6
Mrs Shannon had her hair cut like Jackie Kennedy. The baby Leon’s mother had predicted never showed up and nothing was said. He always gave her something free and he wondered if it wasn’t for the free treat that she kept returning, but for the chance to be given something. She was beautiful, even though the skin of her chest was dark and stretched from the sun, and sometimes underneath her sunglasses you could see flesh swollen so that it nearly touched the glass of the lens. It didn’t stop her from wearing a green gauze ball gown just to walk down to the shops. She turned up one time with her arm in a sling, home-sewed stitches in her lip.
‘How’s the cake trade, kiddo?’
‘Just fine, thanks, Mrs Shannon.’
‘I’ll have a lamington, please, darl.’ And she held the money in her hand, fragile wrist pointing up, an insistence in the jiggle of her fingers. ‘Go on, take the money. I’ll be bleeding you dry.’
‘What’s the use living opposite a bakery if you can’t have a biscuit for free?’ and he gave her a florentine, not a lamington, because he knew that was what she really liked. He wondered what he would do if Mr Shannon ever came into the shop, but he’d never seen him. He’d never even seen the man walk out of his house.
The rest of the year was wet. The cake shop steamed up on the inside. His mother spent time running errands that involved being out of the shop and he wondered if she was retracing the steps his father had taken all around the city. He didn’t follow her to find out, just waited for something to happen. When she came home, she was pale and thin, and she looked like she would be thrown down in a breeze. She started having the long baths again, but this time there was no steam that filled up the top rooms. He felt the water once as it drained away after she had got out and it was cold.
After the rain came an envelope with his father’s handwriting on it. He watched from the back room while she stood at the counter and opened it gently, unsticking the paper flap, not tearing, looking frightened of what might be inside. She looked at the letter, her face blank, then the door chimed and she was gone down the street, melting between the parked cars. She left the letter on the table, thin blue paper folded once. There was a dot at the top of the page, like he’d been about to write but couldn’t think of what to say. And then there was his signature and beneath that, in place of where there might have been a cross for a kiss, another dot, this one bigger than the first, the ink blooming from the pen nib and staining through to the other side. The postmark read something northern and when his mother returned a few hours later she took that, not the letter, to tuck into the book she kept by her bed.
The next morning Leon put a preserved cherry on top of a cake and smiled. When he looked up, he saw Mrs Shannon walk by, a scarf round her face, pulled low over her eyes. She walked like she was only wearing one shoe and then she was gone. His mother appeared in the doorway, her hat pinned to her head, a grey suitcase in her hand, and even though it was warm out she wore her long wool coat. She put a gloved hand in his hair and there was her wet face again, her nose like a beak. She dropped her arm. ‘And suddenly you’re a grown-up man,’ she said. ‘I have to go away, chicken,’ and even though he’d been expecting something like this, he thought she’d insist on him going with her, thought he might have to put his foot down and explain that someone had to keep the shop running. That maybe he could help her look on a Sunday, call up a few lodging houses and give a description of his father. She took a tissue out of her pocket and rubbed her nose with it. ‘I’ll write, of course, when I find him, and then we’ll see.’ Leon felt the smile that was fixed on his face. It hurt his teeth. ‘You understand, chicken?’ He nodded and really he did understand, he could see it in the lines on her face, that to her it was more important to find a man who’d been missing even when he was sitting beside her in his easy chair.
In bed, Leon lay awake in the empty house. There was the tick of the bedside clock, the beat of his heart and the terrible sound of something coming for him, hoof and claw and tooth grinding in the dirt. Scritch-scratch, snuffle.
Weeks went by and sleeping was still strange and restless, but his ears didn’t strain to hear anything that might be going on in another room; he didn’t anticipate the arrival of his thin-voiced mother, didn’t leave his spare pillow under the bed any more. There was no one to watch him close up early for a date or to watch him bring a girl back. He did it a few times, but he couldn’t sleep with the girl in his bed. He found himself sitting watching her as she slept, willing her to wake up and leave because looking at her lying there he felt nothing at all. Even when they were beautiful there was nothing, hard though he looked for it. So he stopped bringing them back and sometimes he closed up the shop a little early to spend more time in the Parramatta Hotel with the men who looked darkly into their drinks as they laughed over old stories. The man with the claw hand came over and sat with him one afternoon. ‘You’re Collard’s son,’ he said and even if Leon had not been he wouldn’t have been able to say no.
‘He’s gone off,’ Leon said, not sure what the man wanted.
‘I know. Best thing for it. If a man doesn’t want company he wants to be on his own.’
‘Suppose. Mum’s gone to find him.’
‘Seen a lot, that man. Cousin of mine was in the same camp.’
‘Is he here?’ He wanted to see what other people looked like – how they handled it.
‘Nah, mate. He’s not.’ Leon took a long drink from his glass and hoped the man would change the subject. ‘Bit of advice, son,’ he said, waving his claw over his drink. ‘Try and forget about it. No one wants to hear about it, no one wants to talk about it, no one wants to remember it. Let them alone to thrash it out. It’s a healing thing. Think about other things, there’s plenty to go round, plenty of other things need a good bit of thought put into. What about this new lot of oriental types and their Ho-Chee-Man? Just round the corner, mate. Worry about that while you drink ya beer.’
‘Right,’ said Leon, and the man winked and got up to return to his friends. As six o’clock approached and the drinking speeded up, Leon watched the claw man laughing and talking with his friends, and he thought it was good to be away from the hopeful eyes of girls. He wondered what would happen to his parents if they found each other again.
A postcard arrived. The picture on the front showed a drawing of a child in a red and white striped swimsuit and armbands up round his shoulders. He had his hands on his hips, his trunks thrust forward, standing in front of a photograph of a beach somewhere. The child’s eyes were blue and his irises reflected a smiling sunshine. His cheeks were red and humped in front of his eyes.
Chicken, my son,
I’ve found your father. He is better than he was, and so am I to see him. He sleeps now, and I watch him, the quiet is good for both of us. He drinks less. We are staying in a little wooden house with a tin roof near the sea and there are gum trees all around, and so it smells good too. Once he feels better, in a little bit of time, perhaps I will try to bring him back and we will all three get going again. Until then I like to let him sleep and he likes to be away from the people.
He sends his love and of course so do I,
Mother and Father
xxx
It made sense to send a postcard if you didn’t have much to say. Perhaps she had thought the picture of the overexcited colourful child would make him think she was just having a holiday. He tucked it in between the pages of a book along with all the other important correspondence that was lost in their small bookshelf, pressed and captured. He washed his face in the bathroom and afterwards looked long and still into the mirror. It was like someone had drawn over his face with another, the face he recognised swam in and out, a dark impression of something else shaded over the top. He found his father’s Leica and felt the weight of it in his palm, and its heavy mechanic comfort. He held it at arm’s length and took a picture of himself as proof.
When the pictures were developed a few weeks later, there was his face, normal and his own, and it was good to see it.
The paper’s shouty headlines were all about the new war, but Leon liked to turn to the quieter stories inside, the local heroes, the record barramundi, a new nail factory to be opened by some stiff-haired boy evangelist preacher. He shaped a figure as he read, using the warmth of his hands from his coffee mug because the marzipan had passed its time.
Mrs Matsue Matsuo, mother of Commander Matsuo, one of the Japanese midget submarine men who was killed when he attacked Sydney Harbour in 1942, came today to place a wreath on Sydney cenotaph in remembrance of her son.
Mrs Matsuo wept as she was handed the charm belt that her son had been wearing when he died. The vessel, containing Commander Matsuo and Tsuzuku, was sunk with depth charges. When recovered four days later they were found to have shot themselves. The ceremony only serves to heighten negative feeling about Australia’s involvement in the war in Vietnam.
The figurine in Leon’s hands grew a kimono, the hair, long to the middle of the back, straight. The arms disappeared up the draping sleeves and the head was lightly bowed. When he painted the face the eyes would be closed.
Someone knocked at the door and he looked up to see one of the older Shannon kids. She stood like a straw doll, straight up and down, a conspicuous bump in her middle, she supported herself with one hand on her lower back. He opened the door with a jangle, ‘Sorry – bit late opening this morning.’
‘Kay.’
He put himself back behind the counter. ‘What can I get you?’
‘Four buns, please.’
‘Sultana? Or apple?’
‘Apple, thanks.’
She looked skinny in the arm and face. The more he looked at her the more she looked like a sea horse, with that balloon bump. Her hands looked large and red compared to the rest of her. He put six buns in a bag. She saw but pretended not to. It wasn’t like with her mother – he felt that if he offered them for free she wouldn’t accept, and worse than that she would be embarrassed. She handed over the money and he gave her 20 cents too much change and again she kept her eyes above it. He closed the till and the girl still stood there.
She looked at the paper open on the counter. She saw the figurine too, but glanced away before she could have understood it. ‘They gave her back his belt, y’know.’ Her words were sudden and sharp as if she hadn’t really meant for them to come out.
‘I heard that,’ said Leon, not really sure how he should respond. He tried to gauge how old she was, but with her pregnancy and her young face he couldn’t tell. She stood with the paper bag of apple buns in one hand, change clutched in the other. It seemed she would say something else. He smiled encouragingly, but felt the flush of embarrassment on his face. She had caught him off-guard. Nothing would come in response to, ‘They gave her back his belt, y’know.’ She gave a small nod, turned and walked out of the shop. Her dress was too small for her and rode up on her legs so that he could see bruises the size of navel oranges on the backs of her knees.
She almost collided with the postman who, for the first time ever, shuffled into the shop. He didn’t look at Leon or speak, but slapped four letters down on the counter.
‘G’day,’ said Leon, surprised. Still the postie didn’t look up, but he gave the letters one last pat, sighed and headed off again.
The brown envelope was creaky with officialdom. A roar started up in Leon’s head. He stood still at the counter. It slunk in the door. Everything will be changed.
The radio sang:
Through the years my love will grow,
Like a river it will flow.
It can’t die
Because I’m so
Devoted
To you.
He turned the envelope over in his hands, looked at where it had been sealed by some unknown tongue. He heard a small hiss, a growl. Maybe it was just the shop sign creaking in the breeze. He would have liked to put the letter aside and carry on with his day. He would have liked to head out right that minute, find a date and screw her up against a tree in the park with the fruitbats hanging all around, put the bastard thing back in its place, get just a little purchase on the good quiet feeling, even if it didn’t last. But it was early and there were lamingtons to dip; and the letter couldn’t stay unopened, it demanded him. He opened it carefully, leaving a clean rip in the top. The paper inside was thin and the black type showed through to the other side. He read it, then closed his eyes for the longest time.
He opened them when the bell to the shop rang and a short man he had never seen before walked in. The man stood in the middle of the shop floor blinking from the brightness outside. He was neat, his hair was combed and flat to his scalp, the cuffs of his shirt were spotless. ‘How’s the day treating you, son?’ he asked, smiling, and there was a slight whiff of something old, like he’d put his immaculate clothes on over a dirty body.
‘I’ve been conscripted.’
The man’s smile stuck and Leon noticed that the rims of his eyes were scarlet. ‘Sorry to hear that.’ The man walked closer to the counter and Leon could smell beer on him.
‘What can I get you?’
‘Just a loaf.’
‘Big one?’
‘Small.’
‘Yes.’
The man stayed silent until his bread was wrapped, the money exchanged. ‘It does something to a man,’ he said, not looking Leon in the eye, as if he didn’t want to say it, but someone was making him. ‘They get you to murder people out there, son. There’s no reason for it. You can’t fix those people.’
He could think of nothing to say. The man left, after a second’s eye contact. The bell rang and he was gone. Leon watched him cross the street and push open the door of the Shannon house before disappearing inside. So Donald Shannon was a small man after all.
That night he dreamt he was a kid, the Russian spaceship passing by overhead. Nothing exciting, just a slow-moving star. Standing outside the shop in the dark with the taste of sweet date slab in his throat and his father’s hand on the back of his neck, the warmth, the easy touch. The smell of his mother nearby – apricots. The tick-tock of the whole street turning their lights on and off, the black the green the black the green. Cheers started houses away, rippling down the street until they became one voice that cried out, shrieked, ‘Hello!’ as it trundled by, waited for some return message, but of course there was none. He walked a few steps into the street, hoping it might do something. At the time he’d held it against the Russians. They could have done a loop de loop, but all it’d done was pass slowly by ignoring the flashing lights of Parramatta, and the candlelit vigil on the bridge that wonkily spelt out ‘SYDNEY’ in weak flame. In among the hallooing, in among the songs about Australia, the flashing house lights, was the doorway of the shop, dark and silent where he could make out the lines of his parents watching the sky and he pretended not to see.