Book of Lost Threads

7
Lily Baxter and Arthur Pargetter

WHEN MRS PARGETTER WAS LILY Baxter, she and her older sister, Rosie, were considered to be beauties, although it was generally agreed that Rosie, laughing and vivacious, was the more attractive. The girls were well-read and genteel, daughters of the schoolmaster, but it was still considered a great coup for eighteen-year-old Rosie when she married George Sandilands, the son and heir of a wealthy local grazier. Despite her supposed good fortune, the only peace Rosie Sandilands experienced in her thirty-eight years of marriage was the four years in which her husband was overseas becoming a major and winning medals. Rosie was always publicly addressed by her husband as Rosalind, and privately as Woman, in tones of exasperation, anger or contempt. He prided himself on using physical force only when he considered it to be absolutely necessary. Lily was the only one Rosie ever allowed to see the bruises.
Their son, George Junior, was known as Sandy. From an early age the boy learned that to show affection to his mother would only enrage his father. So he trembled in the suffocating dark beneath the bedclothes when he heard his mother cry, and cravenly sought his father’s approval at every opportunity. This went some way to protecting him from the Major’s anger, but not from his contempt. He was a bright enough lad, but not well coordinated, and his father’s jeering voice could be heard at school sports days and football matches: You great galah! Can’t you do anything right? The boy’s attempts to read quietly, a pastime that he loved, called forth similar abuse. Nancy boy, his father called him, and in his misery Sandy ate the cakes and scones and sweets his mother pressed on him, the only way she could express her love and pity.
At nineteen, Lily was still not married and lived a quiet life, keeping house for her father and playing the organ at St Saviour’s. She was a dreamy girl and looked forward to a future as a wife and mother. Her sister’s early marriage had left her a little uneasy on this score, but her father, a widower for fifteen years, was in no hurry to marry off his second daughter. He was afraid of George and averted shamed eyes from any evidence of Rosie’s unhappiness, privately vowing to protect his younger daughter from the same fate.
Lily was a talented musician and was often asked to play piano at various gatherings around the district. Because of this, she went to many dances but rarely danced, sitting conscientiously at the piano with a straight back and firm wrists as she’d been taught. The women all agreed that she was a pretty girl but a bit too pleased with herself. The men granted that she was a bit of all right, but felt that she thought herself too good for them. Why else, they asked, would she sit all snooty-like at the piano when she could be dancing? There are plenty more fish in the sea, they told each other. Don’t have to chase Miss Up-Herself. Lily, meanwhile, would sit with her straight back and pretty face, wishing only to be swirling on the dance floor with some young man or giggling in the corner where the girls assembled like multi-coloured butterflies.
The ensemble she played with included old ‘Trooper’ Morgan on drums and Tony Capricci (Eyetie Tony) on the saxophone. Both men treated her with a kind of elderly gallantry, which she accepted with rueful gratitude.
The night she met Arthur she had slipped away from the piano for a cool drink, leaving Tony exuberantly calling for a ‘Pride of Erin’. She was looking particularly attractive in a dress of butter-coloured lace, her long auburn hair framing her face.
‘Is the pianist allowed to dance?’
She turned to see a small, dark-haired young man with soft puppy-dog eyes, and a nervous grin over which struggled a self-conscious pencil moustache. He was dressed in a navy-blue suit with an obviously new white shirt. His tie, she noticed, needed straightening, and his hair was just a little too long over his collar.
‘I thought you needed looking after,’ she would say on their honeymoon. ‘That’s the only reason I agreed to dance with you.’
‘Not the only reason you agreed to marry me, I hope,’ Arthur would retort. ‘My good looks and charm must have had some effect.’
The truth was that his charm lay not in his looks, exactly, but in his shy smile. It had taken all his courage to approach her, but he managed to hold out his hand in invitation. Lily looked over at Tony. Please? her eyes said.
‘Go ahead, bella mia. We can play without you.’ Tony beamed.
Arthur was the new clerk at the Commonwealth Bank. A job with prospects, her father noted approvingly. Their courtship was brief. War loomed, and there was a kind of desperate gaiety and sense of urgency that fermented the social process. So, ten months after their first dance, they married at St Saviour’s and honeymooned at Marysville, where they fumbled through their first sexual experience with enthusiasm and good humour, returning to Opportunity with smug little smiles.
Shortly afterwards, Arthur was promoted to a job in Melbourne. Lily was delighted as they began to furnish their little flat in Carlton, two rooms at the back of a sagging Federation house owned by a Mrs Moloney. Their landlady always appeared slightly harried, and her face and body were so angular that Arthur set himself a challenge to detect even the slightest of curves under her drab button-through housedresses. She didn’t believe in becoming familiar with her tenants and always addressed the two young people as Mr and Mrs Pargetter. Lily was delighted to be addressed as Mrs Pargetter; she sometimes felt that she was still a girl, posing as a woman, and the ‘Mrs’ reassured her.
She loved to prepare Arthur’s chops and vegies and always cooked a roast for lunch on Sundays. They made love (with increasing pleasure), stifling giggles at the thought of Mrs Moloney lying grim-faced in the next room. Eight months into the marriage, and three months into Lily’s pregnancy, Arthur signed up.
‘I can’t let all the other blokes go, and sit here living the life of Riley.’ He cupped her face in his hands. ‘I have to look after my best girl and little Tiger here.’ He patted her softly rounded stomach. ‘Got to keep my family safe from the Japs.’
Lily clung to him fearfully. How could she bear to send him away? The past year had seen their love grow from attraction, and the love of being in love, to a deepening sense of each other’s worth. His kindness, integrity and humour; her gentleness, optimism and generosity—all this hope, all this love, had fashioned a magic circle of two, which was miraculously soon to be three. They linked hands. ‘No matter how many miles come between us,’ Lily vowed, her face awash with tears, ‘our circle will never be broken.’
After he left, she spent every day wrestling with her dread as she went about her household tasks and filled in the time knitting ever more fanciful layettes. She prayed to the God in whose church she had played the organ, in whose church she had made her vows. She told stories to the baby growing within her: stories about how they would greet Daddy on his return; stories about how they would picnic at the beach and the park, and take trips to the countryside. She painted mind-pictures of a young soldier, lean and tanned, holding them both in his arms. But an icy knot of fear remained, despite the long days of sunshine and blue skies as summer lingered deceitfully beyond its allotted time.
The telegram arrived six weeks before the baby was due. Arthur had been killed by a sniper somewhere in New Guinea and buried in the field. His effects included a dog-eared photo of their wedding and a lock of auburn hair in a handmade wooden box. She liked to think that he’d made the box, although she knew that he wasn’t clever with his hands. There was also a half-written letter.
How’s my best girl? I hope you’re looking after yourself and little Tiger.
We are—(Here a large block had been blacked out by the censors.)
I can hardly wait to see you both. I have a little wooden dooverlackie that the natives make for their children. It can be Tiger’s first toy. I’ll be home (censored) to give it to him myself. Or it might be a her. Then I would have two best girls. I’ll . . .
The letter finished there. The toy was not with his other effects. She hoped he had it with him when he died.
When the shock wore off, Lily’s sorrow bore down upon her physically and engulfed her mind in blackness. Mrs Moloney, who had experienced her own sorrows, tended her with gentleness and a delicate discretion which poor Lily barely noticed. Her father and sister came as soon as they heard the news; they feared for both her health and her sanity.
‘Come home with me when the baby’s born,’ her father said. ‘We’ll manage. I can’t be its father but I’ll be a bloody good grandfather. Come on, love. Arthur would want you to. You know that.’
Lily stared out the window. She felt a strong affinity with the garden, which wore the overblown, enervated look that signalled the end of a long summer. It wasn’t so long ago that green buds heralded new life. A life now depleted.
Book of Lost Threads ‘Sorry. Did you say something?’ She could hear her father’s voice but was unable to comprehend his meaning.
Rosie picked up her nerveless hand. ‘For the baby’s sake, Lil.’
But the baby, entering the world at thirty-three weeks, was stillborn. In the throes of an agonising labour, Lily was given chloroform, and when she regained consciousness there was no evidence that her baby had ever existed. The nurses were firm. It was best to get on with life. But her milk flowed as she saw other babies at their mothers’ breasts, and she felt a phantom presence where others saw only an absence.
Her father brought her home to Opportunity but became increasingly concerned as she sang lullabies and knitted little jackets. For winter, she said. We must keep Baby warm in winter. She had bought some teddy-bear wallpaper in Melbourne but had not had a chance to hang it in the flat. When her father came home to find the spare bedroom covered in teddy bears, he felt compelled to act.
Dr Grey had seen many grieving mothers. In those days children were still dying of diphtheria and measles. ‘I know it’s upsetting, Frank,’ he said to her worried father. ‘Most women get over it one way or another. Maybe get over it isn’t accurate. They learn to live with it. I don’t know much about psychiatry, but I’d say she’s having a nervous breakdown. Give her a bit more time. Make sure she gets out and about, plays the piano—whatever will take her mind off it. I’m sure she’ll come good in a month or two. Remember, she lost a husband and child within a week of each other. It’s a hell of a thing. Time’s the key, though. Time and patience.’
But Lily continued to knit, to sing lullabies and to walk the floor with her phantom child in the early hours of the morning.
‘Sleepy-byes, sleepy-byes,’ she would croon. ‘The stars are shining in the skies. Come on, close your eyes—Mummy has to sleep too.’ And then she’d lie exhausted on her bed, sleeping beyond noon.
She found the old family pram in the shed and took to walking up the street, stopping every now and then to adjust the covers or point out a birdie or a puppy dog.
‘See the little birdie? He can fly. Mummy can’t fly. Grandpa can’t fly. Aunty Rosie can’t fly. Only birdies.’
It was a small community, and those who saw her out walking pitied her, each in their own way.
Mad as a hatter, poor little bugger.
If only her mother was alive . . .
She was such a lovely girl. Pretty as a picture.
More and more, though, there were those who would say:
Why doesn’t she snap out of it?
It’s like she’s determined to be unhappy. We’ve all lost someone.
They say some of her mother’s family weren’t right in the head.
Poor old Frank. He’s getting too old to deal with this.
They all agreed on the last one.
Finally, Dr Grey referred Lily to a psychiatric hospital, where she spent the next twelve years in a twilight of drugs and therapy. Her rounded body became gaunt and she lost the bloom of her young womanhood. Quiet and compliant in most things, she continued to search for her child with a stubborn diligence that would brook no opposition. She shunned the 112 company of the ‘mad people’, as she called them, and dreaded group therapy sessions. In order to distract her from her fruitless searching, and despite the fact that she was already an accomplished knitter, the occupational therapist taught her to knit tea cosies. It was here at Chalmers House that she learned to conform. It was here that she received the shock treatment that enabled her to function but cauterised her grief and left her, as the citizens of Opportunity agreed, just a little strange. It was here she lost Lily Pargetter.
Her father had visited her every Saturday and agreed, as people did then, to any treatment suggested by her doctors. Despite his frequent requests, they were always adamant that she was not ready to be discharged. He had some qualms when they suggested electroconvulsive therapy (‘shock treatment,’ they called it), but how can a schoolmaster argue medical matters with doctors? They seemed so sure it would work.
Frank died of heart failure before the course of treatment was finished, but before he died he made Rosie promise to bring Lily home. ‘She needs to come home. We’ll take care of her. This shock therapy is the last treatment we can agree to.’
At first the Major opposed the plan. ‘I don’t know why you’d want your barmy sister around. You’ll be too busy with her to take proper care of the house.’
Then, when the psychiatrist confronted him with arrogance equal to his own, the Major’s instincts—to win at all costs—kicked in. In those days it was much easier to be admitted to a mental institution than to be discharged, and for once the Major’s bullying was put to good effect. In the end Lily was released, as if from prison.
‘I’ve got a room ready at our place, Lil,’ Rosie fussed as she tucked a rug around her sister’s knees.
Lily pushed it off. ‘For heaven’s sake, Rosie. I’m not an 114 invalid.’
She stayed with the Sandilands for a week and then insisted on returning to her father’s house where, to supplement the small income her father had left her, she gave piano lessons on weekday afternoons from one till five. She aired the nursery once a week; the rest of the time its door remained closed.
She shopped each day, nodding to acquaintances in a furtive way as she hurried, basket over her arm, to buy her chop or lamb’s fry or bacon. She sent homemade jam to St Saviour’s fête committee and resumed her place at the organ, much to the relief of the congregation who, in latter years, had had to tolerate the doubtful harmonies of Annie Williams’s daughter, Deanna. It’s the Christian thing to do, they assured Annie, who was inclined to protest at Deanna’s dismissal. Deanna herself was delighted. Playing the church organ had proved to be quite a handicap in her pursuit of the local boys.
Every Thursday, Lily and her sister would have morning tea in the café, known then, rather grandly, as the Regency Rooms. There they would talk quietly over tea and scones, always at the same corner table. These were the longest conversations Lily had with anyone at that time, and no-one else knew what they talked about. Angela Capricci sometimes tried to eavesdrop as she delivered their tea or wiped down an adjoining table, but she had nothing to report. ‘They speak so softly,’ she said. ‘I can’t catch a word they say.’
In June of 1957, Lily turned thirty-five and Rosie gave her a puppy for her birthday. ‘He’s the best of Jess’s litter,’ she said. ‘He’ll be company for you.’
The puppy whimpered in its basket, and Lily felt panic rising in her throat. He was so little. He’d need so much care. She wasn’t sure she was equal to the task but, seeing the delight on her sister’s face, her hand, on the way to a gesture of rejection, fell instead onto the puppy’s paws. Surprised, she felt his warm tongue on the back of her hand.
Lily was engulfed by an unexpected wave of tenderness. She looked down at the little creature. Touched it tentatively. Stroked its softness. She was so lonely. Her bones ached with a longing that finally conquered her fear of inadequacy.
‘Thank you, Rosie. I hope I can take proper care of him.’
‘Why on earth couldn’t you?’ her sister replied with a confidence that didn’t quite reach her eyes. ‘He’ll need a name, though. What will you call him?’
Lily didn’t hesitate. ‘Errol. For Errol Flynn.’ And the puppy became the first of the Errols, of which her current dog was number six.
Rosie’s doubts were understandable. Her sister had changed during her time at Chalmers House. While her behaviour after the death of her husband and child was extreme, something of the old Lily still lingered, distorted and damaged to be sure, but recognisable. Now, though, she seemed to have lost her spark, some important ingredient of her Lily-ness. She avoided social occasions and, when engaged in conversation, had a tendency to flight. Worse, she sometimes made a rude or inappropriate comment before escaping to the safety of her house. Conversations at the Regency Rooms had none of their old intimacy, and Rosie felt she had to carry the full burden. She would return home quite exhausted, submitting in silence to George’s gibes about her barmy sister.
Rosie died in 1972 and was buried in the Sandilands family plot as Rosalind, loving wife of Major George Sandilands, DSO and Bar. Her son didn’t even warrant a mention. Lily stood white-faced beside the grave as the Major, with self-conscious solemnity, threw the first clod onto the coffin. The faint thud reverberated through Lily’s fragile brain, and her mouth filled with bile. Bleak and bitter, she spat viciously on the Major’s polished shoes and spoke as she had never spoken to anyone before.
‘She’s free of you now, you bastard,’ she said. ‘I only wish you had gone first.’
Rosie’s death left Lily with no-one to talk to, and that’s when she began talking to her dog (Errol III, by this time). She could be heard by passers-by chatting away with a vivacity never witnessed in her conversations with people. All the Errols (with the exception of Errol II, who had poor concentration and limited empathy) were good listeners. They would cock their heads intelligently and look into her face with bright, sympathetic eyes. They would place a paw on her knee when she was sad, and whimper if the conversation flagged. They were perfect companions for an ageing lady who avoided the company of her own kind. Sandy kept up the supply of Errols, a small thing to do for his mother’s sister, he thought.
It was Errol III, Lily swore, who gave her the idea of the tea cosies. As the number of music pupils dwindled, she had more time on her hands and decided, after discussing it with her dog, that she would do something good—undertake some grand endeavour for the betterment of mankind.
‘I don’t want to die having done nothing of note,’ she said to the nodding Errol. ‘The one useful thing I did at that place—’ she couldn’t bear to say its name—‘the one useful thing I did was learn to knit tea cosies. And Errol, old boy, humanity shall benefit.’ And so began her long association with the United Nations through the self-appointed quartermaster, Lusala Ngilu.