The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted

by Robert Hillman

  As Tom leaned back the air came out of his lungs with a sound like a sigh. It was as if his body couldn’t be sure that it was supposed to keep going. Finally he said, ‘There was someone else?’

  Trudy didn’t say anything. She was watching her husband’s face.

  Tom said, ‘Excuse me.’ He walked out to the verandah and let the screen door slam behind him.

  ‘Dear God!’ he said under his breath. So much was ruined. When his father died it was like this. So much ruined. A healthy man who strode about like a king killed in a week by a sickness that didn’t even have a proper name. Tom looked up at the hills and said again, ‘Dear God!’

  But even in his shock and disappointment he knew there would be no throwing out, much less any throttling.

  He heard her voice behind him.

  She was standing inside the screen door, barely visible in the shadows.

  Tom didn’t speak. Her form became more distinct as his eyes adjusted. He could see the sheen of tears on her face.

  ‘We’ll work it out,’ she said. ‘Please let’s work it out, Tom? We can, can’t we?’

  She came with him everywhere, whatever he was doing. This was ‘working it out’. The farm was small enough, a one-man spread, income from the small dairy herd, from the woollies, the fruit, firewood sold in foot-lengths to a merchant in town, and Tom’s own innovation, cherry tomatoes for the cannery. Small enough, but it kept Tom busy. Never a break from the milking, never a break from moving the sheep about. Trudy was there, growing bigger with the baby, whatever the work. She didn’t do much but she kept up a cheerful refrain, sang songs from the radio, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Kathy Kirby, Cliff Richard. Before she started a song, she told Tom the title and the artist.

  Tom was tender with her, more tender in fact than when he’d loved her.

  Late one afternoon Trudy said, out of the blue, ‘Do you want to know about Barrett?’ She was making scones in the kitchen—she’d taught herself to bake a few things recently: the scones, apple turnover, a type of shortbread that didn’t taste like shortbread. Tom was preparing a brown trout he’d taken from the fast stream that ran through the northern end of his property. He was the better cook.

  Trudy had never spoken of the man she’d known in her time away and Tom had never asked. But since she’d raised the matter he thought he should let her speak.

  ‘He’s not a nice man,’ she said. She looked up from the scone dough and gazed away towards the window above the sink. ‘He’s… well, he’s selfish. He only wants what’s good for him.’

  Tom said not a thing and Trudy went back to rolling the scone dough.

  =

  It was noticed in Hometown, Trudy’s baby—well, naturally. She must be, what—four or five months now? And she’d been back with Tom no more than three months—about that? Or maybe Tom had been seeing her before she came back, wherever she was. Do you think? Anyone with hide enough to ask Tom Hope if his wife’s baby was his, good luck to him, or her. And if it wasn’t, did Tom even know? Bev Cartwright from up on the flood plain, who had been close to Tom’s Uncle Frank, told anyone who raised the matter: ‘Do you think he’s an idiot? Tommy’s an intelligent man.’

  Eight months into her pregnancy Trudy’s mood changed. She stayed in bed until after eleven each morning and wept often. She said that food tasted like poison to her. Up until seven months or so she had coaxed Tom to make love to her, lying on her side. Now she couldn’t bear him to be close to her and she asked him to sleep on the camp stretcher in the spare room—the room that would become the baby’s in time. She said that the world was full of crooks and liars.

  When Patty visited—and it had taken Tom four months to tell his sisters that his wife had returned—Trudy said, ‘She’s the biggest liar of all.’ Claudie came twice in a fortnight, once at Christmas, and made an effort to be kind and understanding. Trudy said, ‘She hates me. I’ve always had nice teeth and hers are all over the place. You wouldn’t say she was elegant, would you? That awful old cardigan.’

  At times like this, when Trudy was full of bitterness, Tom put it down to fear. She was frightened of her baby. And yet not every frightened mother-to-be was as bad-tempered and ill-mannered as Trudy. He tried to jolly her along, the only strategy at his disposal other than concern. ‘Cheer up, Trudy. The milk’s curdling.’ Gestures of affection—no. He shared the house with her, that was all. He would show the same kindness to a stranger.

  =

  Whenever Tom drove his wife to see the prenatal nurse in the regional centre a long way beyond Hometown she fidgeted and whimpered the whole journey. Tom had to stop the car any number of times so that she could wee. It was his task to hold his coat up as a screen while Trudy squatted by the car. She always thanked him, and strangely, these were the only times when he still felt close to her; as if he might still love her deep down.

  All this fear of Trudy’s was there in the hospital with her when she gave birth. She screamed blue murder and so annoyed the midwife that she was eventually told to show a bit of gumption. The delivery was straightforward enough despite Trudy’s carry-on (the midwife’s word). Afterwards she had to be ordered to suckle the child, a little boy given the name Peter.

  The midwife said to Tom, ‘I don’t envy you over these next few months, my dear!’

  Trudy didn’t want to leave the hospital even after six days. She complained of intolerable pains in her legs and neck and abdomen. Doctor Kidman gave her painkillers but told Tom privately that his wife was making a mountain out of a molehill. Tom said, ‘But the baby’s okay, is he?’

  Doctor Kidman said, ‘Oh, I suppose so.’ He was probably too old to still be practising, Doctor Kidman. Tom sometimes met him down on the river, fishing with mudeyes and drinking from a silver flask.

  The hospital couldn’t keep Trudy forever; she was obliged to go home with the baby. The sullen face she wore on the drive back to the farm was the face she kept for the next three years. Her constant complaint, usually muttered, was that she hated the child. It was against Tom’s nature to insist too much on anything but he couldn’t have the child hearing that. He told his wife she must never say such a thing when Peter was awake and listening.

  The boy didn’t understand the words his mother was using but he must have felt her lack of affection because even at four and five months he looked to Tom for comfort. And Tom took pains throughout his working day to get back to the house regularly. He’d put down the wire-strainer or his shovel or the slasher and stride down to the house to give the boy a few fond words and a hug and make sure he’d been fed and changed. Trudy watched without interest, scratching at the rash that came and went on her arms and shins.

  My life’s gone to the dogs, Tom thought, but the little chap’s coming along.

  At other times, by himself, he thought of what a hit-or-miss business it was being married. Just good luck if it worked out, bad luck if it didn’t. He shared hardly a thing with Trudy—no interests that bound him to her—and yet he had once been head over heels in love with her. Now she only perplexed and worried him. If the little boy couldn’t make her happy, what could?

  He wished Trudy could be a happier person. He wished she would go and find her friend Barrett, if that would do the trick. Only if she took the little boy with her it would upset him badly.

  He tried to calm her by sitting on her bed in the mornings and reading to her from the newspaper. He chose happy stories, or at least stories that had nothing to do with death. Trudy’s greatest interest was in the upcoming execution of Ronald Ryan, who had killed a policeman. He was supposed to hang in February. She said, ‘Hanging’s too good for him. They should chop him to bits with an axe.’ Then she began to cry and something in her relented. ‘I don’t want anyone to hang,’ she said through her tears. ‘I’m sorry I said that. Can you forget what I said, Tom? Can you?’

  Tom said: ‘Of course.’

  =

  How many meals were shared before Trudy went away again? Hundreds upon hu
ndreds at the cedar kitchen table, very little said, middle loin lamb chops with cauli and peas and mashed potato, grilled trout, rabbit stew with carrots and parsnip, mutton roast on Sundays. Tom fed Peter in the high chair, the little chap with his coal-black hair and plump red cheeks reaching for Tom and not for his mother. Tom called the boy Petey; his mother rarely had a name for the child at all. Although every so often she would suffer a fit of remorse and make more of a fuss over the boy, combing his hair flat to his head and dressing him in a strange little tweed suit her mother and sister had sent from Phillip Island. These fits could last up to half a day but always ended with the child distressed and calling in a high, imploring voice for Tom. And that was the child’s name for the man who was not his father: Tom.

  Chapter 2

  THIS TIME Trudy told her husband face to face. She said Jesus Christ had called her to join her mother and sister down on Phillip Island. Jesus Christ had not called Peter, though; not for the moment.

  It was in the bedroom that Trudy told Tom of the calling. She had stolen out of bed very early to dress and pack a suitcase. When Tom awoke for the cows at four, Trudy was sitting in the kitchen ready to catch the five o’clock bus to the city. She was wearing her maroon hat of soft felt and her green suit and best shoes. Even in the kitchen light she looked pretty, with her make-up on and her chin raised and her hands folded on her lap. She looked relaxed.

  She said, ‘Tom, I can’t stay with you anymore. I can’t stay with Peter anymore. I can’t stay in this house anymore, no not even for one hour more.’

  Then she told Tom about Jesus Christ. She said, ‘I’ll come back for Peter one day when I understand things properly. Oh, Tom, I’m so sorry. Do you see why I must go? Do you?’

  Tom had expected that he would feel relief when his wife finally decided to leave him a second time. Instead, a burden of sadness settled on his heart. He looked at Trudy, sitting composed on the bentwood kitchen chair, her hands in her lap and her fair hair grown so long now that it curled over her shoulders. He noticed that she had plucked her eyebrows into perfect arcs.

  He said, ‘Yes, I understand.’ He couldn’t say: ‘You’re going because you’re bored and you have no roots and there is nothing in your heart,’ so he let her believe what she wished.

  The lowing of the cows had just begun, and the clattering of the gate as they banged against it in their insistence.

  Trudy said, ‘I’ll go now.’

  ‘Will you say goodbye to Peter?’ Tom asked her.

  ‘No, I shan’t,’ she said. ‘It will just upset him.’

  ‘Shan’t’ was a word she used now and again.

  Tom didn’t stop to reflect on the great difficulty of caring by himself for a boy of almost three while keeping up with the farm. Before Trudy left he’d tried taking Peter with him whenever it was possible; now he would have to take him everywhere, possible or not. If he’d thought about it for even five minutes he would have seen it was no-go, so it was best not to think about it. At least the shearers had come and gone. He always helped with the shearing, and there’s no time for supervising a small boy with sheep to handle.

  Up the ladder in the orchard, he called down to the boy, ‘Whaddya think?’ And the boy, playing in the grass with his yellow truck, said, ‘Too right!’

  Among the sheep in the hill paddocks, Tom encouraged the boy to trot along beside him. He said, ‘Big fat sheep up here!’ and the boy said, ‘Big buggers!’

  When they found a brown snake toasting in the sun beside the billabong, Tom crouched down to tell the boy how to behave with snakes. ‘You see one, you stop still. Just stop still. And you shout out, “Tom! Big wriggler!” Okay? And I’ll take care of him.’

  It was hardest in the rain. Tom carried the one-man tent he used on fishing trips and set it up for Peter wherever he was working. He said to the boy, ‘Tom’s down there freeing the channels, okay? Listen, now. If you need me, you bang on this billy with this stick, you got that? If you feel lonely, you bang on the billy with the stick. And I’ll come.’

  He couldn’t find a way to keep the boy close for the milking between four-thirty and six in the morning but he was able to recruit Beau for the job. Obediently, but with deep misgivings, Beau sat by the boy’s cot and allowed Peter to reach out and stroke his ears and his nose when he woke at half past five. By six the boy would have worn out his interest in Beau but that couldn’t be helped. Down in the dairy Tom heard him howling out, ‘Tom! Come here, Tom!’ And then, ‘Please, Tom!’

  They read stories twice a day, books from the library in Hometown. At night when Peter was asleep, Tom struggled to keep his own eyes open past nine. But he made sure the fire was set in the stove and that the accounts were up to date. Even exhaustion couldn’t mar the enjoyment he was getting out of life. In bed he lay smiling, recalling pleasing moments from the day.

  He knew Trudy would come and take the boy away one day. The thought always came to him just at the height of his happiness. He chased it away by shaking his head and waving a hand in front of his face.

  Patty and Claudie raced up from the city when they eventually found out that Trudy was away on her travels again. They found Tom in the shed repairing the manifold on the tractor, Peter nearby tinkering away with an old gearbox from the ute. Patty said, ‘Oh, Tommy, this will never do!’ Tom said it would do very well, and no, Peter would not be going back to the city to be brought up with Claudie’s kids.

  Claudie said, ‘Tom, listen to me. He needs a mother’s touch. It’s all very well playing with car parts but there’s more to raising a child than that.’

  But Tom was firm and his sisters returned to the city without Peter. In the car, Patty said to Claudie, ‘That woman, I’d have her skun! I’d do it myself!’

  ‘Poor Tom,’ said Claudie. ‘If ever a man deserved a proper family.’

  It was two more years before Trudy was heard from again. A letter arrived in the post with this to say about her new circumstances and her plans for her son:

  Dear Tom,

  I apologise to you for letting so much time past before contacting you about Peter. I hope you understand that I have been through a very difficult time since coming to Phillip Island. Tom, I was in a very very unhappy state when I came here but Jesus Christ has found a path for me I am so glad to tell you. It was like being pulled out of a swamp! It was like being taken to a warm dry place.

  Tom, I owe my life to Jesus Christ and I will Follow Him forever in my life from now on. It was like all of the colours in the world had dissappeared and then they came back! But I know I must ask for your Forgiveness, dear Tom. Our Marriage was never meant to be I am afraid I must tell you. I know you loved me like mad and probably you still do. It is so difficult for me to say this dear Tom but I never really loved you. My heart was like a dry paddock where nothing grows but the rain comes and I am Following Jesus Christ with all my soul! Tom, I must have Peter here with me to raise in the Love of Jesus Christ. This is what my Prayers have revealed to me. You saw me at my worse Tom but you would be very amazed to see me now. I am ready to be a Mother to my son in a most Beloved way. I am coming with Mum and Tilly to pick him up on Wednesday 27th this month. I will be most apprecciative if you will have Peter ready for me. Tom I thank you for your kindness, you are a good man, I know that.

  With Christ in my Heart,

  Trudy

  The hammer blow that is expected, braced for, does no less harm than the one that comes from nowhere. Tom sat at the kitchen table stunned, aching all over. He’d put Peter to bed before allowing himself to study the damage. He thought, She has no right. Then he said aloud, ‘I’ll take off. We’ll go to Queensland.’ He imagined himself making his way in the outback with Peter in tow. He could do it. He was a mechanic and welder and panel beater by trade and he could always find work. If nobody wanted a mechanic, he could find work on a farm, on a station. He could shear, so there was that. There was nothing he couldn’t turn his hand to.

  Before he did anything so
un-Tom-like as throwing himself into a melodrama, he made an appointment with Dave Maine in Shepparton, the solicitor who’d handled his uncle’s will, a good chap who knew his way about. He had to take Peter with him and the little bloke sat in a chair in Dave Maine’s waiting room with a picture book and a packet of jellybeans. Dave, in the tie he always wore loose and a dark grey suit with a slept-in look, told Tom that he didn’t have a leg to stand on.

  ‘You’re not the father, old chap. She’s the mother. The court will give him to her.’

  ‘After she’s been away for years?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. If you could prove some great moral turpitude, maybe. But she’s shacked up with Jesus, so you tell me. The court wouldn’t even give you visiting rights. You could work out something informal, that’s a chance. Where’s she taking him?’

  ‘Phillip Island,’ said Tom.

  ‘Phillip Island? Fuck me. Miles away! You’re rooted, Tom. Sorry.’ Other strategies occurred to him. He could see Trudy and her mother and sister off the property at the point of a gun. He could be away in town on the day they arrived. He looked at the boy full of pain as the days went by. It was only a week before Peter was due to start school and Tom had purchased his uniform and books, told him what school was all about, shown him the building in High Street. Tom had said, ‘I’ll drive you to school in the mornings and pick you up in the afternoon. You’ll like it. Lots of kids to play with. Lots of stuff to learn.’

  ‘What about the milking?’ Peter had said, for he’d been helping with the milking in recent months. ‘Tom can’t do all the milking by hisself.’ It was his habit to speak of Tom in the third person at certain times.

  ‘I’ll have to cope, won’t I? School’s important.’

  He started a letter to Trudy saying that Peter was ill and that she’d have to wait for a couple of months. But he didn’t send it. He thought for the hundredth time of Dave Maine’s words: ‘She’s the mother. The court will give him to her.’ And he saw that the game was up. Even if he took off for Queensland, they’d find him eventually.