Free Homesickness by Murray Bail Page B

bone.
    Thank goodness: they were walking back to the crowd. Around forty, he was tall with worn straight features. He asked her name.
    â€˜And where do you come from, Sheila?’
    â€˜In Sydney.’
    â€˜Sydney or the bush,’ he roared. ‘Aye, Sheila?’
    Sheila smiled.
    â€˜Listen, what are you doing now? Could you do with a cup of tea or something? There’d have to be a place around here.’
    Glancing, Sheila thought he might be a country man originally, or even now; and so perhaps they could have talked. But she consulted her watch more out of habit.
    â€˜I can’t. I’m afraid I can’t.’
    â€˜All righty. No problems.’
    Keeping his cigarette in his mouth he squinted exaggeratedly through the smoke as he wrote down her hotel. ‘Good on you. I’ll be in touch, Sheila. Be good.’
    His name was Hammersly, Frank Hammersly.
    Sheila went along to her aunt and was still biting her lip, confused, when she returned to the hotel. She took little notice of the scenery. It was growing dark. The man—Frank Hammersly. Certainly he had the gift of the gab. Not that it… He was a tall figure of a man, solid timber. In the big suit his face and shoulders consisted almost entirely of straight lines. His shoes were dark tan, crinkled brogue. These had made her think he was from the country, originally. She should have asked him! He would have said. He could certainly talk. He’d be phoning and she’d have to say. He said he’d phone. And she didn’t know.
    The driver wore the cloth cap. Fat creased his neck: horizontal cuts of a knife. He was a heavy man, but not as solid as Frank Hammersly. As they crossed the river he twisted, ‘That’s where the coppers caught Christie, the pervert-murderer. Right about…there.’
    Steering with one hand he pointed. Then he began shaking his head.
    â€˜He was a shocker. How many women was it he carved up? I must have passed him that day. I had a job out here. It was when we had our fogs. That wasn’t all that long ago. I still have the foreigners getting in asking to see the house. Number 10…’
    Sheila tilted her head to be polite.
    A travel firm ran a tour over Christie’s house, Christ, every Monday night. They have his cupboards open, the old bath, and on the mantelpiece his National Health eyeglasses. Some of the floorboards are up for you to see. It’s for the Irish and the Scots who come down. You get a few tourists—Frogs. Americans have heard about him.
    Sheila fumbled for change,
    â€˜I’ve only been told about it,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘I haven’t been in myself.’
    To make matters worse, Sheila wasn’t familiar with the currency yet. Here you had to give the drivers a full tip: but the handful she shoved through, not counting the African coins, was probably far too much.
    The Hofmanns were there in the lounge listening to Gerald Whitehead who still wore his raincoat. They nodded when Sheila hurried up; Gerald kept talking.
    â€˜I didn’t believe it at first. But it was everywhere I went.’
    â€˜Oh what a pity.’
    â€˜Why, what’s wrong?’ Sheila asked.
    â€˜Let’s have a drink,’ Hofmann smiled. ‘At least our day wasn’t bad.’
    Nation, island, capital city of facts. The black-and-white half-tones had moved indoors. Someone had noted this year was the 156th anniversary of Niepce’s invention of photography, and the only time the anniversary would match the camera’s most popular (Number 1) aperture setting, f5.6. And that wasn’t all! The retrograde of 56, it was pointed out, was 65—sixty-five years ago Oscar Barnck in Germany built the first 35mm camera! Photography—who said it?—is the folk art of the industrial age. The great museums of London were taken up with appropriate celebratory exhibitions.
    At the National Gallery, X-ray photographs of the