The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted

by Robert Hillman

  The house. It was empty now. But even if Tom were inside at this moment—this is the thought that came to him—the house would look the same. He was its sole occupant. The house pitied him. It had lived through the era of Uncle Frank the bachelor, through the disaster of Trudy, the short heyday of Peter and now once again it was the shelter of unmarried Tom.

  Uncle Frank hadn’t enjoyed for a day living the life of a bachelor. He’d admired women, but found himself stymied by their complexity. ‘They go at things in a funny way,’ he’d told Tom on another visit; older Tom, twenty-one at that time. ‘Don’t you find that? Ask you questions you don’t know how to answer. Kissing and hugging, Tom—that’s the best thing in the world. Won’t get me saying a word against that. But holding on to them—can’t work it out.’

  The time with Trudy had left Tom aware that you had to know how to be married. Everyone married, everyone worked out how to do it. But Uncle Frank had never worked it out, and neither had Tom. To Tom, it had always been: What does she want? If he’d worked that out, he might have made her happy, Trudy. When he’d made love to her, that’s what he thought he was doing—making love. She had something else in mind. She liked what he did for her, he didn’t think she was fooling about that. But Tom knew it wasn’t love.

  He drove the ute into Hometown without any motive. No, there was a motive. He couldn’t bear to be only himself any longer; only Tom Hope. It had grown on him up on the boulder with Beau. It wasn’t right. He was thirty-three; there were years left to him; he’d made a poor show as a husband to Trudy but he wasn’t as hopeless as all that, surely. Another woman might be glad of him. Well, it wasn’t impossible, was it? He had a proper bathroom now, and Jesus, really, when would you get another autumn and winter like the one that had driven Trudy mad, day after day of rain? It was true, he wasn’t likely to be a genius as a husband. But it was something he could work on.

  He drifted in the ute down to the pub, the River Queen, didn’t really want a drink, asked himself what in God’s name he thought he was doing but couldn’t go home. His house exerted a repulsion that he wasn’t ready to fight. The River Queen had a tele; he could sit over a pot and watch—what? Too late for Bellbird, a show he’d enjoyed there a couple of times. Too late for Pick a Box.

  He thought of Peter, of the way the boy could turn a curious gaze on anything, everything, ask questions that you could savour before answering. What was a swan-necked valve good for? Why did the points have to be set on the ute with those thin fingers of metal? Did chooks lay eggs on purpose? With Peter, something became freed in his heart. Could that happen with someone else?

  He walked along the empty shopping strip and found that staring into the darkened windows was no better than being at home. On a Saturday night, which this night wasn’t, the Gala Cinema would be lit up, people milling at the entrance. Not tonight. He heard boys calling to each other in the darkness, wandering the town in search of distraction, mischief, anything vivid.

  ‘Hey, Johnno! Get yourself over here!’

  ‘Nah!’

  ‘Get yourself over here, you fuckin’ mouse!’

  Tom paused at Moira’s tiny shop, the window full of tokens from distant cultures: polished stones, charms, inspiring tracts in decorated frames. A poster from the referendum a couple of years back was still taped to the window. Vote Yes For Aboriginal Rights. The shop was only open when Moira felt up to it. It was said by many (including Moira) that she grew high-grade marijuana at the back of the Cathedral Ranges, her real source of income. Tom liked her, the only hippy he’d ever met. Her kisses of greeting were always full on the mouth. When Peter was still on the scene, Moira had buried him in the avalanche of her bosom every time she saw him. And she’d given Peter a pamphlet about the war in Vietnam. ‘He’s not too young to know about murder.’

  Tom didn’t dwell on the war in Vietnam. His instincts told him that it was stupid or, worse, rubbish, but he didn’t attend Moira’s protests, her melodramatic offsiders in LBJ masks with something not quite the colour of blood oozing from their mouths. And then, Morty Lewis’s son Heath had died in Vietnam, not in combat but from septicaemia after he stabbed himself in his bare foot playing mumblety-peg with a Yank infantry man. The irony of Heath’s death—our allies, an idiotic game—only served to magnify Morty’s grief. Tom’s courtesy would never allow him to wound Morty further by standing in the shopping centre with Moira’s handful of offsiders chanting slogans. It was too much like showing off.

  The last shop in the row was vacant again. A woman from the city had run a picture-framing business here until recently, but no business established on the premises had ever really made a go of it. The shop was the sad sack you find in every small town, empty for six months of the year, for the other six months leased to tenants with misplaced optimism. Some years before the picture-framing, antiques had filled the shop space, the whole country struggling out of a credit squeeze, no one spending a penny on luxuries.

  Inside the shop, Tom could make out cardboard cartons stacked in piles of four. And against the walls, in the gloom, timber bookshelves—an assortment, some fairly fancy with glass doors. This was to be a bookshop?

  Tom murmured, ‘What the hell?’ He couldn’t prove it, but it was likely that not a half-dozen people in Hometown had ever opened the cover of a book. Tom himself had read only the one book in his life, something left behind by Trudy. The story of a blonde woman in the time of the crusades who made passionate love to Christians and Saracens alike. The idea was that he’d find some clue to Trudy’s thinking, but no. He’d enjoyed the tale, though. It wasn’t out of the question that he’d read another book one day.

  No signboard hanging from the verandah outside the shop, and nothing on the window. Or no, there was something: a piece of notepaper torn from a spiral binder and sticky-taped to the inside of the glass. Tom squinted at it, couldn’t read it, made a flame with his lighter. The lettering was in another language, not English, the queerest writing you’d ever see. He studied it with his nose close to the glass, the flame of his lighter threatening to singe his eyebrows. Egyptian, maybe? But no little pictures, just queer shapes.

  Tom said, ‘No idea,’ and put away his lighter.

  Home? He supposed so. But dear God, something had to happen. Something. He wasn’t living like this for the rest of his life. He climbed into the ute and sighed like a bellows.

  The boys were still calling to each other, scouting for what they would never find: a girl to kiss; a pot of gold; a vision that would transport them beyond the walls of the town to the heights of a snow-capped mountain where they would drink with the gods from silver goblets.

  Tom drove home nursing his melancholy. Tomorrow, fairly early, the pears, the nectarines. And Beau at the base of the ladder, scratching himself.

  The language that Tom had studied on the window of the shop, the language that had so perplexed him, was Hebrew. Translated into English, it would read:

  To the God of the Hopeless,

  Bless this shop.

  Chapter 4

  TOM KEPT an eye out to see if the bookshop made any progress. Nothing much after a fortnight. It wasn’t Tom’s habit to ask for information about anything that wasn’t his business but he broke the rule after the third week.

  ‘Juice, the new shop down the way.’

  Juicy Collins was weighing Tom’s chops.

  ‘Hannah’s shop,’ said Juicy. Then, ‘You want to watch me when I’m weighing, Tom. Could have me thumb on the scales. Not above that sort of thing.’

  Dulcie Nash, whose husband kept the servo on the S-bend by the sawmill, gave a snort that wasn’t quite a laugh. ‘Don’t you worry, Tommy. I’m watching the rogue.’

  ‘Won’t get away with much while you’re on guard, Dulcie. Hannah’s shop, Tom. Lady from the continent, as they say.’

  ‘Jewish,’ said Dulcie, as if the single word provided a catalogue of important information.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Juicy. ‘A Jewish lady. From
the continent. What, you’ve got some objections, Dulce?’

  ‘Me? No. Have I? I don’t know.’

  ‘How long’s she been in Hometown?’ said Tom. He thought he’d glimpsed the woman who must be Hannah days earlier, sharing a joke with Vince Price in the licensed grocer’s. He was left with a sketchy image of a well-dressed woman, attractive, a mass of dark curls mixed with grey.

  ‘How long?’ said Juicy. ‘A year, Dulce? More?’

  ‘Might be. They usually stick to themselves. She’d be the only Jew in Hometown.’

  ‘Horry Green,’ said Juicy.

  ‘No!’ said Dulcie. Her basket held before her, she took a couple of quick steps closer to Juicy’s marble counter, where the broadsheets of newspaper sat in a pile. ‘Horry’s a Jew?’

  ‘More Jewish than Moses,’ said Juicy. He’d wrapped Tom’s chops and had them ready to pass over the counter but wasn’t yet prepared to do so.

  ‘Horry? No! Dear God, I would never have picked Horry. Horry’s Australian!’

  ‘More Jewish than Moses,’ said Juicy.

  Tom asked when the shop was expected to open.

  ‘Opens on—what?—Friday week?’

  ‘You spoke to her?’ said Tom.

  Juicy handed over the parcel of chops then returned to a familiar theme: ‘Tommy, cut up one of your woollies, enough meat to last you three months. Glad of your custom, but save your dough, Tom-Tom. I’ve told you before, ning-nong.’

  ‘Do that, Tommy,’ said Dulcie. ‘Save your money, well.’

  Tom had no taste for butchering. He never mentioned it.

  ‘You’ve spoken to her, Juice?’

  ‘I have.’

  Juicy lifted the cloth cap he always wore in the shop then replaced it again. He was time-wasting, teasing.

  ‘Got an interest, Tom? The Sheikh of Araby? I’ll tell you one thing.’ Juicy leaned closer to Tom. ‘A figure like Cleopatra.’ Juicy made a shape in the air. ‘Oh, boy! Don’t think I haven’t made a few indecent suggestions. No go. She’s got me pegged for the scoundrel I am. But a young fella like you. Hoo! Cleopatra of the Nile. A widow. The Sheikh of Araby, Tom. Get on your camel.’

  Dulcie, listening closely, reached over the counter and delivered a light slap to Juicy’s cheek. ‘Don’t you get Tommy mixed up with a creature like that! Don’t listen to him, Tom. You’ve had enough trouble in that way.’ She pursed her lips. ‘Old enough to be your aunty.’

  ‘Forty-five?’ said Juicy. ‘I’ll take all the aunties on offer at that age.’

  ‘You already have. Give me half-a-dozen savs and leave Tommy alone.’

  Three days later, Tom came within a whisker of driving back into town to see what the bookshop lady was up to. But at the last moment, he switched off the ute’s ignition and sat there baffled by whatever it was he thought he was doing. He climbed out of the ute with a sigh, gathered a ladder and tools and set to work soldering a gap in the guttering above the living-room windows. Whenever it rained the water dripped down onto the window ledge; it had begun to lift the paint. Tom sanded the window ledge and applied a coat of red lead to the exposed timber. With the soldering, it was the work of a good two hours. An old, demented ram he treated as a friend butted him repeatedly as he sanded and primed, not hard, just affectionately. And Beau in turn chewed on the old ram’s leg.

  Tom asked himself aloud, ‘What do you expect her to say to you, you nong? “Hello, it’s a nice day”? For God’s sake.’ He was a practical person who never thought of fate, things that were meant to be. He could take apart an engine, stand surrounded by its thousand parts, find what was causing the problem, put the engine back together. He might daydream, but he knew that the dreams were foolish. He daydreamed of a time when Peter might contact him—a letter. There would be no letters. Peter would grow closer to his mother and forget him. He’d become a god-fearing Christian and it would be Jesus he loved. Tom these days—since Trudy—remained faithful to what seemed likely. He didn’t chase rainbows.

  Except that he did. He’d think of Peter during the day and fashion prayers for the boy’s happiness. He would say, ‘Nothing wrong with Jesus. Let him have Jesus.’ And then he’d think, I’ll drive down to Phillip Island one of these days and park outside this Jesus place. I’ll see if I can get a glance at him when he comes out. Tom was hoping for no more than thirty seconds. He’d stay far enough away to avoid strife. Maybe catch Peter playing footy with the other kids. Thirty seconds. Then he’d drive back to the farm. Six hours’ driving, there and back. Well worth it.

  It was midday by the time he’d finished the soldering, the sanding, the painting. Once he’d packed the tools away he said to himself, ‘Why not now?’ He could leave Beau to bark at the woollies for a minute or two in the evening, remind them that the place was still attended. He’d get Juliet Henty from across the highway to do the milking this once. The mare Josephine and the Clissolds’ blind pony he’d taken on, Stubby, could care for themselves in the oak tree paddock, so long as they saw his headlights when he got back. Stubby was all Josie wanted in life, after all.

  He packed a lamb sandwich and a bottle of tea, kept on the clothes he was dressed in and headed off down the Melbourne Road to the highway. He took the old Studebaker his Uncle Frank had left him to give it a good run with the new rings and valve seals. His thoughts as he drove were of Peter, of moments when he thought, This is the best thing. Peter with his stick poised above the upturned billy, on the lookout for snakes. ‘How long for a snake, Tom?’ He wanted to beat the billy, sound the alarm.

  But Tom thought of the New Australian lady, too. Said to be Jewish. He knew nothing about Jews, except that they’d been knocked from pillar to post in the war. He knew Horry, of course, who ran a book on the city races, everything squared away with the police, Kev Egan at the station in particular, who enjoyed a punt himself. Horry was what people called dapper. Smart suits, narrow-brimmed hats. On big race days at Flemington and Caulfield and the Valley, Horry went about the Hometown shopping centre in a green velvet waistcoat with gold buttons, a young clerk in tow who kept whispered wagers in a notebook held five inches from his nose.

  People paid coins into the Hometown Urban Fire Brigade box on Second Saturday Song Nights at the River Queen to hear Horry duel with Juicy in front of the open fire in the saloon bar. Horry’s baritone, Juicy’s tenor. ‘On the Road to Mandalay’, ‘Goodbye’ from The Whitehorse Inn, ‘White Christmas’ from Horry, and from Juicy, ‘Your Cheatin’ Heart’, ‘Cool Water’, ‘Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off ’. It was usually Horry who won the duel by acclamation, because of the vibrato he got into notes at E above middle C. He’d say, ‘God smiles on the baritones,’ and immediately donate the twelve shillings prize to the Brigade box.

  The Jewish lady, maybe she had a little bit of Horry’s flair. When Tom saw her with Vince Price that time in the licensed grocer’s, she’d turned for a second or two. Seen him looking, given him a smile and tilted her head to one side. Two seconds.

  He came to the city, to its thousands and thousands, to the demented traffic, then down the Nepean Highway; never out of third for long stretches. Both sides of the highway were lined with shops and each shop had its sign, and the shops and the signs and the striving lowered his spirits. The years on the farm had changed him. Up a ladder a month back pruning the apple trees, the nectarines, the pears, he could feel his heart seeking, even when he was unhappy, even when thinking of Peter brought tears to his eyes. What could you seek here?

  He crossed the bridge at San Remo at 2.45 in the afternoon, the sky a high, hard blue, the sun still hot even though the season had advanced to mid-autumn. Skinny boys burnt black leapt from the bridge railings into the tidal waters below. A slip of paper with the address of the church on the main road out of Cowes sat on the seat beside him.

  He found the two buildings of Jesus Mercy on a bare patch of earth fifty yards back from the road. A signboard behind a low chain-link fence advertised the place as Church of Jesus Mercy and Church of
Jesus Mercy Primary School. A larger sign set further back read simply: Jesus Camp. Pastor Gordon Bligh was named as the principal of the school. The buildings were identical—grey fibro, pitched iron roofs painted a rusty red. Above the gable of the building that served as the church rose a timber cross that had faded in the weather to a driftwood grey. The cross was too big, too hefty for the modest scale of the church building.

  Tom had calculated the time of his arrival to coincide with the end of the school day—assuming that Jesus Mercy kept the same hours as Hometown Primary. It was only those thirty seconds he needed. He realised that he might catch sight of Trudy too, but he wasn’t concerned. The great power of wounding that had once been Trudy’s had lapsed. He watched from the Studebaker, window down.

  At 3.30, with no warning bell, children began to straggle from the front door, a mixture of ages, and there he was, Peter in a navy blue school jumper and grey shorts. Tom thrust his head out the window to call to the boy, then remembered. But there was joy in seeing him shuffling along with his head down and turned a little to one side, a Gladstone bag held by its handle in one hand. Tom said, ‘Don’t they ever give him a haircut?’ Even from this far away, Peter’s hair looked like the raised crest of a black cockatoo. Tom bit his lip, yearning to step out of the car, take a few steps, crouch down and let the boy race into his arms.

  Peter knew the Studebaker. He’d helped Tom with the engine a dozen times, building up phrases of car chatter. ‘Is the carby crook, Tom? The timing’s off, do you reckon? Black smoke out the exhaust, Tom! No good!’ He looked up when he reached the gate and saw the car, cream and red, the distinctive grille. His face flared with glee. He dropped his Gladstone bag, burst through the gate and ran with pounding strides in the clodhopper boots he was wearing to the passenger side of the car. He wrenched open the door, climbed in, slammed the door shut, flung himself into Tom’s arms. He said, ‘Take off, Tom! Take off!’