Country Comfort
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday August 29, 2015

Through the Wyalkatchem shop window, Capt. Jack’s Antiques Emporium looked murky and deserted. The sign on the door read: Open most days about 9 or 10. Occasionally as early as 7. Sometimes as late as 12 or 1.

I didn’t blame Capt. Jack for keeping gentleman’s hours. The town was having a slow morning. At 10.30am, mine was the only car on the main street. I’d been driving east since 7am, aiming for Beacon, on the far edge of the Wheatbelt, where I was to give a talk at a luncheon. My caffeine-deprived brain had demanded a pit-stop.

As I stretched my legs, a pair of crows pranced about in the middle of the road. They flitted up and swooped onto the footpath to inspect the city slicker and her station wagon. Unimpressed with my country credentials, they resumed skipping across the wide avenue of Railway Terrace. “You should try your luck in the big smoke,” I thought as I jiggled the door handle at Capt. Jacks.

To my surprise, the door swung open, jangling a bell that startled me and sent my corvine friends wheeling noisily into a fluted gum.

“Hello?” I called, noticing a yellowing newspaper propped against the glass ribs of an old wash-board. “LINDY GUILTY” shouted the headline. I picked up the paper and checked the banner: October 30, 1982. The front page picture showed a heavily pregnant Lindy Chamberlain being driven to jail.

“A travesty,” came a voice from the gloomy rear of the shop. A tall gent wearing a checked flannel shirt loomed into view. “The dingo did it,” he said through a thick silvery moustache. “And got away with it.” His eyes were a bright shade of blue in a weathered face. He must’ve been pushing seventy.

“Is there somewhere I can get a coffee?” I asked, carefully returning the newspaper to the window display. “And is there a loo around here?”

He laughed. “Been holding on since Dowerin have you?”

“Perth actually. This is my first stop.”

“Why would you live in that festering cesspit when you could live in this small corner of paradise?” he said with a grin. He jerked his thumb to the left to signal I was at the wrong end of town: “Fred the newsagent will make you a nice coffee,” he said. “But you can use my dunny if you like.” He stopped himself with a grunt: “Hang on. I better check it’s fit for female company. Being a bachelor n ‘all, you might not like my toilet humour.” He brayed at his joke.

As my new acquaintance wheeled around, I followed his slippered feet past a pine meat safe, a shellacked dressing table and a smiling Clarke Gable, propped against a bedhead. I breathed in the fusty smell of old books and bibelots, wishing I had an hour to kill, fossicking amongst these treasures.

He ushered me into an airy kitchen at the back of the shop, where a small woman in a scarlet turtleneck and a matching red hat sat at a table nursing a mug of tea.

“This is my friend Bessie. You’d never pick her for 78, would you?” he said. The three of us began polite introductions. “I’m Mick,” he said, “and this,” he added, motioning toward a ginger tabby-cat sidling over to join us, “is No Nuts.”

I spluttered.

“I refuse to call him that,” said the small woman. “I call him Doughnuts.”

“I rescued that cat from Kings Park,” said Mick. “He’s countrified now. Eats three bunnies a week, don’t you boy?” And he tickled the moggy under his chin.

“How long have you had the shop?” I ask.

“Four years. Had in mind to call it Dr Jack’s, but they wouldn’t let me, case people thought I was the town GP. It’s not my first antiques shop. I had one in Beaufort Street, in Inglewood twenty years ago.”

“I remember that shop!” I exclaim. “I bought a mirror there once.”

“There you go,” he said. “Small world.”

It’s time to go if I’m to reach Beacon by midday. As I emerge from the loo, a thought strikes me: “Aren’t you lonely on your own in a small town like this?”

“Nope,” says Mick. “Suits me fine. I needed a change of scenery. Three divorces’ll do that to you. I’ve been single now for thirty years and I can tell you, loneliness is a state of mind.”

Bessie nods her agreement.

I say my thank you’s and return to the street. Wyalkatchem is maintaining its deserted facade. But Fred the newsagent’s a jolly fellow who makes me a long black and draws me a short cut to Beacon on the back of a serviette.

As I head north, Wyalkatchem dwindles to a speck in my rear view mirror. I’d have liked to stay longer.