Tess Evans - Book of Lost Threads

‘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.’

ANA TOUCHED HER HAIR AND straightened her skirt as she stepped into the outer office. She presented her ID and waited for confirmation. The secretary checked her photo, swiped her card and looked up at her. ‘Name?’

‘Ana Sejka. I have an appointment with the ambassador at 235 two thirty.’

The secretary indicated a chair. ‘He’s running a bit late, Ms Sejka. Please take a seat.’

Ana sat on the edge of her chair, hands clasped tightly in her lap. She was a neat-featured young woman, her heavy dark hair tied back with a silk scarf. Behind her glasses, her eyes were large and candid as she looked at, but did not see, a fine wood carving on the table beside her.

She’d been dreading this moment ever since she opened Mrs Pargetter’s parcel. She’d opened the letter first and read the address with surprise. She and her family had arrived in Australia as refugees fleeing from Kosova in early 2000. They’d found a home in the country town of Shepparton, and it was there that Ana had finished school before continuing on to Melbourne University where she had taken an honours degree in politics.

Opportunity . The confidence implied by the name appealed to her. She was sure she’d never heard of it; it was the sort of name you remember. A romantic at heart, Ana dressed Opportunity in clothes of her own designing, creating a mythical town where an ageless princess wove (this sounded better than knitted, she thought) fabrics with magical powers (again, better than tea cosies for her purpose). But despite her noble visions, Ana had failed where others before her had succeeded. Try as she might, she’d been unable to think of an original use for Mrs Pargetter’s gift. And now here she was, waiting to meet Mr Lusala Ngilu, self-appointed quartermaster and long-time Kenyan Ambassador to the United Nations.