The Gap Year

Ellie finished her coffee, wondering what she would do next. School had finished and the long warm summer days beckoned, but she wasn’t ready to settle into any summer routine of beach, surf and sand with her mates. She wanted to get some work – holidays are no fun without readies. But she was planning more than just a holiday. She wanted a job that she could do for a year before going to uni – a break from school and study, get some money behind her, and hopefully become eligible for Austudy when she eventually does get to uni.

She wandered aimlessly into the arcade behind the coffee shop. She had been here hundreds of times before – she always got her hair done at Justine’s – and she thought they might be good for a chat if they weren’t too busy.

As she passed the old bookshop she noticed a scrappy piece of paper taped to the glass near the door. “HELP WANTED” it read. Underneath the heading in smaller writing it read: “Part-time or full-time. General duties.” Well, there’s not much to go on there, but something about it attracted Ellie.

She poked her head in through the door. Immediately the smell of dusty books hit her, yet there was a certain homeliness about that. The perimeter walls had floor to ceiling bookcases, well-stocked with second-hand books. The space in between was occupied by smaller double stack book cases that were set up in such a way as to create a space in which a table and chairs provided a suitable place for carefully inspecting the treasures that had been found on the shelves.

A first impression of the place could easily have been of chaos – yet as the eyes got used to the dance of light and colour created by myriads of book spine sizes and colours, one could sense that all of this was carefully set out so as to ensure once could find what they were looking for.

Ellie couldn’t see anyone – no one at the till; no one at the shelves. “Hello” she called somewhat tentatively. “Hello!” at which there was a rustle of movement from inside a back room.

“Yes, yes. Just a moment, I’ll be there in a minute.” After a few more rustles and dull thumps a strange looking but somewhat familiar face appeared at the doorway. “Can’t find what you’re looking for?” he asked.

He was 50-something with short but uncontrollable hair, a bristly moustache beneath a nose well acquainted with whisky. He was wearing an old friend of a jacket with a hound’s-tooth pattern, brown corduroy trousers over soft loafers. His Celtic complexion was ruddy at the cheek and his bright blue eyes welcomed everyone they saw.

“No. I’m not looking for a book. I saw your sign. I wondered if I could do your job.”

“Well it’s not much of a job, really, but I just need someone around to help with anything that needs doing, and answer the phone when I am out and things like that. I don’t know how much to pay but if you want the job, you look like you could do it.”

“What about the hours? When would you want me to start?”

“Oh, I don’t know. What do you think? Maybe 10 till 4 each day. Does that sound good?” Her eyes lit up with assent, a gentle start to the day “Gentleman’s hours” as her Granddad used to say. “You could start today, if you wanted, or you could wait until tomorrow, I don’t mind.”

Ellie wondered if this could really be true, if it was this easy to get your first real job. “I’ve got some things planned for the day, so how about I start tomorrow.” And thus Ellie’s Gap Year began.

Ellie had enjoyed school, unlike some of her friends who seemed to be perpetually grumpy with almost everything that happened in daylight hours. It seemed like the only time they were happy during the daytime was when, over lunch, they were gossiping together with their friends, sharing Facebook stuff on their phones, and sadly, sending nasty texts or making mean posts about girls they did not like. Ellie was not one of these girls, and was thankful that she had never had to bear the brunt of their nastiness.

Ellie loved writing. At school she excelled in both her English and English Lit classes and also had a penchant for the politics of Modern History. She also participated in any extra-curricular activities that related to the performing arts – particular the annual production that involved both the Music and Art departments of school. Earlier this year they had put on the Andrew Lloyd-Webber show, “Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat”. She was in the Chorus but had a small speaking/singing part as Potiphar’s wife. The previous year they had done “The Mikado” in which she was one of the three little maids – quite a demanding role.

In both her writing and acting, Ellie enjoyed being lost in another character. She enjoyed creating new worlds and thinking of fantastic things that could happen in them. She really wanted to study nothing more than creative writing at Curtin University, as Tim Winton had done, and dreamed of becoming a writer, herself. But her parents, while they were not opposed to the idea, wanted her to consider the creative writing as a side line to her life in which she would have a real job. So the big question for her as she embarked on this gap year was “What might that alternative be?”

As she wandered away from the old bookshop, she realised that she had not even told the man her name, nor had she discovered his. She turned to go back and read on the shop window, Horden House Antiquarian Books, G.G.Horden Esq., Proprietor. She opened the door again and called out “Mr Horden. “ His smiling face reappeared at the rear door. “I didn’t even tell you my name. I’m Ellie. Ellie Johnson. See you tomorrow.”

Gilbert George Horden Esq., GG to his friends, was a third generation resident of Quarabup, a small coastal village on a river mouth that gave onto a deep and well protect harbour. The shipping activity that grew up because of the harbour, both fishing and commercial, had never managed to grow to such a scale as to have the port dominate the village. When it celebrated the sesquicentenary of European settlement some years ago, much was made of its early designation “Sleepy Hollow” and the feeling that even now it still felt like it.

As GG put it, “That is the whole charm of Quarabup. Settled enough to have what you want. Not so big that you feel like it is an extension of suburbia.” GG saw little or no reason to move away from this place. It was good enough for his father and grandfather. It was good enough for him. His grandfather , George Greenway Horden, the original GG Horden, had come in 1898 after making a big find on the goldfields and bought up a large plot for farming as well as a town block to build a mansion on.

After being ripped off by a Stock & Station Agent in the late 1920s old George set up his own Stock & Station Agency with a rival firm and left GG’s father, Albert Andrew Horden, to run the farm. GG grew up on that farm. He was intimately acquainted with the annual breeding cycle of the beef cattle, and could judge a great bull from 50 yards. He also understood the intricacies of building a stack of hay that would neither collapse nor succumb to spontaneous combustion. But GG’s heart was not in the farm.

Even though he was needed, somewhat, on the farm over the summer, his greatest joy was to spend the summer holidays in town with his grandparents where he would help out in the shop and read lots of books. His parents judged that there was a delicacy about GG that meant that farm work was probably not for him, so they determined to manage without him and allow him this summer luxury.

His grandfather taught him how to keep business books, the old fashioned way, and out of this came a very natural inclination towards self-employment in a small business. When his grandfather died, he carried on the Stock & Station Agency so that his Grandmother would continue to be supported. When she died, his parents decided it was time for them to retire from the farm, but with GG not being inclined to take it over, they sold up, and while half remained a farm for beef cattle, the rest had been broken up into smaller allotments and sold for vineyards and strawberry farms. These latter land-uses were now all the go in the region.

GG’s parents moving into the big house in town, and when GG decided he wanted to be free from the Stock & Station Agency, that, too, was sold up and he set up his small antiquarian book shop in The Wildflower Arcade. The wonder of his circumstances were that the assets from the sale of the farm and the Stock & Station Agency were considerable enough for both GG and his Parents to live very comfortably, even if the book business didn’t make its way.

In this carefree context, GG established himself as the president of the G & S Society through which more than half a century of self-made entertainment had been brought to the village. And as the years passed by, in some ways he seemed to take on the personas of various G & S characters in his swagger about town and his manner of speech.