The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted

by Robert Hillman

  Tom kissed him, tried to push down his hair, but even as he was doing this he was telling the boy that he couldn’t take off, couldn’t drive away. Peter clutched at him; grabbed handfuls of shirt.

  A face appeared at the passenger window—a big face, big smile. The man, whoever he was, short-sleeved white shirt and braces, motioned with his hand for Tom to wind down the passenger-side window. Tom lurched across the seat, Peter still grasping him, and turned the handle. The man pushed his head and shoulders inside.

  ‘You’ll be letting that boy go,’ said the man. His face was a burning red; perspiration trickled down his forehead from a great mane of white hair. ‘You hear me, then? You’ll be letting that boy go.’ His smile kept its place.

  ‘We’re not going anywhere,’ said Tom. ‘I’m Tom Hope. I know this boy.’

  Peter, his voice reduced to a squeak, exhorted Tom again to take off.

  The man withdrew his head and now opened the passenger door of the Studebaker. He reached in, took hold of Peter with both hands and lifted him out of the car. Tom slid across the front seat and out onto the roadside. The man stood with Peter under one arm, the boy’s limbs hanging limply. He was a tall man, broad chested, powerful forearms. His face, creased with age, was a handsome face, except that the smile of brilliant white teeth, maybe dentures, was more menacing than genial.

  ‘This boy lived with me for a couple of years after his mother left him,’ said Tom. ‘I’m not a stranger.’

  He was trying to keep any note of apology out of his voice.

  The man nodded. ‘You get along, now,’ he said. ‘You get along, Tom Hope.’ His smile didn’t falter.

  Peter had reached out and taken a grip on Tom’s belt. Tom worked the boy’s fingers free. He lifted Peter’s chin to look him in the eye. ‘This gentleman’s right, Peter. I’m not your dad. I shouldn’t’ve come. I just wanted to see you for a few seconds. But it was wrong.’

  ‘You get along now, Mister Hope,’ said the man. ‘I’m the pastor here. I’ll be speaking to the police.’

  A small number of kids and three adults were watching, absorbed, from the school gate, Trudy and her sister and mother not among them. The pastor nodded in the direction of the Studebaker. Tom reached out to tousle Peter’s hair but, with the boy under the arm of the pastor, thought better of it. ‘Better go, old pal.’

  As he pulled out and drove off he saw Peter, on his feet now, being led away. The pastor stooped and picked up Peter’s Gladstone bag. The children and the three adults were patting Peter, comforting him, so it seemed.

  He reached home at seven in the evening, the three hours of the drive from the island to the farm given over to angry remorse. A foolish thing to have done. Peter would be in strife. Better if he’d parked further away. Better if he hadn’t taken the Studebaker. The police might call. What could he say? ‘I wanted to see Peter; no, he’s not my son. No, no relation.’

  Oh, but so good to have seen the boy. ‘Take off, Tom! Take off!’ Yes, Peter, but to where? We don’t fit in. And you can see the law’s point of view. What?—‘I love him, she doesn’t, give him to me.’ For God’s sake, Tom.

  The horses, Josephine and blind Stubby, were waiting by the fence. Tom gave them a toot of the horn. They tossed their heads in delight then followed the car up along the fence to the top gate. Tom went into the shed and came back with two apples for each of the beasts—blemished apples that he kept aside from the harvest. Beau waited on the front verandah in an agony of obedience, knowing that he had to stay until called.

  ‘Beau! Rouse yourself, pal! Come on!’

  The dog flew off the step and reached Tom without his paws touching the ground, as it seemed. He leapt to Tom’s shoulder and buried his nose in his ear, licking away wetly, teeth clicking. The woollies had kept to the hill pastures below the boulders, which was all right. Tom fed the horses a scoop of grain each, doled out a tin of Tucker Box to Beau from the cupboard on the back verandah. And found, half under the back door, half out, a sheet of paper folded exactly into four. He opened it up and read what was written in the remaining evening light.

  Dear Mr Hope,

  It’s Hannah Babel. You won’t know me, but I have been living in the town for a while. I am opening a bookshop in the shopping centre and I need someone—you—to do some work. I have a sign to hang and I am informed that it must be welded. Mr Collins in the butcher shop says that you can do such things, and so, here I am. I tried to ring you this afternoon—no success, so I came here, to you. Will you ring me on the number at the top of this page?—or call at the shop tomorrow in the afternoon, before 5. Maybe a ‘cuppa’? I am putting this under the back door because people tell me that the back door is the ‘business end’ of the house on a farm. But just to be sure I am going to copy this note and leave it under the front door too.

  And a signature.

  At the head of the page, printed in blue:

  Hannah Babel Diploma of Music Budapest Institute of Music

  Lessons by appointment Piano and Flute

  5 Harp Road Hometown Telephone Hometown 0817

  Sure enough, another note under the front door, identical except for this: Your dog is very friendly!

  Tom sat with the notes at the kitchen table. He read each twice, opened a can of beer, lit a smoke and read them again. Outdoors, the big white owl that perched itself at night on the rear timber rafter of the old barn gave its deep, three-note call every ninety seconds. Tom lifted his head and listened. His uncle had told him that it was a sign of good luck on its way if an owl took to perching nearby. He’d mentioned this to Trudy one time, and she’d said his uncle had it wrong. It was a sign of bad luck. Common knowledge, she said.

  Chapter 5

  JACKET AND TIE? Tom tried on his corduroy coat over a white shirt and blue tie. He looked at himself in the mirror inside the wardrobe door. The expression on his face startled him; as if he were off to a funeral. He tried a smile; another, a series of smiles of varying breadth, then waved his hands in annoyance. What the hell?—he was calling in on Mrs Babel to talk about a welding job. Why in God’s name would he wear his cord jacket and a shirt and tie and his brown slacks? He threw off his jacket, ripped off the tie, the shirt, left the slacks on the bed and dressed himself again in his work trousers and green twill shirt. He gave himself a smack on the side of the head. Would he ever—ever!—have any sense? Would he?

  He took the back road into town because it was a longer journey, by about a minute. He needed thinking time. Or not so much thinking as reproving. He asked himself why he was carrying on the way he was. This Mrs Babel—Hannah—had a job of work for him. She wasn’t interested in anything except his ability as a welder. She wasn’t going to ask him out to the pictures. She was a music teacher, years older than him. So why, Tom? Could he answer that simple question—why? He knew nothing about music. Beethoven. Nelson Eddy. Beethoven had been a great favourite of Uncle Frank’s; he’d left behind twenty or more long-playing records. A foreign chap with a violin. And oh!—it came back to him now—the violin chap was Jewish too. Uncle Frank had mentioned it when he was explaining the name.

  ‘Jewish cove on the violin, lots of ’em are.’

  ‘Lots of them are what?’

  ‘Musicians. Violins, pianos.’

  It was an odd thing about Uncle Frank, an odd thing having all those records. He’d lean back in his armchair beside the record player, beating time in the air with the arthritic finger that he could never straighten. ‘Have a listen, Tommy. How does a bloke do that? Hey? How does a bloke do that with a violin?’

  Tom couldn’t have been less interested if his uncle had been listening to a recording of squeaky doors.

  He found Hannah in her shop-to-be attempting to negotiate the mechanism of an ancient cash register, something from the ark. The day was warm enough for her to be wearing a yellow summer dress patterned with tiny red flowers. The dress revealed a lot of her bosom and she wore black high heels, as if keeping shop called for more
style than any other woman in the shire would have thought necessary. Tom knew immediately what the bosom-revealing yellow dress would do for her reputation in Hometown, and winced. That head of hair, a great mass of curls. The grey appeared just here and there.

  ‘Mister Hope! Lovely to see you. Help me with this. When I press down the keys—like this—nothing happens. Nothing! You do it.’

  She nudged him to the cash register, put her hands on his shoulders and positioned him over the keys. ‘Now. Have I been swindled, Mister Hope? Do you think? The man in the shop where I bought it, he said, “A child can use it.” A Greek fellow, up near Victoria Market in the city. A Greek. Beware of Greeks bearing bargains.’

  ‘Pardon?’ said Tom.

  ‘Make it work, Mister Hope. Madame Babel is on her knees, begging you. Still, it’s very beautiful. Is it beautiful? I think it is.’

  A movement over by one of the stack of cartons caught Tom’s attention. It was a little yellow bird, shaking its wings on the topmost box. When Tom saw the bird, the bird saw Tom. In a motion too quick to be followed, it was on his shoulder.

  ‘Woo!’ said Hannah Babel, and she laughed with delight. ‘David, suddenly so bold! Mister Hope, he has chosen you out of thousands. Say something to him. Be his friend.’

  Tom, blushing, his head turned towards the bird, struggled to imagine what he might say. Finally: ‘Hello, little bloke.’

  The bird gave a hop and came to rest on the top of Tom’s head.

  ‘Oi!’

  ‘Relax yourself,’ said Mrs Babel. ‘He’s not an eagle, Mister Hope. He won’t harm you. Whistle for him. His name is David.’

  Tom attempted a few notes of ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’.

  ‘Try C major, Mister Hope,’ said Mrs Babel. ‘Work within your limits.’

  The bird left Tom’s head and alighted on Hannah Babel’s shoulder. It had a candid look in its perfect eyes. ‘David, too, comes from the Victoria Market,’ she said. ‘I was there maybe a month ago for shelves in Abbotsford Street. The Greek fellow. I walked through the market where the birds are sold—you know where I’m talking about, the pet place? An amazing thing—I came out with David on my shoulder. Could anything be more propitious, Mister Hope? Befriended by a bird.’

  Tom’s guess was that ‘propitious’ meant lucky. He said, ‘Good.’

  ‘He came with me in the car, on the dashboard all the way back. Can you imagine?’

  ‘Good. In the car. Good.’

  Hannah offered a finger to the bird and returned it to the top of the stack of cartons.

  ‘You can do some welding for me? Will I call you Tom?’

  ‘Yes. Please.’

  ‘And you’ll call me Hannah.’

  Madame Babel—Hannah—showed Tom the job. An oblong iron frame suspended from the shop’s verandah was left with an aperture into which a sign could be fitted. The many failed businesses run from the shop had each displayed a sign, rescued from the frame and taken away, once utter defeat had been admitted, by the various proprietors. Hannah had been informed by Juicy Collins that the frame that held these signs was in a precarious state and would need to be re-welded to the iron struts that attached it to the verandah ceiling. Tom brought a stepladder from the back of the ute and climbed up to inspect the damage. He scraped away at the rusted struts with the tip of a screwdriver, scrutinised what the investigation had revealed, made a few clucking sounds of concern, the sort that tradesmen employ whatever the job, and called down to Hannah: ‘Juicy’s right.’

  ‘You are saying? “Juicy”?’

  ‘Mister Collins. Bob Collins.’

  ‘Ah!’

  Hannah, facing west, was shielding her eyes from the afternoon sun. She was smiling as if this appraisal of her signboard frame gave her real pleasure. Which it could not, in any sensible way. Unless everything gave her pleasure. Because Hannah was smiling, Tom smiled. For a few seconds they were smiling at each other, for each other, with that liberty we sometimes enjoy before intimacy exists. Then Tom realised what he was doing and resumed his troubled-tradesman expression. A frown, a shake of the head, a squinting, worried look in his eyes.

  ‘Yeah, I dunno,’ he said.

  Hannah said, ‘It is what? Not possible? The welding?’

  Tom said, ‘Yeah, I dunno. Maybe.’

  He scratched his head above his right temple with the tip of the screwdriver.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said.

  He climbed down the ladder, maintaining his air of preoccupation with the issue of the rusty frame. Hannah had kept her smile. She reached out and picked a flake of rust from the shoulder of Tom’s twill shirt, standing about an arm’s length closer to him than either a woman or a man normally would in Hometown. In Melbourne; in Australia more broadly. And that smile. She touched the palm of her hand to Tom’s chest above his heart.

  ‘Cuppa?’ she said. She spoke the word as if satirising it. ‘Cuppa, Tom Hope? I have some special Hungarian tea. Magyar fruit tea. Come in.’

  An electric kettle sat on the floor by the power point; a bag of sugar, two cups with saucers, a pint bottle of milk, a china teapot, bright red, a tea caddy, teaspoons. Hannah crouched by the kettle in a manner that preserved her elegance.

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘what is your verdict, Tom Hope? Can the sign be fixed? Tell me.’

  Tom stood awkwardly among the cartons, shooting a glance at the yellow bird every few seconds, anxious that he didn’t again become a perch. It was only that he’d suffered since he was a child from a sense of appearing a fool. The bird studied him teasingly, head on one side.

  ‘Yeah, I’ll need to replace those two struts,’ he said, Hannah smiling up at him beside the muttering kettle. ‘You can’t weld rust, Mrs Babel. But what I can do is—pardon?’

  ‘Hannah,’ said Hannah. ‘You must call me Hannah. Okay?’

  ‘Right, right, Hannah. Sorry. What I’m saying is that I can replace those struts with new ones, if that suits you. Pardon?’

  ‘It does,’ Hannah said again. ‘It suits me, Tom Hope. Very much.’

  Hannah spooned tea-leaves into the pot. ‘Hungarian tea. Good for your complexion. Shining skin. Have you ever enjoyed Hungarian tea? Fruit tea?’

  ‘No, no I haven’t. No.’

  ‘My friend sends it to me from Budapest. We don’t use sugar or milk in this kind of tea. But I should ask you. Would you like milk and sugar?’

  ‘No,’ said Tom, with a prescient conviction that the tea he was about to be served would be a trial. ‘No. I’ll go without.’

  Feeling that he would do well to keep talking for the sake of avoiding Hannah’s difficult comments, he explained that this was the oldest shop in the town, ninety years since it was built, those leadlight windows down the side and in the fanlight above the door. And the frames of the plate-glass sections, they were copper. If Hannah scoured off the verdigris with steel wool the copper would shine.

  ‘A bit of steel wool, come up lovely, Mrs Babel—’

  ‘Hannah. Here’s your tea. Let it cool for a minute.’

  ‘Hannah, sorry. Come up lovely, Hannah. Verdigris, the green stuff. Verdigris.’

  Hannah stood before him with her teacup and saucer. She held up the cup and turned it a little left and right. ‘And the cups, too, from Budapest,’ she said. ‘You see the pattern? The flowers and the birds? Do you see how lovely?’

  Tom said, ‘Hmm.’

  ‘When can you start work?’

  ‘When? Well. When would you like?’

  ‘Now.’

  ‘Now?’

  The tea was horrible. Tom sipped it, but barely.

  ‘Not so good?’ said Hannah. ‘You don’t like it?’

  ‘No! No! Lovely.’

  ‘You hate it. That’s okay. I hate it myself. Just for the complexion. So you can start now?’

  Tom drove back to the farm for the welding gear, returned, cut the steel strips for the new struts, welded the frame in place. By which time it was 5.30, the light failing. Hannah asked him if he
could also make some more shelves for the shop. Torn between self-preservation and his liking for the lady from the continent, he said he’d make the shelves. He’d measure up and come back the next day. If she wanted cedar, he had a heap in his workshop.

  ‘Cedar. Good,’ said Hannah. ‘So you’ll come back tomorrow? In the morning? Up until three. After that I have students.’

  The yellow bird had taken up its perch on Hannah’s shoulder. It turned its head rapidly this way and that, its eyes on Tom. All at once it let out a few notes of song; a sound that filled the shop.

  ‘David! Yes, I see very well, my darling. I see very well.’

  And to Tom: ‘David likes you. That is what he said.’

  Tom nodded. He had accepted that Hannah was a fruitcake. It didn’t ruin his liking for her.

  ‘One thing, Mrs Babel. Hannah. Sorry. One thing, Hannah. You’re not worried that you’ll lose money? People in Hometown don’t read books.’

  Hannah closed her eyes and widened her smile.

  She opened her eyes again. ‘They will read. They will come to Madame Babel. Don’t worry.’ She reached up and placed a hand on Tom’s cheek. ‘You have a beautiful face, Tom Hope. Do you know?’

  What the hell? Tom’s beautiful face reddened to the hairline. He attempted to say something. His mouth opened; no sound came out. Then: ‘It’s not.’

  He took Hannah’s hand away; gave it back to her.

  She was laughing, softly.

  ‘Tomorrow morning,’ she said. ‘Cedar.’

  Driving home in the ute, Tom said aloud, ‘Is she mad?’ She must be. You have a beautiful face. Dear God! And yet…and yet what? And yet she had made him happy. The way she kept moving, clasping her hands, laughing, reaching out to touch his arm, smoothing her yellow dress over her hips. He felt like a great block of stone talking to her, but she was interested in him, that’s what it felt like. He had never before in his life been made to feel interesting.