‘I used to be a respectable businessman, once …’ Or so Helen managed to decode his slur. But how to deal with a drunken, bankrupt businessman suffering from a broken heart? She gritted her teeth.
‘Hey lady! Recommendation.’
Vivian thought of recommending the pub down the road but kept quiet, knowing that his mother could handle Jim better than he ever could.
‘A recommendation?’ Helen looked puzzled. ‘You mean to read?’
‘Yes,’ Jim cried out, his body lurching towards the counter, making Helen scream. Insensible to her distress he began lamenting his fate like some tragic operatic figure.
Somewhat bewildered, the customers (meerkats included), having given up the pretence of searching out a book, stood transfixed, watching and listening as Jim’s tale of woe unfolded.
‘I am a man with a broken heart. My beloved wife snatched my heart from my chest, tore it in two, and sent the two halves skimming across a vast lake where they have now sunk, like stones into the deepest depths. And I am unable … to retrieve the two parts.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ Helen said in a placating tone. Vivian’s jaw dropped. She should tell Jim to fuck off. Sadly, he lacked the courage to boot Jim out of the shop.
‘Me too. I can’t swim,’ Jim roared, laughing at his own joke until he began to choke. Coughing now, he bent over and picked up his suitcase which he plonked onto the counter and wrestled with it. After several attempts he managed to open it and pulled out a half empty bottle of whisky, unscrewed the top and took a mighty swig. He offered it to Helen and Vivian. ‘Drink?’
They shook their heads, lost as to what to do.
He felt in his pockets for his cigarettes, found them, and lit one. He took a deep of puff.
‘So where was I? Oh yes. My wife left me — the bankruptcy hit her hard. Told me I was a cent-less bastard. Cents … less. Senseless. Get it?’ He began to laugh at his own pun, but was cut short by a hacking cough that took some moments to stop.
He lifted his head and looked directly at Helen and in that instant he appeared sober. ‘You’re a clever lady Helen. You certainly knew how to fleece me.’
She tried to meet this last comment dispassionately, thinking, not in front of the customers, you great idiot.
‘She’s gone, and I can’t take it. Not sober anyway.’ He swigged once more, and again stared at Helen with bloodshot eyes, the bottle in one hand and the cigarette in the other. Then he suddenly dropped both his arms; the bottle fell and smashed, leaving him standing among broken glass and a puddle of whisky. He took a drag of his cigarette.
Customers backed away, now wary of the scene being played out before them. Some began to sidle out the shop.
Vivian ran from the counter and up the stairs calling to his mother, ‘I’ll get a bucket and mop.’
‘Oops,’ Jim looked at the floor. Helen moved from around the counter. ‘Here, give me your cigarette,’ she demanded. Jim did as he was told. Helen looked for somewhere to butt it out. There was only the floor. She dropped it into the puddle of whisky and crushed it with the sole of her shoe.
‘D … do you know what it’s like to be crying … no, dying … dying from a broken heart?’
Helen was about to say no but she looked at the man before her, his swaggering gait, his watery red crazed eyes.
‘Yes.’
‘You do? But you’re still alive.’
‘I think it’s time you went home, Jim.’
‘Home? I haven’t got one.’
She looked around helplessly and spied one of the benches. ‘Well at least go and sit down.’
Jim did as he was instructed and within minutes was fast asleep and snoring loudly. Helen began to pick up the pieces of broken glass. She cradled them in her hand as she thought of his last words. ‘You’re still alive.’
Yes she was, but it hadn’t been easy. Life had exacted its toll. She realised that now as she watched the last customers leaving the shop empty-handed.
*
Vivian didn’t say anything as he cleaned up the mess on the floor, Helen knew what he was thinking: Jim was a pain to be got rid of, and such matters were best left to Helen. She wanted appreciation for having to play the brute.
‘How come I get the dirty work?’
‘Because you’re good at it. Gifted.’
‘Thanks a million.’
‘Mum, I can’t do it.’
‘You might want to give it a go sometime,’ said Helen. ‘Dirty work must have its rewards. Not that I can think of any right now.’
Vivian smiled wryly, and then added, ‘I think Jim’s trying to crack onto you. Now it’s looking good, he wants the shop back, and unless you do something he’s going to be a regular visitor. And,’ Vivian hesitated, ‘we’re going to lose customers. Jim’s no drawcard.’
Helen suddenly felt tired. Conflict exhausted her.
*
Arnold was delivering his weekly box of books when he blurted, ‘Suppose you’ve seen Gabriel’s pregnant girlfriend.’
Helen, who was sifting through the box, stopped short. Her cheeks burned. ‘No, I haven’t actually.’
‘Really,’ answered Arnold, waiting for more.
Helen turned her attention back to the books. She was tired of playing the bogeyman. Damn Gabriel, couldn’t he fix his own mess.
‘Where are we now? What month?’
‘February,’ said Helen, looking cautiously at Arnold.
‘That’d make her, pretty well due, I reckon. Eight months at least,’ Arnold’s voice trailed off, too saddened to say another word. He shuffled out of the shop as if heading for death row, leaving Helen feeling guilt stricken for her part in the conspiracy.
Grief, she thought, picks you up and shakes you hard; rattles you until you’re limp. And when it puts you down, you’re a different person, and wary of this stranger you’ve become. Life is never the same. Nothing is ever right again. But you press on, you must. Arnold had pressed on, like her, in his own strange manner; then he had been offered a way out, an exit, but now that exit was closed.
*
Arnold knew he’d been duped. And a fool fooled. From the start Helen had shown no knowledge, interest or happiness about her supposed grandchild. He could not fathom how she could go along with it all. The deceit was unbearable and Arnold drifted around his house like a ghost.
*
It was nearly closing time. Helen glanced down at the book that had been placed on the counter by an elderly woman in a Salvation Army uniform. Her lip curled, it was an autobiography, A Bowler’s Life.
She looked at the Salvation Army woman, who looked decent enough. No accounting for taste, she thought. The woman’s eyes met hers. ‘We sell a lot of these,’ Helen said, dredging the words out of herself with all the enthusiasm of someone dragging a lake for a corpse.
‘Not surprised,’ replied the woman cheerfully. ‘It’s a great game. Do you watch it?’
‘Not if I can help it,’ Helen remarked, then instantly regretted her comment. ‘Please, I’m sorry, take the book for nothing.’ God knows, it’s worth nothing, she reflected.
‘No I’ll pay.’ The elderly woman counted out eight one-dollar coins, and then dropped an extra coin onto the counter.
‘It’s only eight dollars,’ Helen explained meekly.
‘I’m giving you the extra dollar because at the rate you’re going your business, in cricket parlance, will be out for a duck.’ The Salvation Army lady smiled politely, picked up her book and left.
Now Helen knew what she hated more than those autobiographies churned out by dingbat cricketers — their supporters.
As she went to close the shop doors she mimicked the Salvation Lady, ‘You’ll be out for a duck.’ She flipped the sign hanging from the door to closed. Extending her arms she brought the double doors together, slid the bolt and took a deep breath of relief. She turned and leaned back against the doors and surveyed the shop. Another day done. The books had worked hard today. Selling yourse
lf is not easy. She should know. ‘Out for a duck,’ she said out loud again, playing to the books before her.
She had insulted a customer who had committed no crime except liking cricket; in fact the woman had been downright nice. And there was more than an element of truth in the woman’s words, and Helen hated her for it. As she went to switch off the downstairs lights, the words out for a duck kept coming back to her. She plunged the shop into darkness.
*
Helen thought Penny’s work habits odd. Surely a writer didn’t curl up like a snail over her work, hunched over the table with the exercise book disappearing beneath limbs, head, hair and torso, one hand always holding a pencil, the other an eraser.
Penny would regularly stop and rub out, then purse her lips and blow the filaments of grey rubber off the paper as Helen watched in agitation. She wanted her writer to sit bolt upright, to pause, to stare thoughtfully into the distance while tapping her pencil gently on her teeth, then gasp with joy as a new turn in her story came to mind, then quickly write it down, giving Helen a fresh account of her book as she went along.
Sadly, Helen’s writer did no such thing. Penny was proving unknowable. But the exercise books were fast becoming crammed with words, and their weight impaled on every page made each book buckle. Penny kept them close by her and bound with thick elastic bands.
*
It was ten at night, and Penny was still writing. Her legs ached from kneeling on the floor as she wrote. She had known her thoughts were tortured and that she was unable to articulate them aloud, but she had discovered an ability to write them down that was astonishing, for they came out smooth as silk. And it surprised her, when she read what she’d written. Was she really in so much pain? Evidently. The exercise books weren’t lying. She knew that much.
Night after night she curved over her books and wrote furiously, frantically, in endless sentences stretching from one page to another, that carried her sadness, the emptiness left by the loss of her identical twin, the chronic ache that went beyond despair.
When she shifted her legs it caused her excruciating tingling sensations, but she continued writing because with each word, she felt her trouble inching itself away. She couldn’t comprehend the science of it, but knew after trying everything from self-destruction to religion in vain, that writing somehow eased the hurt. She could describe the damage and prescribe herself a remedy with the same steady movement of her pen.
She would never show Helen her writing. She wanted no one to know of her loss or her sense of failure. Once she had expunged all her grief onto the exercise books, her intention was to burn them.
*
Just as Helen thought her already gruelling day was coming to an end Vivian appeared before her. He stood, rocking on the balls of his feet, hands in the pockets of his jeans.
She waited for him to speak.
‘Ella’s pregnant.’
Helen froze.
‘Mum, you can close your mouth now.’
Helen hugged him tight and whispered, ‘That’s wonderful.’ That he should survive his depression, let alone get a girl pregnant, was beyond her wildest dreams.
*
Ella lay in her bed with her book opened at chapter twelve. She read: Nails are appearing on its fingers and toes. She continued on. The foetus, as it is now called, from the Latin, meaning a ‘young one’, is 9 cm long.
Ella sat up and made an approximate measurement with her fingers. She gulped with apprehension; it was growing. Nine centimetres was big.
She looked at Vivian who was fast asleep and oblivious to her anxiety. She crept out of bed and did another patrol of all the rooms. Inexplicably, she had become nervous about her home burning down. She turned off every power point not in use, and every light switch, leaving the cottage in total darkness as she made her way back to bed.
29
Jim lumbered around the maze; books falling from the shelves wherever he went. And from where they fell, Helen knew his approximate location. Hearing him struggling to pick them up, she closed her eyes, clenched her fists and wished she could thump him one. Not once, or twice, but until he no longer existed. She could see the morning’s tabloids screaming the nature of her hideous crime: BOOK MAZE KILLER.
He was at the Self-help section, presumably searching for the cure to his financial woes and broken heart. But he was incapable of reading the print, let alone finding guidance.
Helen waited nervously for him; the time had come to ask him to leave and not return and she was fearful of his reaction.
He came out of the maze empty-handed. ‘Couldn’t find a thing,’ he garbled. ‘You need more books, Helen. More books. That’s your problem. Couldn’t find a thing in there.’ He pointed towards the maze, slurring his words so badly Helen barely understood him. He stumbled towards her. Reaching the counter, he held on to it for support.
‘My wife used to tell me I was insane.’ He rotated his eyes to signify a demented state.
Helen took a step back: the stench of alcohol was overpowering. ‘I’m sure she was just joking.’
‘My wife hasn’t joked since 1980.’
‘That’s a long time. It must have made things a bit serious around your home.’
‘Quiet!’ he yelled. ‘It made things quiet. Good for reading. She thought I’d gone round the bend. And I’m beginning to think she’s right. Wives, well ex-wives now, they’re always right, aren’t they? That’s their job. My wife hates me … lost everything. This bookshop … house.’
Helen tried to summon up the words to tell Jim to scram, disappear, skedaddle and don’t come back. But nothing came out. Her courage was gone, replaced by remorse and guilt. She ended up searching for words to soothe this wreck of a man. She had knowingly exploited him, and now she was paying the price.
Jim swayed, and staggered back a few steps before gravity decided which way he would fall, which was forward, hitting his head hard on the edge of the counter. His forehead split open. Helen, hearing the cracking sound, screwed up her eyes, not wanting to see.
He lay sprawled on the floor, with the thin line of blood flowing from his forehead widening with every second. Soon bright red blood surrounded his head and shoulders and his suit began to soak up some of the thick warm syrup.
Helen looked up to see the frog woman and her horde of kids had entered the shop. Great, she thought, that’s all I need.
30
Astrid walked tentatively over to Arnold’s house, still unused to the fact that she was able to move straight across the front yard unhindered by anything. But would he welcome her? Hadn’t she ridiculed, insulted and mistreated the man terribly? And if he threw her out, what had she to lose? Her dignity? Money? Family? She had nothing to lose.
Every morning for the last several weeks she had looked out her kitchen window to see the momentous unveiling of the house previously hidden behind its vast wall of flotsam and jetsam, though, unlike the Berlin Wall, this wall had not been stormed and smashed down. Instead, it had been taken down in a civilised fashion, bit by bit.
She could not help staring at the house, as if seeing it for the first time. There was clearly a lot of work to be done to reverse the ravages of time and neglect: plastering, painting, a new roof, restumping. Yet despite its decrepit state, she could see that given the right attention, the house would come up looking striking.
And what must it look like inside? This question vexed Astrid to the point where she could no longer bear to just stand and watch. She hesitated, feeling surprisingly nostalgic for the past, before she continued her journey. Where once she’d had to manoeuvre around old washing machines, stoves and refrigerators, she cut straight across. It felt strange, as if she was trespassing. The front door was open.
Slowly she entered, allowing the shock of the empty house to settle. She moved like an atheist in a cathedral, a non-believer when all evidence showed she ought to believe. The miracle had happened. She went from one empty room to another. The emptiness seemed to beg silence. She
felt like hollering for Arnold but held back, afraid to shatter the vision before her. For it brought back memories from long ago, when Helen and Arnold had first lived here with their young baby son, Leif.
Astrid stood for some time in the kitchen, then in the lounge-room. Why had this not happened earlier? Maybe it could have saved a marriage.
She made her way to the front room where she’d heard sounds of movement, and there was Arnold, standing on some makeshift scaffolding, his arm moving frantically as he whacked paint onto the long-neglected walls.
Astrid approached as close as she could before speaking out. ‘Do you need any help?’
Had Arnold heard right? Was that Astrid? He looked down and saw a diminished woman. Was this his arch enemy? He knew how she felt — wretched and lonely, desperate for the sound of a human voice humming about her.
Arnold understood her plight. It was the same as his. He wasn’t a vindictive man. The hard feelings he had harboured towards her softened immediately. Astrid needed companionship.
He climbed down the scaffolding and faced his once despised foe. She held a hankie between her hands, wringing it for comfort.
‘Hello Arnold.’
‘Hi Astrid.’
‘My word, you have done an amazing job.’
‘Thanks. Reckon the white ants have taken most of it though.’
‘I don’t believe you. And what great work you are doing here. Can I help you paint? Although, I am no expert.’
‘Sure thing. Could do with some help … if I’m going to have it finished …’ Arnold drifted; he’d lost his moorings, no longer knew what port he was aiming for.
Astrid dragged him back. ‘I think it is going to look beautiful.’
‘Yep.’
‘Now, where do I start?’
Arnold shrugged his shoulders. ‘There’s a spare brush around somewhere.’
The Bookshop on Jacaranda Street Page 18