Percy hadn’t agreed exactly—he had his own views about what the boys might do with themselves next—but he hadn’t disagreed, either, and because Meg had always been the more dynamic of the pair—quicker to action, quicker to anger, quicker to everything—it wasn’t long before they’d received a visit from old Ted Holmes, the signwriter. “Seems like only yesterday I was climbing this very awning,” he’d said with a tobacco-dry laugh. “Have a feeling my joints will tell me it’s been longer than that, though.”
It had, in fact, been over twenty-five years since the last alteration was made. Percy could remember it well. He’d been seventeen or so, returning from a delivery near Nairne, when he found his mum and dad standing with Mr. Holmes on the footpath outside the shop, right about where Percy was now. His father had called him over, regarding him with unusual focus, almost like he was making an appraisal, before telling him there’d been “a few changes” while he was gone. Percy had looked up to where the old man gestured, at the half-moon panel that sat above the building’s awning, and seen that the shop’s longtime name—Summers Grocer—now read:summers & son grocers.
“It’s our family business,” his dad said. “Only right that you should be up there on the sign beside me.”
Harry Summers was a man who’d spent a lifetime working hard to feel nothing, so to glimpse emotion on his face was stunning. It took Percy a moment to recognize the expression as pride. The realization had caught him off guard, and at first he couldn’t find coherent words to speak.
His father filled the gap. “What? Not to your liking?”
“Nah, it’s great, Dad.” Percy managed a grin. “Looks terrific.”
His father, Percy could tell, considered that the alteration bestowedupon his son a great honor. But the change was more than a symbolic gesture. Something that had previously been murky and submerged was lifted into the light: Percy’s parents expected him to take over the shop when it became too much for them. He was to step seamlessly into their shoes and walk the path they had laid out for him. His life was mapped, its borders drawn.
Standing on the footpath, his mother smiling at him with satisfaction, Percy experienced panic followed by a heavy sinking sensation. But he didn’t have the heart, or the words at his disposal, to tell his parents that he wasn’t sure he wanted to stay in Tambilla and become the town’s next shopkeeper, that there were things he wanted to learn and places he wanted to see. His dad would never have understood.
In the moment, Percy figured there was no need to say anything. It wasn’t like he had a travel plan mapped out, or a clear idea of what he wanted to do with his life. He had a notebook that he kept in his pocket, where he collected ideas and information about the pyramids of Giza and the canals of Venice, the giant sequoia trees in North America and the hot springs near Reykjavik. He kept a list there, too, of the places from his favorite novels. Villages in England, Jane Austen’s Bath, the city streets of London and Paris. But all of that was still a dream. He couldn’t afford to go anywhere now; he needed a job. Why upset his parents before he had to? He would wait and find a way to break it to them gently.
He didn’t realize that by the time he had enough money in his account there’d be Meg to think of, too. They’d been going steady for a few years when his dad started to ask around his pipe of an evening when Percy was going to “make an honest woman of her.” Percy brushed the questions off initially. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to marry Meg; he just had a lot of other things to do first. He’d always assumed Meg would want the same.
One night, as he drove the pair of them home from a trip to the pictures to seeThe Hound of the Baskervilles, Percy told her about the money he’d saved and floated the idea that they might spend it on twotickets to England. He’d read in the newspaper about the tensions in Europe, but he was confident Adolf Hitler would see reason: nobody wanted another war—even him, surely.
Meg had looked at Percy as if he was mad, and then she’d laughed and said, “I thought you were serious for half a second.” She’d tightened her hold on his hand and smiled contentedly as she leaned back in the passenger seat of the car. “But it’s wonderful news about the money,” she continued dreamily. “After we’re married, we’ll be able to build a little place just for us.”
She waited a few more weeks before telling him her own news, which went a fair way to explaining why she’d refused even to consider an adventure on the other side of the world. The two of them were married soon after, when Percy was twenty-two and Meg was eighteen, and just before she started to show. They moved into the coach house at the back of the block, behind the shop and his parents’ house.
Percy had dreamed of seeing the Eiffel Tower and walking the coastal paths of Cornwall, but now, he realized, it was time to become a man and put away childish things. He’d been showered with good fortune. These weakened, wonky legs of his could have held him back, but here he was, married to a woman like Meg, with the promise of a solid income and a good home in a fine town where everyone knew his name. And now he was going to be a father.
If his will ever weakened, and he found himself staring out of the window, lost in dreams of other places, his mother’s words came back to him, spoken on a hot day at the edge of his convalescent bed when he was just a boy: “There’s other ways to travel.”
She was right. He had books, and there was no barrier to the places he could visit in his own mind.
Percy started across the street toward the shop. He let himself in through the gate that accessed the path running alongside the stonebuilding. It was eerily quiet. For the past fifteen years he wouldn’t have been able to make this walk without Buddy-dog racing out to greet him. He felt a wave of sorrow for the loss of the loyal old friend.
The house where they lived—where he had once lived with his mother and father—was behind the shop, in the middle of the narrow, rectangular allotment. There was a light on inside, golden and not too bright. Percy hesitated, wanting to observe the tranquility of his home before breaching the threshold, the home where he and Meg had raised their boys, where scrapes had been patched and birthdays celebrated, scolding and praise dished out in turn.
He moved closer to the window. There was no one in the room, but the Christmas tree stood in the corner, Meg’s treasured decorations hanging at the ends of the branches. The boys had made so many ornaments at school over the years, and Meg had kept them all, wrapping each one on Twelfth Night as carefully as if she’d paid a fortune for it in one of the expensive shops in Adelaide.
Percy pressed his hand against the rough stone wall. The scene on the other side of the window was so homely and warm. He felt a sense of profound isolation. It was as if the world he had known, all the safety he had imagined, had disintegrated and dispersed. He felt soiled. By the day, by the years of his life that had led to this point, by the things that he had seen that afternoon, the sight of them all there on that picnic blanket. The stillness, that awful moment. Lord, he would never get it out of his head for as long as he lived.
But there could be no turning back. He would go inside, take off his boots, and line them up against the wall where he always did. He would fetch the gifts he’d hidden before he left for the Station and place them under the Christmas tree for his family to open in the morning. He would find his eldest son and do what he could to support him, and then he would wash himself and climb into bed and wait for the sun to rise on the holiest day of them all.
Percy turned the door handle, and as he stepped into the entryroom, his hand went to his pocket where he’d put the little wooden bird he’d bought in Hahndorf, back before the world tilted on its axis.
But his pocket was empty.
Somewhere, somehow, in the space of the afternoon, along with so much else, he had lost the little carving.
Part II
6
Sydney
December 10, 2018
Jess watched as the taxi pulled away and then glanced once more at the morning sky. It was always a shock, after London’s dense, mist-filled dome, to see how bright and blue the sky was in Sydney, and how far away. A plane was coming in across the ocean, she noticed, a distant speck of white drawing nearer.
That had been her, three hours before. The flight had been long: she hadn’t slept out of London, her thoughts too noisy, but she’d put the time to good use, working on the draft of her article. She’d watched a couple of movies and dragged herself around the time-defying, lit-up mecca of Changi Airport, and then fallen asleep on the second leg, somewhere over Indonesia, waking only when a flight attendant leaned across her to raise the shade on the window.
