30
The curtains that had been pulled over the shopfront were cold and full of dust that floated like flour in the sun when Leon pulled them down. He squinted in the light, saw the butcher’s wife over the road look up at him and slowly raise a hand like she wasn’t sure she was seeing him. There was a postcard propped on top of a large pile of unopened mail. The picture on the front was of a headland, a yellow beach running from it, a bird painted in silhouette on to the blue sky. ‘Mulaburry Heads’ in orange lettering, ‘come swim in the sea’. When he looked closely he could see that someone had also painted in little black surfer figures, dotted on the crests of waves. The postcard, written in long, blue, generously spaced ink, read:
To our darling son
It’s been so long. This is where we are, should you ever want or need us.
All our love
Your Mother and Father
The address was northern. He did not tear it up. After he shaved off his beard he took down the orange felt album, grubbied at the edges from being hidden away under the oldest of the cookbooks. He pressed the postcard between the pages of the orange album and put it back in its place. He would deal with it when he’d had time to think.
There’d been a few requests for wedding cakes since he’d been back, but he’d headed them off, saying he wasn’t quite set up again yet for big orders – that his suppliers were still getting back to him, that his oven was on the blink. Things that he said without really thinking. He couldn’t imagine his hands being useful again. Perhaps that was it. The few girls who had come by, the ones he had taken out for a drink or a walk, had found him clumsy. His hands shook if he tried to spoon cream into their mouths, and his fingers seemed large and ogreish when he unbuttoned a blouse. His hands were cold as if there were no blood in them. They were better suited to holding a gun. Out of habit he had arranged the tarts in pairs like boobs, and looking at them he suddenly felt ashamed.
A car backfired in the main street and he looked up. Over the road, a girl was framed in the doorway of the butcher’s. She was overdressed and there was a feeling that at any minute a wind might lift up her dress and show the butcher her knickers. She wore white wrist gloves like a virgin from the fifties. Her high heels and her broad-brimmed hat in particular looked ready to turn against her, the one to twist her ankle and make her fall, the other to fly away – she held it firm between two fingers. Leon placed a cherry in the centre of a jam tart just as the bell on the door sounded and she pushed her way in. Her dress had a pattern of oranges and ivy, and her lipstick was fresh on and thicker than it ought to have been. He wanted to hold the back of her hair gently and blot her lips with a napkin; to trace the edges of her mouth with his index finger and neaten her up.
He looked at a lemon meringue pie and then, suddenly embarrassed, pushed it to one side. ‘G’day,’ he said.
‘Good morning,’ said the girl.
A small smile. His ears popped – he hadn’t realised they were stuffed – his whole head worked better than it had before.
The girl struggled to take off one of her gloves. She gave away the heat of them by wiping the palms of her hands on her dress. She stood, leaning on one hip, and he saw that she had a ladder in her stocking. ‘I was after a treacle tart.’ And when she spoke he saw that she was Amy Blackwell, and he understood why the air in the place had changed.