Book of Lost Threads

24
Finn alone

THE TWO SPECK WAS ABOUT thirty kilometres downstream from Opportunity. Here, just before a sweeping bend, the stream broadened and ran noisily over pebbles and coarse sand. Finn had found this camping spot years ago and came here when even his limited social life in Opportunity became too much. Sheltered and isolated, the place seemed ideal, but on his first visit he soon became aware that he had a neighbour. Jim was an old prospector who lived in a lean-to that teetered above the steep embankment. Resenting Finn’s intrusion, Jim lurked malevolently in the bush for several days but was finally driven into the open by the smell of Finn’s tobacco. ‘Spare a smoke, mate?’
Finn obliged and they sat in silence, watching the twin spirals of smoke fade into the blue haze of the eucalypts.
‘Ta, mate,’ said Jim before returning to his lean-to.
Thereafter Jim and Finn understood each other, and on Finn’s irregular visits they spent many an hour in affable silence, squatting on their heels beside the campfire, drinking billy tea or smoking roll-your-owns. Sometimes, quite out of the blue, Jim would have a ‘bit of a yarn’, as he called it. His voice was creaky with disuse.
‘Know why they call it the Two Speck?’ he asked Finn once. ‘Because they reckon that’s all they found when they panned here—but me grandad used to say they found more than they let on.’ He touched the side of his nose and nodded towards the river. ‘Either that or the gold’s still here. If it is still here, I’ll find it, my bloody oath I will.’
Jim used to pan for gold along the creekbed, and the few specks he found he stored in a little jar of river water hidden under his stretcher bed. He was a philosophical old bloke, Finn remembered now with affection. I’d stay here on the Two Speck even if they found Lasseter’s lost bloody reef, he’d say. The bush’ll do me any day. Finn had felt a kinship with this reclusive old man; they both respected silence and gave each other space, but there was a companionable element to their encounters.
We could’ve started a monastery of our own, Finn thought. The Bush Brothers. He grinned. No, that sounded like a country and western band.
The shack was empty now and had deteriorated since Finn was here last. Jim had been dead a few weeks before he was found, and, while outrage was expressed in the local paper, Finn was glad. His old friend had escaped the hospital death he dreaded. They roof over the stars, Finn, and you can’t smell the bush. All the old man had wanted was to live and die on his beloved Two Speck.
Finn put down his pack and looked around. There’d been a time when he’d have taken a sudden flood into account, but the Two Speck flowed sluggishly now. A faint but ominous cloudiness defiled the formerly clear water.
I’m glad old Jim didn’t live to see this, Finn thought as he pitched his tent. He made a campfire the way the old man had taught him, and emptied a can of baked beans into the pot, stirring them desultorily with a stick. The sharp scent of eucalypt mingled with the smoke, and furtive little shuffling noises betrayed the first stirrings of nocturnal bush creatures.
Finn had walked the thirty kilometres from Opportunity, stopping two nights to camp and re-provision on the way. Walking usually helped him think, but this time he resolutely refused to face his situation until he’d reached his destination. Now that he was here, he procrastinated once again. Maybe I’ll eat first, he decided. He ate his beans with some bread that he’d toasted—burned—over the fire. He rummaged in his pack for his enamel mug. A cup of tea and then I’ll think. But despite his good intentions, his mind stubbornly refused to cooperate. The short twilight retreated before the encroaching bush night and though the campfire warmed his front, a chill was settling over his back. Time for the sleeping bag, he told himself. Better to think in the morning when I’m fresh.
He was awakened just after dawn by the chorus of birds and the secret, rustling life of the trees. The fire was down to a few smouldering coals, so he stoked it up and soon bacon was sizzling, filling the air with its strong salty aroma. Bacon and eggs. Nothing better for a bush breakfast. He’d finish his breakfast and then he’d think.
Mopping up the last of his egg, Finn sipped at the scalding billy tea and attempted to apply logic to his undisciplined emotions. He understood that he’d reached a milestone in the discovery of Amber-Lee’s real identity, but from now on there were no signposts to direct him. Amber-Lee’s shadow had walked beside him in lock step for over ten years, directing his life and his sense of himself. Now that she had transmuted into Jilly Baker, the idea of Amber-Lee was drifting from him. He had the practical means to commemorate her life and death, perhaps with some sort of charitable donation, but what he had cherished as a great tragedy had become human-sized, even banal. Without Amber-Lee and the life they’d shared, he felt disorientated. He needed a compass or, better still, a map. This could be the end of the road. On the other hand, it could be the beginning of a new one. How do you know such things?
The memory of a voice prompted him. I can sense that you’re stronger now. How do you account for that? Father Jerome was right. He was stronger now, and looking back, he could see that his strength had begun to return even before he met Amber-Lee’s cousin, before he’d heard the name Jilly Baker. He’d felt the beginnings of its tentative re-emergence the night Moss told him that her mother was Amy Sinclair; the night he met his daughter for the first time. In retrospect he was amazed that he’d let her in—a strange young woman, coat streaming with water, hair plastered around her tense, white face. He smiled now as he remembered his caution, his blathering on about names. They’d both seemed a little mad that night. Like father, like daughter, he thought and was pleased to apply the old cliché to himself. Poor Moss: she’d needed his support when Linsey died, and while he demonstrated his concern in all sorts of practical ways, his emotional commitment had been niggardly at best. He had to admit that he’d avoided confidences when Moss clearly needed someone to talk to. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to help; just that he felt singularly unqualified to advise anyone about—well, anything, really.
He stood up and stretched his back, then went down to the river to splash water on his face, which was stung to numbness as its iciness pierced the residual warmth left by the fire. He was getting soft, he thought, and imagined old Jim scoffing at his startled recoil from the cold. He dried his face on a small towel. A good walk would get the blood flowing.
Taking the goat-track by the river, he walked briskly for a while and then slowed down as he returned reluctantly to his earlier train of thought. There was Moss, of course, but also Sandy and his aunt. They were another reason for his renewed strength. He needed to understand how his friendship with Sandy and Mrs Pargetter had come about. Was it simply the attraction of similarly lost souls? In part, it was. They were all damaged in some way. But beyond that was the simple warmth and fellowship that characterised ordinary friendships, like the one he’d shared with Phil in the old days. He, Moss, Sandy, Mrs Pargetter—their reliance upon each other had strengthened them all.
He returned to the core question. For ten years now he’d lived with his self-imposed obligation to Amber-Lee, whom he now knew to be Jilly Baker. Knowing was supposed to be enough.
You have what you say you’ve always wanted, Sandy had said. Be grateful. All the rest is just self-indulgence.
Where had Sandy found this new dignity and authority? He’d always been so diffident, so dependent. Good-hearted, yes, but something of a buffoon. Sandy had always looked up to Finn, yet in the end he had been willing and able to judge him. Perhaps that was because he knew the depths of my culpability, decided Finn, his thoughts once again turning inwards. He pulled himself up sharply. No; this wasn’t about him at all. It was about Sandy. Sandy had grown in the past few months, and the man he really was had found the voice and the courage to reprimand his friend.
Finn had a daughter, a home, friends. He no longer really knew Michael Clancy and couldn’t have picked up his old life even if he’d wanted to. The only remnant of the Michael he had been was his daughter, conceived so thoughtlessly—no, so unthinkingly—to fund his social life. Looking back on that time, Finn was grateful that he’d given generously in the end. If Moss wasn’t conceived in love, at least she was conceived in kindness.
What more did he want of life? Why was he so reluctant to let go of the corrosive remorse he’d nurtured over the years? It had seen him retreat from the world and from all his former attachments, living a monkish existence in a forgotten country town. But life has a way of continuing. He’d formed new attachments. Not because he sought them, but because he lived in a real place with real people, all of whom demanded time and respect. He could live a hermit’s life like Jim, a contemplative life like the Benedictines, or he could live, an imperfect man in an imperfect world.
Back at his camp now he squatted on his heels in front of the fire. He pushed a twig into the coals and touched the spark to his cigarette. This is who I am, he thought. This is who I can be.
Finn had sloughed off his old skin, but the new skin was still raw and tender. He didn’t feel ready to return to Opportunity. This reborn Finn was not a return to the old Michael. Michael Clancy was a person Finn looked back on as he might a naive younger brother or a feckless but charming friend: with affection and a little regret.
The old Finn, trapped in his self-imposed penance, was still too recent, too ingrained to be discarded lightly, and remained as a shadow of the possible future. The new Finn needed time to grow into his skin.
He decided then to linger a while by the Two Speck, walking the five kilometres to Tungally pub each day for a meal. There he could mix a bit with the locals or the passing truckies who stopped for lunch on their way to or from Melbourne. Strangers wouldn’t ask difficult questions; even if they did, he owed them no answer.
For two weeks he was a familiar sight at the bar, eating his counter lunch or drinking his Coke. Once or twice, a truckie stopped to give him a lift, but mostly he was content to walk. The locals were curious, but the first conversations he had were the general conversations of strangers passing the time.
G’day, mate. Where you from, then?
Camping on the Two Speck, eh?
What about the Magpies? Can they win without Johnson?
No bloody rain in sight, eh?
F*ckin’ politicians haven’t got a clue, mate.
You don’t have a beer, then?
Later, the conversations became more specific and personal.
Me daughter’s gone to Melbourne for work. Nothin’ for her here, mate. You got kids?
So what do you do for a crust? Maths, eh? Wasn’t much good at maths meself. Me son’s an accountant, but. Since he moved to town we don’t see the grandkiddies much.
I can last one more season, I reckon. Poor old Dad’ll turn in his grave if we’re forced to sell.
I applied for a country school. I love it here, but we’re running out of kids. It’ll close in two years if we don’t get more families.
You don’t fancy pulling on the boots, do you? No, we’ve got older blokes than you in the team, I reckon.
Finn listened to them all; all the concerns of ordinary lives, all the same, yet all unique. He offered something of himself in return.
I moved from Melbourne to Opportunity about ten years ago.
Yeah, I like the country life.
No, never played for the Knockers.
A daughter. She comes and stays with me sometimes.
No. No grandkids.
He wasn’t so different. Soon, he told himself. Soon he would return.
One morning he woke up and knew it was time. Methodically, he began to gather his things, taking care to collect his rubbish in a plastic bag, which he stowed in his backpack. Finally, he doused the fire with river water and smothered it with earth. With one last look at Jim’s disintegrating shack, he swung the pack lightly over his shoulder and set off downriver, back to Opportunity. He suddenly wanted, more than anything, to be home for Christmas.