Book of Lost Threads

by Tess Evans

  ‘It’s like a rite of passage—even a good luck ritual,’ Andrew Nicholls told his successor, Chang Kyong-–sil. ‘Apparently it started way back when the current Kenyan Ambassador to the UN was a mail clerk. We always sign the letter Lusala Ngilu, Quartermaster. It’s part of the continuity. This Mrs Pargetter must be about a hundred and eighty by now. Some of us even wonder if she’s the same one who started it all.’

  ‘What happens to the tea cosies?’ Chang Kyong-–sil was a practical young woman.

  ‘That’s the challenge. Apparently most of the first lot went to countries that drink tea, although some were distributed around the UN complex. The second “Lusala” sewed up the holes and sent them to a hill tribe in China for hats. They’ve been used to incubate eggs. And so on. My solution was to use them for the safe packing of medical supplies.’

  Chang looked thoughtful. ‘And no-one thinks this is strange?’

  ‘Strange, yes. But comforting, somehow. It’s a bit of old-fashioned kindness in a world where kindness is not valued nearly enough.’

  Two months later, Chang wrote her letter and carefully signed the name Lusala Ngilu in a fair copy of the original. As she despatched the cosies, metamorphosed now into foot warmers, she felt a quiet sense of achievement. The following year, around the time Mrs Pargetter was making scones for Moss and Finn, Ana Sejka became the next Lusala, and listened with special interest to Chang’s briefing.

  ‘This Mrs Pargetter is Australian,’ she murmured. ‘I wonder where Opportunity is, exactly.’

  9

  Opportunity and Cradletown

  OPPORTUNITY WEEKES WAS BORN ON the Californian goldfields. His father, Jeremiah, was an itinerant preacher with smouldering eyes, a beard that rivalled Abraham’s and a voice that could waken the dead. His mother, formerly Miss Clementine Witherspoon, was the eighth daughter of a Kansas crop farmer whom God had previously afflicted with seven plain daughters to marry off as best he could. The charming blonde Clementine was his only hope of a prosperous old age, and Farmer Witherspoon was understandably devastated when his lovely youngest daughter ran away at the age of seventeen to marry Jeremiah.

  Perhaps it was the curse the farmer sent after them, or maybe it was his daughter’s rebellious nature, but after Jeremiah’s mesmeric eyes lost their power over her, Clementine ran away again, this time to join the eclectic band of young women in Miss Kitty’s brothel. There she worked, watched and listened until she felt her education was sufficient to strike out on her own.

  Before she left her husband she bore a child, whom Jeremiah insisted they name Opportunity, in gratitude to God’s gifts to all of us. Jeremiah was of a faith that believed that once a person is ‘saved’, they become worthy not only of heavenly reward but also of worldly treasures. He could not make this point strongly enough to his congregation, and they obligingly cooperated with God’s plan by contributing generously to his ministry. Jeremiah and Clementine both had a head for business.

  When California became infected with news of gold in the faraway colony of Victoria, the preacher decided to take his son to a new land where the stain of his mother’s occupation would never more blight his young life. Being of a dramatic disposition, he wrote to Clementine before he left, informing her that he was removing his spotless lamb from the foul odour of his mother’s scarlet sins. There was also mention of the Whore of Babylon and the bold opinion that Jesus should never have stopped the mob from stoning the adulteress. He concluded: I remain Your Obedient Servant, Jeremiah C. Weekes. He felt a good deal better for this, and left for the colony with a light heart and a mission to convert the wicked and sustain the faithful who sought their fortune in the rich soil of the Victorian goldfields.

  Young Opportunity was eleven by then, and not the appealing waif he once had been. Ungainly, his fast-growing limbs clumsy and graceless, he slouched and sulked while his father attempted to preach to men who, unlike his compatriots, could not or would not abandon themselves to the Spirit. If they came to his meetings at all, they came to stare stonily, to jeer or to laugh. Some would even pretend to feel the Spirit and stagger about gabbling in tongues, providing the small crowd with much merriment. Jeremiah hated these exhibitionists, but at least after such diversions a few people would good-–naturedly make a small offering at collection time.

  However, it was not enough to support him and his boy. They spent their days working on a small claim, and the evenings passed with Jeremiah teaching an increasingly resistant Opportunity his letters and numbers.

  As more families and women came and businesses were established, the canvas town reached a critical mass, and serious building began. The streets of fine shops and dwellings, the ornate town hall and the several beautiful churches for which the town is now admired all owe their existence to the gold fever. The thriving settlement was named Cradletown in honour of the wooden cradle used by miners to separate the gold from the dross. When the Cradletown Methodist church was built, Jeremiah, weary of life on the goldfields, managed to secure the position of minister. Every Sunday his rich voice thundered wonderfully, exciting fear and trembling in the hearts of the wicked and thrilling misgivings in the hearts of the faithful.

  Opportunity worked soberly as a sales assistant in McPherson’s Drapery and Women’s Apparel, his bony wrists protruding from white cuffs that in turn protruded from a blue pinstriped jacket. He sold linen handkerchiefs, lace collars and cuffs, jabots and shawls, gloves and hatpins. (Mrs McPherson herself sold the hats.) Drapery would seem to be a dull job for a young man, but it had its compensations, and his time passed pleasantly enough as young and not so young women came to buy their fripperies and flirt with him in a genteel sort of way.

  Two days before his eighteenth birthday a stranger arrived at McPherson’s, asking to speak to young Mister Weekes. The man had a sallow complexion and jowls like a bloodhound, but after hearing what he had to say, Opportunity could have hugged him. The stranger was a solicitor who had traced him to Cradletown all the way from San Francisco, where his mother had died of heart failure. She had left him—after expenses, you understand— the considerable sum of one thousand, three hundred and eleven US dollars, to be paid when he reached his majority.

  For three years and two days, Opportunity chafed. On his twenty-first birthday, he resigned from McPherson’s. He hadn’t wasted this time, saving an additional sixty-seven pounds from his wages. Despite liberal advice to the contrary, Opportunity Weekes was ready to realise his dream.

  About a hundred and fifty miles to the north of Cradletown was another goldfield town, Mystic, and bullockies, traders and disgruntled miners had worn a wide track between the two centres. Opportunity’s plan was to build a hotel at Halfway Creek, providing accommodation and refreshments for the weary travellers. After a short battle with his conscience, he decided to also sell liquor. Your mother’s bad blood, his father mourned. But the young man had his mother’s business brain, and he set about building a handsome, two-storey pub with verandahs all round and a brass spittoon in the bar.

  Opportunity focused on this vision as he rolled up his sleeves and worked beside the men who laboured to build his dream. He drove them hard but paid them well, and when it was finished, they were all justifiably proud of their handiwork. The hotel welcomed its first guest in 1885, and thus began a long period of prosperity for both Opportunity and the burgeoning township.

  As his business flourished, Opportunity realised that he needed help, and he proposed to Harriet Westlake, a local farmer’s daughter, as sturdy and loyal as she was plain. She accepted him, and the pub flourished as the reputation of Harriet’s lamb roasts and plum puddings spread and Opportunity mellowed into an affable middle age.

  The little town that grew around the Opportunity Hostelry was named for its founder. As he became a wealthy man, Opportunity’s only sorrow was the loss of two baby girls, Faith and Hope, who had been named and christened by his father. A third daughter was born, with sad dark eyes, and having lost both faith and hope
, Opportunity called her Dolour. A popish name, Jeremiah fumed as he immersed the child. It means sorrow, his son replied. I won’t tempt God again.

  But Dolour was the happiest and healthiest of children, with her mother’s strong body and her father’s deep, dark eyes. Over time, the area gradually transmuted into farmland, and at eighteen, Dolour married Charles Sandilands, son of a local farmer. When Opportunity died, Dolour and Charles sold the pub and established the Sandilands dynasty in a fine house on an expanded property.

  The good citizens of Opportunity had suggested erecting a stained-glass window as a memorial to her father, but the practical Dolour said that the town was named for him and that should be enough. What on earth would Father want with a window? she said.

  In its golden years, Opportunity boasted five hotels, several sly grog establishments and three brothels; by the time it began sending its young men to the trenches, however, it had become a very proper town with three churches and a school replacing four of the pubs.

  Like many small towns, Opportunity was proud and somewhat insular, sniffing ever so slightly at the brashness of Mystic and the pomposity of Cradletown. The latter was always called ‘Town’ with an implied upper-case T. The former was simply referred to as ‘That Place’. The good folk of Opportunity kept themselves to themselves, and generations were born and buried within the town’s boundaries.

  The nineteen sixties saw the beginning of its decline, when the young people, no longer content to be farmers, were lured to the cities to join the counter-culture. Some stayed; some returned; but change gathered pace in the eighties, when the economic rationalists began to seriously dismantle rural infrastructure. It was then that the busy farmers and traders of Opportunity looked up and saw that their town was dying. The bank, the farmers’ co-op and McKenzie’s bakery all closed within a year, with the loss of over forty jobs. Families moved to larger centres to find work so the school failed to maintain sufficient numbers. Even church services were rationed when the parish of St Saviour’s was merged with St Matthew’s in Mystic. By the mid nineties, Opportunity no longer lived up to its name.

  Most of the farmers managed well enough during the eighties and early nineties, but now, after ten years of drought, a fatal lethargy held the town in thrall. It seeped out of the mud in the dying creek. It sent out tendrils that choked endeavour. It whispered in the ears of sleepers who thought themselves safe in bed. It loitered in the dust that hung in the air, or swirled ahead of the winds that swept unimpeded across a treeless landscape. You could see it in the eyes of your neighbours. You could taste it in your beer.

  10

  Sandy and the Great Galah

  SANDY SANDILANDS WAS NEARLY SIXTY and he loved his home town. If asked what there was to love about Opportunity, he couldn’t have given a rational reply. The blood of Opportunity Weekes still ran strong in the veins of this, the last of his heirs. It was his family’s town, Sandy would say if pressed. What he would not say was that he felt responsible; that there was a sort of noblesse oblige arising from both his wealth and his heritage. That he was barely tolerated by his neighbours made no difference. The damaged child had become a stubborn man with a mission.

  Rosie’s son was christened George Francis for his father and maternal grandfather. There was the usual household confusion that occurs when father and son share names. ‘Georgie’ didn’t work. It reminded the Major of the old nursery rhyme and the days when he was the target. Georgie Porgie, puddin’ and pie, the boys chanted. Kissed the girls and made them cry. (Well, that was prophetic, Lily always thought. She remembered George Sandilands from primary school days.) Rosie was afraid to suggest ‘Frank’, so when his aunt commented on his red-gold curls, ‘Sandy’ seemed like a good option, echoing his surname as it did.

  Sandy spent most of his childhood feeling fear and shame: fear of his father’s violence, and shame that he failed to protect his mother. In later life he excused himself; after all, he was just a child—no physical match for the Major. He knew, but refused to acknowledge, that this was not the whole truth. For Sandy was not merely a passive spectator of his mother’s abuse but was shamefully complicit. He was hers until he learned that discretion was the better part of valour, and as he grew older, he began to speak to her in the disparaging tone used by his father. He would snigger at the insults and caustic remarks that were his mother’s lot, and while, unlike his father, he never resorted to physical violence, he was aware that he wounded her deeply.

  At the same time, he was anguished by her pain, and longed to be able to protect her. He suppressed his love but penitentially ate the food she prepared, his lean young body growing rounder with each passing year. He accepted as due punishment his father’s cruel jibes and the scorn of his schoolmates (Fatty Arbuckle, they called him). Mercifully, he was sent away to board for his senior schooling, after which he completed a commerce degree in Melbourne. For a while he was free, and even dreamed of a future in a merchant bank, but at his father’s command he timidly returned home.

  When his mother died, it was, shamefully, a burden lifted. When his father died a few years later, Sandy set about reinventing his childhood; in time he constructed a father endowed with a dry wit and a clever turn of phrase. Fair enough, he could be impatient and hot-tempered, Sandy would say, but I was a bit of a scallywag and poor old Mum wasn’t too bright. Dad would call me a galah if I did something crazy as boys do. It was like a nickname. And the local sycophants would chuckle into their beer. But his father had been universally loathed as an arrogant bully. Old Minnie Porter remembered poor Rosie, white and tense at her husband’s side.

  ‘Major Bully-boy Sandilands. Drove his wife to her grave, God rest her soul. Thought he was too good for the rest of us. Mark my words, that youngster will turn out the same.’

  So ‘the youngster’ inherited the general antipathy felt for his father, and his reverence for the Major only made things worse.

  Sandy didn’t have friends but socialised with three or four hangers-on. The dislike was mutual. He was, as Finn had told Moss, the richest man in the district. When his father died he sold most of the land, keeping only the house and a few acres on which he ran some cattle. Agriculture was booming then, so he realised considerable capital. While the other landholders sneered—Hasn’t got the guts to be a farmer—Sandy began to study the stock market and invested in blue-chip shares as well as some speculative mining companies in Western Australia. He had pre-empted the mining boom by a few years and, while the farming community watched as drought wizened their land, Sandy was busy minimising tax on his share-trading profits.

  He spent much of his time indoors, skilfully day trading online, and his large, white body contrasted sharply with the sinewy brownness of his neighbours. He held his beer glass with soft, clean hands, nails innocent of dirt, palms innocent of calluses. He was despised by the people of the district even as they drank his beer and accepted the cheques and the many trophies he donated to the various sporting and social clubs. The final straw came when he sold the farm. At least as a farmer he had some point of contact with his peers. But who ever heard of a day trader?

  There’s something shonky about making money that way, Merv Randall, the publican, would say to his customers. They all agreed. Swanning around in those poncy shirts, they said. Look at his hands. Hasn’t done a day’s work in years, they muttered. The law’ll catch up with him eventually, they agreed, downing their beers in satisfaction at the thought.

  As usual, it was Tom Ferguson, farmer and bush philosopher, who summed up the mood of the meeting. ‘I’d rather do an honest day’s work—mortgage, drought and all—than piss about on a computer all day. I don’t care how much money he makes.’

  A lonely man, Sandy wanted to be liked and admired, and not long before Moss’s arrival in Opportunity, he devised his Great Plan.

  He had gone to Finn for advice. By this time the enigmatic Finn was held somewhat in awe by the people of Opportunity. His arrival had caused a little flurry o
f excitement and curiosity, and it wasn’t long before a small contingent of women arrived at his front door with baskets. He thanked them gravely for the scones, the sponge cake and the chicken casserole. He assured them that the eggs and chutney would be useful, and that he would indeed see them around. They left to report on his posh voice, his nice manners and his wonderful blue eyes. So sad, his eyes. Sort of tragic, you know? Their men snorted derisively, but allowed him to be a decent sort of bloke.

  Unlike other newcomers to small towns, Finn made no effort to secure friendships or forge contacts. He went about, nodding pleasantly, resisting all efforts to pry. He didn’t attend church, was not seen at the weekly film and, despite his enviable height, regretfully declined to play in the ruck for the Knockers. No, he didn’t play cricket either, he told the local president, but would probably come to a few matches. This intransigence would have been fatal for any other new arrival, but Finn had such an abstracted air that the residents of Opportunity chose to treat him as a nice old man, although they could see he was probably only in his late thirties.

  ‘Funny bloke,’ Merv observed to his regulars. ‘When I asked him about playing for the Knockers, I thought he’d jump at the chance. I know he’s skinny, but he’s even taller than young Bob Corless . . . How about it? I ask him. We need another ruckman. He just says, Thanks very much for asking, but I don’t play football. Just like that. Polite as pie—but . . .’ Merv shook his head. ‘It’s like he’s—it’s hard to put a finger on it . . . it’s like . . .’

  ‘Like he’s an island,’ Tom Ferguson offered.

  ‘Exactly. You’re dead right, Tom. An island.’

  They approved of his concern for his neighbour, Mrs Pargetter, relieving them as it did from responsibility. But they were surprised and aggrieved when Finn befriended Sandy. How could that nice Finn take to Sandy Sandilands?