Tess Evans
Book of Lost Threads
Copyright © Tess Evans 2010
Dedicated to my father, Colin Websdale,
a great dad and a great lover of books.
Rebirth us with Wisdom, as
we are knitted once again
back into wholeness.
– From ‘Ariadne’s Blessing’, Janet Bristow, 1998
Others also there are who perished unknown; their sacrifice is not
forgotten, and their names, though lost to us, are written in the
Books of God.
– Inscription from the Shrine in the Scottish War Memorial.
Reproduced with the permission of the Trustees of the Scottish War Memorial, Edinburgh.
1Moss and Finn
‘HELLO. DOES MICHAEL CLANCY LIVE here?’
Silence. The door between them remained shut.
‘Michael Clancy. Michael Finbar Clancy?’
‘Who’s asking?’
‘Moss-Miranda. Miranda Sinclair.’
Moss wasn’t a spiteful person in general, but in later moments of honest self-appraisal, she had to admit that spite was one of the less savoury elements in her decision to seek out Michael Clancy. She had nurtured this ignoble spite for months. It had walked with her up the path to his house, stuck like some disgusting mess to her shoe. And it was directed at Linsey. Linsey, who loved her. Amy’s softness offered no resistance and Moss needed hard edges on which to hone this uncharacteristic desire for revenge.
She had checked the timetable when she bought her ticket. The journey from Melbourne usually took just over two hours, but that day the train was delayed at Fosters Creek for nearly an hour, which meant that Moss missed the connecting bus. It was close to eight by the time she arrived, tired, cold and hungry, wishing she’d never come. Never come and never heard of Michael Finbar Clancy. Amy had warned her: He won’t want to know. But she’d come anyway.
The chill rain numbed her face as she half-sprinted in the direction indicated by the driver. She stopped in front of a shabby weatherboard house, alive to the tension that crawled over her scalp; alive to the tingling root of every hair.
There was no knocker and she felt around in vain for a bell, finally rapping, louder than necessary, on the glass panel.
‘Hello. Does Michael Clancy live here?’
Silence.
‘Michael Clancy. Michael Finbar Clancy?’
There was a reluctant scraping sound as the door opened a niggardly few centimetres and a soft, uncertain voice squeezed its way through. ‘Who’s asking?’
‘Moss-Miranda. Miranda Sinclair.’
The sliver of light from inside revealed four surprisingly neat fingers.
‘I don’t know any Mirandas.’ The fingers withdrew and the door began to close but not before Moss managed to wedge her foot in the gap.
‘Please. I’ve come all the way from Melbourne. It’s freezing out here-not to mention the rain.’
On the other side of the door, Finn was at a loss. Visitors were rare. Especially after dark. He considered his options. He could close the door and that would be that. He could continue to talk through the crack. Or he could simply let her in. The second option seemed safest. The first was rude and the third was risky. It meant asserting some authority, though. Not really his forte. His mind searched for something to say and caught at the tail of her plea.
‘It’s been raining since lunchtime,’ he said.
‘And it’s still raining and I’m soaked. Please. Just let me in so I can talk to you.’
A pause. ‘What do you want?’ he asked warily. ‘I’ll let you in if you tell me.’ Regretting these words even as he spoke.
‘I just need to talk to you. I can’t shout it through the door. You knew my mother once. She told me all about you.’ Moss was overstating the case, certain that Finn couldn’t possibly know anything about what her mother might have told her.
‘All about me? Who is she then-God Almighty herself?’ Finn’s uneasy chuckle erupted into an embarrassing snort.
‘Please. Just let me in.’ There were tears in her voice.
He applied his eye to the crack. A small figure was huddled under the inadequate shelter of the narrow verandah. ‘Alright. You can come in for a bit.’ A grudging invitation at best.
The door scraped open to reveal a petite young woman- in her early twenties, maybe; a sodden waif with dark hair plastered in tendrils around her urchin face. Her japara was soaked, and he was dismayed to see that she was shivering. He knew then that he had no choice. Noting with a sinking heart her ominously large backpack, he stepped aside to let her in.
‘You’re wet through. Take off your coat and come and sit here by the stove.’ He led her down a dimly lit corridor to a large kitchen where he indicated an armchair clumsily draped with a purple chenille bedspread. ‘I’ll put on the kettle. Are you hungry?’
She nodded and Finn busied himself around the kitchen, making a pot of strong black tea and cutting two thick slices of bread which he tried to ram into the toaster. Muttering curses at the recalcitrant bread, he shaved off the excess crusts. It was still a snug fit. ‘There,’ he said, pleased. ‘It won’t take a minute now.’
His guest sat obediently by the large wood-fired stove, warming her hands and looking curiously at Finn and then hungrily at the toaster. Finn had the hunched shoulders of a man uncomfortable with his height; with his long thin legs and narrow face he looked for all the world like an apologetic stork. Excuse me, she could hear him murmur at stork meetings and stork functions, do you mind if I sit here, in this seat at the back? And there he would sit looking morosely at the more successful storks, the better dressed storks, the richer storks, the whole network of storks as they mingled and discussed storkly issues with a confidence, a conviction that he could only wonder at.
The toaster, struggling to expel its burden, gave a kind of whummph that was the signal for Finn to perform an extraction and proceed to the generous application of butter.
‘Jam? Honey? I’m out of Vegemite, I’m afraid.’ He looked at Miranda with eyes so blue, so kind, that she burst into tears. ‘If I’d known you were coming I would have got some Vegemite,’ he said, bewildered at her extreme reaction to its absence. He hovered over her, flapping his hands, making little soothing noises.
‘Honey’s fine,’ she sniffled. ‘I’m just cold and tired.’
His grin was unpractised. ‘Honey it is then.’ He indicated for her to come and sit at the table and poured tea into two mugs. ‘Now,’ he said, stirring his tea nervously. ‘What shall I call you? Miranda’s nice, but it is a bit of a mouthful.’
‘You’re telling me.’ She smiled suddenly. ‘Wait till you hear my full name-Miranda Ophelia Sinclair. There’s a mouthful for you. I hardly ever get called Miranda. Everyone calls me Moss. It’s from-’
‘From your initials. Very clever. A good solution.’ He looked at her with something like admiration. ‘Moss is a very good solution.’
‘Mother Linsey doesn’t think so. She used to insist on calling me Miranda and I would refuse to answer and we’d go on like that for hours. Days, sometimes. But in the end, on my thirteenth birthday, she gave me a book, some sheet music and a new beach towel and promised to call me Moss from then on. It was a good birthday. Even her card said Happy Birthday, Moss. Mother Amy only called me Miranda when she was mad at me about something.’
Finn’s alarm had returned when he heard the name Linsey. ‘You said before that your mother knows me,’ he said. ‘What’s her name? Where do I know her from?’
Moss licked honey from her fingers and stole a look at his face. Now the moment had come, panic constricted her throat. The bravado with which she had set out had been washed away with the rain. She swallowed painfully. ‘Amy,’ she mumbled. ‘Her name is Amy Sinclair. You knew her from before I was born.’