully cultivated serenity. 'I want Phryne to myself for a moment.'

'Oh,' lips pouted and quivered. 'As long as you give her back later. Still, it is your party, isn't it, darling?'

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*59 'It is,' said Gerald, and the girls, arms around each other, dawdled back to the company of the Lady's Own, reclaimed their feathers and resumed fanning. Phryne put Gerald back on his throne and perched herself comfortably on the wide, padded arm.

'Now, look straight ahead, try not to move your lips and talk fast,' she instructed. 'We can ride out the next interrup-tion as it comes. What is biting you, Gerald Templar?'

'Someone is threatening to kill me,' he said, obeying her to the syllable. In men, this always had an ameliorating effect on Phryne. She allowed her chin to rest on his magnificent chest for a moment.

'Who?'

'Don't know.'

'Why?'

'Don't know that either. Started in Paris. Got letters.'

'Kept letters?'

'All of them,' he said, confounding Phryne's detective-story narrative reflexes. In such novels the victim had always burned the letters, adding a degree of difficulty to the detective's task, in case the author thought that he or she was having too easy a life.

'Good. Go on,' she instructed him.

'Tried to poison me,' said Gerald. 'Arsenic in the sugar on Turkish delight. I didn't eat the stuff. But Tillie Mayer did and was taken to hospital. Tried again, a toadstool in the potage automne. Three people in the ambulance that time. Tried to ruin me. Wrote to "Faits Divers" in Paris Jour and said that we held black masses and orgies like in that rebours book.'

'But, Gerald-' said Phryne. He held up his hand and she subsided. Time was, indeed, of the essence. She could see a boy with a tray being chivvied by Sylvanus Leigh into crossing the 59 *60 tent and not stepping on any important parts of the recumbent bodies.

'Police investigation,' he said. 'Cleared us. Paper printed a retraction. Mud sticks, though.'

'So it does,' said Phryne.

'Then he began stealing from us,' said Gerald. 'Money went missing. Suppliers' cheques vanished. Jewellery, too.

Thought I'd left him behind in France. Now he's here. I invited you to my party, Phryne, and now I want you to save my life.'

'You're exaggerating,' she told him. 'No one is dead yet.

How do you know he's here?'

'Got note,' said Gerald. Phryne saw with admiration that he really had the hang of prisoners' lingo, which was spoken without moving the lips and was hell on plosives. But Gerald always had been the clever twin.

'Here's Sylvanus,' she said. 'Have someone put the notes in my room disguised as a hat in a locked hatbox. You should not be seen giving them to me. But I have to tell you, my dear, that someone has already made two determined attempts to keep me away from your little gathering, so I am disposed to believe you.'

Gerald sagged a little. 'I thought it would take much more to convince you,' he admitted. 'Very well. Sylvanus, you are a lifesaver,' he said in his usual baritone as the older man came puffing to the dais. 'What have you brought us?'

'No point in messing about in this climate,' said Sylvanus, nodding to the boy to put the jug down into its ice bucket and allowing him to hand out glasses. 'You have a superlative barman, Gerald, and a very tasty one as well. Arms like a wrestler.

Just the gentlest beading of honest sweat upon his manly bosom. Said bosom, half bared, was at lickable height and I almost swooned while waiting. He concocted them for me.

Singapore slings just like Raffles used to make. Bottoms up,'

he encouraged, and drank down his glass.

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