The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted

by Robert Hillman

‘Get that little bugger back if you can, Tom. You were a happier bloke when he was here. Get him back.’ And he added, with less emphasis: ‘And the missus, too. Good sort.’

  Was it just a mood? Or had something settled?

  After Johnny drove off, Tom went to a corner of the farm where neither sheep nor humans would find him. He sat on the trunk of a big ironbark that had fallen decades ago, the boughs sawn off to save them blocking the ute track, crusty bark falling away in clumps. The pasture hills where Matty Pearce’s cattle roamed on agistment rose to the west, tinged green with the rains of autumn. The bracken had turned brown on the mid-slopes below the tea-tree that crowned the hills, meaning that the foxes would come down in their autumn hunger and do crazy things to taste warm chicken.

  A stone’s throw from where Tom sat, the wood ducks had gathered to eat the flesh out of the acorns fallen from trees planted by the Lutherans fifty years past. The ducks couldn’t break the outer shells and had to rely on Tom driving over the acorns and crushing them. If he had the time, Tom liked to take the ute down and go forward and back over the acorns while the ducks watched on in approval. Hannah had come with him a couple of times. ‘You are a good neighbour for the ducks,’ she’d said. It was something she liked, that he was too sentimental for farming, and yet made up for it with stamina. ‘We help the ducks, we sell the books. How did I come here? I don’t know. But I love you, Tom. Forever. I love you forever.’

  What an unreliable word that was, forever. It shouldn’t be spoken. A word like forever could kill people.

  He still held the telegram in his hand. He’d call Dave Maine; he’d hear that the boy was free to come to him. Peter. And that would bring down the curtain on his life with Hannah. Hector had said, ‘Three thousand years of history. We know. She’ll come back.’ But she wouldn’t. She would keep her precious vow.

  Tired of it—that was Tom’s mood. The way his legs obeyed the orders of his brain to move him from one place to another—annoying and stupid. Everything about him that cooperated in plodding forward—stupid. Looking at things, as now—the hills, the red gums at the fringe of the billabong, Beau with his greying muzzle nibbling fleas from his coat—sick of it. The strenuous enterprise of being alive and drawing breath.

  He was worn out by the circulation of his memories. Images of Hannah in green searching in exasperation for the second of the shoes that matched the dress, and naked, her superb waist that took the circling of his arm; and reading to him in high delight from the Age as he painstakingly sawed out the tongue of a dovetail joint.

  ‘Tom, your country, it’s wonderful. They’re saying that Harold Holt was kidnapped by a Chinese submarine. New evidence. Let it be true! The most nonsense I have ever heard. Gorgeous.’

  He had never thought about Australia before Hannah, and then she showed it to him. And now he was supposed to do without her? Just in the way of things, he was supposed to do without her?

  He took off his hat and slapped it hard against his thigh. The wood ducks took fright and ran left and right, the females braying like calves. Then they saw it was nothing and returned happily to the acorns. Too much for him, all of it. And now Peter was coming back. Best plod. Best think. Best use the stupid arms that hung from his shoulders. The heart’s bias is always the other one. The heart says, ‘You, I know. Show me the other one.’

  The other one was no longer Hannah, but Peter. Tom sighed and stared down at the grass between his spread knees. The boy had suffered. Look out for him. Love him.

  He went to the house and called Dave Maine, who said, ‘Yep, he’s yours. Paperwork’s at the regional office in Benalla.’ And so Tom drove the next morning cross country to Bonnie Doon, then up the Midland Highway to Benalla. He spoke to a shy, dowdy woman in child welfare with the unsuitable name of Desiree. He signed documents. A week later, he drove to Jesus Camp and took Peter from Tilly. A suitcase, half-empty. The place was still in mourning, as hushed as a cemetery.

  Only two people were still about with any madness left to them, and one was Judy Susan. Her red hair hacked off, she burst into tears when she saw Tom and struck herself on the head with her fist. As he walked with Peter along the path of white pebbles to the front gate, the little girl June came running—the other mad one. She stopped on the path and screamed. And in her delight hopped on one foot then the other, cackling.

  Chapter 32

  PETER’S BEDROOM was as he’d left it. He crossed the threshold with a sigh of relief. Mim Coot’s quilt from the CWA fair, magpies and kookas stitched in needlepoint. He fell forward and ground his face into the quilt, kicked his legs. When he turned onto his back, his eyes were wet. Children don’t weep for happiness, so it wasn’t pure joy he was experiencing. He sat on the side of the bed and told Tom earnestly that he could never go back to Jesus Camp, never.

  ‘Never,’ said Tom. ‘I promise you, old chap.’

  ‘But Tom, I mean it. I can never go back.’

  ‘You won’t be going back, Peter.’

  ‘Truly, Tom. I can never go back.’

  ‘Never.’

  He’d seen a knife plunged into Pastor Bligh’s guts, and might still harbour mixed feelings about what he’d witnessed. That was his mum with the butcher’s knife. That was his mum the Newhaven police took away. Pastor Bligh out of his life, good. By means of murder, maybe not so good. The tears in his eyes—regret, sorrow, complicated feelings about a mum who’d saved him from a forty-stroke thrashing that could’ve been the end of him, yes. He might (as Tom said) visit his mum if she went to jail, but it would be Tom he wanted in charge. Altered feelings about his mother, but not so very altered.

  Scrambled eggs for lunch and six fried cherry tomatoes, cut in half. Two slices of toast from a loaf of white high-tin delivered by Willy McNiff that morning and left on a ledge on the verandah out of reach of Beau. A glass of milk from the Ayrshires. Tom sat at the table with the boy, leaning forward on his folded arms, no appetite for a lunch of his own. Beau at the back door moaned for entry and was finally permitted to rush in and dribble over Peter’s bare knees. No appetite for lunch, Tom—and no appetite for what he was about to reveal to the boy.

  A mongrel’s shot dead and it brings a man to your door with a rifle and a conviction that murder will assuage his grief. A woman full of tender love turns away from a child because her own child was murdered. All of this on top of a man mad with pride who died on the floor of a kindergarten with a knife upright in his abdomen.

  The murders belonged to a realm of experience that Tom recoiled from as from a powerful stink. To dwell on murder was to foul your nest. He wanted to be the person who took Bernie Shaw’s rifle from him before it had been fired; the person who said, ‘Pastor, let them go,’ and was heard; the man standing beside Hannah in Auschwitz, holding the child when she lost consciousness.

  What he needed from the world was a flock of sheep to feed from good pasture; fruit that ripened in response to intelligent care; a dozen dozy Ayrshires; cherry tomatoes thriving on forty-inch stakes; a beloved wife to tend a bookshop in a barn with waxed oak floorboards.

  ‘Peter, we own Henty’s spread over the road now. I bought it.’

  Peter looked up from his plate, inviting Tom to continue, then went back to his scrambled eggs. We can’t always discern happiness, strong happiness, without the evidence of laughter, but it’s possible to experience the most intense happiness of your life behind a grave, withholding expression. As an adult, at least. Not usually at the age of eight.

  Peter was blindingly happy, without wishing to show it. It had grown in him as he’d watched Tom preparing the scrambled eggs. As we usually are not, he was at the place in the world he most wished to inhabit. The fact that he would no longer be thrashed had nothing to do with his mood. It was just Tom. Hannah had often watched her husband for the pleasure of it, her heart and soul a single current that flowed to him. What was most active in Peter’s love was admiration, even at the strength suggested by Tom’s forearm stirring the eggs and milk
in the saucepan.

  ‘Henty, you met him a few times. More than a few. And you met Juliet, of course. She liked you. You remember?’

  Peter said, ‘Mm.’ He didn’t remember Henty or Juliet.

  ‘Well, they were shot. Shot dead. By Bernie Shaw. You remember Bernie who used to pick for us?’

  Peter nodded. The story was about something bad. He didn’t care.

  ‘The thing was, Henty shot Bernie’s dog. And Bernie was upset.’

  ‘Mister Shaw shot them?’

  ‘He did. He went crazy. With a twenty-two. So Henty’s daughters, it was their farm once their mum and dad were dead. They sold it to me.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Peter. He had finished the scrambled eggs and was now picking up the cherry tomato halves with his fork, one at a time.

  ‘So there’s that,’ said Tom. ‘Bit of a tragedy.’

  Peter lifted his fork and waggled it in the air.

  ‘Tom, we need more men. With two farms, we need more men.’

  ‘We do. Certainly. Then there’s the bookshop.’

  Peter showed a puzzled expression, head on the side.

  ‘Hannah’s bookshop,’ said Tom. ‘You remember Hannah, don’t you?’

  Peter was noncommittal.

  ‘My wife. She was here when you turned up that time. Hannah.’

  Tom was waiting for some acknowledgment, but it didn’t come.

  ‘Had a bookshop in town, but moved it into the barn when we took over Henty’s spread. Maggie’s in there. She’s running it. You don’t know Maggie.’

  Peter popped the last half of cherry tomato into his mouth, then picked up the remaining piece of toast and crunched into it. He had nothing to say on the subject of Maggie.

  ‘Here’s the thing about Hannah, old chap. She had a boy, a bit younger than you. He was killed in the war. The big war we had before you were born. A long way off. Hannah, she comes from Hungary. Have you ever heard of Hungary?’

  Peter shook his head economically—a half turn to the left, half turn to the right. He gulped his milk and left a moustache. Reached for it with his tongue.

  ‘And she misses him. Very badly. Michael.’

  Without realising it Tom had leaned further and a bit further across the table. Now, he pulled back. Not to alarm the boy. He pushed his fair hair off his brow, sighed, looked away for a few seconds.

  ‘She’s gone away for a bit, Peter. A short time, a long time, I don’t know. Maybe for good. I can’t say. But if she comes back, be kind to her, old chap.’

  Peter had developed a guarded way of listening at Jesus Camp. He said nothing in response to Tom’s plea. His happiness wasn’t eroded. The little boy, the killed boy, he had no thoughts about him one way or another. The war? He’d attended an Anzac Day ceremony with Tom, and two more at Jesus Camp. He’d seen men, not young, with medals on their chests, medals and coloured ribbons. Pastor Bligh had worn medals and ribbons on his blue suit. He’d led the men of Jesus Camp on a march around the dwellings then back to the church. Tom gazed at the boy with gladness, not powerful enough to prevail over his heartache.

  ‘You know what, old chap? You’re going to be looked after. Right?’ These words—it could have been others with the same message—fed into Peter’s happiness and produced the first smile he’d managed in two years. He squirmed in his seat.

  Peter was booked into Hometown Primary but Tom gave him a week to look around. He introduced him to Hector and his family. Hector blubbered. Here was a boy with black hair and the eyes of Ezekiel, and he would never have such a boy, only girls who mocked him sweetly and sang songs from the radio, synchronised hand movements, swoony expressions. Sharon blubbered. Here was a boy, as beautiful as Jesus, and she would never have such a boy, only the two girls who teased her without mercy and barely listened to a thing she said.

  Peter whooped when he saw the size of the Henty flocks and the number of lambs, now seven months old. He and Tom walked the rusty red earth of the orchard rows under a blue autumn sky then took a look at the four Henty dams halfway up the valley slopes. Men would have to be hired, three men, two of them at work all day with the woollies, one in the Henty orchard. It was almost too big, Tom said. He’d need a second tractor with a slasher, a flatbed truck of their own for the baling season instead of hiring Bon Treadrow’s old bomb—it’d be secondhand, not new, said Tom. A three-ton GM, could be; Peter would come with him when he took a look at what was on offer at the truck yard in Bendigo.

  Strolling along, Peter said, ‘I’ve got an idea, Tom.’

  ‘Have you, old chap? Let’s have it, then.’

  Making one huge flock of all the sheep and keeping them on the Henty spread, where there was surplus pasture around the billabongs. Tom had to point out that it would take a year for the flocks on Uncle Frank’s farm to give up trying to get back across the highway, sheep being set in their ways. But clever thinking.

  Then the bookshop. Maggie, growing more officious by the day in her struggle, relented long enough to hug Peter and welcome him, show him all over the two floors of the shop. At the age of eighteen, Maggie had somehow adopted the mentality of someone closer to middle age, burying herself in responsibility and snorting in derision at suggestions (from Tom) that she might like to get about more.

  The next day Tom drove Peter in the ute up a track to the top of the highest of the pasture hills on the Henty spread. He wanted the boy to enjoy a view of everything from the eastern rises on Uncle Frank’s spread down to the Henty billabongs by the red gums. He wanted to watch the boy marvelling, and whisper in his ear, ‘All this will be yours.’

  But then…maybe not. He didn’t want the boy to think he was bound to the farm. He wanted Peter to go to university in the big city and perhaps become—whatever he chose. Anything. Tom himself had come to farming in an indirect way; he wasn’t married to the loam. He thought mostly of liberty—north, south, east, west. Let the boy enjoy liberty. Let the liberty sustain him for years and years. Grow straight, and know what was best, what he wanted, instead of growing crookedly along fissures and cracks and giving his heart to a woman mad with grief, made mad in Auschwitz, too mad to recover.

  He watched Peter drawing in his breath at the beauty of it: the slow green river, the big turn at the granite bridge; up the hill to the orchards on Uncle Frank’s farm, the pears and apples and nectarines golden in leaf; the big ramshackle cypresses against the fence on the highway. And, nearby, the agisted cattle lifting their wet noses to sniff the magical humans who sometimes threw hay about on the banks of the billabongs.

  Peter spent three hours on each of five consecutive days in the bookshop with Maggie. He’d never before been in a bookshop and it seemed to dazzle him, so many volumes, spines turned outward. He walked up and down the rows of shelves reading the names of the books and their authors aloud, as if there were a type of satisfaction for him—poetic, perhaps—in this harvest of plenty. Maggie trailed him, helping with pronunciation, and was soberly thanked for her help at each hurdle. She steered him to the titles he might enjoy reading, urging on him her favourites. He took a chair to the back of the shop and read himself into a Famous Five stupor. Then on the third day, Treasure Island.

  The benefit to Maggie of Peter and his addiction and his earnest endorsement of her being was that he rescued her from her isolation. She might one day—it was possible—be the mother of a child like this. If she found another Tom. If there was another Tom. Or this Tom, if Hannah didn’t come back. Well, it could happen. Why say it could never be?

  Another letter came from Dave Maine. More paperwork before the Department of Child Welfare could formalise Tom’s custody of Peter. And information: it appeared that Trudy would be tried for murder. The Coroner and the DPP were inclined to think that the boy’s life had not been in danger. A pity, because there was a good record in the Supreme Court of lenient sentences for manslaughter. The boy would very likely be called as a witness. Nonetheless, if somebody wanted to run up the expense of a good legal team�
��you, Tom?—the lesser charge was still a possibility.

  Tom wrote back that evening to say that he’d find the money. And because he thought he must, he told Peter, gently, that his mother was to be tried for murder. It was an hour later, at bedtime, before Peter commented.

  ‘I wish she didn’t.’

  A minute after that: ‘It was for me.’

  Chapter 33

  HE LOVED the boy; the boy adored him, but the love of a child rolls on without any special effort. Six weeks without Hannah and Tom still paused in his tasks each day to shake his head and wipe his eyes because of all that he couldn’t share. Husbands are one thing and another, but Tom was made for it: a wife, fond banter, loyalty. Only, he had chosen badly.

  These shows of distress disappointed him. Tears and sighs give you a name. Even joy, which ran clear in his blood (not lately) was best kept private. He was by temperament a man who might lead in the winner of the Melbourne Cup or draw a fabled sword from a stone without betraying for a moment the tumult in his heart. But Hannah had driven him to melodrama.

  In this past week he’d struck out, hit his head with his fist. It could come over him any time of the day. Freeing a burr from the throat of a sheep; trimming the dung from the tails of the Guernseys; replacing the manifold gasket on the ute while considering like a lunatic whacking his finger with the spanner; the ring finger.

  None of this when the boy was near. Tom kept it jolly. He met Peter at the bus stop on the highway each day and walked with him up to the house, full of tales of the farm: how he’d bathed Stubbie’s blind eyes in a solution prepared by Don Ford the vet; had taken a shot at a fox the size of a collie. Really, that big? That big. Almost.

  But Peter could see that Tom was not the man he’d been. From the window of his bedroom one afternoon after school he’d seen Tom standing still in the backyard, his head bowed, raising his hands and letting them flop back to his side. It worried him, but didn’t puzzle him. He’d left Jesus Camp with a more detailed map of the passions than most children of eight years ever possessed, or required.