by Cath Crowley
‘Why?’ he asks, his voice hinting that he knows the reason.
‘Because you owe me an apocalypse.’
‘True,’ he says. ‘And I always pay my debts. Can I ask you for something?’
‘It depends what it is,’ I say, knowing I’ll give him anything.
‘Tomorrow night is the one Friday night we don’t go to dumplings. We host the book club instead. I want you to be there with me. It might be our last one.’
‘Agreed,’ I say, and we hang up. ‘Last’ hangs in the air.
Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens
Letters left between pages 508 and 509
11 February 2016
Michael
I know how upset you are about losing the bookshop. I’m upset too. But ignoring the sale won’t change the situation. As much as we both want the bookshop to do better, it’s not. Can we please talk?
There are developers making very generous offers. (See the paperwork I left on your desk.) We could also go to auction. If you won’t talk, will you give me permission to make all the decisions?
Sophia
Sophia
Frederick and I have been discussing the sale. Would you consider giving us some time to buy you out?
Michael
Dear Michael
I wish I could say yes. I know how happy it would make you. But have you looked into what the building is worth? Where would you get that kind of money? I don’t want to see you in that kind of debt and that debt would affect the kids. This is hurting me, too, but please accept reality for Henry and George’s sakes.
Sophia
Henry
I hold her hand tighter
The book club starts at seven on the second Friday of the month. Dad, Mum, George and I, usually, we’re always here for it. Tonight, though, Dad excuses himself and says we should order in whatever food we want, and pay for it out of petty cash. ‘I’m going out. Your mother’s not coming.’ Before I can say anything about anything to him, say that I’d like him to stay or ask him if everything’s alright, he walks out of the door, gets in the car, and drives away.
The shop feels empty without him, tonight. I feel empty without him. He looks crushed a lot of the time, now. Crushed and lost. I think back to the imaginings that Rachel made me do the other night. Dad will have done his own imaginings, I guess. I try to picture him away from the bookshop but I can’t.
‘Where’s Dad?’ George asks when she comes downstairs.
‘I’m not exactly sure,’ I tell her.
She stands next to me for a while, straightening the wine glasses and the platters, and then eventually she says, ‘I need your advice on something.’
George doesn’t ask my advice on anything, not even English essays. ‘It’s about Martin,’ she says. ‘And about the boy in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.’
This is an exciting development. George is asking, which clearly means she’s open to the idea that Martin is the one for her, and this guy in the pages of Zombies, is not. Rachel walks back in from driving Martin home. I ask her to take over at the wine and cheese table so I can talk to George. ‘They’re a nice crowd,’ I tell her. ‘When they arrive, give them as much wine as they want, and stand back. George is about to tell me that she’s in love with Martin.’
I follow George into the reading garden. We take a seat and before I start offering advice, she launches straight into the problem. ‘I know you think that I should go out with Martin,’ she says. ‘I know you like him.’
‘He likes you.’
‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ she says. ‘We talk a lot. I went to his house last night and met his mums and his little sister and his dog, Rufus.’
She talks about the stuff that they’ve been doing together, all of which, I didn’t know. They went to see the new Tarantino film. They went to see a re-run of Aliens at the old cinema on Meko Street. They went to Lola’s garage, where Lola played them a song.
‘So this is all great,’ I say. ‘This is all brilliant.’ I’m about to tell her that she should clearly choose Martin, but I don’t get the chance.
‘There’s this other boy,’ George says. ‘And I know you’ll say he’s not here and he’s not real but I know who he is, and I’ve liked him for a long time.’ I can see her wondering whether to trust me, and deciding that she will. ‘It’s Cal,’ she says.
‘Cal?’ I ask.
‘Cal. Rachel’s brother.’
She adds in the bit about Rachel because I’m not saying anything, and she must assume that I haven’t put two and two together. I put them together the second she said Cal; I was just trying to buy myself some time.
George talks about how much she likes Cal, about how he’s smart and weird and sweet, and all the while I’m trying to get my head around what she’s telling me. ‘He’s been away from the city for three years,’ I say. ‘How would he get the letters in the book?’
‘Tim Hooper,’ she says. ‘Tim brought Cal’s letters in, and took my letters away.’
‘And it’s not actually Tim Hooper?’ I ask.
‘Tim moved to another state. And coincidentally, the letters stopped when he left.’
‘Which doesn’t disprove that it’s Tim.’
‘Henry, it’s him,’ she says forcefully. ‘It’s Cal.’
‘But he doesn’t write to you anymore,’ I say, careful not to give anything away.
‘Because he’s in France with his dad and without Tim, it’s all too hard. I want you to ask Rachel for his overseas address. I need to send him this letter.’ She holds out a sealed envelope. ‘If, for some reason, she doesn’t want to give me the address, she could mail it herself.’
I take the sealed envelope and put it in my pocket. It feels strangely heavy for a thin piece of paper. ‘Can I ask what it says?’
And without hesitating, she tells me. ‘It says I love him.’
Oh fuck. I could cry. I could actually cry, right now. She’s too late. He’ll never read it. It’s such a huge letter for George to write. George doesn’t make a joke and say nothing will happen because it’s a truth universally acknowledged that we’re all shit at love. She’s taking the first real chance of her life and the really awful thing is that she and Cal would be perfect for each other. Maybe even more perfect for her than Martin.
It’d be fair to say I feel slightly unhinged as we walk back inside. George is in love with a dead person and I can’t do anything about it.
‘What’s wrong?’ Rachel asks, and I want to tell her because Rachel makes things better. Even if she can’t do anything about them, she makes things better by being with me. But I can’t say the words. They’re too sad. Your brother loved a girl, and she loves him back, but he died before she told him. End of story.
‘Everything’s fine. George is feeling a bit confused about Martin. Can you stay here for a minute? I just need some fresh air.’
I walk out the front of the shop and Mum calls me while I’m taking some breaths. ‘You sound strange,’ she says when I answer. I can’t tell her about George, so I tell her about Dad. About how I feel like I’ve crushed him by voting to sell the shop. ‘He’s gone somewhere and it feels like I made him leave.’
‘I’m worried about your dad, too,’ she says. ‘But he’d be the first to tell you he’s not your responsibility. You made the right decision, Henry. I can’t talk more now, but I promise I’ll call you back, and I promise that this will all be fine.’
I hang up, and almost call her straight back to ask if we can slow things down with the sale, but then I turn around and see Amy.
She’s dressed in green, shoulders showing, pearls in the streetlight. It’s the dress she was wearing when she said she loved me for the first time, and seeing her in it transports me straight back to the moment.
I try not to look happy to see her, because we haven’t spoken since the night I was gaffer-taped to a pole. But I am happy to see her. I can’t help it, I’m really happy to see her.
‘I’m sorry about Greg,’ she says.
I’m about to say, ‘Don’t worry, it’s fine.’ But actually it’s not fine and we need to talk about this. ‘It’s been two weeks since you saw your boyfriend throw me in the car. You didn’t think to call before now?’
‘I wanted to,’ she says. ‘But Greg and I were breaking up.’
As soon as she says it, I forget I’m angry. She’s breaking up with The Dickhead. She looks through the bookshop window, and then motions for me to follow her down the street. I stay where I am for all of five seconds and then, as if I’m under some sort of spell, I follow.
‘I can’t do this anymore, Amy,’ I say. ‘You can’t push me around like this. I can’t keep waiting for you to come back to me.’
‘I won’t leave again,’ she says. ‘I’m sure this time.’
She sounds so sure.
‘You’re still selling?’ she asks, watching the people arrive for book club.
‘I’m pretty sure we’re finalising the deal any day.’
‘And you still have the ticket?’
‘Yes,’ I say.
People say hello on the way past and I say hello to them, all the while trying to look normal, when really I’m feeling anything but. The last few people walk inside, leaving us on the street alone again. The book club is starting and I should go back inside.
‘Kiss me,’ she says, and I do. I kiss her with renewed confidence, the confidence of a guy who’s found out that he is, in fact, a great kisser.
The kissing goes on for a long time. When we stop, we don’t have a lot to say, so we kiss some more. Time passes but I don’t feel it. Amy is back. The Dickhead is gone.
She leaves, and I head back inside, slightly dazed, but happy, until I see Rachel, and then I’m dazed and unsettled.
The book club is at the part where the group has finished the book under discussion, and they’re ready to start in on individual suggestions. Josie goes first. She started coming here about eight years ago, the first time to buy a copy of James and the Giant Peach. I was ten, a Roald Dahl expert, and Dad sent me over to the shelves with Josie to locate the book. We had a conversation about all of Dahl’s works, the most frightening of them being The Witches, and I remember her laughing as I checked out her feet. I told Josie that we had all of the books, and she told me it was all right, she just wanted this one. ‘But thank you.’
After she’d gone, Dad explained that she’d lost her son, and said it was nice of me to spend time with her. I remember feeling slightly guilty. I’d spent time with her because she knew every sentence of the Roald Dahl books. I wasn’t actually trying to be nice.
Josie’s book suggestion to the group tonight is When Things Come Back. She holds up the book to show the cover, and I realise she’s going to talk about her son dying. I start to warn Rachel, but she puts her fingers to her lips to make me quiet. When I’m not, because she needs to hear that this might upset her, she covers my mouth. I cover her ears without thinking. ‘What you doing?’ she whispers.
‘It’s about death,’ I whisper back.
‘It’s okay, Henry,’ she says, and pulls my hands away from her ears.
I pull hers from my mouth.
We’re close up, eye-to-eye, nose-to-nose, holding hands. She doesn’t seem sad, at least not the kind of sad she’s been looking since she arrived. ‘I want to hear Josie,’ she says, and turns to the front, without dropping my hand.
When Rachel’s interested in something she leans forward, and I can almost hear her humming. She is the smartest, sharpest girl I know. I hold her hand tighter, because Josie is talking about her son. I’ve heard the story of how he died, and it’s terrible – the bike, the car, how he was here in one second and then gone in the next.
Rachel is mesmerised. So is the group. Josie starts off a round of people talking about their lives, sometimes connected to the books they’ve brought with them and sometimes not. Every one of them is talking about death.
‘I’m okay,’ Rachel says, because I’m staring at her, waiting for signs that she’s not. She points at the group, signalling that I should pay attention. When I look back, Frederick is standing in that formal way he has.
‘My wife Elena died twenty years ago,’ he says, and the room is so quiet. ‘We ran a shop together.’
He tells the group about the night she died, when he sat next to her, and read from her favourite book. I can see him, reading in that soft, careful way he has, saying every word completely, before starting on the next.
Rachel looks over at me. ‘The Walcott,’ we say together.
Rachel
the words could rain on us
I am a strange mix of things tonight. I am spark from Henry’s hands and the memory of his kiss. I am warmth, blush from his stare, and calm, because I’m almost certain that he’s mine and I’m his. He walked inside, and took my hand and held it in a way that let me know. It seems impossible at the same time that it seems like the thing that I knew was always going to happen. I’m all these good things, and aching, too, and sad, because Josie is talking about her son. ‘He was seven,’ she says. ‘Riding his bike. I was, cheering him on. Then a car came round the corner and went up onto the footpath. Just collected him right up,’ she says, and looks shocked, as if all the years haven’t dulled that moment. She’s staring at a spot of air in front of it, and I know, in that spot of air, is her son. At this moment, he might be lying on the footpath, as she saw him that day. But I’m certain that at other times, he’s in that spot, grinning at her.
I’m crying, I realise, but I don’t care.
Frieda talks about her brother next, who died in a plane crash. Another woman talks about her cousin who has cancer and will, most likely, be dead soon. Henry’s agitated beside me but I squeeze his hand to let him know I’m okay. He squeezes back and I ache more and smile again and think about death in my head and love in my skin.
Frederick talks last. He stands to share his story, and as he speaks, he solves some mysteries for Henry and me. ‘My wife Elena died twenty years ago. We ran a shop together.’ He tells us that he’s searching for a book because it was his wife’s favourite. ‘Elena read from it on our wedding night, and I read to her from it years later, as she died.’
‘The Walcott,’ Henry and I say together.
There’s a soft haze in my chest, a quiet I haven’t felt in a year now. I won’t ever put it together properly in words, but I understand it. Frederick’s story is different in the details, so it can only ever be his. But all the same, I hear myself in it.
I’m certain that E and F, on the pages of the Prufrock, are Frederick and Elena. As he speaks, I feel as though Elena is here in the bookshop with us. I think about Cal’s arrow on Sea, and all the other lines in the books, the pages where words are the same, thoughts are the same, where words are written so closely to each other that the curves of letters intersect. I wish Mum were here to listen in to the book club, to read the markings in the Library, to feel what I feel and know what I’m starting to know.
I help Henry clean up and put the chairs away, all the while waiting to see Frederick standing alone. When there’s a chance, I walk over and tell him that my brother, Cal, died.
‘I’m so very sorry,’ he says.
‘I can’t swim anymore. I don’t go near the ocean.’ As I say it, I wonder if it’s true. I wonder if I’m speaking in present tense, when really I should be speaking in the past. I wonder what I’d feel now, if I were there, looking at the water. I think I might walk in, not all the way, but enough to feel the water at my calves, and to imagine it rising, slowly.
After everyone’s gone, Henry and I sit together at my computer, and search for the Walcott. Both of us are desperate to find it, our hands knocking against each other in excitement every time we find a copy close by.
I make a list of locations, because I like making lists.
‘You’re very neat,’ Henry says, looking at my handwriting, and it feels like he’s said something sex
y.
‘You’re very messy,’ I say.
‘And yet, I’m the one who passed Year 12,’ he says.
‘You’re very annoying,’ I say, smiling at him.
‘You’re very sexy,’ he says, like it just came out and he had no control over it.
‘So are you,’ I say.
‘It’s not the way I’m usually described,’ he says.
‘Tonight feels sort of unusual,’ I say.
We finish the list of Walcott sellers, and decide that since tonight is an unusual night, it might be the night when we locate the book. Henry scans the list and says we should choose a place now, and then visit it to look on the last night of the world. ‘That,’ he says, ‘is the time we’ll find it.’
‘I’ll choose which bookstore,’ I say, and immediately pick Beach Side Books.
‘It’s Beach Side,’ Henry says.
‘I can read, Henry.’
‘It’ll be by the beach,’ he says.
‘I had a vague idea.’
‘You don’t mind?’
‘I don’t mind,’ I say. Or maybe I do, I’m not sure. But I want to find out. The store is on the coast, but the opposite way from Sea Ridge, and I can’t think of a safer way to test whether I’m ready to see the water again, than to go with Henry.
We get ready to sleep, my arm touching Henry’s.
‘Why would Frederick give the book away?’ he asks. ‘If it was so important?’
‘Things get lost,’ I tell him. ‘Or maybe you can’t stand to look at them.’
We lie quietly for a while, and then Henry remembers that there’s a story his dad wants him to read. He gets the book from his bag, and lies next to me, holding the book over our heads. The words could rain on us, I think. I have an image of us drinking them. Henry has changed me. He’s changed the way I cry about Cal. The way I see the world.
The story is called ‘Shakespeare’s Memory’ and it’s about a German Shakespearean scholar who has been offered the memory of Shakespeare from his boyhood to 1616. The scholar accepts the memory, but he doesn’t understand that memory is strange and chaotic. He feels as if he’s been offered the ocean, and in taking it, he doesn’t understand what it is that he’s accepting. Memory surfaces in sounds and images and feeling, and in taking someone else’s memory, he’ll have to lose parts of himself.
