The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted: A Novel - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Robert Hillman is the author of The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted and the coauthor of The Honey Thief. He won Australia's National Biography Award in 2005 for his memoir The Boy in the Green Suit. He lives in Melbourne, Australia.

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Chapter 1

She didn't stay long as far as marriages go, just a year and ten months. Her note was brief, too:

I'm leaving. Don't know what to say.

Love

Trudy

And Tom Hope was left injured in a way that seemed certain to kill him.

He stood at the wooden table in the kitchen reading again and again what she'd written. He thought: It was the rain. He pictured her standing on the verandah in her blue dress and her cardigan while the rain came down day after day from a gray sky. He read the note one more time. It was written on the pink notepaper she'd used on special occasions and dated September 10, 1962. She'd also left behind a piece of toast from which she'd taken a single bite. The indent preserved the arc of her teeth.

He kept to the farm for weeks after she'd gone. He knew what would happen if he drove into Hometown: How's the missus, Tom? from every direction-and he had no answer. He worked in a daze, holding himself together as best he could. Cleared the channels in the orchard, a good five days, then repaired the wire fences of the hill pastures ready for the woollies in spring. He had never wept in his life but these days his cheeks were tear-streaked all the time. When he noticed, he would shrug: What did it matter?

She barely had any family: her father missing up in New South Wales; her mother and sister, Tilly, living with some Bible bashers who'd taken them down to Phillip Island. Where could she have gone?

He couldnÕt stay on the farm forever. He needed tobacco, sugar, tea. He needed Aspros. He woke with a headache every morning. In town, first one friend then another expressed surprise at his long absence. When he was asked how his wife was faring, he said, ÒOh, she went on her way.Ó He didnÕt elaborate. He thought, IÕm meant to be alone. He had more reason than Trudy running away to make him believe this. HeÕd always been awkward with people. He had to remind himself to smile. But in his heart he yearned for people all around him. Only let them not ask him to talk and smile too much. Let them just say: ÒTom, good to see you,Ó and, ÒTom, look in one time and say hello to the kids.Ó Animals forgave his unease. The mare heÕd bought for Trudy to enjoy obeyed him, never her. His dog, Beau, an old heeler, loved him in the way of dogs. But then, Beau loved everyone.

. . .

Listening to the radio one evening, he understood suddenly a comment sheÕd made not so long before she left. She had talked a lot when she was playing the game with the three decks of cards, such things as: ÒClever girl!Ó and ÒWhoops-a-daisy!Ó But the comment Tom had just recalled was different. At the time, heÕd thought it part of her strange three-deck game. It wasnÕt. It was something intended for him. ÒAnother night in paradise,Ó sheÕd said, moving one small pile of cards to the edge of the low table.

. . .

Tom stood up from his armchair and stared straight ahead. Why had it taken him so long to understand? Another night in paradise. He stamped through the house, arms folded tight over his chest. All the things he might have done to make his wife happy crowded his mind. A record player. Songs that she could choose for herself. A television set on hire to purchase. A proper bathtub, not that half-rusted tin thing. He ran to the kitchen and found a piece of paper and a black pencil. In a frenzy, he wrote a list of the things he would do to make a difference if Trudy should one day come back. Whenever a new idea came to mind, he rushed back to the kitchen and added it to the list:

6-Picnics!!

7-Pets cat budgie!!

8-Light fire kitchen first thing!!

Outside, Beau ran yelping along the verandah from the back door to the side door, excited by the movement inside the house.

More items occurred to him over the following days. Tell her about good things she does. Such as what? Like when she doesnÕt burn the sausages. And when heÕd had that pain in the guts, sheÕd asked him three times if he was feeling better. Like when she says how are you feeling. But one afternoon in the kitchen for a cuppa he glanced down at his list on the table and noticed how hard heÕd pressed the pencil into the paper. This was mad, wasnÕt it, making notes? Tell Beau not to jump up on her. An image formed of Beau listening to him, head cocked. Tom smiled and made a mental note on a different list: DonÕt be an idiot. Trudy had told him once, smiling, that he was ÒunbalancedÓ given the way that heÕd stick with some problem about the farm for hours, for days, studying the habits of the codling moth until heÕd all but indexed the physical and mental processes of the insect. SheÕd mimicked him perfectly, the way he wandered up and down, arms crossed, head on his chest, mumbling his thoughts. HeÕd enjoyed the mickey-taking.

. . .

TomÕs sisters drove up from Melbourne in PattyÕs big Ford to see to him. HeÕd been their big brother in their growing-up years but at some point, one sister then the other had adopted a protective way of handling him. It was as if their developing experience with men had made them aware that their brother lacked a type of male insistence, often very stupid insistence but maybe necessary. He was solid with men, respected by them; but a woman of a certain sort, they clearly believed, could get away with murder. And Trudy was evidently that sort.

. . .

Listen to Tom in his letters taking all the blame on himself! The sisters had come to the farm with a message: Get over her, Tommy love, and move on.

Tom had only the one strategy for dealing with his sisters when they fussed: He became carefree. Making tea in the kitchen, Patty called over her shoulder: "More fool her if she doesn't want our handsome Tom!"

Tom said, "Probably for the best!" and smiled as if he were well on top of the situation.

Claudie said, "Her and her crosswords!" She meant the crosswords in the Sun newspaper that Trudy had pored over, chewing her pencil.

Patty called cleverly, "I'd give her a cross word or two if she turned up now, I can tell you!" and the three of them laughed.

When the sisters left for home in the middle of the afternoon, Tom heaved a sigh of relief. But the relief was succeeded by a plunge of sadness. He had said one or two things critical of Trudy for his sisters' sake and now he felt like a traitor. "Damn you for that!" he said aloud to himself. He added to his second-chance list of ideas a new item, number 34: Don't blame her for things!!

A big southeasterly took a sheet of iron off the dairy roof the day Trudy returned. Tom was up a ladder in the late afternoon hammering the sheet back in place when he saw her. The Melbourne bus must have dropped her off on the town road. Everything in the world came to a stop except for Trudy struggling up the drive with her suitcase. It had been raining for a month, just as it had been when she ran off, and it was raining now. The first words that came to Tom when blood returned to his brain were: ÒThank God!Ó He hurtled down the ladder two rungs at a time and strode to meet his wife with all the unused joy of twelve months swelling his heart.

. . .

When they met halfway up...