Helen froze, looking around her. Her heart beat fast against her chest as she tried unsuccessfully to lose the thought. Had Leif lived he’d be twenty-eight. About the same age as the dreadlocked young man who had just been in the shop. She wondered if Leif would have grown into such a fine young man. She stopped herself thinking further; there was a pathetic futility to wondering what the dead would be like if they had lived.
*
Helen telephoned Razoo for more science fiction.
‘Please,’ she implored down the phone. ‘It’s easy, just look at the covers. Science fiction books look like science fiction.’
The dogs were barking in the background, almost drowning him out until he hissed at them to shut up. Then his voice came more tentatively through the phone line. ‘How about coming around, you can pick the books. Have a cup of tea with us and a bit of a yarn.’
‘I’m sorry Razoo; I don’t have the time right now.’
‘Oh, I see.’ His words were accented with shades of hurt. Helen felt bad. As much as anything, she was petrified of the Rottweilers.
‘Leave it with me. I’ll get yer Science books.’
‘Thanks a million.’
‘Be seeing ya,’ was Razoo’s reply before hanging up. Helen heard the clunk; she stared at the telephone receiver, feeling guilty. Razoo was a lonely man whose only constant companionship were two raucous dogs and a radio.
*
She decided to close up early. It was late afternoon and the shop had been empty for hours. She strolled over to the cafe across the road. From this vantage she could search for ways to improve the façade of the bookshop. Being chilly she pulled her jacket tighter and clasped her hands around her cup of coffee
There seemed nothing more she could add. The façade appeared perfect. Today, business had been poor; only one buying customer — Dreadlocks. Why? Did business ever boom in a second-hand bookshop?
She looked up and down the path: there was no shortage of people. She stared up at the sky as if the answer to her dilemma might be written there. There was no message. The grey skies had long dissolved into blue and the air was stilling itself into gentle breezes; the strong gusty winds were moving elsewhere.
The jacarandas were covered with splashes of green and mauve. Soon summer would be here; months of hot weather lay in wait. She walked back across the street and into the shop where, once again, she examined the contents of the till. It was only eight dollars more than this morning.
She had just sat down behind the counter when Vivian sauntered in. She pounced on him. ‘Where have you been?’
‘At Ella’s. Had a talk with her.’
‘You did?’ Helen was astonished, though she suspected it had been a one-sided talk. ‘What did Ella have to say?’
‘Lots.’
I bet she did, thought Helen. ‘Did you talk about her getting back with Gabriel?’
‘Nope. I asked her out to dinner.’
Helen gawked at her son in utter disbelief. ‘You did what?’
‘Asked her out to dinner.’
‘To talk about Gabriel and …?’
‘No. It’s a date with me.’
Helen’s mind was a fog of confusion. ‘I thought she was Gabriel’s girlfriend.’
‘Once. They had a fight. Ella’s not interested in him now.’ Helen waited for more; it didn’t come. ‘Can I borrow a little money?’ Vivian asked.
Helen lifted one hundred and fifty-eight dollars from the cash register. For the briefest moment she looked in the empty till then sighed and handed the money over to him. ‘No need to pay it back, you’ve had zilch wages from this place.’ She was happy for him. Vivian had actually done something proactive.
‘Place looks good,’ Vivian offered, folding the notes into his pocket.
‘It’d look better if we had some customers.’
‘Takes time. We’ve only been open two weeks.’
Helen gave her son a smile; he was showing signs of optimism.
She stared out of the large window at the people walking by. They looked purposeful, as if aiming for destinations far more important than a second-hand bookshop. What would it take to break their concentration and lure them in? She considered the effect of throwing her body onto the pavement to divert human traffic into her bookshop — a truly noble destination.
Vivian interrupted her cogitations. ‘You’ll like Ella,’ he said as if trying to reassure his mother. ‘She’s not at all like Gabriel said.’
She woke as if from a dream. ‘Ella, that’s a beautiful name.’
*
Jim might have sold the shop yet he couldn’t quite leave it alone. Helen wasn’t surprised to see him when he first started dropping in; after all this had been his home, his life, and she had got it all for a steal.
He always arrived in his three-piece suit and his trademark fume of whisky and cigarette smoke. Once he’d brought a miserable bunch of flowers and a cheap box of chocolates. She feigned gratitude but later dumped them in the kitchen bin.
He dished out advice. ‘You gotta be friendlier. Talk nice. And dress a bit … more … you know … sexy? You got a nice figure. Show it off.’
Helen snapped back, ‘This is a bookshop, not a brothel.’
Jim’s body wobbled backwards on hearing the sharpness in her voice. ‘Scuse me, only trying to help.’ Then he wobbled forwards again as he regained his confidence. But the tremors in his hands were still there, always there, a permanent fixture after so many years of hard drinking.
‘We’re managing just fine. Would you put the cigarette out? Please.’
Humiliated by her request, Jim smiled slyly, then dropped his cigarette to the shop floor and crushed it with the heel of his shoe.
Helen remained silent. Jim was a nuisance whom she tolerated out of guilt. All her attempts to colour him, in her mind, as some sort of conniving bastard who’d earned his bad luck, had failed.
Helen began to wish the shop had been bought under different circumstances; that she had not taken advantage of a hapless drunk down on his luck.
19
Astrid sat at her kitchen table listening to the ticking of the clock. It was just gone nine, too early for bed; she’d only toss and turn and think. Her thoughts seemed more tortuous and inescapable when she was in her bed waiting for sleep. Out here, the safety of her kitchen offered a better view of her circumstances.
She got up and looked out the window. Her neighbour’s house was lit up like Christmas; the house lights were often aglow all night now that Arnold was cleaning up.
Astrid didn’t like what she saw. Arnold was doing the unthinkable — clearing out his junk. She knew his motive. He was trying to get Gabriel to bring his pregnant girlfriend to live in his house. She was losing the young family she had unofficially adopted.
Each tick of the clock reminded her of how lonely she was, especially now with Helen and Vivian gone. She had tried to patch things up with Helen at the launch, wanted to offer her accounting skills, but Helen had seemed distracted, so she held back. No doubt one of her new literary friends was keeping the books.
She looked up at the clock: nine-fifteen. She stretched her arms in front of her. How was she to keep herself amused? She’d already been to the casino that day, and lost. She entertained other possibilities; all were equally dull.
Then it occurred to her to go and spy on Arnold. It was a warm night, a cloudless sky with a fine dash of stars. Astrid felt happy with her decision to take this short walk. An adventure. But outside was even quieter than her kitchen. Even the houses that lined the street seemed to have turned in for the night; they stood in darkness, apparently unaware to the goings-on of their dissident neighbour.
Approaching Arnold’s house she sought cover behind the wall of telephone directories, the one she had always despised, but was now grateful for as she made her way along it to the front gate.
The radio was on and Astrid could hear the sound of a lively tune. She watched in astonishment as Arnold danced
a jig to it while holding a box. She smiled momentarily at this antic, knowing he would be mortified if he knew he was being watched. Then she slumped down and leaned heavily against the wall. The house was a hive of activity, with Arnold and Gabriel carrying out boxes, putting some on the front verandah, others onto the trestle tables lining the driveway where they were opened and emptied.
She felt wretched on seeing father and son working together. Even Gabriel was avoiding her. She wanted to talk to him about the baby, but every time she saw him, he was vanishing around a corner. Once again she was excluded from that special world where parent and child moved as one with barely a word spoken. Sharing … sharing the same genes, the same history, and now this — working towards a better future, together.
Tears pooled in her eyes and spilled as she walked back to her empty house. Back to the kitchen and the ticking clock, each tick now sounding like a clang; clanging off the seconds that made up her empty life.
20
Razoo dumped the books onto the shop floor. Helen was flummoxed. Why did he have to deliver books this way?
Mercifully, he had at least brought them into the shop via the wheelbarrow now, instead of leaving them on the pavement. And there did appear to be a good number of science fiction titles. Razoo had managed to single them out by their covers, a garish concoction of spaceships, intergalactic battles and monstrous-looking creatures.
While Helen stood over the books, Razoo began to walk along the bookshelves, studying the spines of the books before him. Objects that had been his life’s work, yet the contents of which he knew nothing. They looked forbidding. He peered around to see if anyone was watching him and selected a book as furtively as if he was a pickpocket. He weighed it in his hands then leafed through it until he stopped at a page about midway through and looked intently at the black figures positioned in neat rows. Line after line. He tried to read, to make some sense of it all, to penetrate his way into Helen’s world, but the words appeared incomprehensible and hostile.
He went and stood next to Helen.
She felt his closeness as she was trying to sort out the books and ignored it, still angry at his dumping the books like this. This was no way to treat books; they did no harm to anyone, and it made more work for her.
‘Can you teach me how to read?’ Razoo’s words tumbled out rapidly. Nervously he added, ‘I can pay you.’
Did she hear right? She lifted her head. ‘You want to learn how to read?’
‘No crime is it?’ murmured Razoo. He began to fiddle with his worn clothing. A tiny piece of cloth gave way in his hand and he wrapped it around his forefinger, and then released it slowly.
Helen was floored. He did care about books after all. ‘Of course I’ll teach you and there’s no need to pay me. But first things first. You need to know the alphabet.’
‘Bugger me. Can’t we start with something simple?’
‘The alphabet is simple, and essential. But it can be taught easily, and you’ll catch on like nothing.’
Razoo looked doubtful.
Helen smiled. ‘Come on. First you can help me sort these books out into their proper sections. And then we put them in order of the author’s surname. Alphabetically. And don’t worry. Just follow me.’
And for the rest of the afternoon Razoo followed her like a young pup until the pile of books on the floor had been sifted and allocated to their rightful locations.
Helen, pleased with her new assistant, told him to sit on a bench while she made him a mug of hot tea and a pile of boiled egg sandwiches which he gobbled up.
She wondered about the type of book that would interest Razoo. Dogs, she supposed, but there had to be other things. Of course! Horses, as in cowboys and horses. She moved on to the Western section where she selected a book she felt to be right. It was a slim volume with a tattered cover entitled Shadow of a Noose. Beneath the title was the bold pronouncement, ‘Acting wayward came easy to him.’
Satisfied with her choice, Helen wound her way out of the maze and sat down next to Razoo. She opened the book and started reading, enunciating each word carefully: ‘Unk Shadie had a habit of sleeping with one eye open like the old hound dog he had as a kid.’
Razoo was struck dumb with admiration at Helen’s ability to decipher the mysterious code before them; and marvelled at how the words flowed out of her mouth. He was more than happy to let her read for eternity, or until they rode off into the sunset together. On the same horse.
Helen held the book in front of him, putting the tip of a pencil to each word as she read out loud.
‘Betsy was his beloved rifle,’ she read. Then paused. Waiting for her eager pupil.
Razoo trailed his finger along the words she’d just left behind, holding each word for a long moment before finding the confidence to say it out loud. Unsteady but determined he struggled on, ‘Bet … Betsy … was …’ He stopped and looked at her, murmured, ‘I like this …’ He stared at Helen as if about to say something else but instead rubbed his chin before turning his head to the page before him.
*
Initially, learning to read was not easy for Razoo. Helen blamed her teaching while Razoo blamed himself, his stupidity; if he couldn’t read Westerns what could he read? Reading about hound dogs and guns, the things he loved, seemed to make it second-rate. But Razoo kept on. And at night, in the still of his recycling plant and under the watchful eyes of his dogs, he tried reading passages from different books picked at random from his huge stockpile.
He frequently thought of Helen; she was smart and kind and was always reading or mucking about with books. Yes, if he could read books then he would be worth more than a brass razoo. He could be a fit companion for Helen.
Once he could read fluently, he would ask her out on a date. Or maybe take her to the races? No, thought Razoo, a lady like Helen you took to a meal at a fancy restaurant.
*
Helen knew it was serious when Vivian took to brushing and flossing his teeth and rinsing with an antiseptic mouthwash after every meal. Where once he had ducked his head into a book, he now took to ducking into the bathroom before grinning at the mirror, allowing his teeth maximum exposure. They were immaculate by any standard and she could smell his disinfected breath at twenty paces.
Surely, thought Helen, as she picked up the strands of dental floss, Ella should be impressed, although Gabriel might be slightly less impressed with Vivian’s conquest. His younger brother had stepped over the line, and she hoped there wouldn’t be trouble between them. Gabriel could be bull-headed when he wanted, just like his father. It was painfully obvious to Helen that Vivian and Ella were an item and a very serious one if Vivian’s coming home at eight in the morning was anything to go by.
Did Vivian plan on getting Ella pregnant? Or had all that gone by the board? If so, what about Arnold?
21
Gabriel was constantly amazed by the sheer variety of his father’s ventures and collections. Arnold had amassed the unimaginable: like his collection of otoscopes, an apparatus for looking in ears. Who the hell was going to buy these antiquated contraptions? Was there another collector of utterly useless objects in this world? Someone as daft as his own father? To his amazement he discovered there was; there was a whole army of squirrels who loved nothing more than useless objects.
At first, he struggled to treat any of his father’s junk with respect, but as time passed and he saw the rate stuff was selling at, he changed his attitude. This stuff sold and made money. And if it made money, it wasn’t junk.
Gabriel, to his father’s amusement, became an overnight expert on every conceivable item. Together, they worked well, and Arnold revelled in their newly defined relationship.
The garage sales were held on the wide return verandah, every day of the week from nine in the morning until late in the evening. Gabriel enjoyed selling. He found the steady flow of chatting, haggling and horsing around with customers invigorating. In fact he was having so much fun at times, he forgot the reason the
y were doing all this, until his father reminded him with the occasional comment woven deftly into their conversation. ‘You think Ella’s going to like this when we’re all done?’
The question caught Gabriel off guard and all he could manage was a grunt. He didn’t know how to interpret his father ramblings. Was his father taking the piss out of him? Did he know the truth?
‘When you bringing her around then?
‘You know when.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Arnold replied, smiling. ‘This place will be looking like a dental surgery in no time.’
Seeing his father’s smile of anticipation Gabriel wondered how Vivian was going with Ella. A pregnant girlfriend was no easy thing to procure; it wasn’t like going to a garage sale and buying half a dozen mixed china plates for the price of a bus ticket.
*
Arnold was hunting around in a box full of articles wrapped in ancient newspaper when he came upon it, a small object that aroused his curiosity.
On unwrapping it he gasped. It was an old Ventolin inhaler. One of the many Leif had used in his battle to stay alive. Scratched and faded now, but still intact.
For almost an hour Arnold sat in contemplation, turning the pale blue and grey plastic object around in his hands. What to do with it? Finally he wrapped the inhaler and went out the back and buried it deep in the dark soil. Patting the dirt back into place he was suddenly startled by the realisation of how few possessions his family had. Apart from his ventures and collections, Helen and his sons had acquired almost next to nothing.
There were a few photographs of Leif, but hardly any of Gabriel and Vivian, except as babies and toddlers. There was no pictorial evidence of Gabriel and Vivian growing up past the ages of six and five. It was as though their lives stopped with Leif’s death.
Arnold tried to remember them as boys, as teenagers. He couldn’t. He tried to remember Helen as a younger woman and failed. He let out a silent wail for what he’d lost; for what he’d never thought of hoarding — his family’s past.
The Bookshop on Jacaranda Street Page 14
