Book of Lost Threads

16
Lily Pargetter and her baby

EAGER AS USUAL TO GET his plans underway, Sandy asked Moss and Finn to meet him at the pub for lunch. ‘I don’t want Aunt Lily to know for now,’ he said. ‘I’ve got some information, and I need to discuss where to go from here.’
‘It’s like this,’ he said after they’d ordered their meal. ‘There are identifiable places where babies were buried, but there’s no record of Aunt Lily’s baby anywhere. The woman from SANDS suggests taking her to the Church of England section of the cemetery. It might comfort her to see the burial place and the memorial—give her another focus. What do you think?’
‘All I know is that she needs some sort of help,’ said Moss. ‘She’s in pain, Sandy. She hides it well enough, but I’ve seen her with her defences down.’
Sandy sipped his beer thoughtfully, and they sat in silence while the pub noise rose and fell around them.
Finn finally spoke. ‘So you don’t know whether to tell Mrs Pargetter that the gravesites have been found, or whether to let it go.’ Sandy nodded. ‘Moss tells me that your aunt feels the baby’s still in the house. She never said anything like that to me.’
‘It only started happening again since Moss came back. Aunt Lily seems to think that Moss can bring the baby out of hiding.’
‘It’s become a bit distressing,’ Moss admitted. ‘Sometimes I find her standing in the doorway of the room. Other times I come back and find her sitting on the bed. When she sees me, she just says, I’m looking for my baby. Then she goes about her business as though nothing has happened.’ She paused. ‘The room does have a strange feeling . . .’
Sandy nodded. ‘From what I overheard as a child, she brought an imaginary baby home with her from the hospital. Used to take it for walks, buy it clothes and everything. That’s why they put her in Chalmers House. That was the mental institution just out of Cradletown. It was closed down in the seventies after a fire. Good thing too, from what you hear.’
Finn didn’t feel qualified to comment on Mrs Pargetter’s emotional state. ‘You know your aunt best, Sandy,’ he said. ‘What’s your gut feeling?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe if she can visit a gravesite, it will give her some peace of mind.’
Moss agreed. ‘I read the plaques. It seemed to me that at least some of the pain the parents feel comes from not knowing. It’s not time that brings relief in these cases—it’s finally knowing where their babies lie.’
Finn stood up. This conversation was too close to home. ‘It’s not for us to decide,’ he said abruptly. ‘Everyone has a right to know . . . things. Sorry. Have to go and—and check some stats.’ And before they could reply, he bolted.
Sandy wanted Moss to be present when he spoke to his aunt, but she declined. Firstly, she felt this was a family matter, and secondly, she was rattled by Mrs Pargetter’s insistence on her own connection to the baby.
‘I’ll just complicate matters,’ she said. ‘This is something between you and your aunt.’
The next day, Moss returned to Melbourne and Sandy invited himself to his aunt’s for lunch.
‘Don’t go to any trouble, Aunt Lily. I’ll bring some ham and fresh rolls.’
The old lady sniffed. ‘ I can still feed my guests, George. I have some nice vegetable soup that I made with Moss. You can bring some rolls,’ she conceded. ‘We’ll have them with the soup.’
Sandy, knowing his aunt’s regular habits, turned up promptly at twelve thirty. ‘I hate it when Moss goes,’ she said petulantly after absentmindedly offering her cheek for a kiss. ‘Errol doesn’t like it either, do you, Errol?’
Errol woofed his wholehearted agreement.
They sat down to the soup, and Sandy, who had rehearsed the conversation in his mind, deployed his opening gambit. ‘I took Moss to the cemetery the other day. She wanted to visit her mother Linsey.’
‘Very strange arrangement, that one,’ his aunt replied, juggling her teeth with the soup spoon. ‘You didn’t see that sort of thing in my day.’
Sandy was checked. She was supposed to say something about the comfort such a visit might bring. He’d have to prompt her. ‘She said it helped—you know, in her grieving.’
But Mrs Pargetter was off on her own train of thought. ‘I suppose they existed in my day. But we didn’t know. Rosie hinted something about Abby Lawson and Stella McGuire once. I didn’t know what she was talking about. Perhaps that was what she meant.’ She shook her head in wonder at her own youthful innocence.
‘We wandered around the cemetery a bit. It’s an interesting place,’ offered her persistent nephew, with a growing sense of desperation.
‘I wonder if they call Moss’s other mother a widow. Is there a special word for it, do you think?’
Sandy tried again. ‘Listen, Aunt Lily. While we were walking around, we found a spot where they buried stillborn babies.’
His aunt looked at him steadily, her soup spoon frozen in midair. ‘And why should that interest me?’
He looked at his aunt in disbelief. This wasn’t at all the conversation he’d rehearsed. ‘Well, I thought that, you know, you might like to—to visit your . . . baby.’
‘My baby lives here, with me. I’ve just misplaced it.’
Sandy felt a throbbing in his temples and his hands began to sweat. The colour rose to the surface of his face, a fine network of capillaries revealing an ugly mottle.
He would remain forever ashamed of what he did next. He’d been tense leading up to the visit, and his planned conversation had gone awry as Mrs Pargetter prattled on about Linsey and Amy and Stella and God knows who else. Then she sat there, bold as brass, asking what it all had to do with her. He struggled for self-control and teetered on the edge until she calmly told him she had misplaced her child. It was then that he felt himself rushing headlong into the darkness that had fascinated and repelled him all his life. Stumbling to his feet, he grabbed her shoulders and shouted into her face: ‘What’s the matter with you, woman? Are you completely batty? What do you mean, misplaced ?’
Appalled, he let his hands fall as she cowered away from him. Cowered. From him. He saw, in a moment, history repeating itself, and sank back into the chair as harsh sobs lacerated his throat. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Aunt Lily, I’m so sorry. I’m not like him. Mum, I promise I’m not like him.’
His aunt twisted her hands in distress. ‘George—I can’t— oh dear, please stop crying . . . Rosie, Rosie, I don’t know what to do . . .’
Errol had interposed himself between the two, snarling a warning to Sandy. ‘Come here, Errol,’ Mrs Pargetter murmured. ‘It’s alright now, old boy.’ The dog put his paws in her lap, but continued to growl softly, keeping an eye on Sandy, still slumped in his chair.
As she stroked the old dog’s head, her agitated heart gradually slowed and returned to its usual measured beat. Time dripped away in relentless drops that fell far back into the waters of her past and then swept her forward into a lonely future. Sandy. What would happen to him now? What would happen to her? Her vision blurred and her hands shook but she steeled herself. I can do it, Rosie. She cleared her throat.
‘George . . . Sandy,’ she said. ‘Never, ever do that again. Rosie kept making excuses for your father, but the truth is he was a cruel and violent man. Cruel his whole life till the day he died. I—I don’t know what to do. I can’t . . . I’m too old. Oh, Sandy . . . what can we do?’
Sandy began to excuse himself, his usual reaction to feelings of guilt. ‘I wanted to make you happy. To set your mind at rest. I wanted to do it for Mum’s sake too. She worried about you all the time, you know.’ Even as he spoke, he knew that there was no excuse. He had to accept that he was George Sandilands’ son. A son who had inherited his father’s brutality along with the family farm.
Mrs Pargetter’s voice broke and her eyes pleaded with his. ‘I’m speaking to you now—to Rosie’s son. There’s a lot of good in you, Sandy. I’ll never call you George again. It’s your father’s name, not yours.’ She articulated her next words distinctly, with pauses to emphasise her meaning. ‘And you are not your father. You don’t have to be. Do you hear me? You don’t have to be.’ She turned away. ‘Dear Rosie,’ she said. ‘Such a gentle, loving soul.’ Even after all these years, she missed Rosie more than she could say. Here was a chance to repay some of her sister’s kindness. She would save Sandy. ‘I’ll come with you to the cemetery. It was kind of you to take the trouble.’
Her nephew looked up, his large face blurred and crumpled like wet cardboard.
‘Go now,’ she said. ‘I’m very tired. I think I’ll have a little nap.’
Sandy came over to give her his customary peck on the cheek but stopped, still deeply ashamed. He half raised his hand in farewell and went out, closing the door quietly behind him.
Lily Pargetter sat on in her chair. Sadness overwhelmed her. It was too deep for tears, so she continued to sit, stroking Errol’s head until she was suddenly aware that night had fallen.
As he drove away from his aunt’s house, Sandy looked with puzzled gravity at his soft white hands on the steering wheel. It was as though they had acted of their own volition. He recoiled again as the steering wheel became his aunt’s stooped shoulders. It was lucky that he met no other drivers on the road home. He found himself unlocking his door without any further recollection of the journey.
He had to steel himself, but there he was the next day standing sheepishly on his aunt’s doorstep, a lemon pie balanced in his hand. He knew that if he left it any longer, he would never have the courage to return to his aunt’s house. The Major wouldn’t have recognised this as courageous—there are no Distinguished Service Orders for acts of moral courage— but Mrs Pargetter realised what it must have cost him. She patted his arm.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘let’s have a cup of tea and you can tell me your plans for the visit to Melbourne.’
Gratefully, Sandy slipped into planning mode and suggested they stay in Melbourne overnight. ‘That way it won’t be too tiring. How would you like it if we went to a show as well?’
Mrs Pargetter smiled. ‘That would be lovely. How about 226 the opera?’
Sandy groaned inwardly. He was a country and western man.
‘You don’t get away scot-free, young man,’ said his aunt, and never mentioned the ugly incident again.
Sandy took the car as far into the cemetery as he could, and then he and his aunt walked slowly down the narrow paths between the graves. She walked reluctantly, her head bowed, a straw hat shielding her papery skin from the sun. Sandy was pleased that the day was fine. He wanted everything to look as serene as possible, remembering the sullen sky and biting winds that assailed them when he and Moss had made their pilgrimage. Today the sky was benign, and despite the cool breeze there was a hint of warmth in the air. Nevertheless, the grey sentinels that stood over the graves were as bleak as ever. Sandy shuddered and was momentarily grateful for the family plots that awaited them both in St Saviour’s little churchyard.
Mrs Pargetter stopped in front of one elaborate stone. ‘In loving memory of Hannah Wilson, wife of John, mother of Matthew and Dora. 1895–1930. Rest in peace,’ she read. ‘I wonder where John is? He wasn’t buried beside her by the looks of things. Perhaps he married again and was buried with his second wife.’ As though she’d heard Sandy’s thoughts, she added: ‘At least in Opportunity we all rest together.’ She sat on the marble bed and patted it. ‘Forgive me, Hannah Wilson. I need to sit a while. I can’t get about as I used to.’
Happy to take a break himself, Sandy waited until she was rested, and they resumed their walk towards the straggling peppercorn trees.
‘It’s here,’ Sandy said, indicating the seat. His aunt was out of breath again and was pleased to be able to sit down. She sat with her eyes closed for a few minutes, touching her forehead and cheeks with a lace-edged handkerchief. Then she looked around her. The small clearing was surrounded by tombstones which stretched in ordered ranks as far as her eyes could see. In the middle distance, the two peppercorns strove unsuccessfully to provide a canopy over the memorial seat.
They’re poor specimens, Mrs Pargetter thought, as she remembered the huge, gnarled trees of her childhood. She and Rosie had loved the peppercorn trees that grew beside the railway line. They used to collect the cocoons spun by the fat blue-green caterpillars that lived on the leaves, and then waited, usually in vain, for the emergence of the moth. They were wonderful trees to climb, too. The girls would sit dangling their legs over the branches and making veils with the trailing leaves, taking turns at being the bride.
By the time Lily was indeed a bride, the war had started and it became difficult to obtain suitable fabrics. So she wore a long veil of Limerick lace that her aunt, who had married a Catholic, was able to borrow from the nuns in Cradletown. She wore Rosie’s wedding dress and her mother’s pearl pendant. Her shoes were the only new thing she’d worn that day, but it didn’t matter. She felt beautiful; she was beautiful because her Arthur never tired of telling her so. So many years ago now. Arthur had looked nervous and handsome in his striped suit and the paisley silk tie she’d given him as a wedding present. ‘Gee,’ he said when he opened the parcel. ‘It’s a ripper of a tie. I reckon I’ll look like Errol Flynn in this.’ He kissed her soundly and then produced his present for her, watching her open it with a look of sly anticipation. It was a pink satin dressing-gown with high-shouldered quilted sleeves and a wide sash. ‘You’ve got such a tiny little waist,’ he said. ‘With your lovely red hair you’ll look like Rita Hayworth.’
Mrs Pargetter could still remember her blushes. It was quite daring, shocking even, for a young man to buy what was tantamount to underwear for his sweetheart. She and Rosie giggled as they folded it into her case, still wrapped in the soft white tissue paper. After Arthur died, she had clutched the gown around her, rocking back and forth in her grief. It was a comfort of sorts, but no substitute for his arms.
She took it with her to the hospital when she went into premature labour. She wanted to wrap their child in something that was connected to its father.
‘What a lovely gown,’ the young nurse had said enviously as she helped Lily unpack. ‘By the look of things, you’ll be in the labour ward soon. I’ll have this ready for you when you come back here.’ And she hung it over the chair. That was the last Lily saw of the gown. When she came out of the anaesthetic, it was gone.
‘I need it,’ she told the duty sister. ‘I need it to wrap my baby in.’
The sister looked down with pity as she injected her with morphine. ‘Go to sleep now, Mrs Pargetter. You’ll need your strength. Doctor will be in soon.’
‘My baby. You haven’t even told me if it’s a boy or a girl. Please bring me my baby.’ She clutched at the nurse’s starched uniform.
‘Sleep, now, dear. You aren’t quite strong enough yet.’
She awoke a second time to find a short, balding man standing with her father and Rosie.
‘I’m Dr Macgregor. How are we now, young lady? A bit sore, I imagine.’
‘My baby. Where’s my baby?’
‘Your baby was very tiny. I’m afraid it didn’t survive the birth.’
She looked at her father, and Rosie, who was crying. ‘What does that mean? Didn’t survive the birth. What does that mean?’
She came to know what it meant. It meant empty arms, milk overflowing from painful breasts, a sense of abandonment and feelings of shame and guilt. She’d not been strong enough to protect their child. Look after little Tiger for me. Those had been Arthur’s last words to her and she’d failed him; failed their child.
She stirred in her seat and returned to the present, looking around her, bewildered. Then the memorial rocks swam into view, with their brass plaques and sad little messages. She felt very tired. ‘Can you read them to me, please, Sandy?’
Sandy squatted uncomfortably, his large body obscuring the rocks from her sight. ‘Let’s see . . . There are some that only have names and dates. I’ll just read the ones with inscriptions.’
‘No. Read everything, please. It’s only right to read everything.’
So Sandy began a litany of names and dates. ‘Mary Simpson, 7 June 1971. Peter Ashley Moore, 15 September 1963. You are wrapped tightly in our hearts. Baby Sartori, 1 December 1954. We never forgot you, now we’ve found you at last . . . Do you want me to go on?’
‘Please, Sandy.’ So much sadness in this place.
‘Alan Michael Thompson, 12 July 1961. Rosemary Jane Bartley.’ His voice was husky with emotion. ‘The one day we had you is still precious . . . Nathan John . . .’ He finally stood up. ‘That’s all of them.’ Only twenty minutes had passed but they had encompassed sixty years of sorrow.
So many, yet none of them hers. ‘Thank you. Just let me be for a bit, will you, dear?’
Sandy walked away a little as Lily Pargetter bowed her head and said a prayer for all the lost babies and their grieving parents. Then she gathered her courage and looked for her child among the little souls that crowded her consciousness. She listened to the wind and opened her heart but found only silence.
‘Sandy,’ she said. Her tone was flat and passionless. ‘My baby isn’t here.’ Sandy began to demur. ‘It’s not here,’ she said simply. ‘I know. I’m its mother.’
They laid the flowers they had brought and retraced their steps. Sandy was uneasy. He’d expected tears, but his aunt talked about the weather and the opera, even joking a little about some of the more elaborate monuments they passed. He responded cautiously, and later told Finn that she seemed almost indifferent. But at the opera that night, when Mimi died, she cried as though her heart would break.
They stayed in Melbourne for two more days, visiting the other three sites of infant burial. Each time, Sandy looked at her hopefully, but her response was the same: ‘My baby isn’t here.’
She was so sure that he came to believe her, and he had to admit that he had failed. The old lady was quiet on the way home and Sandy put on a CD, The World’s Greatest Arias, which he’d bought for her in Melbourne. She drifted off into an exhausted sleep, and he had to waken her when they arrived at her house.
‘Sorry we weren’t more successful, Aunt Lily,’ he said, helping her up the steps. ‘There probably are other sites. They just haven’t been identified yet.’
‘Oh, but it’s confirmed what I knew all along, Sandy dear. Now I know for sure that my baby is still here with me in Opportunity.’
Gravely troubled, he settled her into her house and then left, promising to call in to see her the next day. He hesitated at the gate and then walked up Finn’s path.
‘So how did it go?’
‘I think I’ve just made things worse,’ Sandy replied. ‘She’s more convinced than ever that the baby is still with her.’
Lily Pargetter had to admit that she was getting old. The visit to the city had depleted her, and she spent the first few days after her return dozing by the fire with Errol. Her knitting lay on the sofa beside her while she sat and stared at the splayed fingers of her idle hands.
What had she expected of the visit to the cemetery? In truth, very little. She’d read of the memorial services in the newspaper, but could never bring herself to participate. Wherever her baby’s body lay, its spirit had come home to Opportunity in her arms. She was now sure of that. At each site, she’d grieved for the bereaved and their lost children, but never once felt the presence of her own child.
Why did she go on this fruitless quest? she asked herself. In some part it was to acknowledge Sandy’s goodness before he lost all belief in himself as a good person. I think I’ve saved him, Rosie, she told her dead sister as she sat by the fireside they’d shared as girls. Her other motive was deeper and more difficult to express. She had to satisfy herself that her baby was still with her. That it was still somewhere in the house, even though it hovered just at the periphery of her vision; just beyond the reach of her heart.
‘Do you sense its presence, Errol?’ she asked, stroking the old dog’s head. ‘They tried to burn away my memory, but memory survives in other places.’ Her body still remembered the baby’s weight as it grew inside her; it remembered the first stirrings, soft like a tiny fluttering bird; it remembered the growing strength of the little legs kicking. Her blood remembered its heartbeat, and her arms remembered its weight as she carried it home. She stroked the dog’s greying coat.
‘Errol, I brought my baby home and it lived right here with me until they took me to that terrible place.’ Errol licked her hand and whimpered. ‘I made a mistake, you see. I closed up the room, and it wasn’t until Moss came to stay that I opened the door.’ Her face seemed to melt in the firelight. ‘Now I know that my baby has been hiding all these years. No wonder it hid from me. I closed my heart, Errol. Moss has a young, loving heart, just like mine was. My baby knows that.’
She looked down as the dog nuzzled her hand. ‘You love me, old boy, don’t you? But it’s not enough any more. I need to find strength from somewhere to . . . to shine a light into that room and call my baby to me.’ She was trembling now. ‘I’m afraid, Errol. I’m afraid that when Moss goes, it will stay there in the shadows. Always out of reach.’
At the sound of Moss’s name, Errol got up and padded over to her room. His mistress followed him and opened the door. The wind stirred the lace curtains, and the smell of furniture polish competed with the scent of freesias that floated through the open window. The dog whined and pressed against her as she stood in the doorway and willed her baby to appear. Her eyes strained at every shadow, challenged every shaft of light. She tried sliding her eyes sideways in a sudden movement that might capture a disappearing form. She stood until she was grey with fatigue and a bright spot of pain speared her temples. The teddies murmured their concern unheard, except by Errol, who growled softly. He remained at her side, stiff-legged, guarding her grief. That’s where Moss found them when she returned home nearly an hour later.
‘Are you okay, Mrs Pargetter?’ she said gently as the old lady jumped, startled by her approach.
‘Just thinking over the years,’ she replied as Moss led her back to her chair by the fire. ‘Do you know something, Moss? I was standing there, wanting to call to my baby, but then I realised why I couldn’t. It has no name.’