Book of Lost Threads

by Tess Evans

  Jilly had pined for her own father, of course, and Patty judged it wiser to tell her that he’d died. In a car accident, she had explained. You mustn’t be sad, though. You have Mummy and Brad (then Craig, Harry, and so on).

  Meanwhile, Andy had begun to drink. He would come home from work, pause at the door and then head for the fridge, gulping down a can of beer before heating up a pork pie or sending out for a pizza. Some nights, if he remembered, he’d bring home cod and chips. Whatever he ate, it was always washed down with a couple of cans of beer, and he’d drink another three or four before falling into his bed, never quite drunk enough. The house he’d been lovingly renovating fell into disrepair. His days were grey and his nights black. On –Jilly’s birthday each year, he’d get very drunk and cry. He always imagined her as she was when he had last seen her. For him, she was forever five years old.

  Far away, in Perth, Jilly was beginning to dare to feel safe when, after nearly two years of relative security, she and her mother were alone again. It was usually Patty who ended relationships, but this time it was Brian who left.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jilly,’ he said. ‘If I were your dad, I’d take you with me.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said fourteen-year-old Jilly. ‘Whatever.’ But she hugged him briefly and took the money he gave her.

  ‘Don’t waste it, Jilly. It’s for an emergency,’ he said. ‘For God’s sake don’t let Patty know you have it.’

  Jilly hid the money, of course. She had learned not to trust her mother.

  After Brian left, life returned to normal: more parties, more men, and school shoes with holes. One day, shortly after her fifteenth birthday, Jilly came home from school to find a note on the kitchen table.

  Dear Jilly

  Im off to France with Dominik. Your old enough to look after yourself now and I need a life of my own Im only 33. The rents overdue but Ill send you some money when I’m setled. I left $10 to buy a pizza for your tea. I took your black jumper and red shirt. I’ll need them til Dominik can by me some new clothe’s.

  Love

  Patty

  Since Jilly turned twelve she was no longer allowed to call Patty ‘Mum’. They looked more like sisters, Patty thought. And she was right.

  Book of Lost Threads Children of such parents learn survival skills, and Jilly knew that once the authorities discovered she was living alone, she’d be put into foster care. Patty had always threatened her with a foster home as a priest might threaten his congregation with hell. She packed the few clothes she had left, stuffed her mother’s note and pizza money into her pocket, and went to the shed where she’d hidden Brian’s hundred dollars and a little box of mementos. When the school checked a couple of weeks later, it was assumed that the family had absconded to avoid the rent.

  To conserve her money, Jilly decided to hitch to Melbourne. She thought it best to go to a larger city, where no-one knew her—where she could melt into the crowd.

  Patty, meanwhile, had left France for Dominik’s native Bucharest where, sitting behind a desk in a bright modern office, she stamped the papers of gullible Rumanian girls who wanted to work in London. The job paid well and she enjoyed herself for a time. Unfortunately, when she decided to move on, she met with a fatal and uninvestigated accident. She knew too much and Dominik took no risks.

  ‘So what’s your name then, love?’ The truck driver leaned over and opened the door. He liked a bit of company.

  Jilly was prepared. She had learnt caution from an expert. ‘Amber-Lee,’ she said without blinking. ‘I’m going to Melbourne to see my cousin.’

  ‘I’m going as far as Adelaide. We’ll stop on the border for a bit of a kip.’ He bought her coffee and a doughnut in Southern Cross and an evening meal in Norseman. When he wasn’t talking, he would sing along to a country and western CD, of which he had an endless supply.

  Jilly wasn’t surprised to find that when he pulled over for his ‘kip’, he slid his hands between her legs. As she approached puberty, her mother’s boyfriends, with the exception of Brian, had all tried, more or less successfully, to have sex with her. This was one of the reasons that Patty felt it prudent to leave her behind. A nubile young daughter could get seriously in the way.

  ‘You are sixteen?’ the driver said as he pulled at her buttons and slid her bra straps down her arms. Her small breasts were white and strangely vulnerable. He paused and looked at her face, still and watchful in the shadows. He wasn’t a bad man. For a moment, he felt something like remorse.

  ‘You are sixteen?’ he repeated, seeking reassurance.

  ‘Just get on with it,’ she said wearily. ‘I’m tired.’

  He took her then, brutally. And pushed her and her belongings out of the truck when he’d finished.

  ‘You’ll get another ride. A lot of trucks stop here.’ Ashamed, he threw some crumpled notes out of the window after her. Jilly stooped and picked up the money, stuffing it hastily into her backpack. She sat on the embankment and, childlike, dug her fists into her eyes. A little shuddering sob escaped. She’d come to expect no better, but that didn’t mean she enjoyed it. The first time had been a terrifying assault by a drunken and violent man. She was barely thirteen. She’d called for help but her mother had gone out to buy more booze. When she did come home, Patty had slapped her daughter’s face. Little slut, she hissed. Just keep your filthy eyes off of my boyfriends. And don’t tell Brian, she warned the sobbing child. We don’t want him to know his precious little Jilly is a whore.

  As trucks rumbled past, Jilly thought of Brian. Maybe she should have tried to find him. No, even Brian had let her down. Left her to Patty. There was no-one to care for her now but herself. With renewed determination, she took out the money the truck driver had given her and counted it. Fifty-five dollars. That was the first time Jilly had been paid for sex. She vowed to survive. No matter what it took. She stood up and waved down a passing truck.

  Three days later, she was observing street prostitutes in 151 Melbourne.

  A car pulled into the kerb. ‘How much for a blow job?’

  She didn’t know. ‘Ten dollars?’

  The car door swung open. ‘Hop in, then.’

  Brenda was a few years older than Jilly and wiser in the ways of the streets. She heard that the new girl was undercutting prices and took her aside for a word.

  ‘You’ll find yourself beaten up if you play that game,’ she told Jilly, who was now calling herself Amber-Lee. ‘I’ll introduce you to my pimp. He takes a fair slice of the action but you can’t work without a protector. You can stay with me for a while. I need some help with the rent.’

  So Amber-Lee unpacked her belongings in the small alcove in Brenda’s one-room flat and patted the lumpy bed. She hid her money in the lining of her coat and her box of mementos under the mattress. Among them was the photo of the day at Blackpool; looking at it, she wondered at how far she had come from the child in the photo.

  She hated the work: the men, rough or kind, urgent or impotent, who used her body as though it were a thing. In the early weeks, however, something of Jilly remained. Perhaps there was another way.

  She took herself to the Ward Street Shelter. A tall woman, with untidy hair and collar askew, asked her name.

  ‘Amber-Lee,’ she said.

  The woman raised her eyebrows but didn’t ask for a surname. She knew better. ‘Okay, Amber-Lee. I’m Ilse.’ She had a slight accent. ‘I have to make a couple of phone calls and then we can talk. There’s a café bar over there. Just help yourself.’

  Jilly sat on the edge of the worn sofa, cupping her hands around the plastic mug. The room was shabby, and the three workers behind the desks all wore worried frowns. Ilse was talking earnestly into the phone, firing frequent glances in her direction. Panic rose in the girl’s throat. Was the woman talking about her? Who was she talking to? What if they sent her to a foster home? When Ilse looked up again, Jilly had gone.

  In the early days, Jilly had curled up under her thin blanket in Brenda’s flat and made pla
ns. She would do this work only until she had enough money for her fare home to England, a place that she had endowed with an almost mythical significance. She longed for her family, but she wouldn’t go back until she was on her feet. She saw herself knocking on her grandparents’ door, wearing long leather boots and a smart coat with a silk scarf. She felt the hugs and saw the smiles and tears. She sat once again in the kitchen, eating her grandmother’s cake, the lost child returned. She even dared to wonder if her father was still alive. She had no illusions about her mother by now and suspected that she’d been lied to. She couldn’t picture an ageing Andy. She still saw him as a young man who held her soft little paw in his big, rough carpenter’s hands and ran with her, laughing, down the hill to the shops.

  As the months went by, however, she saved very little. By the time she’d bought food and clothes, paid Brenda her share of the rent and given Vince the pimp his cut of the takings, there was very little left.

  Amber-Lee worked the streets for eight months, and during this time, Jilly’s voice and Jilly’s tears became fainter. Her judgement was dulled as her sense of self continued to retreat. She had resisted for months, but her first experience of heroin provided the escape she craved. She worked harder but became more and more indebted to Vince, who was also her supplier. She’d earlier used a little of Brian’s money for living expenses, but some delicacy of feeling at first forbad her from using it to buy drugs, even though she could no longer maintain the fiction that this little bundle of notes was the beginnings of her escape money.

  Sitting on her bed one evening before work, she realised that delicacy of feeling was a luxury she could no longer afford. Regretfully, she took the money from her coat lining and put it in her little treasure box, ready to give to Vince for her supply. It was early in her addiction, and she still had some sense of decency. She understood that Brian’s gift had been a sacrifice; he had little money left for himself after moving in with Patty. Sorry, Brian. She ran her hands through her hair, clutching fistfuls, tugging at the roots. Sorry, Brian. Fingers still knotted in her hair, she slumped and rested her elbows on her knees. Fuck it, Brian. I’ve run out of choices.

  The photograph caught her eye, and she ran her fingers over its surface. What were they all doing now, her parents, her aunt and uncle, her cousins? Mr Pie would probably be dead. Lucky Mr Pie. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, snivelling a little in self-pity.

  At that moment, Brenda came in. ‘Wanna get a hamburger before we start?’ She looked at the photo. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘My family.’

  ‘Who’s the good-looking chick in the shorts?’

  ‘My mother.’

  ‘Funny-looking dog.’

  ‘My cousin’s dog, Mr Pie. Stupid name.’ Jilly put the photo back in its box. ‘What about that hamburger?’

  They’d only walked a few paces along the footpath when Jilly (in that moment she was no longer Amber-Lee) caught a glimpse of a man on the other side of the road. He was about twenty-five, tall and dark. There was something about the way he held his shoulders. The way he walked. Where had she seen him before? It came to her all at once. It was the young man in the photo on the pier. It was her father. Filled with sudden, irrational hope, she ran towards him, right into the path of Finn’s car.

  12

  Moss and Linsey

  MOSS HAD BEEN STAYING WITH Mrs Pargetter for nearly two weeks now. Something of the town’s lethargy had affected her too, and although she knew that one day soon she’d have to return to her life in Melbourne, she was reluctant to formulate any plans.

  Her days took on a pattern. She would breakfast early with her elderly host and then call to Errol, who waited by the door for his walk. After a few laps of the oval, they’d head down to the creek, where the dog sniffed importantly every few steps, before looking back gravely for approval. Sometimes on these walks they’d see Finn, but Errol sensed that this was his quiet time and only wagged his tail briefly before moving on.

  After her shower, Moss would set off for the shops. There was usually something to buy. Mrs Pargetter—and Finn, too, for that matter—had a ‘just in time’ approach to shopping. Moss made an effort to explore the town, but as she’d seen on her first day, the scope for exploration was limited. She knew a few residents by sight and nodded shyly if she passed them in the street. The old man who called her ‘girlie’ introduced himself as Cocky. He was usually sitting on the seat outside the pub, waiting for it to open.

  She lunched with her father. Unused to company at meals, Finn often seemed at a loss for conversation. He didn’t allude to Amber-Lee again, and as he had little small talk, Moss had to coax him to talk about himself.

  She learned that he was an only child, that his mother was still alive and that he had enjoyed his years at university. He’d travelled around Europe while he was at Oxford; when she could draw them out of him, Moss found his travel stories entertaining. They were all light-hearted and impersonal: when he matriculated into Oxford, he told her, all the speeches were in Latin, except the exhortation not to light fires in the library.

  ‘It went back to the days when students used to smuggle in candles so they could study after the sun went down. Electricity stopped all that, but the rule stayed. Things move a bit slowly at Oxford. Did I ever tell you about the time I passed the port the wrong way, just to see the reaction? You’d have thought I’d murdered the queen.’ And he’d laugh quietly, his eyes crinkling at the corners. These were precious moments for Moss, but they were rare. She reconciled herself to the fact that Finn was naturally reserved, and as often as not, much of the meal was eaten in silence.

  In the afternoons, Finn worked on his computer and Moss returned to Mrs Pargetter’s. Here she’d read for a while, but sooner or later, her attention was drawn to the piano. Serene and regal, it stood in the corner of the front room, its polished beauty protected by a green felt cover. Moss would occasionally lift the lid and idly play a scale. It was a good instrument and had been kept in tune. Closing the lid, she would hum softly to herself for some time afterwards. Music had been the centre of her life, and the brutal incision she had made in anger had left a wound that refused to heal.

  At these times, Mrs Pargetter would continue to knit without comment, but one evening she put down her needles and offered to play. ‘I’m a bit rusty, but the knitting keeps my fingers supple and I still play at St Saviour’s once a month.’

  ‘I’d love to hear you, Mrs Pargetter. I’ll turn the pages if you like.’

  The old lady fussed with her sheet music. ‘Let me see . . . I used to play dance music when I was young, but I always preferred hymns or the classics . . . Here, how about Chopin?’ Mrs Pargetter played a few phrases pianissimo and then straightened her back. ‘This is one of my favourites.’

  She’s a fine pianist even now, thought Moss as music filled the house. I wonder what she was like when she was young? Her performance ended, the elderly pianist inclined her head graciously.

  ‘Bravo, Mrs Pargetter. That was wonderful.’

  ‘Thank you, my dear,’ she responded. ‘Now it’s your turn.’

  ‘I’m not really a pianist, Mrs Pargetter.’

  ‘But you are a singer, I believe. Let’s see what we have here.’ She ruffled through her music again. ‘Ah. This one. You must know Schubert’s Ave Maria.’

  Moss began to protest; since leaving the Conservatorium, she had avoided music. She was afraid that once fully released, she would sing her own siren song, one that would tempt her into the future she’d renounced. She hovered on the edges of decision but couldn’t help herself. She was drawn to the piano as Mrs Pargetter played the opening chords.

  ‘It’s so long since . . . I need to warm up.’ She did some breathing exercises and then ran through some scales, assisted by Mrs Pargetter. I can still sing! She sang her final scale and held the last note for the sheer joy of it, defying her unacknowledged fear that she might have lost her voice in this time of silence.


  ‘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.