Once Penny appeared to be fully restored, Helen made gentle enquiries about her past. Penny’s replies were a source of great frustration: she resorted to signs; a shrug of the shoulders, a twisting of hair, grimaces, the folding and unfolding of arms and legs, a scratch here or there. The girl had a pronounced stutter; everything she uttered came out sounding like rattling cutlery.
Helen tried to be patient, but became despondent. Vivian, by way of comforting her said, ‘Give her time Mum.’
Helen gave her biros, pencils, a sharpener, an eraser and a stack of exercise books. ‘How about writing something?’ she suggested eagerly from across the kitchen table.
Vivian, who had stood by the doorway watching his mother, was mortified. ‘Mum!’ The game had gone too far.
Helen darted a look of annoyance at him.
‘Wwww … should … I … wr … wr … i … ite?’ Penny stuttered, her hands under the table, not daring to touch the writing equipment placed before her.
‘A book. You can write a book. You’re the writer.’
Helen’s certainty was disturbing. Penny looked unsure, but took a biro and one of the exercise books, and wrote a few words, much to Helen’s delight.
Vivian turned and started stomping down the stairs, as if trying to pound out a message for his deranged mother who ignored him while studying Penny’s message.
But Helen’s delight was short-lived. Penny had written: What shall I write about?
Helen was perplexed, having assumed that writers, unable to contain their ideas, spoke voluminously; great torrents of words tumbling over one another, carrying the listener away, drowning them in a sea of images and metaphors. That’s why they wrote — they had so much to say. She also considered them to be mysterious, troubled and misunderstood souls.
She stared intently at Penny, trying to identify a trait to tag her as a writer. There was nothing. What she had was a stutterer whose name was Penny. It all seemed too plain and mediocre and it irritated her. And what kind of parent would name a daughter Penny, she wondered. An accountant?
But Penny it was, and her stutter was here to stay, for now. Helen decided to make the best of it. ‘Oh, you writers are all the same.’
‘W … w … w …’ said Penny, and then with a great burst, out sprang, ‘We are?’
‘Definitely.’
Penny sat silently, not daring to speak. She loathed how words backed up in her mouth, and then escaped in a shower of broken chips that sounded like a cold engine spluttering into life. Silence was better.
‘Now, I want you to sit there and think about the book you’d like to write. It’ll come to you and before you know it, you’ll be running those biros ragged.’
‘I … I … w … will?’
‘You will. Just make it up. Fiction. As long as it’s not romance or crime, or horror, or about cricket. Absolutely no cricket.’ Helen crossed her hands, ruling it out. ‘I like to think we have standards here at the Book Maze. Downstairs we have to sell rubbish. Upstairs we can be decent — no trash.’
Penny’s face was blank, a blackboard wiped clean, as though Helen had thoroughly scrubbed away any ideas the emergent writer might have had.
‘I know you’ve got a story to tell. It’s all up in that head of yours, and it’s waiting for you let it out, here on these pages.’ Helen pressed two fingers on the exercise books, as if feeling for a pulse.
Penny glanced doubtfully at the exercise books and then put a hand to her head, as if to see if there actually was a story up there. Her face brightened. She picked up the biro and wrote: I know what to write about.
Helen gave a yelp of delight. Penny quickly wrote again: It’s not a happy story.
Helen put her hand on Penny’s and, held hostage by her own romantic notions, said earnestly, ‘All great stories in English literature are sad and dark.’
Penny wrote: That’s interesting, just like life. Except my story isn’t great.
‘You’re not to judge. Let the reader decide.’
*
Losing had become Astrid’s holding pattern, with hardly a win to balance the books a little. The casino, her sanctuary, had turned sour. Even now as she sat at the blackjack table she felt like an alien.
The dealer dealt an ace, which on top of his ten, made twenty-one. The house had won. Again. Astrid’s chips were fast disappearing. And the harder she tried to win, the more she lost. She became reckless, betting on cards that two years ago she would have snubbed.
The dealer quickly slid a card across the green baize to her. It was a six. Not a good first card. Astrid knew she should pass but she bet with her second last five-dollar chip. Her next card was a ten. Sixteen. She could sit. Damn. No. She nodded her head for another card; it was an eight. Bust.
Astrid tried to smile. Smile away her misfortune. She left the casino to face the quiet back home.
*
Helen sat in the shade of the jacaranda at the cafe across the road from the bookshop, sipping her lemon squash. People sauntered in the midday heat. She looked up and down the street, admiring the bright green foliage of the jacarandas; the moving pattern of shade on the pavement awash with lilac-blue clusters of trumpet-shaped blossoms. She admired the cathedral-like effect the jacaranda trees gave the street.
Helen tried to feel peaceful, to believe that all her worries were at a safe distance across the street. But really she’d brought her troubles with her; they were highly portable. And now she fretted over each and every one of them.
She was concerned about Vivian and Ella. Admittedly, she’d never seen him happier, but Gabriel’s description of Ella as odd and mixed up nagged at her. As for Gabriel, it bothered her that apart from helping his father, he had no job, no girlfriend, and no plans for the future.
Her thoughts turned to Penny, and she ruminated over the wisdom of becoming her unofficial guardian, and of assembling her into a writer. But decided she’d done the right thing, despite Vivian’s protestations.
The real worry was Jim’s condemnation of her ethics. This charge worried her because it was true. The business deal had been unethical. Helen examined the bottom of her glass. If only she could rearrange the past. If only she had settled for less, gone for a stall in a market. She looked around her. If only her worries were as light and breezy as the streetscape before her.