‘Took me a few hours to clean up,’ said the Obscurosmith, leaning on his cane. ‘Same time next week, then?’
Not on your life, Pearl wanted to say, but she chose her words carefully. She could not afford to be vague. ‘No, thank you. Vally and I will be too busy enjoying our winnings.’ She gestured to the Arcade, radiating gold and silver and rainbows in the morning sunlight. ‘And we’ll probably never stop being busy. You know what it’s like in this place.’ She registered her own words with a little surprise, because she suddenly did know what it was like again. She remembered the staff in red jackets, weaving between the shelves. The hundreds of customers at Christmastime, and the Band playing carols about snow in the stifling December heat. Mr Pyke doffing his cap every time he passed Ma, the only other person who could straighten out the lads quite as well as he did.
‘Yes, never a dull moment.’ The Obscurosmith looked down at Pearl with a fresh twinkle of tooth and eye. ‘Fancy playing on my turf next time?’ He lifted off his hat again, and spun it around to show her. She caught a mesmerising glimpse of a richly furnished room, turned topsy-turvy – a door in the ceiling, an armchair hanging off a wall, a painting on the floor, two sets of stairs going in mutually impossible directions.
She fixed her gaze on his face. A rascal after my own heart still buzzed in the back of her thoughts, and now she was determined to be as direct and un-obscure as possible. ‘That’s enough, Mr Maximillian. We won, fair and square.’
He groaned in a show of exaggerated disappointment. ‘You did. I suppose it’s poor form to ask for a rematch so soon, isn’t it?’
‘You suppose right. You may not have one.’ Pearl watched the shifting of his face, from elastic expressiveness to a dignified mask. ‘Why do you do that, by the way?’
‘Do what?’
‘Why do you trick people with questions and sayings? You say you don’t lie, but you don’t tell the truth either. Why?’
‘Don’t makes it sound as if I have a choice.’
‘You mean … you can’t lie?’
‘Can’t muster so much as a fib.’ He flipped the hat by its brim and set it back on his head. ‘I used to be a champion liar, you know. But yours is not the first wager I’ve lost. I’ll tell you the story, if … well, you wouldn’t miss one little vertebra, would you?’
Pearl crossed her arms. If she said no, he was bound to take it that she would not mind him taking a piece of her spine; and if yes, he was bound to take it that she accepted the offer of the story. ‘I don’t want to hear it.’
‘All right, all right.’ He gazed past her at the Arcade again, sighed, and gave a small shake of his head. ‘There’s probably too much light in here, anyway. Good day, Miss Cole.’
And, swinging his cane, he sauntered away up Bourke Street. Pearl tried to track his black top hat. But it was Sunday, and too many other men were wearing similar hats with their best clothes for church. The last trace of him was his beautiful voice, rising above the noise of the city in merry song. ‘She put her left foot in the stirrup and mounted his horse like a man! Over hedges and ditches she galloped, shouting, “Catch me, old rogue, if you can!”’
As the crowd swallowed him up, Pearl recognised the song. The Highwayman Outwitted. The song of the girl who, while being robbed, stole her attacker’s horse. Where had she heard it?
A concert. In the living room. Pa had sung it. An English song from his youth. After the children’s play. They’d put on a lot of plays over the years, hadn’t they? Linda always wanted to be the narrator, and Ruby had a habit of diverting from the script …
Something clinked. Pearl turned. The Little Men were moving. As one tiny sailor cranked his bar up, the other pushed his down. Be Good And Do Good, read their sign. Then it turned: clink.
Old Books, New Books, Common Books, Rare Books.
Clink.
Pearl closed the doors and watched them. Was the game really over? Could she trust that the Little Men wouldn’t come to life and start brawling, or that their signs wouldn’t spell out some brain-bending question?
When is a book most like a spoon?
Pearl went rigid with alarm.
Clink!
When it’s in tea, resting.
‘In tea, resting?’ Pearl said aloud. Then she groaned. ‘Interesting. Oh, Pa!’
It wasn’t a riddle. It was only one of her father’s awful jokes. He did that a lot, now that she thought about it. Not to make people laugh, but just to be playful. He must have liked coming home and being playful with his children, after long days of writing philosophical articles and sorting out the Arcade’s business. She’d never thought of that before.
Pearl stepped back from the Little Men. She stood in the entrance, looking down the length of the grandest bookshop in the world. Her chest brimmed with an almost unbearable delightful fizziness, like the bubbles in Pa’s goldfields lemonade.
‘We won!’ She threw her arms wide, and she was surprised to hear herself giggling. ‘We won!’
And, though it was not sporting of her to gloat, she jumped around in a little victory dance, and punched the air, and laughed like a demon. Last night, the Book Arcade had been ruined. One day it would be nothing but memories and photographs – and eventually, not even that. But now it was here, just the way it should be, and she was one of the luckiest people in all of human history, because she was part of it.
Pearl careened through the Book Arcade, her feet making up their own minds where to run. She was a firecracker. She was the wind. She was a bird seeing the sky without bars for the first time. She had no words for her joy, her freedom, her love of the magnificent building and everything it meant to her – so she shouted them without words, in a wild hoot of triumph that filled the Arcade to the skylight.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
FAMILIAR
The boy knew a few of the important things.
His name was Valentine Cole. As in Saint Valentine’s Day, the day he was born. He had one brother and three sisters. No, four sisters. Ruby was buried near Cousin Lily’s house, in Camberwell. His mother’s name was Eliza, and she liked dinner parties and the theatre. He’d once had a father, and that name was easy to remember because it was the same as his brother’s: Edward. But something had happened to the father when Valentine was small. Now he was only fragments: a frock coat on Swanston Street, a Kentish accent in the Botanic Gardens. The boy remembered a few of the less-important things, too. His multiplication tables. Losing a hat out of a train window. The height – in feeling, not in feet – of Princes Bridge. A schoolyard chant: Conrad Cook, what a sook, hang him from the butcher’s hook. The capitals of Europe. Twelve pennies in a shilling, twenty shillings in a pound.
But a lot of important things were missing. That made him confused and afraid. The boy knelt on the floor with his hands on his temples. He felt a gaping hopelessness inside him, as if he’d come home to find his house robbed. Only it wasn’t his house, it was his head: the secret lockbox to which only he was meant to have the key. And come to think of his house – he didn’t know where it was. Or how old he was. Or what his own face looked like. Who was the man on the floor? Whose study was this? Perhaps Valentine had killed the man. He didn’t know. He didn’t even know if he was the sort of person who would kill someone. He wished he could put it together, but all that came to mind was the idea that it was something to do with books. Maybe he had hit the man with a book. Maybe he had read an evil spell from a book.
‘What am I meant to do?’ he said. ‘What am I meant to do?’
And who was the man on the floor? And why could Valentine recall last week’s geometry class so clearly, when he didn’t know a single thing he’d done yesterday? Or two minutes ago? And, oh, no, there was an old man on the floor and he looked like he was dead. How had Valentine ended up here? How long had he been here? What was the thing on the wall, with the funnel and the cord and the round bells? What did his face look like? Who was the man on the floor? The floor of where?
&nbs
p; ‘What am I meant to do?’ Had he asked that already? Maybe not. Maybe five hundred times. Every moment that passed slipped out of his grasp. ‘What am I meant to do? She’s going to be so cross with me. What …?’
He stopped. Where had that thought come from? He tried to hold it, like a thirsty man cupping a drop of rain. Who was she?
She was his sister Pearl. The baby he’d held on the chaise longue. The girl who came home from the beach with her shoes full of sand. She was four – ten years old. These were things he knew already, a knowledge that ran as deep as the scars on his knees or the smell of his bed. It was the anticipation of Pearl’s anger that was new. She was loud and funny and here, somewhere. And she was going to be cross with him for his stupid empty head, because …
Wait a minute. The smell of his bed. He remembered his bed. It was on the left side of his bedroom, and Eddie’s was on the right. It smelled of the conditioning oil he used on his hair, and of his body, and of comfort. He’d had to get out of that bed last night. Pearl had come with the candle.
Right. Pearl had woken him up for something. And now she was going to be cross with him.
Why?
Because he’d forgotten so many of the important things.
Why would that bother her?
Because it kept him from doing his share.
Of what?
Of what they were working on.
Which was?
Helping someone. Helping the man.
He blinked hard. When he opened his eyes, the man was still there. Still there – that was a good thought. It meant he’d remembered the moment just gone. And hang on, this man looked like someone he knew, but older. The brother of his half-remembered father, perhaps?
Valentine started to shuffle on his knees towards him, but a sudden agony surged down his legs. ‘Augh.’
This was worse than pins and needles. This was electrified nails and six-inch hatpins, crackling and stabbing through every nerve. How many hours had he been kneeling in that one spot?
‘Augh is right.’ The man sat up, raising his arm to shield his eyes from the sun. ‘That you, Vally?’
The man? Val, you donkey – this was Pa, of course he was Pa. It was his voice, his shape, his balding forehead. He wasn’t old, either; only older than he had been when Vally was seven. In 1887. Six years ago. The year that the Coles had moved from their old house into the Book Arcade.
If the thought of Pearl’s temper was a raindrop, this was a downpour.
Vally Cole lived on the second floor of Cole’s Book Arcade 299 Bourke Street Melbourne Victoria Australia Earth The Universe and he was thirteen and he looked like his father but without the beard and this was Pa’s office and the thing on the wall was the telephone and two minutes ago he’d been babbling like a mad boy and yesterday was the game the rainbows Maximillian dollbody Whipping Machine ball gown monkeys Lindeddivy allgone toffeemonster –
And the downpour became a flood. The flood of his life rushed over and through him, birthdays big sales mourning Ruby hide-and-seek reading winter fires summer sunlight concerts tantrums springy snake, and carried him back to before the game and the death and the move and Ivy and Pearl to the first Tuesday in November.
Wearing big-boy shorts. Sunday best shorts. Special occasion. Papa was opening the new shop. Setting sun streaming golden through the skylight. Smells of sawdust and polish and paint and books. Lads in red jackets, rushing from the shiny floor to the high, high ceiling. So many people.
Then – Vally all alone. No Mama, no Eddie, no Linda, not even Ruby, who had just learned to walk. And Mama couldn’t move fast, because she was going to have the new baby any day now. So how had she gone so quickly? How long had Vally been alone? Should he cry?
No. Today was a good day. Crying would ruin it. Anyway, Papa was the boss here, so Vally couldn’t be lost. But too many people. Too many stomping feet. All pressing together. Bumping him. Shoving him. He couldn’t see.
Brainwave. Wiggling through legs and skirts. Finding the bookshelf wall. A ladder rolling towards him – one of Papa’s special tricks. Climbing a ladder, like one of the lads. Round wooden rungs, smooth under his hands. Sitting at the top. Better. King of the castle. What a busy shop. Stomping feet, grabbing hands, shouting voices. Ladies wearing the biggest brightest frilliest dresses Vally had ever seen. Just come from the races. Papa said people were silly at the races – put teapots on their heads, threw pies at each other. No teapots here, though.
And now, a man down below. Brown beard, shiny forehead – Papa! ‘There’s our Vally! What are you doing up there?’
‘Looking for Mama.’
‘You lost her? And you’re not upset?’
‘It’s just a little obstacle.’
‘An obstacle, eh?’ Laughter. ‘Come on, monkey.’ His father reaching up. Gentle fingers. Strong arms. Arms that built a bookshop. Arms that held up the sky. Lifting Vally down. Holding him to his side. Turning towards the entrance with all the shoving people.
‘My word, Vally-pal. There’s more wiggle room in a tin of sardines.’ Then, calling to his lads, ‘Pyke! Williams! It’s like a cattle-yard in here! Let’s put up a barricade, boys, and charge thruppence each for a medallion! Tell them they can spend it for the same value at the till!’
And as the floodwaters of Vally’s returning memory became calm, a momentous revelation bobbed to the surface.
His father was alive.
‘Pa!’ Vally threw his arms around him. His voice came out strangled – he seemed to be choking on his heart. His Pa. The innovator. The idealist. The writer. The man who didn’t take impossible for an answer, because the principles of magic formed the core of his spirit. Who made wonderful things come true even without spells. Whose glorious ideas turned every rigid never into a promising maybe. ‘Pa, you’re OK!’
Mr Cole grunted. ‘Am I?’
‘You were really sick!’ Vally tried to stand, but his legs were still prickling. ‘And the Arcade was falling apart, and I couldn’t remember, and Pearl had to go to the last one by herself …’
‘Was I, at any point, knocked out with a brick?’ Pa massaged the back of his neck. His eyes widened. ‘By God – I haven’t been drinking, have I?’
‘No, Pa, it was him. The Obscurosmith. We had to try to win the Arcade back from him.’
His father frowned. ‘I was hoping that was a dream.’
‘He made awful things happen to us. We made him swear not to rig it, but he still didn’t play fair. Look!’
He pulled his pocket watch from his waistcoat – but the ticking had slowed to its normal speed, and the face of the watch showed half-past seven. He stared at it in disbelief. If the game was over, and Pa and the Arcade were still here, and Vally remembered them …
Outside the office, something shrieked.
‘The parrots!’ Vally scrambled to his feet. If the Fernery was back, they could escape into the main Arcade. They would – what did the parrots do, again? Bite things. Knock things down.
But when he threw open the door and ran into the Arcade, the pink cockatoo was sitting calmly on a second-floor balcony railing, preening herself. Pearl was the one who ran and jumped and whooped and spun, as if she had scored the deciding goal at the Grand Final.
‘Goodness,’ said Pa. ‘What’s got into her?’
Pearl saw Pa and Vally and with a squeal of delight, she ran across the Arcade and barrelled into them, locking one arm around each of their waists.
‘Calm down, Pearligig,’ said Pa, a little winded. ‘Some of us just got up.’
Pearl would not calm down. She jumped on the spot, and pressed her face against him. ‘You’re back! You’re better!’ She stood back and gave Vally a challenging look. ‘Where’s Queen’s Corner?’
‘Up there.’ He pointed at the second-floor balcony.
‘What is Ruby’s middle name?’
‘Angelina.’
‘How many monkeys are in the bedtime story?’
‘Six,’ said Vally. ‘No
, wait, seven!’
Pearl looked puzzled. ‘I think it’s six.’
‘You didn’t forget the funny old monkey, did you?’ Pa asked, with mock outrage.
‘Oh – of course!’ She turned on the spot again to look at the Book Arcade. ‘It all came back. We beat him, Pa! It all came back!’
‘All of it?’ Vally heard hope dawning in his father’s voice.
‘Sorry.’ Pearl crushed her eyes shut and squeezed him. ‘I don’t think Mr Maximillian could give us Ruby, even if he wanted to.’
Mr Cole said nothing. He held his son and daughter tight, and kissed their hair. It was a bit overwhelming for Vally. He was quite tired, and that made it hard to stay strong. He squirmed free, and the impulse to cry went away. ‘We should check,’ he said to Pearl.
A shadow crossed her features. ‘In the storeroom?’
‘The whole Arcade. Make sure everything is …’ He touched the side of his head. ‘All there.’
Pa patted Pearl’s shoulder, and let her go. ‘The shops will be locked.’
‘Doesn’t matter!’ She grabbed Vally’s hand, already running again.
The shops should have been locked. The shops were usually locked, on a Sunday.
But when Pearl and Vally reached Wonder Land, the turnstile at the entrance gave way. Inside, the mechanical orchestra gleamed. Glowing creatures pulsed gently past the Window to the Deep. The snakes were curled up on a rock, their two heads resting on their one body, at peace with one another.
Pearl gestured at their terrarium with a quizzical wince. ‘Fish and Chips?’
‘Bubble and Squeak.’ Vally turned over the details of the room like they were treasures. The Unicorn Horn – not from a unicorn, but an oryx antelope. Light distorting on a silvered surface – the Wonder Mirrors. A round brass thing with little pictures … he knew this one, they spun around and the pictures moved … ‘Zoetrope?’
The Grandest Bookshop in the World Page 22