Her eldest son shrugged. ‘Actually, I feel fine.’
Pearl held her breath. Was he about to let them down? Or was his plan to keep an eye on her while the rest of them continued the game?
‘Are you sure?’ asked Ma, putting her hand to his forehead.
‘Pretty sure. I’d be happy to come with y–’
At that moment, Eddie deployed a skill that was even more impressive, though far less cute, than Ivy’s wink. It was, in fact, a talent. It was the disgusting icing on their cake of lies. He released a deep, visceral belch that Pearl would have sworn blew back the feathers on their mother’s hat. With feigned horror, he clapped a hand to his mouth. ‘’Scuse me,’ he said, and ducked past Ma to the bathroom.
‘Well, that’s the last time I buy garfish,’ said Ma, over Eddie’s theatrical retching. ‘I suppose I was going to pop into the pharmacy anyway. Where’s Linda?’
‘Went to a friend’s,’ Vally said. ‘For a …’ His eyes lighted on the bouquet Pearl was still carrying. ‘Garden party.’
‘Probably for the best,’ their mother sighed. She opened her hands and ushered her youngest three towards their bedrooms. ‘Back to bed, the lot of you. I might have the old chamber-pots somewhere, in case anyone is sick again. You might as well stay in your underthings – they’ll be easier to wash. Val, can you help Ivy while I find some rags to put down?’
Ivy, reminded that she was supposed to be crying, burst out in a torrent of sobs that sounded close to giggles.
‘Of course,’ Vally said, taking out his handkerchief.
‘Thank you, dear.’ Their mother bustled off in search of the rags and outdated chamber-pots, leaving Pearl, Ivy and Vally in the girls’ room.
Pearl flopped onto her bed in relief.
‘Ivy, you’re a champion,’ Vally said. ‘I didn’t know you could act so well.’
Pearl slapped Ivy’s shoulder in encouragement. ‘I didn’t know you could fake-cry!’
Beaming with pride, Ivy took her brother’s hanky and wiped away her tears. ‘It’s easy, after all those plays we put on.’
The concerts were clear in Pearl’s mind. They were usually on Sundays. She remembered faces in the audience – her parents and their guests, or sometimes just the toys. She could think of a dozen different examples of magic tricks, songs, piano pieces, comedy routines, poems and dances she and her siblings had shown off over the years. But no plays. ‘We’ve never done plays, Ivy.’
‘You and I do plays all the time! Remember when all six of us did The Three Little Pigs?’
Pearl glanced at Vally, who shook his head.
Ivy gave a frustrated groan, then lay down and reached under the bed, producing the flower dictionary. ‘I hid your things from Ma and Pa. Can we do the next message yet?’
‘No.’ Vally raised a hand to stop her. ‘When she leaves. We’re sick, remember. I’ll come back when the coast is clear.’ He left for the boys’ room.
Pearl and Ivy were wearing only their cotton combination-suits by the time Ma returned with the rags and chamber-pots. The porcelain pots, complete with lids, were decorated with pretty scenes. A toilet covered in delicate paintings was, however, still a toilet. The last one hadn’t been used as intended since Ivy was trained out of nappies, and now they were good for little more than catching leaks under the sink. Pa had insisted on modern flushing lavatories when designing the Book Arcade, and the rest of the city was slowly catching up to him.
‘Just as well I never planted flowers in these,’ said Ma, placing a pot next to Ivy’s side of the bed. ‘If you feel like eating, start with toast. And if things get worse before I come back, Pa is here, all right?’
‘Thanks, Ma,’ said Ivy weakly, and Pearl felt guilty again for lying to her.
‘Poor things.’ Ma closed the curtains and pulled up the covers. ‘Falling ill when it’s not even a school day.’
At last, she left them and went to help the boys. Ivy tried to get up right away, but Pearl stopped her. ‘She might check on us before she goes.’
‘Don’t you want to find the next challenge?’
‘It’s not safe yet.’ Pearl wriggled under the covers, facing Ivy. Had she always faced Ivy, or was Ruby meant to lie in the middle? ‘Tell me about the play.’
Ivy made an impatient sound. ‘Ed was the wolf. He wore Ma’s fur coat and stuffed cushions up it when he ate you and Vally. I was only three, and too scared to get eaten, so I had to be the person selling the sticks and straw. And the sofa cushions we used for the brick house fell on Ruby right at the end.’
‘What was Linda doing?’
‘Linda’s always the narrator!’ said Ivy, exasperated. ‘You really don’t remember?’
‘No.’ And Pearl did feel sick then. The Obscurosmith had her memories. He would be sorting through them, preparing to distill emotion from the ones he liked and throw the rest away.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Ivy. ‘It was a stupid play, really.’
This, Pearl realised, was her little sister’s way of trying to comfort her. And it was the last thing she wanted. It wasn’t the play she missed. She could always read a story again. But all the little details Ivy was talking about, the things that made the play theirs – she felt those ought to belong to her.
The front door closed. Pearl heard the bathroom door creak.
Then Eddie came thudding down the passage and launched himself onto the girls’ bed. He landed with a huge bounce, making Ivy and the bedsprings squeal in protest. ‘Thought she’d never leave,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Ivy, you’re a hero.’
It was the closest he’d come to an apology for threatening her in the storeroom. ‘I know,’ she said, lifting a stack of books from under the bed.
Eddie grabbed one of the gardening books. ‘Haven’t seen any signs of our Linda around, have you?’
‘No. Sorry.’
‘Right.’ He began flipping the pages. ‘Well, we’ll simply have to work extra hard to get her back.’
A moment later, Vally joined them. Like the girls, he was in his summer underwear – loose white shorts and an undershirt. ‘Got our flowers?’
Pearl tossed them to him.
The smaller of the pink flowers, the five-petalled ones, gave themselves up first. The biggest clue was the twigs from which they grew, suggesting a tree. Eddie guessed that they were cherry blossoms, based on their resemblance to some fine Japanese china he’d seen in the Ornament Department. This turned out to be correct. Cherry blossom meant good education.
The trumpet-shaped flowers took longer. The Coles started with Vally’s systematic method of ruling out all the flowers in the dictionary alphabetically, but this was both boring and slow – and they could not afford to be slow. The green bands of the rainbows were burned up almost to the halfway point. Even worse, Pearl realised that Vally was forgetting things that had just happened. He was talking and listening as normal, but every few minutes, after looking at the books, he would mutter, ‘So what does cardamine look like?’ or ‘It’s not campanula …’
‘You already said that,’ Ivy pointed out.
‘I did?’
‘Three times,’ said Pearl.
Vally put his hands to his head.
‘Pull yourself together, Val,’ said Eddie.
‘Write it down,’ said Pearl. ‘Like Linda told us.’
Ivy, being the slowest reader, came up with a faster method: she only looked through books with pictures. After finishing a book of educational charts, Pearl examined the bouquet again. She didn’t remember being rough with it, but every stem had been snapped. Every cherry twig had a kink, and some of the pink trumpets were hanging by threads.
‘What does it mean if all the stems are broken?’ she asked.
Vally picked up the flower dictionary and flipped to the front. ‘According to this, a bouquet upside down means everything has the opposite meaning. Given with the right hand means yes or right, as in correct. Given with the left hand means no or wrong. A dead bouquet means
you’re extremely sad. Something like I never want to see you again.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘Based on that, broken stems might mean …’
‘Breaking heart?’ suggested Ivy.
Vally nodded. ‘I was about to say breaking a promise.’
‘Breaking wind,’ said Eddie, and looked expectantly at Ivy. She was stifling giggles. It seemed they were on their way to making up.
‘What’s tickled you so much, Miss Ivy Diamond?’ said a voice from the doorway.
Pearl whirled around. Her father stood in the doorway, pulling on his blue lounge jacket – like a lady’s dressing gown, but shorter – over his pyjamas. Sweat was shining on his pale brow. He sounded cheerful, despite the rasp of illness in his voice, which made her guilt even heavier.
‘You’re all very studious for a Saturday. And why are you in your underwear?’
‘We’re figuring out a riddle,’ Ivy said, before anyone could stop her.
‘Oh,’ said Pa, brightening. ‘You’ve got a lot of botany books there. I used to be a bit of a botanist, you know. When I was rowing down the Murray, I collected specimens for Sir Ferdinand –’
‘– Jakob Heinrich von Mueller, we know,’ said Eddie. They had all seen the specimens, and the drawings of the specimens, and the photographs of the specimens, and heard the story of the specimens. No trip to the Botanic Gardens was complete without a stop at Pa’s little contribution to science.
‘Well, yes,’ said Pa. ‘Would you like me to give you a clue?’
‘No, thanks, Pa.’ Pearl tried to sound upbeat. ‘We want to work it out ourselves.’
Her father gave a small chuckle, which turned into a cough. ‘All right, then. Where’s Her Majesty?’ He had lots of nicknames for Ma, some playful, some adoring. Many of them referenced their reputation as Melbourne’s literary royalty: Majesty and Highness and my queen. Pearl thought it rather suited her regal attitude and her easy command in difficult situations.
‘She’s gone to the pharmacy,’ said Eddie.
‘For me? She didn’t have to do that, the dear thing.’
‘Don’t call Mama a thing!’ Ivy said.
‘Quite right. Dear lady.’ Blinking hard, Pa braced himself on the doorway and took a deep, effortful breath. ‘Ought to stay in bed today, I think. Let me know if you’d like a hint.’
As soon as the footfalls returned to the master bedroom, Vally collapsed on the girls’ bed. ‘Thought we were done for.’
‘Don’t relax yet,’ Eddie said, taking the flower dictionary. ‘Where were we – broken stems?’
Pearl picked up another book on tropical plants and began flicking through. Bright colours and fantastic shapes flipped past her: blue wing, yellow bell, pink trumpet, white spike – pink trumpet! She turned back a page. The dipladenia, or rock trumpet, is a delightful South American climber … ‘Dipladenia!’
‘That’s a dinosaur,’ said Ivy.
‘It’s not!’ Pearl grasped the air for someone to give her the flower dictionary.
Eddie was already onto it. ‘So we’ve got cherry blossom – good education. Broken stems – something about breaking. And dipladenia … you are too bold.’
Vally sat upright on the bed. His face was pale.
‘Vally?’ Pearl nudged him. ‘Did you forget something else?’
‘No,’ he moaned. ‘I’ve remembered something. That slapping noise downstairs …’ He gave Pearl a pleading look, but she couldn’t recall a slapping noise.
‘Well, come on,’ said Eddie. ‘Out with it.’
Vally turned to him with a look of pure dread. ‘It’s the Whipping Machine.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
COLE’S PATENT WHIPPING MACHINE FOR FLOGGING NAUGHTY CHILDREN
Vally was going to die.
He knew it by the metallic clatter from the floor below, by the hungry growl of its engine. He knew it by the war-drum beating of his heart. He knew it by his dry mouth and his skin stinging with memories that would never be erased, even if he lost the game. Too bold. Good education. The canes would whip the clothes from his skin, the skin from his flesh, the flesh from his bones, and he would die.
He dug his fingernails into the strap of his school satchel. He was dressed again, and the satchel was packed with useful things. Inside was the flower dictionary, the altered Funny Picture Book, the emergency sweets from Miss Kay, a list of the flowers they had so far deciphered, paper and pencils for decoding riddles, scissors in case they encountered more malevolent ball gowns, and at Pearl’s insistence, the oryx horn. As thorough as this kit was, it didn’t feel like much protection. Vally wished he was upstairs with Ivy, keeping an ear out for Pa and an eye out for their mother returning down Bourke Street.
Five stairs from the ground floor, his feet seemed to turn to stone. Eddie and Pearl looked up at him.
‘I don’t think I can do this one.’
Eddie rolled his eyes. ‘What do you mean, you can’t do it?’
Too bold. It suited Pearl and Eddie, but not him. Pearl had kept a level head in the second challenge when Vally had lost his. She bantered with Magnus Maximillian as brazenly as their mother did with those who crossed her. Eddie’s natural attitude to danger was to charge in with a courage that verged on stupidity. But Vally was scared. And the thing he was most scared of was how his own mind might betray him. He would panic. Or worse – forget.
‘I’ll mess it up,’ he said. ‘I don’t trust myself.’
‘Well, I do,’ said Pearl.
Vally was about to argue with her when he noticed the open, hopeful look on her face. She wasn’t brushing him off. That slight note of provocation in her voice wasn’t saying, you’re a coward, but come on, cheer up, don’t be hard on yourself. Which meant a lot, coming from the Constant Irritation.
That was a horrible nickname, now that he thought about it. She wasn’t a constant irritation. She was loud, and she didn’t always know how to think things through. But she wasn’t stupid. Every time she had argued with him since the game began, it was only because she was trying to help him reach the goal they shared. The goal of saving Pa.
‘Tick, tock,’ said Eddie, pointing at the diminishing rainbows. ‘Don’t sook out on us, Val.’
‘All right, all right.’ Vally hefted the satchel and stepped onto the ground floor. It felt like stepping into an ancient battle arena. The Book Arcade was suspiciously devoid of customers, considering the doors had been open for almost an hour. ‘What do we do?’
Before Pearl or Eddie could answer, a shout of bewildered frustration came from the southern end of the Book Arcade.
‘I reckon we go towards the screaming,’ said Eddie, and broke into a run. Pearl dashed after him, her skirts bouncing.
Vally rammed his fear down into the back of his mind and followed.
Then, halfway across the Arcade, he noticed the cloud. It billowed from a corner of the Little Collins side. The sunlight streaming through the Book Arcade had an orange tint now, like a bushfire sky. Slap, slap, slap, slap. There was a smell like a locomotive, all metal and smoke. But of course it would smell like a train engine: that was the main advantage of the Whipping Machine that Pa had designed. If it could be powered by steam, the teacher wouldn’t wear out his thrashing hand. Not that they ever did, in Vally’s experience. Even a headmaster only had to strike six blows in a row, and once he found his rhythm, they tended to land harder.
Best not to think about that. Best to bottle those thoughts up and bury them and never mark the spot.
Ahead of him, Eddie reeled backwards. A figure in a red jacket flew out of the smoke and crashed into the art history section. As the person slumped at the bottom of a bookcase, Vally recognised his face. The lad was friendly but accident-prone, had worked in the Book Arcade for at least five years – and Vally had completely forgotten his name. Tim Handlepot? Will Apricot?
‘Syd?’ Eddie stepped towards him. ‘Hey, Endacott. Can you hear me?’
The wretched young man gave a slight nod.
Vally
put out a hand to help him up. ‘What’s going on?’
With eyes crushed shut in pain, Syd remained on the floor, clutching his side. He pointed down the aisle, into the smoke. Thumps and shouts rang out through the murk. And the terrible slapping. Louder now. Sharper.
‘Come on,’ said Pearl, and strode down the aisle. She was like a little dog running between the legs of a team of horses – fearless, even when fear might have protected her.
And because she was younger, Vally and Eddie had to follow her.
Vally glimpsed red jackets in the gloom, heard snatches of commands in a familiar voice he couldn’t quite place. Various people were carrying ropes and brooms. Somebody passed by with a firefighter’s axe. But Vally was only vaguely aware of these details. The thing that loomed out of the smoke drew in his attention like a whirlpool.
Its chugging engine turned a flywheel, rotated a drum, coughed out smoke and steam. Like many of the Arcade’s wonders, it was designed for children. Its stocks were made for trapping young necks and wrists. The canes bowed, bent, sprang free. Slap, slap, slap, slap. They bristled from the turning barrel, as thick as the flowers clustered on a banksia cone.
And in his mind flashed the illustration that had so fascinated and repulsed him as a child. The drawing that used to send Linda – or was it Ruby? – into uncontrollable giggles for no reason Vally could understand. Cole’s Patent Whipping Machine for Flogging Naughty Children.
But the machine in Pa’s book didn’t have wheels. The drawing didn’t have a pair of huge iron hands. As Vally stared at the alterations in disbelief, one of the hands reached out and batted Miss Kay away like an insect. The other planted itself on the floor and hauled the machine towards the Coles.
Pearl pulled back. ‘It moved!’
The machine snorted a cloud of exhaust, like some great demonic bull. The other hand slammed on the wooden floor, raising splinters as its iron fingers clawed for purchase. The canes spun faster. Slap slap slap slap.
It could have grabbed any of the staff, yet it was tossing them aside. Its stocks were empty. It wanted children. It had been waiting for them.
The Grandest Bookshop in the World Page 13