Book of Lost Threads (11 page)

Boniface traced a cross on Finn’s forehead and murmured a blessing. ‘You’ll know what to do when the time is right, Finbar. Remember, the Silence isn’t designed to let you brood. It’s to give you space to listen. Look into your heart and listen, my friend. Go with God’s blessing.’

Jerome walked him to the gate. ‘Go in peace, Michael.’

‘Thank you, Father. For everything. But from now on my name is Finbar.’

‘Go in peace, Finbar.’

It was a long trip from the coast, and when Finn reached his destination and alighted from the bus it was mid-afternoon. He headed for the inevitable corner pub which was circled on both levels with a classic iron-lace verandah. He kept his eyes lowered, but was forced to nod to an old codger who was carefully negotiating the bar door. Finn felt his appraising gaze.

‘Jes’ steppin’ out to check on old Blue here,’ the man said, indicating a stringy cattle dog snoring peacefully in a patch of sunlight. ‘Blue’s me dog,’ he added helpfully. ‘I’m Clive— Cocky to me mates.’ His face widened in a toothless grin.

‘Nice to meet you, Cocky—Clive. I’m Finbar,’ he said, as he bolted for safety through the door marked ACCOMMODATION
.

The old man scratched his chest. ‘See ya later, Finn.’ By the time Cocky had swilled a few more beers, everyone spoke of the newcomer as Finn. It was a christening of sorts.

Finn had rung ahead and booked a room but it soon became obvious that booking was unnecessary.

The landlady said her name was Marlene. ‘Don’t get many strangers here,’ she said as he filled in the required details. ‘We get a few sales reps, of course . . .’

Finn chose to ignore the query in her voice and went up to his room, which was clean if sparsely furnished. Not so different from his little room at the monastery, when he came to think of it. His appointment with the real estate agent was not until five, so he had a quick shower and then went over to the window. In the hour he sat there he saw Cocky and his dog; two women, one with a shopping jeep; and a man who got out of a ute and unloaded some pipes. No more than half a dozen cars drove down the street in that time. When the school bus came in there was a little flurry of activity as three women arrived to collect the eight children who spilled out, one waving a painting, another clutching a drink bottle.

The signs were good, thought Finn. Opportunity appeared to be a very quiet town. All that remained was to find some permanent accommodation.

The agent had five vacancies. Three were too large for his needs and the fourth was in Main Street. The fifth, a forlorn little weatherboard cottage on the far side of the football ground, had only one neighbour.

‘She’s a funny old bird,’ said the smartly dressed agent, indicating an elderly woman who, upon seeing them, tucked down her head and scuttled back into her house. ‘You’re lucky if she gives you the time of day.’

‘I’ll take the house,’ said Finn. ‘I want a long-term lease.’

6
Finn, Moss and Mrs Pargetter

O
N THE SECOND MORNING OF
M
oss’s stay, she and Finn were sitting down to breakfast. Relating the story of Amber-Lee’s death had clearly been painful for him, and she wanted to return their conversation to something more general.

‘How did you come to live here?’ Moss asked.

Finn, happy enough to be diverted, responded with a much-abridged version of his life in the monastery. ‘After the accident, I had a bit of a breakdown and some Benedictine monks took me in. Taught me a few things. That was ten years ago now. I still practise the Silence twice a day from six to eight, morning and evening. I try to avoid unnecessary conversation at other times. People used to be one of my strong points, but now . . . You know, it was lucky the bus was late the night you came. It usually gets in at seven fifteen.’

‘What would you have done if I’d arrived on time?’

‘I never make exceptions to the Silence. I wouldn’t have answered the door. I was in that night because it was too wet to go outside, where I prefer to be.’

They both pondered this fortunate confluence of events.

‘What do you do when you’re not . . . being silent?’ Moss 93 asked.

‘I work, and I try to do a little good here and there. I still haven’t quite got the hang of that.’

‘What kind of work do you do?’

‘Bits and pieces. I do some hack work for the Bureau of Statistics and some interesting number-crunching for the Commission for the Future. Most of our communication is online. I have to go to Melbourne a couple of times a year for meetings, but I get back here as quickly as I can. It’s a living, as they say. And there’s my vegie patch, although the drought has pretty much buggered that up.’

‘You wouldn’t go back to your research?’

‘You wouldn’t go back to your singing?’

‘Touché.’

Finn said he had to go out, and Moss decided to walk along the river.

‘There’s a path that goes about five kilometres,’ he told her. ‘Starts near the bridge.’

That night at dinner, Finn seemed distracted and not inclined to talk. Finally, he shifted in his seat and cleared his throat.

‘How long do you plan to stay? Not that I want to get rid of you,’ he assured her, remembering his panic when Jerome had asked a similar question.

‘Not sure, really. I need some time to think things out. And—and I’d also like to get to know you better?’ The upward inflection betrayed her uncertainty.

‘I’d like you to stay a while.’ Finn’s tone also betrayed doubt.

‘But we can’t have you sleeping on the floor and I don’t have a spare room so I . . . sort of took the, you know,
liberty
of speaking to old Mrs Pargetter. She lives next door, in the house with the blue verandah. She said you can stay with her.’

When he took the house, Finn was pleased that his elderly neighbour was a recluse. After a brief introduction, they had merely nodded politely whenever they happened to pass. One evening, a few weeks after he moved in, he answered a knock at the door to find her standing on his verandah, twisting her apron apologetically.

‘Mr Clancy,’ she began, ‘I’m so sorry to disturb you, but my door is stuck and I can’t close it properly. I won’t sleep unless I can lock it, you see. Normally my nephew would . . .’

‘Of course I’ll help, Mrs Pargetter. Just let me get my tools.’ Noting for the first time how frail she was, he took her arm as they went down his path and up to her house. ‘Now, let’s see what I can do.’ He planed a little off the door and, disarmed by her old-fashioned courtesy, accepted the proffered cup of tea. As he left, he was surprised to hear himself promising to dig over her vegetable garden.

After that, Finn found it pleasant to do little jobs for her— taking her dog for a walk, pruning her roses, replacing a tap washer, changing a light bulb. In turn, she would call him in when she’d made scones or biscuits or a teacake. Once she presented him with a tea cosy. But she never asked personal questions, nor did she tell him anything of herself. They suited each other very nicely.

So for want of another solution, he turned to Mrs Pargetter for help with the problem of Moss’s incursion into his life.

As he saw it, he had no choice. He didn’t want to send her to the pub, so where else could she go? Besides, he often worried about his neighbour living alone. She was so frail. What if she had a fall or became ill? Here was a perfect solution—at least in the short term.

The old lady stared in dismay when Finn proposed that she take his daughter in for a few days. ‘I didn’t know you had a daughter, Finn. Not that it’s any of my business,’ she added hastily. ‘I mean, a young girl! What would she want staying with an old woman like me?’

Despite his rationalisations, Finn already felt guilty for trying to pass his problem on to his elderly friend. He stepped back a pace. ‘That’s alright, Mrs Pargetter. I’m sorry I asked. I had no right to expect . . .’

Mrs Pargetter saw in Finn’s face a montage of embarrassment, confusion and . . . something else. Something familiar. She swallowed hard. ‘You’ve been good to me, Finn. I’d like to help. Just for a few days, you say? Bring her round tomorrow afternoon.’ She said this rapidly, as though she had to get the words out before she regretted them. She even allowed Finn to leave without offering him a cup of tea. They were both aware that they had crossed some unspoken boundary.

‘So,’ Finn continued now, in the face of Moss’s frown, ‘you can move your things in tomorrow afternoon—if it’s alright with you, of course. She’s a nice old thing,’ he added weakly. ‘Knits tea cosies for the United Nations.’ He indicated his own colourfully encased teapot. ‘That’s one of hers. She gives them as Christmas presents too.’

‘Did you say United Nations?’

‘Yup.’

‘And it was
tea cosies
?’

‘Yup again. There was some story involved, but I can’t remember. She’ll tell you. She could do with some company. Sometimes I wonder if she’s a bit batty.’

Moss had been wondering the same thing, but sleeping on the floor had little appeal so when Finn said they would still have meals together, she agreed to move next door on a trial basis.

When Finn had gone, Lily Pargetter went up the stairs and stood looking at the closed door of her spare bedroom with something like fear in her eyes. She opened the room once a week to air and dust it, but this was different. If the girl came, then the room would be disturbed, unsettled. Things would be displaced. What would happen then to the sorrow she had folded and stored away there? Looking at Finn, standing irresolute on her doorstep, she had seen a sadness that echoed her own, and had let down her guard. She had been foolish to agree, but could always go next door and tell him she’d changed her mind. It was her house, after all. Her private domain. But what could she tell him? The truth was too painful, and a lie would drive him away. She didn’t want that. She’d come to rely on his presence, his quiet companionship over scones and tea.

The door creaked a little as she opened it and switched on the light. Her fingers trailed over the wallpaper. She had decorated this room so long ago. A musty smell sent her hurrying to the window to let in some fresh air. She shook out the curtains. Perhaps the musty smell came from them. ‘I have to do this,’ she muttered. ‘Merciful God, help me do this.’

Determined to concentrate on the task at hand, she applied herself in a housewifely manner, polishing the dressing-table, smoothing fresh linen on the bed, checking there were coathangers in the wardrobe. She switched on the little bedside lamp and was pleased to see its soft glow. The room remained curiously aloof, so she went out to the garden and cut some camellias. ‘Thank goodness the drought hasn’t got these yet,’ she murmured to herself. She arranged the pale pink blooms in a blue-patterned vase and stepped back to admire them. This cleaning had taken on the elements of ritual, as though sweeping away the dust and polishing the surfaces would drive her sadness into the darkest corner. It still lingered in her heart—a small, hard knot of misery—but she called on her reserves of strength and refused to let it overwhelm her.

She was startled to hear the clock chime six and realised that she had achieved a victory of sorts: she could never have imagined spending so much time in that room. More than that, she was actually excited by the prospect of playing hostess for a few days. It was nice to feel needed.

The following day, Moss and Finn arrived just before three o’clock, Finn carrying a backpack and Moss a handbag and a basket of fruit. The old lady greeted them at the door, her hands in a flurry of flour.

‘Come in. I’ve just put some scones in the oven. We can have a cuppa. Or would you rather see your room first? What am I thinking?’ She smiled a welcome through unwieldy teeth. ‘You must be Fern.’

‘Moss, Mrs Pargetter. And thank you, I’d love a cup of tea.’

Mrs Pargetter pottered around the kitchen, insisting that she wait on her guests. She was of medium height, her body melted into the shapelessness of old age. She carried the beginnings of a dowager’s hump, a feature that was accentuated by her habit of holding her head down to one side whenever she spoke. Her grey hair was drawn back in an untidy bun, and what was once a wide and generous smile was marred by ill-fitting false teeth which she occasionally needed to slurp back into place. She found this manoeuvre quite embarrassing but managed to perform it with some delicacy, simultaneously sucking and patting at her mouth with a lace-edged handkerchief.

As Mrs Pargetter poured the tea, Moss commented on the Fair-Isle tea cosy.

‘How pretty,’ she said disingenuously. ‘Dad has one just like it.’

The old lady smiled so broadly that her teeth wobbled dangerously and the handkerchief was hastily deployed. ‘Thank you, dear. I’ve knitted three thousand and twelve over the past thirty-odd years. Jam? I’m afraid it’s shop-bought. I used to make my own, but I’m getting on. Eighty-four next birthday.’

Moss helped herself to a scone and took a small spoonful of jam. She hesitated over the cream.

‘Eat up. Young girls are all too thin nowadays. Men like something to hold on to.’ Moss’s eyes widened. ‘Sorry, dear. I didn’t mean to embarrass you. Your father’s skinny, so it must be in the genes.’