Three Summers Read online

  also by Judith Clarke

  Angels Passing By

  Night Train

  The Lost Day

  The Heroic Life of Al Capsella

  Al Capsella and the Watchdogs

  Al Capsella on Holidays

  Friend of My Heart

  The Boy on the Lake

  Panic Stations

  The Ruin of Kevin O’Reilly

  Luna Park at Night

  Big Night Out

  Wolf on the Fold

  Starry Nights

  Kalpana’s Dream

  One Whole and Perfect Day

  The Winds of Heaven

  JUDITH CLARKE was born in Sydney and educated at the University of New South Wales and the Australian National University in Canberra. She has worked as a teacher and librarian, and in adult education in Victoria and New South Wales.

  Judith’s novels include the multi-award-winning Wolf on the Fold, as well as Friend of my Heart, Night Train, and the very popular and funny Al Capsella series. Kalpana’s Dream was an Honor Book in the 2005 Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards; One Whole and Perfect Day was a winner in the 2007 Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards, shortlisted in the 2007 CBCA Book of the Year Awards and the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, and Honor Book in the American Library Association, Michael L. Printz Awards for Excellence in Young Adult Literature 2008. The Winds of Heaven was shortlisted for the 2010 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, Young Adult Fiction, and the 2010 CBCA Book of the Year Awards.

  Judith’s books have been published in the USA and Europe to high acclaim.

  First published in 2012

  Copyright © Judith Clarke 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available from the

  National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 1 74237 827 5

  Cover and text design by Ruth Grüner

  Cover photos by Rebecca Parker / Trevillion Images and iStockphoto

  Set in 10.5 pt Sabon by Ruth Grüner

  Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  To dear Frances Floyd

  Contents

  PART ONE: SECRET PLACES

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  PART TWO: HAPPINESS

  ONE

  TWO

  PART THREE: THE REAL TRUE THING

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  PART ONE

  Secret Places

  one

  Ruth woke from a dream of Tam Finn, so vivid that for a moment its landscape – the narrow stretch of coarse sand beside the creek, the ripple of brown water over the pebbles, the broad shiny leaves of the bushes on the far bank – seemed more real than the familiar furniture of her room. She sat up, throwing the covers back, breathing hard, while the brown water and the shiny bushes flickered and faded, sucked into a mist which thinned and then vanished, leaving nothing behind except a suspicion that ordinary things were not as solid as they appeared.

  She leaned back against the pillows and thought about Tam Finn. Why had she dreamed about him? She hardly knew him; he was the boy from Fortuna, the big property five miles down the Old Western Highway where her nan had worked when she was a girl. He’d been in Ruth’s class the year before last, but only for a little while. She saw him in town occasionally, and heard the gossip that went round, that was all. And yet in the dream he’d been sitting close beside her on the sand, leaning into her; even awake she could still feel the weight of his body pressed against her side, his arm tight around her, his strong fingers digging into the flesh above her elbow. Such closeness should have felt strange yet instead it seemed oddly familiar. It was like those times when she saw him in town; how the mere glimpse of his pale face beneath the tumble of blue-black curls would bring such a deep shiver of recognition that for a moment she’d feel she could walk right up to him and say, ‘Here I am,’ and Tam Finn would smile at her as if they were old friends.

  She sighed and closed her eyes, drifting back into the dream, feeling the weight of his body again, the fingers digging into her arm, a flutter of warm breath against her cheek. A girl’s voice said clearly, ‘But what if you don’t know who you are?’ and Ruth struggled awake again, suddenly afraid. She knew the voice; it belonged to Helen Hogan. Not Helen as she was now, seventeen, grown up, but Helen when they were little kids in the playground, telling stories to each other in the shade of the peppercorn trees.

  You could walk out of your house in your sleep, Helen had told them, right into the street where you could meet anyone. It might be a perfect stranger, someone you’d never seen before, or it could be a person you knew and really hated, but none of this would matter, you’d still – here Helen had lowered her voice and whispered, ‘do it with him.’ When she’d said this, the listening girls had looked at each other and giggled. Ellie Lester had crossed her eyes. They’d been in grade four, nine years old, but they’d known all sorts of things.

  It was strange, thought Ruth, how she could remember that whole long-ago conversation: all the words and even the little gasps and silences, how Fee had been wearing a yellow sundress and Helen’s plaits had been tied with two big bows of red tartan ribbon. She could even remember the weather: hot, really hot, full summer, the shade of the peppercorn trees no more than a faint grey dappling on the dry ground.

  ‘Yes!’ Helen had gone on. ‘You can do it with anyone in your sleep, and not even know! And if another person comes along and wakes you while you’re doing it, well—’ here Helen had drawn in a long breath and finished dramatically, ‘well, then you die!’

  Kathy Ryan had gasped, ‘Oh!’ and put her hand across her mouth.

  ‘It’s true!’ Helen had insisted, tossing her long heavy plaits back over her shoulders and staring at the other girls defiantly. The plaits were blue-black and shiny, glossy as a crow’s wing.

  None of them had believed the story, at least not in the daytime.

  ‘That’s bullshit!’ Fee Lachlan had protested. ‘It’s bullshit, Helen!’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. My mum says that when you sleepwalk, you can’t do anything you wouldn’t do if you were awake. She says you can’t do anything that isn’t really you.

  ’ That was when Helen said the thing that had somehow found its way into Ruth’s dream. ‘But what if you don’t know who you really are?’ The words had come out very clear and separate, like footsteps down an empty hall, and there’d been
a funny little silence beneath the peppercorn trees. It was as if those words had been important in a way they couldn’t quite understand. Important, and scary too.

  It’s why they’d come back to her now, thought Ruth, after years and years.

  Her arm was burning. She switched on the bedside lamp and carefully examined the tender skin above her elbow, half expecting to find the red marks of Tam Finn’s fingertips there.

  The arm was unmarked. There was nothing. Ruth clicked her tongue in the way her nan did when she was knitting and dropped a stitch. Of course there was no mark; you didn’t get marks from a dream, however real it seemed, just like you didn’t make love in a dream and have it turn out to be real. ‘But what if you don’t know who you really are?’ Helen’s voice echoed faintly, but this time Ruth took no notice; she was properly awake now, and she could tell by the brightness of the light at the edges of the blind that it was late, well after nine. She could hear her dad moving round in the shop downstairs, the sound of a heavy sack being dragged across the floor, the clang of the metal lid on the big flour bin and then the squeak of the screen door and a voice calling, ‘Morning, Mr Gower,’ and Dad’s gentle voice replying, ‘Morning Mrs Harrison, what can I do for you this lovely day?’

  She switched off the lamp. The bedrooms above the shop were silent; Nan would be out in her garden by now. She always got up early. ‘It was a habit I learned at the orphanage,’ she’d told Ruth once.

  ‘And never got out of,’ Ruth said.

  ‘Never,’ Nan had replied. She’d been smiling. But there were other times, like certain dark winter afternoons when Nan would stand at the window gazing out at the rain, when Ruth could see the orphanage in her eyes, like a shadow, and then she felt she’d do anything to keep that shadow away.

  She loved her nan.

  ‘Don’t you mind not having a mum?’ her best friend Fee had asked on their very first day at school.

  Ruth had thought about it for a moment. ‘Yes,’ she’d said at last. ‘But I’ve got my nan.’

  Fee had taken Ruth’s hand and looked gravely into her new friend’s face. ‘And me,’ she’d said. ‘You’ve got me now.’

  TWELVE years on, they were still best friends. ‘Tam Finn’s back,’ Fee had told her yesterday morning, and Ruth’s heart had jumped. She hadn’t thought of Tam Finn for ages, and yet the moment Fee had spoken his name her heart had given that strange little leap, as if it had a secret life of its own and knew things that Ruth didn’t know.

  ‘Back?’ she’d echoed stupidly.

  ‘Got kicked out of Ag School, didn’t he?’

  It was no surprise. Tam Finn had been kicked out of two private colleges; that was the reason he’d been at their school for those brief few months. The teachers hadn’t liked him.

  ‘How do you know he got kicked out of Ag School?’

  ‘Joanie Fawkes at the post office, who else?’ Fee answered. ‘She told Mum Mr Finn and Tam had this big fight in the middle of Main Street and Mr Finn was roaring out how he was going to leave Fortuna to someone else if Tam didn’t change his ways.’

  ‘What ways?’

  ‘Girls, I s’pose, you know what Tam Finn’s like – people say that’s why he got kicked out of those other schools. Joanie Fawkes does, anyway.’

  ‘Joanie Fawkes is a stupid old gossip!’ Ruth had cried, and Fee had glanced at her curiously, surprised at the anger in her friend’s voice. ‘And she steams the letters open, I bet,’ Ruth added more calmly.

  ‘Course she does. All the same, it’s best to know things sometimes.’ Fee had given Ruth a funny, sidelong glance. ‘Pity Helen Hogan doesn’t.’

  ‘Helen Hogan?’

  ‘She’s been going with him. This mate of Mattie’s saw them down the creek – you know, down the little beach, mucking round. Her dad’s going to kill her if he finds out; he’ll have the hide off her, for sure.’

  Ruth flinched, thinking of Helen Hogan’s skin, her hide, which was a pure and perfect white with faint blue shadows, like new milk.

  That was why she’d remembered the scene in the playground, of course – because Fee had been talking about Helen yesterday, and she’d had the dream about Tam Finn because Fee had been talking about him as well.

  Though there was something else. Yesterday afternoon the house had been so hot that she had taken a book and gone down to the creek to read. The brown water had trickled over the stones, crickets chirped, birds called drowsily in the trees – and then there’d been another sound, a rustling in the bushes on the other bank, and something that could have been a long, long sigh. Looking up, she thought she’d seen a narrow wedge of pale face framed in those broad green leaves: a pale face, curly black hair, grey eyes staring straight across at her.

  She’d jumped to her feet and scrambled up the bank towards the road. No one had followed. The road was as empty as the afternoon.

  She’d imagined it, of course she had. It hadn’t been Tam Finn amongst those bushes, only light and shadow and strange little games going on your mind that someone else seemed to be playing, perhaps that person Helen Hogan said you didn’t know you were. Tam Finn wouldn’t be spying on her down at the creek; she wasn’t his type. ‘Anyone’s his type,’ Fee would say. ‘Anyone.’

  ‘Not me,’ said Ruth aloud, and she slid out of bed and went to stand in front of the wardrobe mirror. ‘Not you,’ she told the girl in the old blue nightie with her hair all tangled and messy from sleep. ‘You’re not his type at all, whatever these funny feelings. Fun-ny feel-ings,’ she chanted, rising up on her toes and then down again, smiling at the serious face of the girl in the mirror, making her smile back, a little uncertainly. ‘And anyway,’ she added, ‘you’re going away soon, you’re going to Sydney University.’

  two

  Only she mightn’t be. Living in Sydney, going to the university – Ruth’s new life, as her nan kept on calling it – was hanging in the air, suspended like some shining miraculous treasure, just out of reach. Everything depended on how well she’d done in the exams.

  ‘You love exams!’ Fee had accused her gleefully when time was up and pens put down and the two of them burst out from the very last afternoon of school.

  ‘Who, me?’

  ‘Yes, you.’ Fee had flung her old school case down and given it a kick along the ground.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Finished early, didn’t I? And then we weren’t allowed to go outside and there was nothing to do so I was watching you. Your face! You looked like – a kind of happy angel.’

  ‘An angel!’

  ‘Honestly! Anyone could tell from that face you’re going to come top of the state.’

  ‘Angels don’t come top of the state. Or people from Barinjii.’

  ‘Always a first time. You will, I bet! And then – then you’ll go flying far, far away.’

  ‘You’re as bad as Nan!’

  Fee’s slender arms had flown out in a wide clear gesture. ‘You’ll fly away over the great wide world, and never come back, and I’ll never ever see you again.’

  Ruth had laughed; it was impossible to think that she’d never see Fee again. Fee was for always.

  ‘Course you’ll see me. I’d come back, even if I did go away; can’t miss your wedding, can I? Specially since I’m going to be bridesmaid and wear that awful purple shroud.’

  ‘It’s not purple; it’s lilac! And it’s not a shroud!’

  ‘Anyway, I mightn’t even be going; it depends on the results.’

  ‘If it depends on them, you’re on your way. And I can feel you’re going; best friends always know.’

  Fee was staying in Barinjii. Love made her world go round: she loved Barinjii and she loved Mattie Howe and they were getting married at Easter. ‘I’m going to stay here and be a mum,’ she’d said, nudging the battered school case further along the road. ‘Keep the home flag flying, eh?’

  It was a kind of joke, but Ruth knew Fee was truly happy; she could see it in her shining eyes and the way h
er feet had skipped in a little dance on the dusty road. ‘Oh, last exam!’ she’d exclaimed joyfully. ‘My last exam forever! Oh, I’m so glad – glad, glad, glad! It was torture sitting at that desk for hours. It was torture being at school. All those years! And now I’m free!’ She’d given the old case one last kick and sent it sliding into the long grass of the verge. ‘Free, free, free!’

  AS for Nan, there’d been no stopping her. ‘You’ll be needing new things,’ she’d announced over breakfast the very first day after the exams.

  ‘New things?’

  ‘Clothes!’ Her small face had been almost swallowed by her smile. ‘For when you start at university!’

  ‘But Nan, it’s too soon! What if I don’t get enough marks?’

  ‘Of course you’ll get enough marks. More than enough. Your teachers tell me you’re a certainty.’

  ‘But—’

  It was no use. The very next day they’d gone into Dubbo on the bus, to the biggest department store in town and bought the material: linen and cotton for summer, wool and cord for winter, zips and buttons and sewing thread and braid. Nan had sewed for days, the needle of her old Singer flashing down the long seams of straight skirts and flared skirts, gathering fullness into narrow waistbands, tracking carefully round the curves of collars and the armholes of dresses and blouses. In the evenings they’d turned up hems and sewed on buttons and zips and braid, while Dad sat reading the paper in his armchair, and from the mantelpiece above his head Ruth’s mother Polly, who’d died when Ruth was a baby, smiled down at them from her silver frame. Ruth had no real memory of Polly, though sometimes at night she’d have an occasional fleeting sense, right on the border of sleep, of being rocked and held, of great delighted eyes gazing into hers, and a gentle hand cupping her head, leaving its warmth behind.

  ‘Your mother would be so proud of you,’ Nan had said last night, and Ruth had needed to bite hard on her bottom lip to stop herself from crying out again, ‘But Nan, it’s too soon.’

  Now she swung open the door of her wardrobe and reached inside. She took out the brown linen skirt with the saddle-stitched side pockets and ivory buttons from the waist to the hem. ‘For best,’ Nan had said, ‘for when you get asked to some special occasion in Sydney.’