Daughters of Lace

Francesca in Australia - Benalla - Chapter 2

Photo by Chiara Guercio on Unsplash

I arrived back at the Benalla motel just before lunch. I picked up some crackers, cheese and orange juice as well as some quick fix pills for my recurring heartburn. Damn the heat and dry. I didn’t feel like eating anything and, when I did, I felt sick almost at once. I ate only a little bit of the crackers and cheese and then lay down under the air conditioner and let my mind wander.

It was hard to know where to start. First there was the lace cross on my grandfather’s grave, then finding Matty, the strange woman in the caravan on my grandparents’ old property, there was the second lace cross on Mary Lacey’s grave and now Phillip’s revelation about Aunty Rose and Aunty Kath, their lacemaking and Aunty Rose’s destitution.

Thoughts swirled in my head but no matter how I looked at them, the end result was the same: confusion. I fell asleep eventually, and when I woke a few hours later, a plan had started to form. I showered and nibbled at another cracker with a cup of tea and pulled out my notebook and pen.

I wrote:

1. Stay in Benalla a few days and find out what I can about Rose and Bert Malong and the scandal of the lost fortune.

2. Research the ‘Daughters of Lace’ panel and see if there’s any links to the lace cross.

3. Compare the lace cross on Stanley and Mary’s grave. Is there a connection? Are they the same or different?

4. Before I leave, go back to ‘The Gurdies’ and find out if Matty knows anything else.

My trip had seen both disappointments and surprises but I could, at least, make the most of the time I had left and see if I could solve these mysteries. The biggest mystery of all remained though; Mum’s disappearance. She was still a fleeting figure in Australia. Dad, Aunty Kath and even Aunty Rose loomed large; people had met them, they knew them, they remembered them and their stories and I’d visited the areas where they’d lived, but my mother was still a phantom. No one knew of her or, if they did, they weren’t saying. I began to suspect Mum wanted to stay hidden, that is, if she was still alive.

I shook my head and put away the crackers, it was too hot to eat even with the air conditioner rattling away. I took out my phone and studied the pictures I’d taken of the two gravestone crosses. I pinched the screen, zoomed in and swiped from one to the other but, no matter how much I magnified the images, I saw no difference between the two designs. I took out the actual cross and studied it. It was exactly the same.

I dropped the phone on the bed next to the lace cross and paced the room. The whole situation was doing my head in and I felt no closer to finding the truth of what had happened to Mum. The pacing was getting me nowhere so I grabbed my phone again and my hotel key card and headed out to the courtyard area.

The sun was low in the sky as I walked toward the centre of town. I kept to the shady side of the road, passing derelict and abandoned buildings before reaching the Town Hall and the heritage centre. On a whim I headed toward the glass doors, not expecting the centre to be open. To my surprise though, the doors swooshed aside, ushering me into the cool interior. Inside a sign read ‘late night opening Tuesdays and Thursdays.’

The Heritage Centre was as empty as when I first came in. I went straight to the screens against the brick wall and, after looking around for someone to say hello to, and let them know I was there, I switched on the screen. I’d explain if anyone asked me what I was doing.

I thought for a moment, checked my notebook and typed the first thing on my list:

Rose and Bert Malong. Scandal.

There weren’t many results for the search; a few entries focusing on stock prices including sunflowers and passionfruit. A small note about a farm purchase and a search for gold but nothing about a scandal. I tried every combination I could think of, including Kathleen and Rose – the Daughters of Lace. 

Then, I heard the doors swoosh open and span around as Mavis approached.

‘Oh,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Mavis. ‘I didn’t expect anyone this time of day, but you’re welcome to keep doing what you’re doing.’

I pushed back my chair and stood up. I had an urge to step away from the screen and stretch but I settled instead for cricking my neck from side to side. 

‘Did you solve any secrets yet?’ Mavis asked, smiling.

I smiled back although the truth of what I’d found felt far from funny.

‘I talked to a landowner on Upper Lurg Road,’ I said.

Mavis stroked her chin and nodded. ‘The Smithsons?’

‘I didn’t catch their name. The man was quite young, Phillip.’

‘Ah, yes, that’s Phillip Smithson. A mouthful, eh?’

‘Yes, I suppose it is,’ I said. ‘He told me my aunts were famous lace-makers.’

Mavis grasped my hand and held tight.

‘The Daughters of Lace? They’re your aunts?’

‘My great aunts. You know them?’

‘That’s incredible you’re related to them.’

‘Were they so famous?’

Mavis laughed, a cross between a snort and a chuckle. 

‘They put Benalla on the map,’ said Mavis. ‘Look here.’

She led me down the passage to the rear of the glass building, up the stairs and into the library. We stood facing the double front doors. Mavis pointed upwards and there, across the door, in a gilded frame was an exquisite lace panel.

‘Created by The Daughters of Lace,’ said Mavis. ‘Isn’t it a marvel?’

I stepped forward to get a closer look. The lace panel stretched across almost the whole width of the building. It was utterly magnificent; a cobweb of designs seemingly suspended in the air with each embroidery shaped into small flowers and leaves. The overall effect, as I stepped back, was a waterfall of Australian flora and fauna.

‘Amazing,’ said Mavis in a tone suggesting reverence and awe.

There was nothing I could say. Even living in the heart of the historical lace-making world, and knowing experts in the field, nothing could have prepared me for the quality of the lace panel I saw before me. I stared at it, my eyes following the threads as they wove the delicate pattern of flowers, leaves and animals, into a riot of life, unique in the world, I thought, because of its Australian-ness. There were many plants and animals I didn’t recognise.

‘What’s the flower on the border?’ I asked.

‘It’s called the golden wattle,’ said Mavis. ‘It’s the most beautiful flower and a national symbol. It’s famous because it blooms at the end of winter when everything else is colourless and drab. It has a beautiful honey-like scent. It’s probably my favourite flower. You might know it from the Australian shield.’

I looked at Mavis with a blank expression. I wasn’t sure what was on the Australian shield. I had a vague recollection of a kangaroo but that was all.

I took my phone out and said, ‘would you mind if I took a picture?’

‘I can do better than that,’ said Mavis. She led me down the stairs and across to the library desk directly underneath the lace panel. She rustled in the draw and handed me a card about the size of a bookmark. On the card was a perfect image of the lace panel. Every detail was crisp and clean and showed the whole pattern, not only the larger animals and trees, but the buds of the golden wattle itself.

‘Thank you so much,’ I said. ‘I still can’t believe my aunts made this and I had no idea.’

‘Yes, the three of them were so talented. The story goes the oldest one lived some way away but she’d spend as much time as she could with her sisters on the farm so they could work on the panels. She even crossed the mountains in the middle of winter to make the lace. There’s lots of fantastic stories about them.’

‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘Did you say ‘three of them’? Who were they?’

‘Oh, I thought you knew,’ said Mavis. ‘Elsie, Rose and Kathleen Lacey – The Daughters of Lace.’

‘My God,’ I said. ‘Elsie was my grandmother.’

‘You definitely have lace running in your family then,’ laughed Mavis.

She continued talking but my mind was racing. All three sisters famous lace-makers in Australia but not one of our family knew it? It seemed so implausible, so far-fetched, that I was struggling to comprehend how such a thing was kept secret for so long. Did my grandmother and aunts want to forget their Australian lives when they left the country forever, is that why the failed to tell me that they were famous lace-makers? It seemed too incredible to be true, but there it was. I shook my head to clear my mind and tuned into Mavis’ commentary.

‘I heard they were really humble,’ she was saying. ‘It wasn’t easy being sheep farmer wives in the ‘70s and ‘80s, particularly with the drought and the bushfires. I think it was the ’83 Ash Wednesday fires that decided the Emersons.’

‘Decided them?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Mavis, ‘you’ll have to check but I think it was the bushfires that convinced them to sell up. Lots of people did. After that February day, on top of the drought and the dust storms – Victoria lost most of its topsoil that year – lots of farmers gave up. I don’t blame them. It was too hard to keep farming.’

‘My aunt and uncle sold up?’

‘It’s likely. We were lucky the panel wasn’t destroyed because the fires came very close to town that day. The Daughters of Lace only made a few panels in their lives - this was one, as well as the famous Sheep Panel at the NGV. This panel,’ she said, waving her hand above our heads, ‘it’s worth over $50,000.’ 

‘What?’ I gasped.

‘I told you, ‘she said. ‘Exquisite, almost unheard-of quality and attention to detail. They were true artists, your aunts. You must get to the NGV and see their piéce-de-résistance.’

‘NGV?’

‘National Gallery of Victoria. You haven’t heard of it? It’s in the city, fantastic exhibits but one of their hallmark displays is the Sheep Panel, the one your family made - your grandmother and great aunts.’

---

Mark was as dumbstruck as I when I called him late that night and told him the news. 

‘Is that so?’ he said when I finished. ‘Do you know where the other panels are? Or what the ‘Sheep Panel’ is?’

‘I don’t know. It’s all so weird, Mark. I wish you were here.’

‘Me too Checki. What d’you think you’ll do?’

I raised my eyes to the plaster ceiling where a flaking piece of paint hung onto by a worn edge and then gazed at the threadbare brown bedcover. The room itself was no more than twenty paces long by ten wide and I felt suffocated by its oven-like shape every time I stepped into it, but... There was only a bit over two weeks remaining of my trip. If I didn’t take the chance now to find out what I could about my family’s Australian life, particularly my great aunts, then the trip was wasted. I had a feeling I couldn’t quite put into words that the lace-making and the lace cross were interconnected and, perhaps, in some bizarre way, connected to my mother’s disappearance. If I could unravel that mystery, maybe I’d solve the other, bigger, more important mystery of where my mother was now.