Book of Lost Threads

by Tess Evans

  ‘What is it, Mrs Pargetter?’ She spoke softly, fearing to disturb the listening air.

  The old lady bowed her head. ‘They locked me away,’ she said. ‘They locked me away and I couldn’t save my baby.

  I brought it home. To this very room. But it just went away.’ Her eyes searched Moss’s face. ‘It comes back when you’re here, though. I can feel it.’ She took a faltering step into the room. ‘I need my baby, Moss.’

  The two women sat together on the bed, and Moss took the old lady’s hands and held them between her own. They were trembling, and cold to her touch.

  ‘We’ll just sit here for a bit, Mrs Pargetter. Until you’re ready. Then I’ll make us a cup of tea.’

  The room was cold, and the yellow bulb, swinging high from the ceiling, cast more shadow than light. Moss glanced around uneasily, sensing a faint susurration, a delicate splintering of the gelid air. The teddies froze, their eyes straining to pierce the shadows.

  The young woman looked at her companion and shivered. Did she feel it too? But Mrs Pargetter gave no sign.

  After several minutes, the old lady patted Moss’s hands and stood up. ‘Take no notice of me, dear. I’m just a silly old woman.’ As Moss began to protest, she shook her head. ‘Don’t worry about the tea. I’m really very tired.’

  The young woman put her arm around the frail shoulders and they walked together back to her room. Moss had to take small, slow steps to keep pace as Mrs Pargetter’s bare feet shuffled and whispered on the kitchen tiles.

  She helped her into bed and pulled up the covers. ‘Goodnight, Mrs Pargetter.’

  ‘Goodnight, dear.’

  In the light of day, Moss decided that the presence she had sensed in the room was the product of her overactive imagination. But she was worried about her elderly friend. She recounted the story to Finn as they took Errol for a walk. ‘Do you know what happened to her, Finn? I’m terrified I’ll say the wrong thing.’

  Finn shook his head. ‘I’ve heard bits and pieces but Sandy 185 would be your best bet.’

  Moss sought Sandy out that afternoon, finding him in the pub with two other men. They were all staring morosely into their beers, so Moss approached, confident that she wasn’t interrupting anything important. ‘Can you join me for a drink, Sandy? I need to ask you something.’

  The other men leered at each other, and looked at Sandy with something like respect as Moss led him to a corner table.

  ‘I was only a kid at the time,’ he began in response to her question, ‘but I used to hear Mum and Dad talking about it. Apparently she lost her husband in New Guinea and then their baby was stillborn. Anyway, she went a bit barmy, by all accounts, and she was in a mental hospital for years. Had shock treatment and everything. I was away at school then, but Mum used to take me to visit her in the holidays. Mum and Dad helped to get her out when Grandpa died.’ He tossed down the last of his beer and wiped the froth from his upper lip. ‘She was always nice to me. Made welcome-home cakes and took a bit of an interest. Dad used to say she should have stayed in the mental home, but I think she was just eccentric, not mad.’ He paused. ‘Dad could be a bit hard, sometimes,’ he admitted. ‘I can almost understand why Aunt Lily didn’t like him.’

  Moss sipped her drink. ‘What you tell me makes it even worse. It’s like she says: she’d locked things away, and now, for whatever reason, a door is opening. I wonder just how fragile her mental health is?’

  Sandy’s face was grave. ‘I hadn’t realised things were so bad.’

  ‘Is there anything you can do, Sandy? You know her better than anyone.’

  ‘Leave me to have a think,’ he replied. ‘Meanwhile we’ll all keep an eye on her. And thanks for telling me, Moss.’

  Once again, Moss felt humbled. This man had more depth than she had originally given him credit for.

  14

  Sandy and Rosie Sandilands

  THE NEXT MORNING, SANDY SAT at his computer, swearing softly. He was sure he’d read the article in the last couple of years. He googled ‘stillbirths’. He refined his search: ‘stillbirths Melbourne’. There was a lot of medical information but no historical references. He tried again. ‘Stillbirths, Melbourne, 1940–44.’ This search turned up a little historical information, but not what he was seeking. He searched ‘Melbourne Hospital for Women’. Plenty here, but no link to stillbirths. He tried ‘Melbourne General Cemetery’. No information at all, beyond a map that marked out the multitude of reference points for gravesites. Bugger! He knew he’d read somewhere of a memorial service at the Melbourne General Cemetery for parents whose stillborn babies had been buried in unmarked graves.

  He got up to find the chocolate biscuits he always kept as a bulwark against frustration, and stood looking out his window. He finished the first biscuit and reached for a second. The early spring sky, blue and cloudless, mocked the parched paddocks. He watched a flock of galahs crowding on the telephone wire, their sheet-metal screeches shredding the air. Of course. Old technology! He’d ring the cemetery. That was his best bet. He hurried to the phone.

  ‘Yes,’ a woman’s voice responded. ‘There are several neonatal sites scattered throughout the cemetery. They’re looked after by the SANDS group.’

  ‘SANDS?’

  ‘Stillborn and Neonatal Death Support. I have their phone number.’ She read it out to him and he wrote it on a post-it note. ‘Now, do you have any information at all about this baby?’

  ‘As far as I know, the baby was taken and buried without a name. Probably some time in 1941 or maybe ’42. My mother tried to find out once, and the hospital told her that the babies were buried in common graves—no plaques or headstones or anything.’

  ‘That’s right. You might try the hospital again,’ the woman said doubtfully, ‘although I believe their record-keeping wasn’t too brilliant at the time. There was a war on, remember.’

  Sandy thanked her and hung up. He decided that his best course of action was to visit the cemetery. That might give him some information he could work on. He told Moss his plan and asked if she’d like to come. Bored and restless, she agreed.

  ‘I could help you, and visit Linsey at the same time,’ she said.

  When he invited Finn, he was startled at the response. The other man’s face rapidly registered shock and shame. Then confusion.

  Finn’s last visit had been to seek out Amber-Lee’s grave, but the sight of the raw mound on the fringes of the cemetery had been more than he could bear. Not far away, elaborate tombstones and well-tended burial plots turned their backs on the graves of the poor and nameless. He had stood beside the mound and promised he’d be back, that he’d rescue her from this awful obscurity. But although he never forgot her, he hadn’t kept his promise. And with this new opportunity, failed to do so again.

  ‘I just can’t,’ he mumbled in distress. ‘Maybe another time.’

  Leaving the small car park that adjoined the main gates, Sandy and Moss went into the gothic-style bluestone building that housed the cemetery’s administration. The young woman at reception was helpful, giving them a map on which she marked the various sites where the infant graves could be found.

  ‘You’ll find some commemorative plaques,’ she said, ‘but very few compared to the thousands buried there.’

  As they were about to leave, Moss asked on impulse, ‘Where are the public graves?’

  ‘You won’t find those any more. They used to be around the perimeter fence, here and here.’ She circled the locations apologetically. ‘There’s no marker or anything. The plots have been reclaimed.’

  Moss ignored Sandy’s raised eyebrows and scanned the map with feigned concentration. She felt sick at heart to think of the total annihilation suffered by the inhabitants of those graves.

  ‘Come on, love,’ said Sandy. ‘Let’s do what we came here to do.’

  The cemetery was bristling with tombstones, which grew from the earth like rows of grey teeth, some carious and crooked with age, others straight and perfectly
aligned. The graves came one upon another in tight formation, with their crosses and angels, their stars of David, their Chinese characters; some with photographs, some with plastic flowers, a few with fresh blooms. There were tall monuments crowned with kneeling angels, arms crossed and heads bowed. Other angels held a trumpet to their stone lips. Silent trumpets: it was not yet time to waken the dead.

  They passed the Elvis memorial beside which sixty-year-olds in tight T-shirts and leather jackets posed for photographs. They passed the grand tombs of Melbourne’s forefathers, and graves of the humble whose names were all but obliterated. They walked in silence until Sandy, who had the map, indicated that they should leave the main road and take a narrow path to the right. There were no signposts, and it was almost by chance that they came across the place they’d been seeking.

  It was a small space under two peppercorn trees. There had possibly once been a lawn, but now a few lone weeds struggled in the hard soil. There was a wooden bench and four stones studded with brass plaques. The largest stone was inscribed with the words:

  Never held. Never seen.

  But never forgotten.

  Cherished but not cradled.

  The other plaques had names and dates and expressions of loss all the more poignant for their simplicity. We had a home ready for you, Moss read on one unadorned plaque. There were a few weathered toys, and two bunches of fresh flowers that had been placed there quite recently. As there were no dates after 1972, these fresh flowers were a testament to the longevity of grief. Moss could see the elderly mothers and fathers after forty, fifty years, still mourning their loss, visiting the baby they had never seen. Most of the plaques had no name, just dates: the birth day and death day of anonymous children. She sat down on the seat with Sandy and looked at the colourless sky, shivering as the cold wind moved through the trailing branches of the peppercorn trees.

  ‘There’s not much more we can do here,’ said Sandy at last, heaving himself up with a sigh. Moss took some blooms from the flowers she had brought for Linsey and placed them gently beside the nearest memorial. Their warm yellow contrasted with the cold grey stone, creating a momentary illusion of sunlight.

  They retraced their steps to the entrance and stopped at the row of walls where ashes were immured. Moss checked a piece of paper and found her way to Linsey’s commemorative plaque. It was the first time she’d visited since the memorial service, and she read the inscription with dismay. In this last tribute to the life of her mother, she was not even mentioned. Felicity couldn’t have chosen a better way to hurt her.

  Moss arranged her flowers with numb fingers. It’s no more than I deserve, she thought. But I did love you, Mother Linsey. You have to understand that I just couldn’t take the bullying. She paused mid-thought as realisation dawned. I guess you faced your share of bullies and bigots too. Maybe you understood more than I imagined.

  Moss glanced back at Sandy in mute apology for the delay.

  ‘Take all the time you need, love,’ he said.

  Moss turned back to the wall. ‘I’m glad I sang for you, Mother Linsey,’ she whispered. ‘If it weren’t for you, I would never have found the discipline.’ She paused. All at once, Felicity’s words came back to her. Her exact words. Linsey’s last request was that you sing at her funeral. At the time, Moss was still in shock and had not heeded the significance of these words. Linsey had wanted her to sing. Linsey had known she would sing. Had her mother sent her a message through Felicity? And if she had, did it mean that Linsey had forgiven her?

  Moss spread her palm over the plaque. The cold metal resisted her touch.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mother Linsey. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Come on, love,’ said Sandy gruffly. ‘It’s okay.’ But reminded of his mother’s epitaph, he knew it wasn’t okay at all.

  Leaving the cemetery, they drove a short distance to a café, where they ordered coffee and sandwiches.

  ‘I have the phone number of the organisation that set up the memorial,’ Sandy told Moss. ‘We don’t know if the site we saw is where Aunt Lily’s baby was buried or if it was one of the others. This group might be able to help us. There’s no point in getting the poor old thing’s hopes up.’ In fact, Sandy had another source of information but chose not to tell Moss. It wasn’t his secret to share.

  As soon as he returned home, Sandy went to what had been his mother’s sewing room. He stopped in the doorway and looked at the mess. Rosie had been fond of sewing, and when she died, her fabrics, cottons and notions had been bundled into two plastic garbage bags for donation to the charity shop. Neither Sandy nor his father had bothered to deliver them, and the bags now shared the space with boxes of magazines, old ledgers, books and sundry household items too good to throw out but not good enough to use. Rosie’s sewing machine was still there. He remembered how happy she’d been to trade her old Singer treadle for an electric model. Now it sat there, its bland plastic cover casting a dumb reproach.

  I should’ve given Mum’s sewing machine away, Sandy thought. She’d call this a wicked waste.

  But it was not the sewing machine that he’d come for. He went to the window seat and, sneezing violently, threw the dusty cushions onto the floor so that he could access the lid. He took a screwdriver from his pocket. The screws had rusted over the years, but they yielded one by one. He wheezed a little as he stood up and stretched his back. Even with good intentions, he felt reluctant to expose his mother’s secrets.

  Children living in a violent or conflicted household learn invisibility at a very early age. Sandy Sandilands was no exception, and he managed to move shadow-like through his childhood, avoiding any unnecessary contact with his parents. He must have been about eight when he first saw his mother opening this window seat and placing a book inside before screwing down the lid. He remembered his main feeling at the time was surprise to see that his mother could use a screwdriver. The Major liked to ensure that she was reliant upon him for everything. He sensed that this was a secret, and was guiltily glad to know that his father was out on the tractor. He slipped away, and thought no more about it until some years later when he came upon his mother writing at her small sewing table. She looked up with a start, protecting the book with her hands. There was fear in her eyes. She didn’t need to speak; Sandy understood. ‘Don’t worry, Mum. I won’t tell.’ And he never did.

  That was one of only three occasions when his mother had entrusted him with a secret. The second time occurred when he was about fourteen, and she was helping him to pack for the new school term. The Major, of course, was nowhere to be seen. There’s women’s work and there’s men’s work, he always said.

  ‘Sandy,’ his mother approached him timidly. ‘I need to ask a favour.’ His nod was neutral, but she continued. ‘I’m afraid it means keeping a secret from your father.’ Sandy’s reading had recently taken on a racier tone. Good Lord, he thought, was his mother going to confess to an affair? He foolishly hoped she was. These romantic hopes were dashed when she gave him a letter to be sent to the Melbourne Hospital for Women, in which, she told him, she was making enquiries as to the possible whereabouts of Lily’s baby’s grave.

  ‘Men don’t understand these things,’ Rosie said. ‘I’m afraid your father might think I’m an interfering fool.’ She looked steadily at her son. ‘I’ve asked that the reply be sent care of you, at school. You can give it to me when you see me at half-term. Will you help me, Sandy? It’s for Aunt Lily.’

  Sandy was really afraid of his father by that time, and he visualised the consequences of participating in this deception. He wanted to say no, and that she was a fool to risk discovery.

  What made her think she could trust him not to tell? But she did trust him, and after all the times he had implicitly or explicitly sided with his father, this was a rather wonderful foolishness. For once he felt worthwhile.

  ‘Okay,’ he said roughly. ‘Give it here. I’ll post it from the station. It’s alright, I won’t tell the old man.’ But he pulled away as she ki
ssed him.

  The third time, just before her death, Rosie told him about the books in the window seat. ‘My journals,’ she whispered, still afraid. ‘I had no-one to talk to, you see. Please destroy them for me.’

  Again, ‘Okay, Mum.’ But his voice was kinder. ‘I’ll do the right thing, I promise.’

  When the time came, though, Sandy couldn’t bring himself to destroy the journals. They were all he had left of his mother’s life, and he safeguarded them from all prying eyes, including his own. So they lay where she left them: under the cushions in the window seat. Biding their time until her son came, screwdriver in hand, to retrieve them.

  Sandy hadn’t made this decision lightly, and had set himself some ground rules. Firstly, he would only access the book or books from around the time the letter was sent to the hospital. Then he would scan the entries as quickly as possible, looking for keywords like baby, Lily, hospital, letter, grave—words that would point to the information he was seeking. In all other ways, he would respect his mother’s privacy. He was only doing this to help Aunt Lily, he told his mother.

  There were nearly thirty books in all, stacked in three neat piles; some were covered in black or green or blue cloth, others were no more than exercise books, but all were meticulously dated. Some were tied with ribbon. Sandy’s hand hovered over these. They were the earlier ones, when Rosie was still a hopeful young girl. He picked up the top book and, despite his vow to the contrary, couldn’t resist reading a little of his mother’s early married life. The first book was marked 1936, and Sandy was surprised at the emotion he felt as he scanned the first page.

  12 March. Arrived home today. Our honeymoon was wonderful but I can’t wait to settle into real married life. Father and Lily met us at the station. Lily had prepared tea but George said we had to go straight home. I think they were a little disappointed, but George was understandably eager to bring me to our home. He’s so practical. I asked if he was going to carry me over the threshold and he said that it was all women’s nonsense. But he kissed me and called me his little duffer. I can’t believe that I live in such a fine house. It needs a woman’s touch, though.