The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted Page 25
Glick asked her quietly if the boy was her son, thinking it tactful to substitute ‘son’ for ‘grandson’. Hannah murmured, ‘Yes, my son,’ not intending that her reply should carry to Peter. But it did.
They visited Trudy at Fairlea. The main business of the trial would conclude on the Wednesday after this one-day break on the Tuesday, and the verdict was expected the same day. Sentencing would follow two weeks later. Trudy, who had the sympathy of the prison officers, was permitted to sit with her son and Hannah on a bench in the Fairlea grounds pretty much unsupervised. She was still in civilian dress.
She said she knew she would be found guilty and go to prison. She said she didn’t care. Peter bore up stoically under his mother’s affectionate petting. Trudy said, ‘I’m glad you’re with Hannah. I wasn’t a good mum. But I love you.’ When they strolled back to the administration building, Trudy held Peter’s hand. She wept when they parted. She said, ‘You stay with Tom and Hannah. That’s best. But come and see me.’ Her self-control gave way at the end. She fell to her knees and hugged her son; remained on her knees as Hannah guided Peter out the door. A corpulent prison officer, a woman with horn-rimmed spectacles and a built-up orthopaedic shoe, said, ‘There, there, girlie.’
They drove back to Hometown over the Black Spur, Peter quiet, Hannah jittery. She feared he’d heard her. ‘My son,’ she’d said.
Every time she glanced at Peter she thought she saw a satirical smile on his lips. By the time they reached Dom Dom Saddle at the top of the spur, she could stand it no longer. She veered into the picnic area under the oaks and brought the car to an abrupt halt.
With her hands still on the wheel, she turned to Peter and said, ‘You heard me?’ Her expression retained the tenderness that was always there when she spoke to Peter, but made more complicated by remorse. ‘You heard me call you my son?’
Peter, alarmed but well in control, nodded his head. Hannah looked away, far more badly upset than Peter thought she needed to be.
‘Well, that was bad. That was bad of me.’
She turned back to Peter.
‘I am not your mother,’ she said. ‘Trudy is your mother. I am sorry, Peter. Very, very sorry.’
She opened the door and slid out of the car, walked a few steps and stood with her arms folded, her weight more on one leg than the other. She put a hand to her face but then snatched it away, perhaps to avoid giving Peter in the car the impression that she was about to cry.
A month past midwinter and the days were stretching out. At four in the afternoon the sky was still full of light. Rosellas on winter rations gathered in the oaks, ready to hustle for sandwiches and chips. Half-a-dozen gathered at Hannah’s feet. Ignored, they gave themselves to a pessimistic picking-over of broken acorn shells. Down on the meadow that ran to the fringe of the forest, rabbits stood on their back legs to assess the likelihood of carrot and lettuce being tossed from bread rolls.
A mountain rose above the picnic area, conical in shape, the slopes densely treed with mountain ash and red box, myrtle beech, black wattle. But the green of the packed foliage gave way in a thousand places to the bone-white of dead trunks, the standing corpses of trees burnt in the Black Friday fires of 1939. Enough time had passed since the eruption of the mountain into flame for an intricate pattern of living colour and dead colour to have emerged. It was as if the thriving foliage of the living trees had undertaken a vast campaign of support for the dead trunks, hemming them in, holding them erect in many places.
Hannah hadn’t left the car to look at the mountain but to grimace and hiss and call herself a fool without frightening Peter. It distressed her to see Michael when she looked at Peter. The black hair, the grave expression, the ripple of worry that played around the eyes—the same, even though Michael had been younger than Peter when he’d disappeared.
The same, but not the same. It was as if she’d been reading a book and had by mistake turned two pages at once, so that when she resumed reading, there was a jolt of discontinuity. A question at the end of the last page, a scene, an episode that was not taken up at the head of the new page.
If she came to love Peter, her grieving might end. If her grieving stopped, the SS had won. Could she not grow close to this child and still be with Michael when they undressed him, handled him, killed him? She saw no path, only tears. A wringing of hands, episodes of anger if she felt the boy was forcing disloyalty on her.
At the same time—why not confess it?—she loved Peter. Why not confess it? When the tenderness leapt from her heart into her throat, she yearned to hold his face in her hands. Why not confess everything—that she feared she would walk away again, leave Tom with Peter.
Would she? She might. Probably not. No.
The car door opened and closed. Hannah glanced over her shoulder to see Peter approaching shyly. He stood beside her, studying the rabbits.
Hannah wished to reach for his hand; but the risk.
‘I like the suit,’ he said.
‘Do you? Tom will laugh.’
The rabbits—six of them, the boss bunny in the lead, an impressive brute with tufts of black fur in his ears—improved their position once more, not by much.
Hannah said under her breath, ‘Enough.’ This was not even the same continent on which Michael had lived. Only she feared the wayward nonsense that surged into her heart. The horrible sense that she had brought the SS to Australia. The smile of that officer, his singsong voice, his unsoiled white gloves, his assurance.
She thought, You could have died if this is what you feel. A hundred opportunities. Say what you like: you chose to live.
Hannah could see that Peter was waiting for some sign of recovery. His intelligence showed him distinctly that he must get along with Tom’s wife; she was an auxiliary project of his devotion to Tom. This Hannah understood. But best if she kept it clear in her head that she would come to love him like a crazy person, and he would never love her.
Too bad about that. Let him for the love of God be the child he was. She had seen him at work on a picture of a steam train in a colouring book, his tongue sticking out in concentration. And the friend he’d made at school—Kerry, Dulcie Nash’s youngest daughter—she’d watched the two of them at play, splashing and shrieking in the Henty dam. He permitted Sue and Sylvie to fuss over him, combing his hair and leaving lipstick shapes all over his face.
She felt for his hand, and held it. Peter didn’t look up at her, but he acquiesced.
Hannah thought, God knows where this will end. She wanted Tom in her arms. God bless him that he knew nothing about the camps. May he remain in ignorance forever. She heaved a deep sigh, and Peter glanced up quickly.
‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘I was thinking of Tom. Will he remember the list? Do you think?’
Peter screwed up his face, considering. ‘He’s very…’ he searched for the word, then looked up at Hannah again. ‘When you do things like you should?’
‘Reliable?’ Hannah offered.
‘Yes. He’s very reliable.’
Cars rushed by on the highway past St Ronans Well and down through Narbethong, Buxton, Taggerty, Rubicon. The destination of two or three of the cars would be Hometown Shire, where Tom Hope was locking the bookshop on David and thirty thousand volumes. It was early to lock up, but Maggie had suffered a blinding bout of conjunctivitis and had to be ferried home by her mother. Tom, unassisted, coped with a bus-load of tourists and now had to get to the Cash ’n’ Carry and Juicy’s butchery before closing time. If possible. Vern Caldicott and his girl on the cash register, Mandy, abandoned the grocery section at 4.30 and served exclusively in the liquor department until 5.30. The pub would be open later, but Cash ’n’ Carry liquor was cheaper than pub liquor.
The list, Hannah’s list. Where the hell?
On the way to the ute, Tom felt in his pockets, side and back, at the same time cursing Beau who had taken all this hurry as high jinks and was leaping and yelping.
Tom said aloud, ‘Can I remember everything
?’ No. But here it was, the list, in the breast pocket of his shirt and thank God for that. He let Beau into the cabin of the ute, climbed in behind the wheel and roared down the driveway. Maybe ten minutes to reach the shops.
He glanced at the list, then dropped it on the seat between him and Beau: lb and a half of eye fillet steak, trimmed make sure; lb of little potatoes; silverbeet big bunch not wilted; half cabbage; four carrots big not too big; paprika in packet; self-raising flour packet small one; butter lb; three apples green; ice cream neapolitan in plastic tub. Thank you my darling.
Robert Hillman has written a number of books, including his 2004 memoir The Boy in the Green Suit, which won the National Biography Award, and Joyful, published by Text in 2014. He lives in Melbourne.
roberthillmanauthor.com
PRAISE FOR ROBERT HILLMAN AND JOYFUL
‘Hillman’s prose is a pleasure to read, elegantly alert to the paradox of strong feeling, full of poetry.’ Australian
‘Hillman’s writing has a rococo grandness and sweep. His confidence encompasses … the eccentricity of country towns, the glory and terror of the Australian countryside and the hilarity, as well as the anguish, of being mad. And he writes about sex with an earthiness reminiscent of D. H. Lawrence.’ Age
‘Hillman’s writing has a rococo grandness and sweep… This calamitous work, brassy with the vigour of life in a specifically Australian, specifically contemporary way, singles Hillman out from the crowd. There is nothing around quite like it; no genre, no homage to acknowledge.’ Sydney Morning Herald
‘Hillman’s prose is a pleasure to read, elegantly alert to the paradox of strong feeling, full of poetry yet never entirely convinced by the absurd rhetorical gestures favoured by ruined men… As one character observes of William Wordsworth, the poet showed that joy was in fact an achievement—more “a product of character than a product of inspiration”. The whole novel nestles in the wisdom of this thought.’ Australian
‘Joyful is exactly as it says, a great joy of a book. Robert Hillman is not making fun of grief but rather of his characters’ determination to wallow in their sorrow. It is a constant balancing act, skillfully enforced by Hillman and it makes reading Joyful an act of absolute pleasure.’ The Hoopla
‘Counting against all [the] business is Hillman’s gift for compelling characters, the elegance of his prose and his genius with inventive, surprising dialogue…This is a story about redemption and negotiating a place of peace inside despair.’ Saturday Paper
‘Portrays an entire, sealed world of complex and ultimately connected storylines.’ Australian Book Review
‘Slightly crazed, this unconventional story is essentially two similar struggles, at once both funny and sad. They finally merge and find resolution.’ Otago Daily Times
‘Ravishing, compelling prose…It’s a strangely funny, compelling, and sad novel, the beauty of which is found in searching for what remains once beauty has disappeared.’ Bookslut
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Copyright © 2018 by Robert Hillman
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First published in 2018 by The Text Publishing Company
Book design by Text
Cover image by Trevillion
Typeset in Caslon 12.3/17.25 by J&M Typesetting
ISBN: 9781925603439 (paperback)
ISBN: 9781925626476 (ebook)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia