The doctor spoke to Helen and Vivian in the kitchen. ‘She’s in a poor way. My guess is that she must have eaten something horribly rotten.’
‘She’s a writer,’ said Helen as if that was a reason for eating rotten food.
‘Mum,’ whispered Vivian fiercely, startled by her assertion.
‘How do you know she’s a writer?’ said the doctor.
‘Because she looks like a homeless person.’
‘I see,’ the doctor nodded, giving no hint of what he thought of Helen’s logic. ‘Now, is she able to stay here? Hospital beds are … scarce.’
‘Of course she can stay here. It’s where she belongs.’
The doctor stared at Helen, puzzled by her claim, but made no comment. Instead he told her, ‘By the way, her name is Penny. It’s all the information she’d give me about herself. But looks to be in her early twenties. And I’d hazard, from a good background. Definitely not an ongoing history of being homeless. No scars, obvious addictions, or serious injuries. Maybe you can get more out of her. Get some fluids into her, very important, and a little dry toast if she can manage it. And give me a call if she doesn’t improve. Oh, I almost forgot, she appears to have some sort of speech impediment.’
‘Oh really,’ replied Helen a little wistfully.
The doctor took a sterner approach. ‘You will let the appropriate authorities know about her, won’t you?’
‘Of course,’ said Helen. ‘She must have family somewhere.’
*
Helen sat on the edge of the bed, pushing a hank of blonde curly locks away from Penny’s face as she slept peacefully. ‘You are home now, and can rest,’ she said to the sleeping girl.
Vivian appeared at the door and watched his mother for a few seconds before speaking. ‘It seems the police know nothing of her. And as she’s an adult, she can do as she pleases.’
‘So she can stay?’
Vivian gave a deep sigh of exasperation. ‘We’re running a bookshop, not a refuge for the homeless.’
‘Well I’m going to take care of her,’ Helen stated defiantly.
Vivian wanted to argue, but suddenly it hit him. Hadn’t his mother saved him? In fact bought this bookshop at least in part for his sake. He no longer needed saving, and his mother had found a new outlet. Vivian became resigned to the fact that his mother wanted to save Penny, and, for whatever reason, treat her as a down and out writer.
*
It was dawn of the following day and Penny, feeling much better, was investigating her new abode. She wandered slowly through the flat then made her way downstairs to the maze. Captivated by the warren and the books it held she dawdled until she came to its centre and sat on the chair that Helen had installed there.
She reflected on her new situation. Her experience of living rough over recent months had given her an acute vulnerability to any kindness. True, Helen struck her as a little kooky, but she clearly had a heart of gold, for she’d not only adopted her but given her an identity — writer.
Penny gazed around her and realised with a jolt that she liked where she had landed. She decided that she would do what Helen asked, because she didn’t know what else to do. She didn’t know how to save herself. A kook had thrown her a lifeline, and Penny knew that if she was to survive — and she realised with some wonderment that she did want to survive — then she’d better hold onto it. For her old life was no more, and the distance back to it, if there was one, was an eternity. It was living here in the bookshop or out on the streets.
*
With both Penny and the shop to look after, Helen was airborne with busyness. The writer was well attended. Helen washed her and dressed her in clothing from her own wardrobe, much to Vivian’s horror. She reassured him it was only until Penny was fit enough to get herself some decent clothes from the Good Samaritan Store a few blocks away.
Helen made copious amounts of soup, which she fed to Penny with thickly buttered bread. ‘Our writer needs fattening up,’ she declared jubilantly.
Not many days passed before Penny was sitting at the kitchen table opposite Vivian, matching him bowl for bowl, slice for slice. Helen felt satisfied. She had restored a damaged writer.
Vivian, though, wondered about his mother’s need to turn Penny into a writer. And it was definitely weird seeing Penny in his mother’s clothing. As though with time, she would fill them. Vivian hoped not. He hoped that Penny, who hadn’t said so much as boo yet, would throw off his mother’s clothes and wear clothes that suited her.
*
Customers began drifting into the bookshop more frequently. They stayed; they browsed, and if they bought a romance or a crime novel Helen complimented them on their good taste and if they purchased a science fiction book she praised their choice until she ran out of breath.
Books in the classics section did poorly and eventually Charles Dickens and his ilk were sent upstairs and put to work in the flat. In the laundry, War and Peace was used for slamming cockroaches into the next world. Ulysses laced with rat poison and peanut paste was placed up in the ceiling. Great Expectations was under the lounge sofa, substituting for a missing castor. Far From the Madding Crowd became a coaster for Vivian’s coffee mug, Middlemarch served as a doorstop, while Jane Eyre, the Collected Works of Oscar Wilde and a half dozen others were stacked to keep a sash window, whose cord had frayed, open during the summer months.
My Brilliant Career, however, was Helen’s darling and duly spoilt. She was laid on top of the coffee table to rest.
Books had sprouted throughout the flat. Authors had to pay their passage (except Miles Franklin), and every now and then Helen would relieve them of their menial duties, releasing them for their true mission. She read them, pausing every so often to wonder why the particular book was languishing up here in the Unwanted section.
Helen mourned for these unwanted books while downstairs books of lesser character were sought after. How strange, she thought. What primitive minds read such garbage and then came back for more?
Even Arnold knew what was good, and she cringed at the thought of her behaviour towards him. How could she have been so cold and ungrateful while he dutifully, over the years, kept a library going for her sake? In his library there was a democracy by default, since Arnold didn’t know one author from another. But they were always of a high literary standard. How did he know which ones to get? She had never bothered to ask.
Arnold’s library had branches throughout the house; the linen closets where the Brontë sisters could be found between the sheets with Isaac Asimov; Ernest Hemingway was in the broom cupboard, disgruntled at being placed with the mops and straw brooms. But F. Scott Fitzgerald was happy enough gazing out from a shelf in the closet where Arnold kept his shoehorns.
He had put his offerings in places he knew Helen visited. Then, having read them, she put them back in those same places. Later, Arnold silently replaced them with other books. This charade had gone on for the duration of their marriage.
*
Ella switched off her early morning alarm but remained in bed. She lay in the semi-darkness, trying to discern her feeling of nausea. She didn’t think it was a normal kind of nausea; it felt heavier, different, hard to define. What was making her feel sick wasn’t the food she’d eaten last night, or the wine she’d drunk. So it had to be hormones! It was the queasiness of pregnancy. She gripped her bedsheets with joy. She knew from the obstetrics book she’d already bought that it was human chorionic gonadotropin, known as hCG to the elect few, that was making her feel ill, and it was the embryo that was making this hormone. She wondered when conception had occurred.
She rolled over and spooned her body against Vivian’s, smiling, happy and contented. But then from nowhere came a moment of sheer panic, it lodged itself in her chest, and she gasped for breath before it settled. Ella put it down to the surprise of finding herself pregnant.
*
Arnold had reached his extensive collection of books. He shuffled them around and stared at their co
vers. He had never read a single one of them. Strangers to him but best friends to Helen, he envied them. She had wanted them, touched them and spent her precious time with them.
He finished packing the books, wondering if Helen might want them now. Take ownership of them. She hadn’t in the past, but that was before she had a bookshop. He’d make the offer; anything to see her and to be a part of her new life, however small that part might be.
*
Arnold turned up at the bookshop without any warning. Helen wasn’t surprised. He hated using telephones; was guided instead by the weather, the moon and the sun. Right now, it was a mid afternoon in early January.
‘Thought you might want these,’ he offered, standing just inside the entrance of the shop holding a large cardboard box full of books.
‘Put them here, on the counter,’ Helen instructed.
Arnold had had a shower and splashed on some potent aftershave. His full head of hair, still damp, was combed back, and he was wore a clean shirt with long sleeves, a cowboy kind of shirt, purple with white cording. It was a tight fit and he looked as though he was under threat, careful not to move in case it ripped.
Helen valued the trouble he’d taken over his appearance. She especially appreciated the long-sleeved shirt. ‘Thanks, of course we’ll take them.’
Arnold noted how she said ‘we’ instead of I. It was a minor thing. Stupid really, but it gave him an unwelcome jab.
‘Got more if you want them.’
‘That’d be good. Sure. Bring them in.’
Arnold smiled, his plan was working. He’d bring the books in one box at a time. He did some rough calculations as to how many boxes he had.
‘That’s a nice shirt you’re wearing,’ Helen lied, but felt the need to acknowledge his effort.
‘Thanks,’ he muttered, too scared to say another word.
Helen watched him, glad that he hadn’t gone into an explanation of where the shirt had come from.
‘How’s business?’ he ventured.
‘Getting there.’ Helen wanted very much to ask Arnold how he had known which books to get her in the past, but something held her back. Embarrassment.
Arnold searched around in the box of books and pulled out the teapot. ‘Thought you might want this.’
She took it from him and fiddled with its lid. ‘The boys tell me you’re doing a great job cleaning up the house.’
Arnold looked taken aback. ‘Nothing to brag about, I mean we got a … grandkid on the way. Ella and Gabriel need a place to stay.’ It was nonsense he knew, but the awkwardness in trying to converse was overwhelming him.
‘Better get going,’ he said quickly, careful not to meet Helen’s gaze.
‘And I’d better do some work,’ Helen replied with little enthusiasm.
*
Next day Arnold dropped off a box of cookbooks and the following week a box of mixed non-fiction. The week after that it was fiction.
Each week Arnold brought Helen a box of books. He couldn’t turn up with nothing. To have nothing between them, no buffer, would be too painful.
The mystery of how Arnold had known which books Helen would enjoy continued to puzzle her. In the end she asked Vivian, who shook his head in astonishment, and then explained, ‘Dad may not be a reader, but that doesn’t make him stupid.’
Vivian’s reply had caught her out. She wandered around the bookshop for a short time before going up into the second floor where she sat on the cool wooden floorboards and studied her life.
If she were a library book, no sane person would want to take her out on loan. But Arnold had. And he had never been able to read Helen. Instead he had loved and accepted her as she was. He had never judged her cover or her content.
On the other hand, Helen had tried to read him like a book, finding it was a book in which whole pages, even chapters, had been torn out. Arnold was a book that didn’t make sense. Until now. Arnold made sense now. He wasn’t a book. He was a human being.
*
Ella and Vivian were finishing breakfast at her kitchen table, when she happily announced. ‘Guess who’s pregnant?’
Vivian turned to her. ‘It can’t be me.’
‘It’s me,’ Ella cried gleefully as she put her hand in Vivian’s. ‘I’m pregnant.’
He gently caressed her face with his hand, trying to comprehend the enormity of what she was telling him. It struck him how quickly it had happened. ‘How long have we been going out together?’
‘Two and a half months,’ Ella announced proudly. ‘Didn’t take us long to make a baby, hey? But we sure put in the effort.’
Vivian smiled then said, ‘You really want it though?’
‘Of course. Don’t you? We never talked about birth control, so I just assumed …’
‘Of course I want the baby,’ Vivian said, hugging her. ‘I love you. You know that.’
‘Yes. I love you too,’ Ella whispered back, searching Vivian’s face for deceit. She had steeled herself for abandonment, for Vivian to cry foul and in due course to vanish, never to be seen again. She had expected to become a single mother but it seemed, much to her surprise, Vivian wanted this baby. More, he wanted to be with her. He took her face between his hands and asked, ‘Will you marry me?’
‘Why not? I mean, yes,’ she answered. She was ecstatic. She was getting exactly what she wanted — a family. And she felt relieved, for despite her misgivings, everything was falling into place.
24
Jim wrestled to walk a straight line as he entered the bookshop. It was early morning and there was only Helen about. She was putting books back into alphabetical order after customers had moved them around the previous day. She let out a yelp of shock to see him swaying there beside her.
He was wearing his three-piece suit and the alcoholic stench coming off him was enough to make her gag. She took a few steps back.
‘You’ve done orright for yerself with this bookshop,’ he slurred.
‘Thank you,’ she managed to say breezily, trying to hide her anxiety. She didn’t like having a drunk in the shop. And a drunken former owner of the shop was definitely awkward.
He talked as if he had a mouth full of marbles. ‘Must be making a packet.’
‘No. Not really,’ Helen declared, refusing to look at him.
‘I pretty well gave you this place, which was my home, and life. You know that?’ he yelled, frightening Helen into facing him, and bringing Vivian downstairs.
Jim stared at Vivian. ‘Hey it’s wonder boy. My old buddy. What you doing here?’
The atmosphere in the shop had grown oppressive and uncomfortable. Helen found it difficult to speak, let alone move.
‘I work here. With my mother.’
‘Ya mum! Fuck me if I haven’t been diddled.’
‘Watch your language,’ Vivian said as he moved towards Jim.
‘Watch my language! You cheeky bugger! How about you and your mum watch your ethics. Or lack of.’
Helen and Vivian both backed off, hoping for a miracle in which the man might evaporate or stagger back from where he’d come.
‘I might be a drunk, but I’m not brainless.’
‘We never thought you were,’ Helen said empathically, wanting to nip any unpleasantness before it escalated further.
Jim eyed her, puffing out his cheeks as if he was about to hiss out more diatribe. Mercifully, he didn’t.
‘Word of advice Helen, don’t try and read those buggers,’ he said, indicating the books which surrounded them. ‘They’ll do ya head in. That was my downfall. Started thinking funny. Like my brain was knitting a six-sleeved jumper.’ He turned and stumbled towards the door where he hesitated as if trying to figure something out. Yes, this was the way out.
*
Ella studied her obstetrics book with a fervour bordering on obsession. Each week she read the chapter corresponding with that week of her pregnancy. At chapter six she read: The embryo is not recognisably human.
Now she was up to chapter ei
ght and read the following over and over: The embryo is now much more like a human. It is 2.5 cm long … the external ears are forming … the limb buds have become arms and legs with tiny fingers and splayed toes.
She placed a hand on her abdomen. She accepted she was having a baby, with all its implicit responsibility. It was her duty to provide for this child. She had plotted her pregnancy with astonishing singlemindedness, even been willing to marry beneath her. But Vivian loved her unconditionally, which puzzled her.
How could something invisible, like love, hold such sway over people? Money was real, tangible, it had clout — everyone she knew scrambled after it like madmen. Except for Vivian. He worked, but professed no desire for wealth. Money didn’t drive him. And for Ella this was an exotic quality.
25
The throngs descending on Arnold’s house, swarming over the ventures and collections, never ceased to amaze and excite Gabriel. Each day different items were popular, even when broken or useless. Yesterday, it was surfboards, kitchen sinks and fax machines. Today, it was bikes, mattresses and foldaway card tables. To Gabriel’s admiration his father easily supplied demand. He began to see his father in a different light, a much brighter light. Though he wasn’t blinded either. He did a reconnaissance of the house and yard. There were still banks of newspapers, magazines and books in the house, and electrical corpses scattered all around, forgotten victims of some bloodless conflict.
And there was the wall of out-of-date telephone directories lining the front yard like the Great Wall of China, keeping out the Mongol hordes.
The wall had been created with some effort, helped by numerous donors who had come religiously over the years from far and wide to off-load their old phone books in a worthy cause. Arnold considered it a work of art in progress. White and yellow pages covered with dirt and seeded with nasturtiums so that in winter an enchanting tangle of green leaves and bright flowers unfolded and cascaded down the great wall of telephone numbers. The wall was Arnold’s pride and joy, a landmark, and he intended it to stay.
The Bookshop on Jacaranda Street Page 16