by Tess Evans
But as it turned out, she had to return to the city much sooner than that.
The phone call came two days later.
‘Hello, love, it’s me. Is Michael with you?’ Amy’s voice sounded muffled.
‘No. Why?’
‘Are you alone, then?’
‘No, I’m with Mrs Pargetter. We’re having breakfast. Can I get Finn to call you back?’
‘Yes—no, wait. I’m sorry. There’s no way to make this easy, Miranda. I’ve just heard from Felicity. It’s Linsey.’ Moss sensed Amy’s struggle for composure. The news came out in a rush. ‘I’m so sorry, Moss. I have to tell you that Linsey—Linsey died last night, darling . . . I’m so sorry—she had cancer. It was so quick . . .’
Moss flinched painfully as the news hit her like a blow to the side of her skull. When she spoke, her voice was pleading. ‘Mum! It’s not true. It can’t be. I didn’t even know she was sick. Why didn’t you tell me?’ She had every right to be told. She was Linsey’s only child.
‘She didn’t tell me either, Moss. It was ovarian cancer. She was only diagnosed three weeks ago but by then it was too advanced to do anything. You know what she’s like. She didn’t tell anyone, even then. She only told Felicity and Robert a few days ago. They got to London too late. They’re organising a cremation over there—they’ll bring her ashes back home . . .’ Amy was speaking with a nervous rapidity. She stopped suddenly. ‘Miranda—Moss. Are you still there?’
The phone had fallen from Moss’s nerveless hand. She was gulping now, as though the air were suddenly depleted of oxygen. Mrs Pargetter picked up the phone and put it tentatively to her ear. She had gleaned the essence of the call, but wasn’t sure if the caller was Amy or Linsey.
‘Hello? Hello? Who’s there? Moss is very upset. Can I help?’
‘Is that Mrs Pargetter? This is Moss’s mother, Amy. I’ve just given her some bad news: her mother Linsey died last night. Please, can you look after her until Michael gets back and then ask him to ring me?’
‘Michael?’
‘Yes—no—I think Moss said he calls himself Finn.’
Mrs Pargetter put down the phone and led the trembling Moss to the sofa where she held her close. ‘It’s alright to cry, dear. She was your mother.’
But the landscape of Moss’s grief was bleak and arid. Mrs Pargetter heard the gate squeak, and gently disengaged herself. ‘That’ll be Finn, for morning tea. I’ll let him in.’
Moss’s dry-eyed grief worried Finn. He had an idea that women always cry at such moments, but Moss just sat with burning eyes, ceaselessly rubbing her temples. She hadn’t spoken since she dropped the phone. Finn and Mrs Pargetter looked at each other. They both understood grief, and they both understood guilt. Finn patted his daughter tentatively on the shoulder. It was the first time he had ever touched her, and even in her grief, she was pathetically grateful. She reached up and placed her hand over his, holding him there for a few moments more.
Finn cleared his throat as an unfamiliar warmth stole over him. ‘Talk to us, Moss. Tell us about Linsey.’ But Moss remained silent.
‘I’ll make some tea,’ decided Mrs Pargetter. ‘Plenty of sugar, for shock.’ That was what Mrs Moloney had said to her when the telegram arrived from the war office. Sugar doesn’t help at all, she thought, but made the tea anyway.
As they silently sipped their tea, Sandy arrived, brandishing a manila folder. ‘I’ve just been to . . .’ he began, but the words died on his lips when he saw Moss’s white face and met Mrs Pargetter’s warning gaze. On hearing the news, he thrust the folder out of sight.
‘Moss. I’m so sorry.’ She gave him a little smile. Feeling helpless in the face of her grief, Sandy thought for a moment and then said diffidently, ‘If you want to go back to your mother’s, I’ll drive you. We can’t let you go on the bus.’
Finn looked at him with gratitude. ‘We’d appreciate that, Sandy.’
Mrs Pargetter patted his large, soft hand. ‘You’re not a bad fellow, sometimes, George.’
Errol, meanwhile, had crept over to Moss, jumping stiffly onto the sofa beside her. He licked her hand and pressed his nose into her lap. He was the best of all the Errols. She stroked his head gently, and finally, when her tears began to flow, Errol whimpered a little in sympathy.
Finn felt responsible for Moss’s welfare and insisted on coming to Melbourne with her and Sandy. It wasn’t kindness alone that motivated him. There was also the fragile connection he had just made: a slender thread spun out of her grief and his pity. He found himself wanting to comfort and protect her. She was a child and she had lost her mother. Father Boniface would have offered spiritual solace, but all Finn could offer was his company on her journey. Little enough, he thought sadly.
Mrs Pargetter packed some muffins. ‘Some for the road and some for your mother,’ she said, handing Moss two plastic containers. She added a thermos of tea. She tended to forget that nowadays they were only two and a half hours from Melbourne, even on a bad traffic day.
Sandy drove in silence as Moss sat in the back with Finn, staring out at the dry yellow paddocks and the featureless winter sky. She failed to notice Finn’s oblique glances and this time barely felt his hand as it moved tentatively to cover hers. While she understood the situation at the surface of her mind, Moss couldn’t quite grasp the fact, the uncompromising finality, of Linsey’s death. She couldn’t imagine how all that energy and longing and striving for perfection had simply stopped. How all the unfinished business over which Linsey had surely fretted would be processed by other hands or remain unfinished 163 forever.
‘You okay?’ Finn said finally. Moss nodded and continued to stare. ‘Won’t be long now. The exit’s only a few minutes away,’ he offered, feeling inadequate.
When Linsey left, all those years ago, she had assured Amy that she and Moss could stay in Aunt Shirley’s house until Moss was of age. There was a careless generosity in Linsey’s personal dealings that contrasted sharply with her hard-nosed practice as a banker. Consequently, Amy was still living in the family home even though their daughter had attained her majority several years before.
Moss felt the sickness of loss as the car pulled into the kerb and she saw the front door with its distinctive leadlight. Grief is not a constant state. It comes in waves, and at that moment Moss was engulfed, unable to speak or move. Linsey had loved her but she’d pushed her away. She had a flashback to that day at the beach; a little girl reaching out to Amy, leaving Linsey with her arms hanging ineffectually by her sides. It was what Moss had always done: blamed Linsey and exonerated Amy.
Music was their one shared pleasure. ‘One day I’ll hear you sing Mimi at the Sydney Opera House,’ Linsey would say. ‘And Violetta in Milan,’ Moss would reply. ‘Then Madame Butterfly at Covent Garden,’ they would chorus gleefully.
Linsey was always planning, as though life could be moulded to her will. But even before the sweet young voice began to mature so wonderfully, she loved to hear her daughter sing. Her tense face would soften and her eyes shine. At those moments the dissonance between them abated; Moss realised only now that they’d been moving towards an acknowledgement of the love they’d always felt for each other but had expressed clumsily and only too rarely since her adolescence. And she, Moss, had chosen to sever the bond. After Amy’s revelations regarding her conception, she had marched off to Linsey’s apartment and, ignoring the bell, knocked peremptorily on the door.
Linsey smiled to see her daughter. ‘Moss! What a nice surprise. Come in.’
Moss pushed past her mother and confronted her in the hallway. ‘I won’t be long,’ she said coldly. ‘I just want to tell you how I feel.’
Linsey was bewildered. ‘Whatever’s the matter? Has something happened to Amy?’
‘Mum’s fine. But she told me the truth. About how I was conceived. You advertised for a father for me. You chose a stranger. I suppose your friends weren’t good enough? And as for taking your chances with a sperm bank . . .’
‘Moss—Miranda, I don’t understand. I wanted the best for you . . .’
‘For you, you mean. I can see now why I was such a disappointment. You wanted a genius, a beauty . . . You wanted a—a paragon, not a child.’
When she spoke, Linsey’s voice was dry, but the struggle to control her emotions showed in her face. ‘I made mistakes, Moss. Motherhood didn’t come naturally to me like it did to Amy. And it’s true, I did think that I could plan the perfect baby, but once I saw you, I finally understood. You were a perfect baby, just as you were. I wanted someone to love and care for, and . . .’ She looked away. ‘Someone who might love me.’
Moss almost gave in then, shaken by this evidence of her mother’s vulnerability. Her impulse was to hug this woman who, though difficult in some ways, had nonetheless provided so much stability and certainty in her childhood. She moved forward slightly just as Linsey stepped back. And the moment for reconciliation was lost in that one uncertain gesture.
Stung by the apparent rebuff, Moss’s anger returned. ‘I just came to tell you that I won’t be going on with my singing. That was your ambition, not mine.’ She was beside herself now, shouting. ‘I’m glad you left. You’re a calculating bitch. You’re not fit to be a mother.’
‘Don’t do this.’ Linsey’s voice fractured the air between them. ‘Please don’t do this.’
But Moss had turned and left with an air of grievance that later compounded her shame. She didn’t look back, but she could see in her mind Linsey’s stricken face, her eyes darkened with pain, and the delicate tremor in her cheek. Visualising that, Moss was almost exultant, and strode off to the lift with a fierce, triumphant little smile.
Linsey had watched Moss’s retreating back and put out her hand as if to stop her. It was too late; Moss turned the corner and was out of sight, and Linsey’s hand fell back to her side.
She closed the door and went into her meticulously furnished sitting room where she sat down heavily. She picked up a cushion and held it to her, staring miserably at the wall. It wasn’t so long ago, it seemed, that she had held Moss for the first time and experienced the surge of joy that changed her forever.
Such a fierce little baby, Linsey remembered. She would stiffen her body and scream if she didn’t want to be held. In those early days, though, she was mostly happy for Linsey to hold her; happy to snuggle into her willing arms. Despite her tiredness, Linsey loved those early mornings when Amy slept and she had this bewitching little creature to herself. She would sometimes stand and watch her, smiling as the little nose wrinkled and twitched on the cusp of sleep and waking. To Linsey, moments like these were tiny, perfect stitches in the fabric of her life.
Was I too hard on her? Linsey wondered. Moss so often went to Amy when she was in trouble. Amy was the forest where Moss could explore and play freely, whereas Linsey created pathways, some of which led Moss to places she didn’t care for, but others to hard-won goals of which she could be rightly proud.
She just needs time, Linsey thought. Her music is too important to her.
Then the sobering thought: But how important am I?
Amy had been watching for the car to arrive, and ran out to greet her daughter. They both cried then, holding each other and rocking in unconscious mimicry of their ancient foremothers’ mourning rites. In another age, their stifled sobs would have been a full-throated keening. They would have rent their garments and covered their heads with ashes. The village women would have joined them in a circle of pain, sanctifying their grief. Now they stood, just the two of them, in a cold suburban street, drying their tears with crumpled tissues. This was probably enough for Amy. She had loved Linsey in her own way, but not enough to overcome their differences. She’d always carried her love lightly, and much of her present feeling was for Moss, who needed not only to mourn but to be shriven. She clutched her daughter and felt the shudders that reverberated deep in her own body.
‘Shh. It’s okay, sweetheart.’ Murmuring words whose meaning was less important than their cadence. Lullaby words. Lullaby rhythm. ‘It’s okay. Shh. It’s okay.’
Finn, meanwhile, stood holding Moss’s bag, unsure of his 167 place.
Sandy leaned out of the window. ‘What do you want to do, Finn? I can come back later, if you like.’
Before Finn could reply, Amy turned towards them. ‘Michael, it was kind of you to bring Moss home—both of you.’ Her smile included Sandy. ‘Would you like to come in for a coffee?’
‘I’ve got a couple of things to do,’ said Sandy, ‘but thanks anyway.’ He turned to Finn. ‘You stay if you want. I can meet you back at the Coachman’s Inn.’
‘I won’t impose,’ Finn said. He looked at Moss. ‘You two need some time to yourselves. I’ll be by later.’
Amy held out her hand. ‘Nice to see you again, Michael.’
Finn shook her hand but failed to meet her eye. ‘Yes, you too. We’ll be in Melbourne for a couple of days. I’ll ring before we leave.’ He put an unpractised arm around Moss’s shoulder and pecked her cheek. ‘You take care, now,’ he said.
Moss sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee and, surprising herself, eating one of Mrs Pargetter’s muffins. She scrabbled in her bag and drew out a woollen object.
‘Mrs Pargetter sent this for you, Mum. It’s a tea cosy.’ She smiled faintly. ‘One less for the United Nations.’
‘That’s kind of her,’ Amy said, alternately squeezing and smoothing it with nervous hands. She had a difficult message to deliver. ‘Moss, Felicity and Robert will be back tomorrow week. They’re planning a memorial service for Linsey. They believe that she wanted you to sing.’ She peered into her daughter’s suddenly impassive face. ‘You will sing, won’t you?’
Moss’s eyes betrayed her. ‘I can’t. I don’t feel I can, after . . .’
Amy was uncharacteristically firm. ‘I know that, but this is not about your feelings, Miranda.’
When they met the following week to plan the service, Felicity was even more blunt than usual. She loved her sister dearly and knew how much she longed for reconciliation with Moss. Now there was no hope. Linsey had died carrying the burden of that rejection. ‘You hurt my sister more than you can know,’ she told a weeping Moss. ‘I can’t say that I want you to come, either, but that’s hardly the point. Linsey’s last request was that you sing at her funeral. If you can’t find it in your heart to do this one thing for her, then you’re even more callous than I thought.’
So Moss sang. She chose ‘Pie Jesu’, not for religious consolation but because agnostic Linsey loved the music. She sang her grief and sent it soaring with the white balloons released by the other mourners. Finn stood among them and thought of the strange circumstances that connected him to the dead woman. He even smiled when he remembered her holding out the ‘receptacle’, as she called it, and her disapproving sniff as she handed him the magazines. He looked across the garden at his daughter and allowed himself to drown in her voice. She was so small and vulnerable. And brave. Yesterday she had been distraught, calling him in the middle of the night.
‘Felicity and Amy are right, Finn. I’m so selfish. But how can I sing for Linsey now? I had every opportunity to let her back into my life and I blew it.’ Her voice rose in pitch. ‘She died thinking I hated her. Hated her! What sort of person does that make me?’
Finn felt a surge of panic. Here was the first test of his competence as a parent and he couldn’t think of one reassuring thing to say. ‘Moss, listen: you must sing . . .’
‘I can’t! My throat is so tight I can’t sing a note. I can’t do it!’
‘You can,’ said Finn helplessly. ‘Moss, you can.’
Listening as the last notes of ‘Pie Jesu’ died away, Finn truly hoped that Linsey would rest in peace. She had been the driving force that produced this child whom, he now realised, he had come to care for very much indeed.
Linsey left a substantial estate. Felicity’s children, Toby and Pippa, and Robert’s son, Cal, all received generous bequests. She left smal
ler sums to the Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières, but the bulk of her estate, including the house, was left to my goddaughter, Miranda Ophelia Sinclair.
Felicity was outraged. ‘That house belonged to our family,’ she fumed to Robert. ‘And she left it to that girl who’s not even related.’
‘Well, that’s a moot point,’ Robert replied. ‘She always saw Miranda as her daughter, even after she and Amy split up.’
‘And what thanks did she get? That girl broke her heart. There’s nothing we can do about the will, but we’re Linsey’s next of kin, and I intend to make it clear where we stand on this.’
When his sister had one of her ‘notions’, Robert always found it easier to acquiesce.
And so it was that the brass plaque mounted over Linsey’s ashes denied the motherhood that had been her greatest source of joy and pain: Linsey Anne Brookes, died 2 August 2006. Loved and loving daughter of Meredith and John Brookes, loved and loving sister of Felicity and Robert. Returned to the universe.
Moss had read the will in disbelief. The money, the shares, even the house were insignificant beside one stark fact: Linsey had referred to Moss as her ‘goddaughter’.
‘It’s probably just a legal thing,’ Amy said. ‘She always thought of you as her daughter.’
But Moss wasn’t interested in legalities. In her last will and testament her mother Linsey had repudiated their relationship. It was Moss’s fault and now it was too late to make amends.
She felt the title goddaughter scorch her like a brand. Why hadn’t Linsey adopted her? This question became a constant in her effort to deal with her bereavement. ‘Isn’t the fact that she left you the house enough?’ Felicity retorted when asked.
Amy in turn was evasive. ‘I don’t know. We never really discussed it.’ What remained unsaid was their knowledge that Moss had been the one who had wanted to hide the relationship. Averting their eyes, they both remembered the elaborate story Moss had concocted. How Amy and Linsey were sisters-in-law whose husbands had died in a fishing-boat accident. How they decided to live together for company and economy. They both remembered the first parents’ night at Moss’s new school.
