The Grandest Bookshop in the World

by Mellor, Amelia

  Pa sat back in his chair, his fingertips touching his beard. Then, in a halting, gentle voice, he began. ‘In the old days of Paddy’s Market, you had to have a good head on your shoulders. You’d meet a fellow who said he had a horse with its tail where its head should be. And you’d say to yourself, “well, there’s something I haven’t seen!” So you’d pay your penny and pull back the curtain, and what did you find? Just an old nag standing backwards in the stall, with its rump in the trough.’

  This brought the tiniest smile from Vally, but he didn’t uncross his arms.

  ‘Across the way was a lady who said her ointment would make a man look young again.’ Pa was taking a while to get to the point, but Pearl didn’t mind. She liked his stories. ‘You’d take home the ointment, put it on your face – and it made you look young, all right. Your beard would all fall out, and you’d have a face as bald as a baby’s. So, after a few years selling pies and books in a place like that, I thought I knew every trick of the trade. And then … he turned up.’

  ‘The Obscurosmith?’ asked Pearl.

  Pa nodded. ‘He asked me to call him Magnus Maximillian, but that sounded like a stage name to me. He liked to introduce himself that way. Never “my name is,” but “call me such-and-such.” He struck me as friendly – charming, even. But he seemed to consider himself … not above the rest of us, exactly. Perhaps … a little off to the side.’

  Vally shifted in his seat. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, the rest of us – all the shopkeepers – got our lunches and suppers at one stall or another. But I never saw him eat a thing. He didn’t seem to have any regular customers, but he had plenty who wanted a refund. They didn’t intend to ask him for one, either. They demanded. They begged. Or they would have, if they had been able to find him. I tried to help them when I could, but he had a way of disappearing just when you wanted him. And nobody was more miserable than the people who found him in the end.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Pearl.

  ‘He didn’t give refunds,’ said Pa. ‘Only exchanges. If you didn’t like the first deal, and managed to find him, he’d swap it for something worse.’

  Vally fixed his father with a critical squint. ‘And you thought you could trust a person like that?’

  ‘I shouldn’t have.’ Pa dragged his hand down his face. ‘But I couldn’t refuse. No one else could have done it.’

  ‘Done what – double-crossed you?’ Vally demanded.

  Pa closed his eyes hard, and Pearl almost didn’t hear what he said next. ‘I wanted her back in time for Easter.’

  Pearl glared at her brother. He looked away.

  ‘I know you older ones don’t care much about Easter anymore, Val, but it’s still exciting for your little sisters.’ Pa’s voice was getting shaky again. ‘She used to love all the new clothes, and dyeing the eggs with vegetable skins, and the games at the church fête …’

  ‘Don’t forget the chocolate,’ said Pearl, afraid that Pa might break down if he tried to keep talking about Ruby. ‘The chocolate is very exciting for us.’

  The distraction worked: Pa looked at her with that familiar moustache-quirk that meant a smile. ‘Anyway. I don’t know what became of Mr Maximillian when they rebuilt old Paddy’s. When I moved down to Cole’s Cheap Books, Bill Pyke and I had our hands full. I thought the old fox had moved out to North Melbourne or somewhere, and that was the end of that.’

  ‘Pfft. North Melbourne. Probably barracks for the Shinboners,’ said Vally snobbily – he went for the Melbourne Redlegs.

  ‘Wait a minute.’ Something about all this, Pearl realised, didn’t add up. And it wasn’t the idea of the strange man hollering for the Shinboners at the football. ‘How old was Mr Pyke when you worked at Paddy’s Market, again?’

  ‘About thirteen when he started, I think.’

  ‘And how old was the Obscurosmith?’

  ‘Thirty, I thought.’

  ‘But that was twenty-two years ago! The Obscurosmith looks younger than Mr Pyke! And if you didn’t talk to him in all that time, how did he find out about us?’

  ‘Us, as in the Book Arcade?’

  ‘No, us.’ Pearl gestured at herself and Vally. ‘Your children. He knew how Ruby passed, and he knew Linda was the oldest.’

  ‘We’re in the picture book,’ Vally said. ‘All those poems with our names in them.’

  Pearl imagined the Obscurosmith sitting cross-legged, poring over Pa’s Funny Picture Book. If it were any other grown-up, that thought would have made her laugh. With the Obscurosmith, though, it seemed to add to his strangeness. As if he didn’t know the proper ways to behave. Or didn’t care.

  ‘He truly seemed glad to see me,’ Pa continued. ‘Told me he’d been travelling the world, and in all that time, he’d never seen anything quite like our Arcade. He mentioned your manners, Pearl. And how noble that I kept the Read For As Long As You Like sign in such a grand building, and how nice for Melbourne to have such a unique attraction …’ At that, Pa looked immeasurably sad. ‘I did think he meant it, you know. I really thought he liked our Arcade.’ It was becoming more difficult for him to speak. ‘When he mentioned Ruby, I knew he was up to something, but I thought I hadn’t left any space for him to slither out. He asked for a treasure, in place of the one he would give me. And I lost my temper at him then.’ He squeezed Pearl’s hand. ‘I thought he was after you.’

  A Ruby in exchange for a Pearl. She shivered.

  ‘I wrote out the contract. I said, you’re not to touch anyone else in my family. You’re not to disturb her grave. I don’t want my Ruby-Roo coming back like Frankenstein’s creature. If you can’t bring her back alive, as hale and hearty as she is in this picture, don’t try it at all.’

  He opened one of his drawers and took out a photograph. It showed Ruby aged around five, dressed up in her best frilly coat and bonnet. Her dark, curious eyes were looking right at the camera. But because it was a formal picture, she wasn’t smiling. Pearl had only been small on the day of the portrait, but she remembered it. The photography studio on the Arcade’s second floor had newly opened, and the Coles had recently moved into their flat. Everyone had worn their Sunday best. Pearl, aged four, had ended up with the worst photograph. She’d thought it was funny to move at the last moment and make everyone groan in dismay, because as the second youngest, she didn’t get to be the centre of attention very often. Baby Ivy was absolutely terrified of the photographer, like a hulking monster under his black sheet. In the end, Ma had been forced to sit in a chair with a cloth over her head, holding Ivy on her lap.

  Ruby had kept still. They had all earned a raspberry lollipop afterwards, and when Pearl complained that Ruby’s was bigger, Ma said she deserved it for sitting so nicely. Looking back, it was astonishing. She climbed like a possum, she flopped like a seal, she leapt like a lamb, she slid like an eel. Ruby – the real Ruby – had barely ever been still at all, even in her sleep. When they were little, all the girls had shared a bed. More than once, Pearl had woken up with Ruby’s toe in her ear.

  She found she was frowning hard. How wicked, how pedantic, to give them a Ruby who was technically breathing, yet as lifeless as a photograph. ‘The dirty cheat!’ Pearl jumped up from her chair, nearly knocking over the teapot. ‘You ought to send the coppers after him.’

  Pa shook his head. ‘He hasn’t broken the contract …’

  ‘He conned you, Pa,’ said Vally. ‘That contract isn’t worth a fart in a whirlwind.’

  ‘Vally, don’t be crude –’

  ‘You should burn it. You can’t let that …’ Pearl searched for the worst words she knew. ‘That bloody bastard have our Book Arcade!’

  ‘Pearl!’ her father cried, but the violence of the exclamation threw him into such a fit of coughing that he had no breath to scold her.

  Vally stood up to offer Pa his handkerchief. ‘I think bloody bastard sounds about right.’

  ‘Look what he’s doing to you.’ Pearl put her hands on her hips.

  ‘No
more gutter-talk,’ said Pa sternly, as he recovered. ‘That goes for both of you. And you needn’t worry. I never said he could take our Arcade.’

  ‘What did you pay him?’ Vally asked.

  ‘I took him up to Pamamull’s Gems. I said he could have the most expensive thing he liked on display.’

  Mr Pamamull was the jeweller, whose department on the second floor was heady with sandalwood incense. He had a tiny gold elephant with a gem-covered veil, which was worth several hundred pounds. Plenty of people might have been satisfied with that, but Pearl thought of the evening Pa had brought her down on a feather. ‘Were those the exact words?’

  ‘Yes,’ Pa said. ‘I told him he could have nothing that he couldn’t see right there and then. And I was very careful, too, to say expensive, not costly or valuable. Those can mean personal value, you see, but expensive is only ever literal. I made it clear that he was allowed a tangible thing that was not physically attached to me at the time of the agreement.’

  ‘Why did you say that?’ asked Vally.

  ‘In case he tried to take a hand or an eye,’ Pa said. ‘Some wicked sorcerers will pay a fortune for a human hand.’

  ‘And the most expensive thing he could see was the building around you!’ Pearl said. The Book Arcade was only magically connected to Pa. Even though he was happiest at home, he wasn’t chained to it.

  But Pa didn’t look convinced. ‘Why would he want our Arcade?’

  ‘He’s jealous,’ Pearl guessed. ‘All these years later, you’re a famous author with a house and a family and the most beautiful shop in Melbourne.’

  ‘And he’s the same slimy old conman as always,’ Vally said.

  ‘I can’t imagine him caring about having a house and a family.’ Their father shook his head. ‘No – it must be something else, something small or hidden that he can sell. A few days of good health, perhaps. People used to ask him for that sort of thing.’

  ‘But that goes against what you said,’ Vally pointed out. ‘Health isn’t tangible. You can’t pick up a jar of it from the grocer’s shop.’

  ‘You can hear if somebody’s breathing is normal, and feel their temperature. You can buy and sell medicines and poison.’ Pa tossed up his hand. ‘We sell ideas and stories here every day, Val. I think old Magnus knows exactly what he can get away with.’

  ‘Well, we mustn’t let him,’ said Pearl. ‘What are we going to do?’

  Pa sat in silent thought. Something would come up, Pearl was sure. Something clever, mad, exciting. Her father deplored gambling … but he did take risks with his business. He had left his home forever when he was sixteen, like Linda was now. And since those first optimistic days, his strategy had been to throw all he had – be it money, intellect, effort or love – into every new idea. Edward William Cole, the Book King of Melbourne, did things so bold that no one else dared to try them, and that was why they worked.

  So Pearl was a little surprised when, after a long silence, it was her brother who said, ‘I’ve just had a brainwave.’

  They both turned to him.

  ‘Let’s talk to this Obscurosmith.’ He picked up the photograph and leaned on the desk. ‘I mean, you said our Ruby, didn’t you? Yes, the one upstairs is like the picture – he’s got us there. But it’s not our Roo. So since he couldn’t do what you paid for, the contract should be cancelled.’

  ‘Goodness me,’ Pa said. ‘You be careful, Val, or you’ll wind up as a lawyer.’

  ‘Well, how about it? Shall we write to him?’ Vally was doing his best to look innocent, but he gave Pearl a warning glance.

  ‘He doesn’t give out his address,’ said Pa. ‘But perhaps we can speak to him.’

  ‘On the telephone?’ Pearl reached for the machine’s speaking trumpet.

  ‘Afraid not,’ her Pa replied. ‘We’re going to need your mother’s help.’

  ‘Righto,’ said Vally, which he only did when he was making a special effort to sound cheerful. He stood up straight and drummed a quick rhythm on his stomach. ‘Let’s go up to dinner, then, and see what we can do about this afterwards.’ He caught Pearl’s eye as he passed her.

  Ma’s spiritualist friends sometimes attempted telepathy. They couldn’t do it very well, nor for very long. The result was often garbled, like a song played on a worn-out phonograph, and tended to cause headaches. And Vally, for as long as Pearl could remember, had treated magic as if it was a horse that had kicked him.

  At that moment, though, she could almost feel him thinking at her. The slight widening of his eyes, the tense set of his mouth, made his message as clear in her mind as if he had said it aloud.

  Trust me. Follow my lead. Don’t tell Pa.

  CHAPTER SIX

  LIQUORICE

  AND PHOSPHORUS

  Vally had a plan. It was daring, and probably unwise ...

  Strike that. It was outrageously, stupidly dangerous. It made his insides flip over every time he thought of it. But audacious courage had built this family, and audacious courage was how Valentine Cole intended to save it.

  The trouble was, he didn’t know how he was going to talk to the Obscurosmith alone. If his parents found out about the plan, that would be the end of it. And the likelihood that they would was growing by the minute. His mother was getting completely carried away. After dinner, she bustled about the flat in a gaudy peacock shawl, and a matching turban that kept sliding off her head. She liked to make a real spectacle of her magic, using all sorts of symbols and trinkets and things she thought made her look mysterious.

  ‘I hope this works,’ she said, as she lined up a candlestick with a compass in her hand. ‘Who’s this Mr McMillan, again?’

  ‘Pa used to work with him in Paddy’s Market,’ said Vally, which was true.

  ‘He’s been off travelling the world,’ said Pa, which was also true. ‘Popped in to say hello last weekend.’

  ‘I’ve never tried to call a living person before.’ Ma struck a match and lit the candle. ‘Is he attuned to the spiritual plane? Is he any good at magic?’

  ‘Very,’ said Pearl, and that was true as well.

  ‘Why can’t you call him on the telephone?’ asked Ivy.

  ‘We don’t know where he’s staying,’ said Pa, which was technically true.

  Eddie closed the curtains. ‘Why do you need to talk to him at all?’

  ‘Pa forgot to invite him to our Easter lunch,’ said Vally, which was a complete lie.

  Linda looked at her younger siblings with narrowed eyes. ‘Not like you, Pa, to be so disorganised.’ She liked things organised. Even her name was organised alphabetically: Ada Belinda Cole.

  ‘Well, we all make mistakes,’ said Vally, in what he hoped was a cheery voice.

  Linda pursed her lips. No doubt she was filing this odd exchange for later.

  But Ma didn’t seem to notice anything amiss. ‘Worth a try. The more, the merrier, I say!’

  She did say that often, in fact – but she wasn’t always right. She and her friends held gatherings every month or two, sometimes at the Coles’ house. Nights devoted to fortune-telling or exchanging goodluck charms were always wonderful, the laughter of women ringing through the flat until the children fell asleep. But Vally had seen his mother’s seances, and they were anything but merry. Ghosts tended to arise from violent deaths, and they brought the fear of that violence with them. The candles would flicker, and the room would grow cold. Sometimes a ghost would knock down an ornament. One had written LET ME GO in matchsticks. A few could speak: they cursed, or wept, or asked the same question over and over, not always in English. This left Vally with the impression that ghosts – if they were ghosts, and not tricks – were the most pitiable beings in existence. They were lost and angry and confused, stuck in a cycle of the same few behaviours. It made him glad that, for all the times Ma had tried to speak to Ruby from beyond the grave, she hadn’t replied. Wherever his sister was, at least she wasn’t here.

  Or rather, it would have made him glad last week. Now, knowing
what he knew about the thing in the storeroom, he almost wished Ruby would answer. At least then he could be sure that the girl in the storeroom wasn’t really her. The copy was a horrible thing, but it would be worse if his sister’s spirit was trapped in a new body that couldn’t move.

  What if this attempt to speak to the Obscurosmith called up someone else instead? The Melbourne Gaol was only a few blocks away – they’d been hanging murderers there for nearly fifty years. Frederick Deeming had been strung up last year. People said they felt his spectral hands around their throats in Hosier Lane.

  ‘Vally!’ Ma touched the fourth candle to the third. ‘Did you hear what I said?’

  He hadn’t.

  ‘Put the dog in the kitchen. We can’t have him breaking our concentration.’

  No backing out now. Resigned to his impending doom, Vally did as he was told. Ebenezer looked up at him with baleful eyes, and Vally gave him a good scratch under the chin. Sometimes, that dog seemed to be the only sane creature in this house.

  When he returned, the rest of the family were seated at the table. A yellowed piece of paper was spread upon it.

  ‘Lights out, please, Val,’ said his mother.

  He turned the gas lamp down until the flame went out, and took a seat between Ivy and Ed. The sun had set outside, so it was now quite dim in the room. As his eyes adjusted, Vally could make out a glowing green ring on the paper.

  ‘What’s that, Ma?’ asked Ivy.

  Ma dropped her voice to a dramatic whisper. ‘Ectoplasm.’

  ‘Phosphorus,’ Eddie muttered to Pearl. ‘And it’s made from wee.’

  Pearl scrunched up her nose. ‘It is not made from wee, you fibber.’

  ‘It is,’ said Vally, who had read about it in a chemistry book. ‘Human wee.’

  ‘You’re both stupid,’ said Pearl.

  ‘Sit down, sit down,’ Ma clucked, rather un-mystically. ‘Now put your hands on the table, everyone, like so.’

  The seven of them spread their hands flat, making the shape of a many-pointed star on the table. Eddie looked bored. Linda was biting her lip, as if nervous. Pa simply seemed tired.