‘My dear Ruby,’ Mr Grandy said, arriving beside me. He leant down and kissed me on the cheek before presenting me with a small bunch of roses.
‘Oh but you didn’t have to,’ I tried to say but he waved away most of it before I’d finished the sentence. He turned to the woman. ‘Ruby, this is my mother, Molly Goodweather.’
‘Hello,’ I managed to say, holding out my hand. She took it – her fingers felt cold and fluttery, but her grip was firm. I felt as though the room was spinning around me. Molly Goodweather! One of the greatest names in the history of Australian fashion was Mr Grandy’s mother?
‘I’ve been so longing to meet you, Ruby,’ she said, pulling out a seat beside me and sitting down. Mr Grandy moved to a spare seat beside Dad. The dessert arrived and I looked at Mr Grandy for some kind of explanation. Why had he never told me?
‘Okay, Mother, how about you tell Ruby.’
I could not swallow my ice-cream. Molly Goodweather? My hands were sweaty. All those times Mr Grandy and I had rolled our eyes toward one another during her phone calls. Molly Goodweather! Tell Ruby what, exactly?
‘I’ve set up an interview for you with the Melbourne School of Fashion, Ruby,’ Molly said. ‘You can thank me when you’ve made a name for yourself.’
Molly dipped her spoon into her dessert. She consumed a considerable amount of wine and engaged us in a lengthy discussion about everything wrong with our country, politics and the general state of affairs.
‘Mothers,’ Mr Grandy whispered as we were leaving.
Not long after school finished, five boxes addressed to me arrived at our house, all from Tonga. Inside were all of the damaged rods, cocoons and throwsters waste I had seen in the baskets in the silkhouse. Kilograms of silk waste, collected and saved over those seasons when something disturbed the equilibrium of those worms and their cocoons were improperly formed or they emerged too early in the season, ruining the cocoons by biting through the ends before Pearl had time to boil and spin them. She had boxed all of the raw, unspun silk and sent it to me. There was a brief letter.
Dearest Ruby,
Life is about taking what’s given to us and creating something wonderful.
Love always,
Grandma Pearl xxxx
I stuck the boxes back up with masking tape and stacked them in a corner of the garage.
I hadn’t heard from Becky or any other of my friends much at all. There was a phone message, left hurriedly, from Becky saying she and Rachel had been accepted for work on Hayman Island and would be off in a matter of weeks. I was relieved she sounded happy and there was no trace of the bitterness that existed between us since the formal and I was so glad she seemed to have forgiven me. I managed to catch her before they left and we chatted happily for an hour and it felt good to be connected to her again, even if I could feel us drifting apart, inevitably, as we found worlds of our own. We reminisced about school, the musical and made each other promise that no matter where we moved to, wherever life took us, we’d always find time to catch up. I don’t know how much of that either of us actually believed, but it was more important that we really meant it. She promised to write and tell me everything that happened. I reminded her that Casanovas were a trap. She owed it to females everywhere to resist their evil ways and pursue the true Romeo. Becky assured me that her life held no greater purpose than that.
I hung up, musing on the notion of a Valentine and considering – to my shame – whether there was any truth in what Mr Grandy had said. I know I hadn’t called Barry since returning from Darwin, but he hadn’t called me, either. It was easy to interpret this as his general disinterest. Surely he’d rather put the entire Moon family far behind him, but Mr Grandy may have had a point, too. What if he thought I needed space? After all, by his own admission he’d given Sally exactly that.
One day, a few weeks before Christmas, I spent longer than usual at the beach. I walked along the shore, my jeans rolled up to my knees, my Converse knotted around my neck, letting the water rush over my feet and between my toes. I trod on shells and dug footprints in the sand, watching them slowly shrink and dissolve into the sand as if they had never existed at all. I forgot about Sally and Mum and Dad and everything definitive about my life. I felt the sun caress my skin and the wind whip against me and I was no more or less in that moment than any other one thing. Creativity and ideas fired between every synapse underneath my skin and I felt radiant from the inside out. I walked home barefoot, feeling every rock and pebble, every patch of broken asphalt and paver, every ounce of soft grass and broken ground.
I threw my shoes in the corner beside the front door and ran a bath. While the tub filled with hot water I dug out every candle I could find in the house and covered the floor, the shower top, the soap holder, the basin and the floor with them. I stripped free of my clothes and balled them on the floor in my room. I switched on the CD player, turned the volume up and let Vivaldi fill every crevice and space, every inside and out of the house. I lit every one of the candles and sank my body under the hot water, bubbles clinging to my skin, the sudden change in temperature sending goosebumps radiating along my arms and neck. I sank beneath the water and closed my eyes and Vivaldi was muted inside my cocoon. I held my breath for as long as I could, felt my need for breath build fire inside my lungs. I lurched out, gasping, sending water slopping onto the floor and pooling around the candles. I laughed. Without reason.
I let my hair hang lank and wet around my face, drips of water falling free and sliding along my skin, sliding my arms into my bathrobe and knotting it around my middle. In the sewing room I opened the cupboard and took every dress from its hanger, spreading them across the floor. I fluted the skirts and bent the bodices as though invisible mannequins were wearing them. They overlapped and bumped and danced one into the other. I stood on the sewing table and photographed them from different angles, narrowing the zoom and widening the scope until I had, perhaps, a hundred photographs.
That night I printed and cut and pasted and drew. By the time the sun rose and Dad and Amona had stumbled out for their morning coffee, I had a folio of sketches and photographs, material swatches and descriptions linked by an unbroken silk thread which I had sewn, ducking and weaving around every carefully placed picture, on to every black page.
The next morning I took my folio and attended my interview for the Melbourne School of Fashion.
25.
A year after Sally’s death I returned to Tonga. I had intended on being in Tonga for the whole silk season, but as it turned out I had to miss the first few weeks and, all the while, I was as restless for the company of those ravenous worms and their insatiable pursuit of life.
It felt as though I had never left Tonga at all, arriving at a similar time in their development as I had left them, though, I was tending the hope of a new generation; the eggs that had been laid by those worms I never saw grow fully.
Pearl was still wrapped in the same sarong, her hair pulled back into a grey ponytail and her feet still bare. The ocean pounded, as ever, against the shore in the distance and the same intoxicating perfume filled every breath I took in the first hours.
There was no rain when I arrived, no heavy weight hanging over my head. No guilt sitting in my stomach and no sister waiting, dead already, in a hospital bed back home. Pearl met me at the airport, crushing me to her, along with the same friend who had driven me to the airport last time.
She had rearranged her house for me. There was a partition around the couch, a small wardrobe and mirror. A set of drawers – each of the three painted a different colour – beside my bed which was neatly made with clean sheets and a velvety blanket picturing an exotic scene of palm trees, blue water and cool sand. There was no time to unpack my bag, not straightaway, as Pearl quickly disappeared out of the front door around the side of the house towards the silkhouse, calling my name.
A warm glow spre
ad inside me, beginning at my toes and rising all the way through my body. My skin tingled and I felt like a thousand cobwebs and sad thoughts, complicated memories and tensions inside me were loosened and set free. I slipped off my sneakers and ran to join her, making a pact with myself to dedicate these two months in Tonga as part of every year from then on.
I could hear the sound of those ravenous worms, a steady, thumping rain, at the door of the silkhouse and my skin prickled, and goosebumps ran up the length of my arms. I had forgotten that earthy, pungent smell which, again, overwhelmed me as I stepped through the door.
Pearl had also rearranged the silkhouse. There were more shelves, more baskets and worms – I was sure of it. The chopping bench was longer, a second board and knife waiting for me. Smiling, I ran to my side of the bench, tying the apron around my waist, and taking the knife in my hand, knowing exactly what to do.
We didn’t speak much at all over the next hours, binding ourselves to each other once more by the efforts of our labour. Strips of light streamed in through the door and the broken window, our chopping sounding like muted Tongan lali drums.
I took to the task with vigour, chopping roughly, quickly, to fill my basket. I felt the life of those worms pulling me forward, along their golden thread, towards a glorious new beginning. Those worms and their lives were like promise and hope. I began to understand what bound Pearl to their simple mystery because I felt the same connection. In front of us, all around us, was the energy of life and growth. Beauty was only a month away and it depended, in part, on what I could do.
For the first few days, Pearl and I slipped into an easy routine and it was clear she enjoyed my company as much as I enjoyed hers. I liked her sense of humour, the way she found simple things amusing, as well as the kinds of things that were not polite to laugh about. She would be good company at Charlie’s Chinese Restaurant on special occasions.
We had the silkworm baskets numbered, after my suggestion to do so, as I found that occasionally Pearl would skip one basket for the next, not realising her mistake. Knowing her passion for these little creatures, she’d be mortified to find she hadn’t been giving each batch equal attention. I was noticing different things about her this time that I hadn’t seen before. She seemed elderly in a way I hadn’t appreciated on my last hurried visit and I had a sudden understanding that she wouldn’t be here forever.
Pearl took me to visit each of her friends and I felt the same admiration for their generous affection. I took photographs of everything.
We walked into town and shopped at the markets and collected baskets of mulberry leaves. At night, between shifts, we talked together and Pearl made me tell her details of everything. She taught me how to play cards. Her favourite game, five hundred, and I laughed to myself thinking of Barry and that night I visited Boof and Cassie. I wondered about their baby. Whether it was a boy or a girl, realising that baby would be almost one year old.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ I said, moving between the silkworm baskets, where my task was to remove each worm to a clean basket, which had been lined with freshly chopped leaves. I disposed of the leaf litter and droppings into a larger basket, which I emptied out the back in the compost pile once it was full. Once one basket of worms had been transferred, I began with the next. ‘You’ve held onto that coat for a long time.’
Pearl looked up from her task and wiped the back of her arm across her brow. She nodded, absently, as if she’d rather the acknowledgement went unnoticed.
‘I’ve done a lot of thinking since Sally. And being here last year. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for you then. Sometimes I think that what has happened to me is so bad but I wouldn’t have been as strong as you.’
I heard Pearl sighing softly.
‘You don’t know how strong you are until you need it, Ruby.’
I moved onto another silkworm basket and heard Pearl begin to hum behind me.
I understood what it meant to hold on to something for so long you couldn’t imagine doing without it. I was just eighteen and yet things from my childhood – which seemed a lifetime away – felt too hard to relinquish. Even small, inconsequential things. Needing those things was probably an irrational attachment to what I truly longed for but could never have, but then grieving is all about feeling irrational. I’d kept Barry’s message for much the same reason.
‘There must be someone special in your life,’ Pearl said and I shrugged.
‘You can’t tell me there aren’t at least some appealing boys at college.’
‘I study fashion,’ I told her, raising my eyebrows.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Well, then if not college . . . Well, there must be good-looking boys somewhere in Melbourne,’ she said, somewhat defeated by the logistics.
‘I don’t know,’ I told her.
‘Don’t lay your hopes on a Tongan boy,’ she said, lowering her voice.
I laughed. ‘No.’
Pearl busied herself at the chopping table, shrugging as if I was making this conversation more difficult than it had to be. She stopped, suddenly, looking up at me.
‘Oh,’ she said, knowingly as if she’d guessed the answer.
I had no idea what she meant.
‘It’s perfectly okay with me,’ she said as she scraped her leaves into the basket. ‘You know the Tongans have a perfectly civilised way of dealing with this,’ she said. ‘Though they’re all men from what I understand. I don’t think it’s occurred to them there might be female equivalents. They let them dress up as women and everything. Quite odd. For a religious culture they’re surprisingly—’
I cut her short. ‘You think I’m . . . that I don’t like boys, that I like—’
‘You don’t?’
‘No,’ I said adamantly, laughing. ‘I’m not gay.’
‘Oh,’ she said again. ‘Well, what’s the problem?’
‘It’s complicated.’
‘Really,’ she said as if it couldn’t be further from the truth.
She put her knife down and walked around the table, wiped her hands on her apron and took me by the hand. She pulled me out of the silkhouse, back into her house.
‘Sit down while I make us a cup of tea.’
‘What?’
‘Have you thought about it?’ she said, sitting down opposite me. ‘You don’t like wearing dresses,’ she said, sizing up my T-shirt and jeans, ‘you don’t seem particularly interested in boys. I’m just wondering. Maybe you’ve had no one to talk to about this sort of thing.’
Pearl was so serious. Her forehead was creased with worry lines and behind her, at the kitchen bench, the kettle began steaming from the spout, framing her head as though it was actually coming from her ears. I started laughing. Really the whole thing was so absurd. I laughed harder and was caught in one of those moments where I really couldn’t stop. I pushed my chair backwards to hold my stomach. It was really not that funny, but I just couldn’t stop.
Pearl considered me with confused amusement, which added to the hilarity of the situation. She leant back on her chair. The kettle stopped steaming, the automatic shut off clicking in, and she smiled. She laughed, too, her boobs shaking under her sarong and I found it all the funnier.
‘Well?’ she said.
‘Oh my god,’ I managed to say in between my spluttering laughter. ‘You actually thought I was gay?’
‘You’ve got to admit, you tick all the boxes!’
‘Except I’m in love with a boy called Barry!’ I said without thinking. I felt the peak of laughter break, you know when you feel like you’ve run out of gas and you try to hold on to that feeling but it subsides. I was catching my breath, making little groans and realising I’d said more than I meant to. And underneath that laughter was a feeling of sadness and confusion.
‘Barry?’ Pearl said mockingly. ‘What kind of a name is
that?’
I slumped forward on the table, resting my head on my arms. ‘Oh my god. My stomach hurts.’
Pearl stood to make the tea.
‘And what does this “Barry” do?’
But I shouldn’t have said anything. I felt stupid and ashamed. How was it possible to be in love with your dead sister’s boyfriend. It just sounded wrong.
‘He works on a croc jumping boat,’ I said, though I don’t know why I did.
‘Hmmm,’ Pearl said, not knowing what to make of his job.
‘I know it doesn’t sound much.’
I put my head on my hands at the table and sat like that for a minute. I felt ashamed. It was all wrong and yet I couldn’t help it. Why did love have to be so precise, so disarming and wrong? And tears came to my eyes, taking me completely by surprise.
Pearl turned from the bench to see me. ‘Oh you poor darling,’ she said, coming to stand beside me. I felt her hands around my shoulders. ‘Bad as all that, then,’ she said. ‘I know all about that.’
Pearl and I took time out between tending the silkworms to go down to the beach. We lay down on our backs, closed our eyes and soaked up the sun. We wore ridiculously over-sized sunglasses that Pearl must have had for years. They actually looked antique.
‘When Jack died,’ Pearl said, just after we’d closed our eyes, ‘I’d come down here every time I felt overwhelmed. Nothing better than feeling the sun on your skin to know you’re alive and breathing. A bit of warmth to chase away cold feelings.’
I lifted my sunglasses above my eyes. Pearl looked like a beached whale, her large, round body wrapped in one of her colourful sarongs and the sight of her made me smile. I hoped I would be like her when I reached that age, unencumbered by fashion and futility. Bound to my own simple passions and myself.
I lay back down again and closed my eyes. I blamed the sun and Pearl and her capacity to lull me into her own sense of security. But I began talking about Barry. I told her everything and when I was done she reached over and took my hand.
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