Tess Evans - Book of Lost Threads

Two days before his eighteenth birthday a stranger arrived at McPherson’s, asking to speak to young Mister Weekes. The man had a sallow complexion and jowls like a bloodhound, but after hearing what he had to say, Opportunity could have hugged him. The stranger was a solicitor who had traced him to Cradletown all the way from San Francisco, where his mother had died of heart failure. She had left him- after expenses, you understand- the considerable sum of one thousand, three hundred and eleven US dollars, to be paid when he reached his majority.

For three years and two days, Opportunity chafed. On his twenty-first birthday, he resigned from McPherson’s. He hadn’t wasted this time, saving an additional sixty-seven pounds from his wages. Despite liberal advice to the contrary, Opportunity Weekes was ready to realise his dream.

About a hundred and fifty miles to the north of Cradletown was another goldfield town, Mystic, and bullockies, traders and disgruntled miners had worn a wide track between the two centres. Opportunity’s plan was to build a hotel at Halfway Creek, providing accommodation and refreshments for the weary travellers. After a short battle with his conscience, he decided to also sell liquor. Your mother’s bad blood , his father mourned. But the young man had his mother’s business brain, and he set about building a handsome, two-storey pub with verandahs all round and a brass spittoon in the bar.

Opportunity focused on this vision as he rolled up his sleeves and worked beside the men who laboured to build his dream. He drove them hard but paid them well, and when it was finished, they were all justifiably proud of their handiwork. The hotel welcomed its first guest in 1885, and thus began a long period of prosperity for both Opportunity and the burgeoning township.

As his business flourished, Opportunity realised that he needed help, and he proposed to Harriet Westlake, a local farmer’s daughter, as sturdy and loyal as she was plain. She accepted him, and the pub flourished as the reputation of Harriet’s lamb roasts and plum puddings spread and Opportunity mellowed into an affable middle age.

The little town that grew around the Opportunity Hostelry was named for its founder. As he became a wealthy man, Opportunity’s only sorrow was the loss of two baby girls, Faith and Hope, who had been named and christened by his father. A third daughter was born, with sad dark eyes, and having lost both faith and hope, Opportunity called her Dolour. A popish name , Jeremiah fumed as he immersed the child. It means sorrow , his son replied. I won’t tempt God again.

But Dolour was the happiest and healthiest of children, with her mother’s strong body and her father’s deep, dark eyes. Over time, the area gradually transmuted into farmland, and at eighteen, Dolour married Charles Sandilands, son of a local farmer. When Opportunity died, Dolour and Charles sold the pub and established the Sandilands dynasty in a fine house on an expanded property.

The good citizens of Opportunity had suggested erecting a stained-glass window as a memorial to her father, but the practical Dolour said that the town was named for him and that should be enough. What on earth would Father want with a window? she said.

In its golden years, Opportunity boasted five hotels, several sly grog establishments and three brothels; by the time it began sending its young men to the trenches, however, it had become a very proper town with three churches and a school replacing four of the pubs.

Like many small towns, Opportunity was proud and somewhat insular, sniffing ever so slightly at the brashness of Mystic and the pomposity of Cradletown. The latter was always called ‘Town’ with an implied upper-case T. The former was simply referred to as ‘That Place’. The good folk of Opportunity kept themselves to themselves, and generations were born and buried within the town’s boundaries.

The nineteen sixties saw the beginning of its decline, when the young people, no longer content to be farmers, were lured to the cities to join the counter-culture. Some stayed; some returned; but change gathered pace in the eighties, when the economic rationalists began to seriously dismantle rural infrastructure. It was then that the busy farmers and traders of Opportunity looked up and saw that their town was dying. The bank, the farmers’ co-op and McKenzie’s bakery all closed within a year, with the loss of over forty jobs. Families moved to larger centres to find work so the school failed to maintain sufficient numbers. Even church services were rationed when the parish of St Saviour’s was merged with St Matthew’s in Mystic. By the mid nineties, Opportunity no longer lived up to its name.

Most of the farmers managed well enough during the eighties and early nineties, but now, after ten years of drought, a fatal lethargy held the town in thrall. It seeped out of the mud in the dying creek. It sent out tendrils that choked endeavour. It whispered in the ears of sleepers who thought themselves safe in bed. It loitered in the dust that hung in the air, or swirled ahead of the winds that swept unimpeded across a treeless landscape. You could see it in the eyes of your neighbours. You could taste it in your beer.

SANDY SANDILANDS WAS NEARLY SIXTY and he loved his home town. If asked what there was to love about Opportunity, he couldn’t have given a rational reply. The blood of Opportunity Weekes still ran strong in the veins of this, the last of his heirs. It was his family’s town, Sandy would say if pressed. What he would not say was that he felt responsible; that there was a sort of noblesse oblige arising from both his wealth and his heritage. That he was barely tolerated by his neighbours made no difference. The damaged child had become a stubborn man with a mission.

Rosie’s son was christened George Francis for his father and maternal grandfather. There was the usual household confusion that occurs when father and son share names. ‘Georgie’ didn’t work. It reminded the Major of the old nursery rhyme and the days when he was the target. Georgie Porgie, puddin’ and pie , the boys chanted. Kissed the girls and made them cry . ( Well, that was prophetic , Lily always thought. She remembered George Sandilands from primary school days.) Rosie was afraid to suggest ‘Frank’, so when his aunt commented on his red-gold curls, ‘Sandy’ seemed like a good option, echoing his surname as it did.

Sandy spent most of his childhood feeling fear and shame: fear of his father’s violence, and shame that he failed to protect his mother. In later life he excused himself; after all, he was just a child-no physical match for the Major. He knew, but refused to acknowledge, that this was not the whole truth. For Sandy was not merely a passive spectator of his mother’s abuse but was shamefully complicit. He was hers until he learned that discretion was the better part of valour, and as he grew older, he began to speak to her in the disparaging tone used by his father. He would snigger at the insults and caustic remarks that were his mother’s lot, and while, unlike his father, he never resorted to physical violence, he was aware that he wounded her deeply.

At the same time, he was anguished by her pain, and longed to be able to protect her. He suppressed his love but penitentially ate the food she prepared, his lean young body growing rounder with each passing year. He accepted as due punishment his father’s cruel jibes and the scorn of his schoolmates (Fatty Arbuckle, they called him). Mercifully, he was sent away to board for his senior schooling, after which he completed a commerce degree in Melbourne. For a while he was free, and even dreamed of a future in a merchant bank, but at his father’s command he timidly returned home.