Book of Lost Threads (18 page)

‘Ready?’ Mrs Pargetter played the opening chords of Schubert’s haunting melody.

‘Ave Maria, gratia plena . . .’
Moss began softly at first, her voice slowly swelling. ‘
Ora, ora pro nobis peccatoribus . . .’
Pure silver sound vibrated the dust motes in Mrs Pargetter’s stuffy front room, floated into the frosty night air and out into the streets of the tired little town. Helen Porter, walking her dog, felt a prickling along her spine. Cocky Benson, in a drunken stupor, brushed aside the tears that wet his corroded cheeks, and Sharon Simpson stopped painting her toenails and lifted her head to listen. Merv Randall, pausing as he wiped down the bar, briefly and wonderfully experienced the numinous.
You would of
swore it was an angel singing
, he told his customers the next day.

The sound also drifted over the fence to where Finn was returning from his evening Silence. He sat down on the front porch and lit a cigarette, watching the small point of light as though it and the music were the only things left in the world.
Ora pro nobis peccatoribus.
Pray for us sinners. After the last note died away he remained motionless, looking out across the darkening oval.

Inside, both singer and accompanist looked gravely at each other in a moment of silence that neither was willing to break. Mrs Pargetter quietly closed the piano. There were tears in her eyes. When she finally spoke, her voice was unsteady.

‘I had no idea . . . A gift from God himself, Moss. I had no idea . . .’

Moss gave the old woman an embarrassed hug and went outside where she found Finn, still sitting on his porch. She feigned a casual cheerfulness.

‘Sorry, Finn. I lost track of time. Mrs Pargetter has made her famous Irish stew. She wants to share it with us.’

Finn stood up slowly and stretched his back. ‘You can’t waste a talent like that, Moss. You’ve got to go back.’

‘Soon,’ she murmured. ‘Soon.’ She was agitated but would not admit it, even to herself. She had been studiously avoiding a decision, and now the clamour of her reawakened ambitions rose to the surface of her consciousness. ‘I’ll think about it in the New Year,’ she said.

But as it turned out, she had to return to the city much sooner than that.

The phone call came two days later.

‘Hello, love, it’s me. Is Michael with you?’ Amy’s voice sounded muffled.

‘No. Why?’

‘Are you alone, then?’

‘No, I’m with Mrs Pargetter. We’re having breakfast. Can I get Finn to call you back?’

‘Yes—no, wait. I’m sorry. There’s no way to make this easy, Miranda. I’ve just heard from Felicity. It’s Linsey.’ Moss sensed Amy’s struggle for composure. The news came out in a rush. ‘I’m so sorry, Moss. I have to tell you that Linsey—Linsey died last night, darling . . . I’m so sorry—she had cancer. It was so quick . . .’

Moss flinched painfully as the news hit her like a blow to the side of her skull. When she spoke, her voice was pleading. ‘Mum! It’s not true. It can’t be. I didn’t even know she was sick. Why didn’t you tell me?’ She had every right to be told. She was Linsey’s only child.

‘She didn’t tell me either, Moss. It was ovarian cancer. She was only diagnosed three weeks ago but by then it was too advanced to do anything. You know what she’s like. She didn’t tell anyone, even then. She only told Felicity and Robert a few days ago. They got to London too late. They’re organising a cremation over there—they’ll bring her ashes back home . . .’ Amy was speaking with a nervous rapidity. She stopped suddenly. ‘Miranda—Moss. Are you still there?’

The phone had fallen from Moss’s nerveless hand. She was gulping now, as though the air were suddenly depleted of oxygen. Mrs Pargetter picked up the phone and put it tentatively to her ear. She had gleaned the essence of the call, but wasn’t sure if the caller was Amy or Linsey.

‘Hello? Hello? Who’s there? Moss is very upset. Can I help?’

‘Is that Mrs Pargetter? This is Moss’s mother, Amy. I’ve just given her some bad news: her mother Linsey died last night. Please, can you look after her until Michael gets back and then ask him to ring me?’

‘Michael?’

‘Yes—no—I think Moss said he calls himself Finn.’

Mrs Pargetter put down the phone and led the trembling Moss to the sofa where she held her close. ‘It’s alright to cry, dear. She
was
your mother.’

But the landscape of Moss’s grief was bleak and arid. Mrs Pargetter heard the gate squeak, and gently disengaged herself. ‘That’ll be Finn, for morning tea. I’ll let him in.’

Moss’s dry-eyed grief worried Finn. He had an idea that women always cry at such moments, but Moss just sat with burning eyes, ceaselessly rubbing her temples. She hadn’t spoken since she dropped the phone. Finn and Mrs Pargetter looked at each other. They both understood grief, and they both understood guilt. Finn patted his daughter tentatively on the shoulder. It was the first time he had ever touched her, and even in her grief, she was pathetically grateful. She reached up and placed her hand over his, holding him there for a few moments more.

Finn cleared his throat as an unfamiliar warmth stole over him. ‘Talk to us, Moss. Tell us about Linsey.’ But Moss remained silent.

‘I’ll make some tea,’ decided Mrs Pargetter. ‘Plenty of sugar, for shock.’ That was what Mrs Moloney had said to her when the telegram arrived from the war office.
Sugar doesn’t help at
all
, she thought, but made the tea anyway.

As they silently sipped their tea, Sandy arrived, brandishing a manila folder. ‘I’ve just been to . . .’ he began, but the words died on his lips when he saw Moss’s white face and met Mrs Pargetter’s warning gaze. On hearing the news, he thrust the folder out of sight.

‘Moss. I’m so sorry.’ She gave him a little smile. Feeling helpless in the face of her grief, Sandy thought for a moment and then said diffidently, ‘If you want to go back to your mother’s, I’ll drive you. We can’t let you go on the bus.’

Finn looked at him with gratitude. ‘We’d appreciate that, Sandy.’

Mrs Pargetter patted his large, soft hand. ‘You’re not a bad fellow, sometimes, George.’

Errol, meanwhile, had crept over to Moss, jumping stiffly onto the sofa beside her. He licked her hand and pressed his nose into her lap. He was the best of all the Errols. She stroked his head gently, and finally, when her tears began to flow, Errol whimpered a little in sympathy.

Finn felt responsible for Moss’s welfare and insisted on coming to Melbourne with her and Sandy. It wasn’t kindness alone that motivated him. There was also the fragile connection he had just made: a slender thread spun out of her grief and his pity. He found himself wanting to comfort and protect her. She was a child and she had lost her mother. Father Boniface would have offered spiritual solace, but all Finn could offer was his company on her journey.
Little enough
, he thought sadly.

Mrs Pargetter packed some muffins. ‘Some for the road and some for your mother,’ she said, handing Moss two plastic containers. She added a thermos of tea. She tended to forget that nowadays they were only two and a half hours from Melbourne, even on a bad traffic day.

Sandy drove in silence as Moss sat in the back with Finn, staring out at the dry yellow paddocks and the featureless winter sky. She failed to notice Finn’s oblique glances and this time barely felt his hand as it moved tentatively to cover hers. While she understood the situation at the surface of her mind, Moss couldn’t quite grasp the fact, the uncompromising finality, of Linsey’s death. She couldn’t imagine how all that energy and longing and striving for perfection had simply stopped. How all the unfinished business over which Linsey had surely fretted would be processed by other hands or remain unfinished 163 forever.

‘You okay?’ Finn said finally. Moss nodded and continued to stare. ‘Won’t be long now. The exit’s only a few minutes away,’ he offered, feeling inadequate.

When Linsey left, all those years ago, she had assured Amy that she and Moss could stay in Aunt Shirley’s house until Moss was of age. There was a careless generosity in Linsey’s personal dealings that contrasted sharply with her hard-nosed practice as a banker. Consequently, Amy was still living in the family home even though their daughter had attained her majority several years before.

Moss felt the sickness of loss as the car pulled into the kerb and she saw the front door with its distinctive leadlight. Grief is not a constant state. It comes in waves, and at that moment Moss was engulfed, unable to speak or move. Linsey had loved her but she’d pushed her away. She had a flashback to that day at the beach; a little girl reaching out to Amy, leaving Linsey with her arms hanging ineffectually by her sides. It was what Moss had always done: blamed Linsey and exonerated Amy.

Music was their one shared pleasure. ‘One day I’ll hear you sing Mimi at the Sydney Opera House,’ Linsey would say. ‘And Violetta in Milan,’ Moss would reply. ‘Then Madame Butterfly at Covent Garden,’ they would chorus gleefully.

Linsey was always planning, as though life could be moulded to her will. But even before the sweet young voice began to mature so wonderfully, she loved to hear her daughter sing. Her tense face would soften and her eyes shine. At those moments the dissonance between them abated; Moss realised only now that they’d been moving towards an acknowledgement of the love they’d always felt for each other but had expressed clumsily and only too rarely since her adolescence. And she, Moss, had chosen to sever the bond. After Amy’s revelations regarding her conception, she had marched off to Linsey’s apartment and, ignoring the bell, knocked peremptorily on the door.

Linsey smiled to see her daughter. ‘Moss! What a nice surprise. Come in.’

Moss pushed past her mother and confronted her in the hallway. ‘I won’t be long,’ she said coldly. ‘I just want to tell you how I feel.’

Linsey was bewildered. ‘Whatever’s the matter? Has something happened to Amy?’

‘Mum’s fine. But she told me the truth. About how I was conceived. You
advertised
for a father for me. You chose a stranger. I suppose your friends weren’t good enough? And as for taking your chances with a sperm bank . . .’

‘Moss—Miranda, I don’t understand. I wanted the best for you . . .’

‘For
you
, you mean. I can see now why I was such a disappointment. You wanted a genius, a beauty . . . You wanted a—a
paragon
, not a child.’

When she spoke, Linsey’s voice was dry, but the struggle to control her emotions showed in her face. ‘I made mistakes, Moss. Motherhood didn’t come naturally to me like it did to Amy. And it’s true, I did think that I could plan the perfect baby, but once I saw you, I finally understood. You
were
a perfect baby, just as you were. I wanted someone to love and care for, and . . .’ She looked away. ‘Someone who might love me.’

Moss almost gave in then, shaken by this evidence of her mother’s vulnerability. Her impulse was to hug this woman who, though difficult in some ways, had nonetheless provided so much stability and certainty in her childhood. She moved forward slightly just as Linsey stepped back. And the moment for reconciliation was lost in that one uncertain gesture.

Stung by the apparent rebuff, Moss’s anger returned. ‘I just came to tell you that I won’t be going on with my singing. That was your ambition, not mine.’ She was beside herself now, shouting. ‘I’m glad you left. You’re a calculating bitch. You’re not fit to be a mother.’

‘Don’t do this.’ Linsey’s voice fractured the air between them. ‘Please don’t do this.’

But Moss had turned and left with an air of grievance that later compounded her shame. She didn’t look back, but she could see in her mind Linsey’s stricken face, her eyes darkened with pain, and the delicate tremor in her cheek. Visualising that, Moss was almost exultant, and strode off to the lift with a fierce, triumphant little smile.

Linsey had watched Moss’s retreating back and put out her hand as if to stop her. It was too late; Moss turned the corner and was out of sight, and Linsey’s hand fell back to her side.

She closed the door and went into her meticulously furnished sitting room where she sat down heavily. She picked up a cushion and held it to her, staring miserably at the wall. It wasn’t so long ago, it seemed, that she had held Moss for the first time and experienced the surge of joy that changed her forever.

Such a fierce little baby
, Linsey remembered. She would stiffen her body and scream if she didn’t want to be held. In those early days, though, she was mostly happy for Linsey to hold her; happy to snuggle into her willing arms. Despite her tiredness, Linsey loved those early mornings when Amy slept and she had this bewitching little creature to herself. She would sometimes stand and watch her, smiling as the little nose wrinkled and twitched on the cusp of sleep and waking. To Linsey, moments like these were tiny, perfect stitches in the fabric of her life.

Was I too hard on her?
Linsey wondered. Moss so often went to Amy when she was in trouble. Amy was the forest where Moss could explore and play freely, whereas Linsey created pathways, some of which led Moss to places she didn’t care for, but others to hard-won goals of which she could be rightly proud.