The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted

by Robert Hillman

  ‘I don’t want to go away,’ he said.

  Tom didn’t nod. But he moved his head slightly to show that he’d heard what had been said.

  ‘I’m bloody not going away, Tom.’

  Tom said nothing.

  ‘Bloody, I’m not going back to Jesus Camp. Bloody well.’

  ‘Whoa! What’s all this swearing? Where’s that come from?’

  ‘Nowhere.’

  ‘Nowhere?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘It’s okay. Better cut it out, though. Finish your brekky, old fellow.’

  Peter returned to the eggs and toast, but mournfully. He ate two or three mouthfuls then put down his knife and fork.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  ‘For what? The swearing. It’s okay, Peter. Better cut it out, though.’

  ‘From Trudy.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s from Trudy.’

  ‘The swearing? No!’

  Peter nodded his head in emphatic insistence.

  ‘From your mother? I’ll be damned. Truly?’

  Peter crossed his heart.

  ‘Well,’ said Tom with a shake of his head, ‘she’s changed.’

  Tom had never heard Trudy swear. Oh, except once. Except once. After Trudy’s return to the farm, years back, Averil Booth, an aged woman who kept an affectionate watch on Tom, had hoisted her nose in the air and declined to respond to Trudy’s greeting. Once past, Trudy had muttered audibly enough, ‘Stupid old cunt.’

  Peter’s gaze suddenly moved to the door from the hall, behind Tom. Tom turned his head and found Hannah in her black silk dressing gown. The look on her face was too involved for ready interpretation. You might have seen some disapproval. But concern, too.

  ‘Peter’s made his way here by himself, Han,’ said Tom. ‘From Phillip Island. No tickets. A junior hobo.’

  Hannah crossed the kitchen to the sink then gestured for Tom to come to her.

  ‘You must take him back, Tom,’ she whispered. There was an insistence in her voice that Tom found awkward. Not pleasant.

  ‘Yeah, I know. Give me a bit of time.’

  ‘I’m serious, Tom. He must go back.’

  ‘Well, I’m not taking him right this moment, Han. Okay?’

  ‘No.’ Hannah made a face of exasperation. ‘No, not this minute. But he must go back.’

  Tom was painfully concerned that Peter shouldn’t hear this exchange. He put his finger to his lips. But a glance over his shoulder told him that Peter was aware of what was being said.

  ‘Han, go back to bed. Please, just leave it to me.’

  Hannah searched his face. ‘You can see I am serious?’

  ‘Yes. But go back to bed. Leave it to me.’

  Tom put Peter to bed in the spare room—once his own room—after overseeing the cleaning of teeth and washing of hands and feet.

  ‘We’ll talk after you’ve had some sleep, mister traveller. Okay?’

  ‘But Tom, I’m not going back. I don’t want Trudy. I don’t want Gran. I don’t want Pastor.’

  ‘We’ll have a chat in the morning, old fellow. You get some sleep, okay? Pals?’

  ‘Pals,’ said Peter, but not with the conviction and confidence of times past.

  Tom waited in the kitchen for a good half-hour—time enough for Peter to have fallen asleep. He glanced into the spare room, and it seemed to him that the boy was out to it. He took the telephone into the bedroom and plugged it into the second socket. Hannah was wide awake, her eyes glittering in the moonlight. Tom turned on the bedside lamp to search for the number of Jesus Camp in his notebook. Hannah watched intently.

  It was Gordon Bligh who answered: the pastor. His voice was muffled. He would have been woken from sleep.

  Tom identified himself, apologised for calling so late at night and explained that Peter had turned up at the farm.

  ‘How?’ said Gordon Bligh.

  ‘He took a few trains, and walked for a way. I want to speak to Trudy.’

  Tom was told to wait; Trudy came on the line minutes later. She sounded sullen.

  ‘What’s he doing there?’ she said. ‘You better get him back.’

  ‘I’ll get him back. Is that what you want?’

  ‘You better.’

  ‘You’ve been out looking for him?’ asked Tom. He had his doubts.

  ‘Yes, of course. Talk to Pastor.’

  Gordon Bligh came back on the line.

  ‘We’ll collect him.’

  ‘No. No. I’ll drive him. We’ll be there about midday.’

  The phone was given to Trudy.

  ‘Do what you want,’ she said.

  Gordon Bligh again: ‘Have Peter back by twelve o’clock.’

  Hannah told him that he had done as he should. Tom shot her an angry look. He undressed and climbed back into bed but with no more than half an hour until the alarm went off, he didn’t try to sleep. Three trains and a twenty-mile walk? Did anyone doubt where the boy belonged? Hannah put her hand on his back. He reached around and removed it.

  Before she left for the bookshop at 8.30, Hannah found the carton in which a few of Peter’s left-behinds were kept, including his Hometown Primary school uniform. She ironed the shorts and the shirt. No footwear was on hand other than Peter’s old thongs. She knew that the boy would be gone by the time she returned to the farm in the afternoon but had the tact to avoid saying anything as pointed as goodbye. She took an opportunity that came along to place her hand on his shoulder, briefly. She wished the touch to convey much, much more than it possibly could.

  Peter refused a second breakfast. A glass of milk, only. He was broken in defeat. He knew that Tom would take him back before a word was spoken on the subject. He sat slumped at the kitchen table while Tom said his stuff, hearing but not listening. The law, what the law says, by law I have to take you back to your mum, by law to Jesus Camp, the law, if I had my way, I wish I could keep you, I wish I could keep you here, the law…

  ‘So you see the problem, old fellow?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘The law.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘It’s hard, isn’t it? It’s hard, old fellow.’

  Peter raised his chin, but looked away. A door flew open; rebellion stormed in. He wanted to hit Tom in the face, to burn the house down, burn all the farm. It ran mad in his blood. Then it was gone: a foray, nothing more. He was broken in defeat and no longer needed his life.

  On the long drive, Peter had not a thing to say. Tom, trying hard to engage him, saw that the boy’s heartache was too much for him. He quietened down, all the while trying to find that one thing that would make a difference; that one comment that would throw a great light forward.

  And there was one thing he could say, but must not. He could say, ‘I want you with me at the farm. Nothing will stop me.’ That was what the boy had come to hear.

  Chapter 19

  IT TOOK a couple of days before Tom got past pausing in his work to sigh and shake his head. In all that time, Hannah barely looked him in the eye. Then on the Sunday more than a week before Christmas, Tom glanced up from his Hungarian fare and said, ‘He’ll do it again, Han.’

  Hannah nodded. ‘He should be with his mother,’ she said.

  It was the first hateful thing Tom had ever heard Hannah utter. ‘That’s what you think, is it?’

  Hannah lifted her shoulders and let them fall. ‘What can I say, Tom?’

  ‘Han, you could say that it’s a sad, sad business that Peter can’t live with us. It’s a sad, sad business that he can’t be where he wants to be. That’s what you could say.’

  Hannah said, ‘Yes. I could say that. Do you want me to, Tom?’

  Tom didn’t reply, and the rest of the lentil soup was consumed in silence. It was a season of day-long labour on the farm and Tom thanked his wife for the meal, excused himself and headed outdoors. Where had he seen that, the husband standing up from the table, saying something poisoned by formality and heading out?
In his own home, as a kid.

  The screen door opened. Tom turned at the sound to see Hannah standing on the back verandah, her face made ugly by her emotion.

  She came quickly down the steps, held Tom by the front of his shirt with both hands and wrenched at him.

  ‘I won’t do this, Tom. No. Look at me.’

  He looked. But it was one of those times when he experienced himself, his being, as distinct, singular in the world, and he could barely summon what Hannah was to him. He didn’t hate her, he didn’t love her. He felt the transcendent clarity of a warrior taking up a weapon to face an enemy he knows he will defeat.

  Hannah said, ‘Tom, be kind to me. I won’t do this. I don’t want these stupid things. Look how hard your face is!’

  She turned and went back into the house, and Tom walked to the shed for the tractor. A problem with the gearbox. He would be glad to be alone with the problem. He didn’t care if she packed up and went back to Harp Road, to Budapest. But let the gearbox be fixed.

  He worked alone and with a profound contentment. He heard the leaves of the cider gums that the northerly picked up from the ground falling with a tapping sound on the iron roof of the tractor shed. And he heard the breeze itself, every so often a stronger gust like a raised voice in an argument.

  It was a spring that was causing the problem—a small metal spring, worn away on one end and unable to hold reverse gear in place. Tom held the worn spring before his gaze and studied it. Then he went to a wooden crate and sorted with his fingers through hundreds of bits and pieces from another tractor, spares, until he found exactly what he was looking for—a gearbox spring pretty much the size he needed. He fitted the replacement spring, nudged it into place and it released a satisfying click. He tried the action of the gears. Perfect. Perfect. He smiled and nodded, happy in his work. His mind was free and cold and clear. He didn’t give a thought to his wife; he didn’t think of Petey suffering at Jesus Camp.

  Hannah came into the tractor shed holding something made of fabric by its corners, displaying it. She was smiling.

  ‘Tom, see what I found. I was looking for my tea towels in a box. Do you see how beautiful?’

  And it was gone, like that, the anger that had in some way transformed itself into such a feeling of freedom. He was back in the arena, Hannah facing him under a bright light. In his wife not a trace of the distress and vexation of thirty minutes earlier.

  He wasn’t sorry that his contentment had gone. He couldn’t have Hannah and be free in that way. This was where he must be, in the arena.

  ‘It was in a box, Tom, the one with the tea towels. Mixed up with them, I don’t know. Do you see how beautiful, Tom?’

  ‘Yes, I see. It’s beautiful, Han.’

  It was a cushion cover. The appliquéd shapes depicted a woman in loose eastern clothing playing a musical instrument. A man sat listening.

  ‘My sister Susan made it, Tom. Who had polio. You see this woman, playing the dulcimer? You see how beautiful she is, all done with shapes of cloth? And the man, who is a king, you see how his face is full of desire? How could she do that? She was so good, stitching in her wheelchair, Tom. And the tree, you see it’s a cherry tree, the little cherries? It was at the apartment when I came back. In Budapest.’

  Tom nodded. He was still holding a pair of needle-nose pliers. The gearbox sat on the bench.

  ‘Han,’ he said, ‘I love you, I can’t stop. I can’t.’

  Hannah nodded. ‘Yes, I know,’ she said. ‘Tom, this I will put up on the wall. With a pin in each corner. It can’t be put on a cushion. It would become ruined. Do you see?’

  On the Saturday before Christmas, the eighteenth of the month, Hannah searched out an ornate candlestick holder, a Hanukkiah (as she said) in one of the unpacked Harp Road boxes. She placed it on the table and fitted a central candle, the shamash, as she called it, and one other candle, which she lit with the shamash. One more candle would be added each day. Each lit candle would be allowed to burn to its end, then replaced the next evening, until all nine candles were burning at the one time. Tom was told to sit at the table, and he did, arms crossed, legs crossed. He could not have been more uncomfortable if his wife had been about to reveal herself as the High Witch of the Continents.

  Hannah, seated, her back straight, hands folded on her lap, sang a song in a sweet, flute-like soprano. The singing took years off her appearance; she could have been sixteen. Her eyes shone in the candlelight. She raised her chin as she sang and every so often put her hand on her heart. Tom’s uneasiness faded as he watched and listened. He thought, as he had in the past, that he could never come to the end of her transformations. And look, now, as the song concluded, such a shy, pleased expression on the face of Hannah, who never gave the least indication of shyness.

  Christmas came, a day of great heat after a few days of milder weather. Light in the sky from four in the morning when Tom rose for the milking. The leaves of the cider gums out the back moved in the motion of the air, the usual signal of a blank blue sky daylong.

  The day proper, after the milking, began with a dreidel. Hannah called Tom to the kitchen table after he came in from the milking. She explained the rules; she explained the Hebrew markings on the dreidel. Tom had twelve cherry liqueur chocolates; Hannah had twelve. Tom made the right call time after time. He had all of the chocolates within a half-hour. They drank brandy from sherry thimbles because it was Christmas and Hanukkah, ate all twenty-four cherry liqueur chocolates and went back to bed to roll around and kiss. Later, in a ramshackle state, an exchange of presents. From Tom, a wooden jewellery chest with a brass clasp and cedar inlays including a Star of David on the lid. He had worked on it in secret for three months.

  ‘Tom, so beautiful! The star, Tom. Dear God, all my years, nobody has made me such a gift.’

  From Hannah, an embroidered shepherd’s smock based on a pattern from Cornwall she’d found in a book. Pleated. A thing of beauty, the stitching in fine green wool. It had been made by Thelma Coot of the CWA, a genius with needle and thread. Beautiful, yes, but also ridiculous. Tom tried it on and with the best will in the world could not promise that he would ever wear it outdoors.

  ‘Once a year, Tom, wear it for me. Just for me. At Christmas.’

  Well, once a year. Tom wore it all of Christmas Day to show it to its maker, Thelma, a widow with children and grandchildren in Perth, who came for Christmas dinner along with the childless Nev and Poppy: no one special in Hometown to pour gravy with and, after the flood, no home.

  Nev said, ‘Jesus wept and well he might. What the hell’s that, Tommy?’

  And Thelma: ‘It’s a Cornish shepherd’s smock, you ass.’

  ‘Is it, but? Listen, Tom. Don’t show up wearing that. The sheep’ll be over the highway to Henty’s searching for safety.’

  Hannah had set the Hanukkiah on the Christmas table. She invited Tom and the guests to sit at their places, the table spread with a crisp white linen cloth, and served the roast chicken and vegies and gravy that Tom had prepared. Coloured tissue hats in the shape of crowns; bon-bons, whistles. On the record player, an LP of carols commencing with ‘God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen’.

  ‘For this, my father would weep in heaven,’ said Hannah. ‘Four Christians at my Hanukkah table.’

  ‘Hold on,’ said Neville. ‘I’m no Christian. Not on your life.’

  ‘Yes you are,’ said Poppy. ‘We were married in church. Makes you a Christian.’

  The decorated Christmas tree in a big terracotta pot had been draped with electric lights rigged by Tom, a transformer switching phases on little fifteen-watt bulbs painted red, blue and yellow. Two electric fans played a breeze over the gathering, riffling the tissue of the party hats. David the canary, normally restricted after hours to an alcove beyond the shop’s little kitchen, had been brought to the celebration; he treated the breeze of the fans as a type of adventure playground, darting through the currents and issuing a racket of approval.

  Hannah, in the best o
f moods, sang Hungarian folk carols and chirruped away like a featherless David. When the time came for the pudding, she danced it in from the kitchen with little hopping steps and pirouettes. After pudding, performance. Each guest was required to sing something, recite something, read something—your choice. It was a Hanukkah innovation of Hannah’s Budapest household. Neville offered a transpontine version of ‘The Face on the Barroom Floor’, no gesture considered too extravagant. Poppy, half a shandy from collapse, drew lipstick faces on her knees, held up her skirt and wiggled her legs in a way that caused the boy face to kiss the girl face. Thelma, a foot-washing Baptist before her husband died, a little lapsed since, sang ‘Santa Claus Is Coming to Town’; Hannah sang in Hungarian a Christmas song that included peculiar bird calls, and Tom, exposing a comic gift he’d kept from the public until now, read the ‘Doreen’ poem in Uncle Frank’s copy of Songs of a Sentimental Bloke. Uncle Frank had read to him from the same book, on occasions. In place of Frank’s tropical phrasing, Tom gave the poem a contemplative reading.

  And then, from nowhere, Vietnam. Where it was located on the globe nobody other than Hannah had any clear idea, but it had been announced that more Australian conscripts would be sent there, wherever it might be. Nev, made merry by liquor and primed to toast all those dear to him, provided the opening.

  ‘To Terry!’ His nephew had been called up. ‘Off to fight the little yellow heathens.’ And he added as he raised his glass: ‘Vietnam.’

  Hannah, giving it a few seconds’ reflection, sauntered through. ‘Off to fight. And this is a good thing?’

  ‘It’s what he wants.’

  ‘Is it? It’s not what the little yellow heathens want.’

  The anti-war demonstrators on the radio and television were widely disdained in Hometown: creatures of a culture from somewhere else, a foolish culture, also annoying. So, a hush. Hannah appeared to be, inconveniently, one of the annoying people.