The Winds of Heaven Page 14

  She’d walked for miles that night; all the way out to the common and then down round the lake to the place where her old friend’s camp had been. Yirigaa, he’d called her. Morning star. Some morning star she’d turned out to be! And where was he now, that old man who’d said he was her miyan? Was he still alive, wandering over the old countries in his stories, or was he dead long ago, gone back into the earth, or climbed up into the stars? She’d sat there for a long time, her arms clasped round her knees, listening to the water lapping amongst the reeds, calling up the words he’d taught her as if they might somehow bring him back, or make her spirit strong again. ‘Guriyan,’ she’d whispered. That was lake, and magadala was the red earth, and wir was the sky, the air, where the winds of heaven blew.

  Then a fox had barked out on the common, and she’d jumped to her feet and begun to run, along the shore, down the track towards Palm Street, panic swelling inside her, because how long had she been away from the house? How long had she left Cash by himself? What if he’d woken up and found her gone? She pictured him wandering through the house looking for her, peering into all the rooms, unable to find her, thinking she’d gone for ever, tears on his cheeks, his little mouth square with grief.

  She’d heard the sound of his crying when she was still only halfway down the track, long before she reached the house. And she’d run faster, the panicked breath crashing round her heart, afraid he might have hurt himself. When she’d turned into Palm Street she’d seen someone standing at the gate, an adult figure, a woman with a small child on her hip, so she knew Cash was all right, at least. Half blind in her panic, she’d thought the woman was Mrs Darcy from next door, but as she came closer she’d seen it was her sister Caro – an angry Caro clutching a bawling Cash, his eyes red slits from weeping, holding out his arms the very second he saw Fan. She’d grabbed him from her sister and held him close to her thumping heart. ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry,’ she’d whispered into his hair, which was warm and damp with sweat.

  ‘Sorry?’ Caro had hissed at her. ‘What do you think you’re doing, Fan? How could you go out and leave him all alone in the house? Anything could have happened! Where have you been?’

  ‘Nowhere,’ Fan had replied. ‘I just went for a walk.’

  ‘A walk! Do you know what time it is?’

  It was one o’clock in the morning; she’d gone out at ten. And she’d totally forgotten how Caro had been coming on the late bus to spend the weekend with them. She forgot a lot of things these days.

  In the room next door, Cash’s cars still swooshed across the floor and pinged against the wall. ‘I’m only seventeen,’ Fan whispered into her pillow. She had to keep reminding herself, because all the forgetting was starting to make her feel old. Older than Mum even, because when Mum wrote a letter describing her latest ballroom dancing costume, she sounded like a kid of fifteen. The whole thing was crazy: it was like she and Mum had changed places, or Mum had gone backwards in a time machine. There were girls of seventeen who were still at school – her cousin Clementine, for one. Though she’d never got round to writing that letter about the old shop she’d seen in the hills, with its tattered sign for Griffiths Tea up in the corner of the window, and though Clementine had long since given up on her, Fan often thought of her cousin. She daydreamed about visiting Clemmie in Sydney one day, and some nights when she couldn’t get to sleep she’d make up lists of clothes in her mind; clothes she would buy, and then pack in her suitcase, for visiting Clementine. One night she’d got up and gone out into the kitchen, taken the writing pad and a pencil from the sideboard and written the list down.

  One dark green skirt with patch pockets

  Two pairs pedal pushers (one red, one pale blue)

  One blue shirtwaist dress (circular skirt)

  One white sleeveless blouse…

  She hadn’t had clothes like that for a long time, not since she’d been working down in Mr Chiltern’s hardware store. There wasn’t the money, for a start, but perhaps one day things might be different, they might. No one said they couldn’t be, no one said that for ever and ever she would have to be like she was now.

  ‘Nine o’clock!’

  Cash was back beside the bed, the clock clutched tightly in his hand. He held it out to her. ‘Nine,’ he repeated, tracing the hands with a small finger. ‘See? The big arrow’s on twelve.’

  ‘Hand.’ This time she corrected him, because she wanted him to get stuff right, even though he’d only just turned two. Once you got to school, they thought you were dumb if you didn’t use the right words for things, or if you didn’t think in the same way as them. They’d thought she was dumb, except for Miss Langland in second year, who had wanted her to stay on at high school, at least until she’d done the Intermediate. Stay on! As if she would have! As if those other teachers wanted her! She was a loser, that’s what they thought, a no-hoper from a no-hoper family. That sort of thing repeated itself, so that she knew Cash would cop it too, the minute he turned five and went through those bloody gates into the playground and the red brick building with its smells of chalk and milk and squashed banana and something unnameable which made you feel you couldn’t breathe.

  No one was going to get a chance to call Cash a no-hoper, not if she had anything to do with it. No one was going to say that he was dumb. ‘They’re called hands, not arrows,’ she told him gently. ‘The big hand’s on twelve, and the little hand’s on – nine.’

  ‘Hands,’ said Cash, and smiled at her.

  ‘You’re my clever boy,’ she said.

  ‘Up?’

  ‘Yes, Mum’s getting up now.’ She flung the sheet back and swung her legs onto the floor. ‘You’ve made your bed, now you lie in it,’ Mum said whenever Fan complained about anything, but enough was enough; you couldn’t stay in bed for ever, no matter how much you might want to do just that. Not when you had a little kid.

  Fan stood up and entered the day. She wandered down the hall to the bathroom where she washed her face and brushed her teeth and ran a ratty old comb through her sleep-tousled hair. Then she took yesterday’s dress from the hook on the wall and slipped it over her head. Out in the kitchen she took eggs and milk and butter from the fridge and flour from the cupboard and mixed pancake batter in a big china jug. ‘Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Clementine,’ she sang, ladling the batter into the frying pan.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Cash.

  ‘It’s a song your great-grandpa used to sing.’

  ‘What’s a –’

  ‘Great-grandpa? It’s your nan’s dad.’

  ‘Nan.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘Where?’

  ‘Down in Coota. You know that’s where Nan lives. With Trev.’

  He waved his hands. ‘No, no. Where’s great, great –’

  ‘Great-grandpa? Gone to heaven,’ said Fan. ‘A long, long time ago. Before you were born. Before your mum was born.’

  ‘Long,’ said Cash.

  ‘Long ago,’ echoed Fan, ladling golden syrup onto his pancake and thinking how Clementine used to say their house smelled special, of wild honey and kerosene.

  Now she remembered that she’d dreamed of her cousin last night. It had been the oddest sort of dream. Nothing had happened in it; they were simply standing together, side by side, and yet though they were so close she could see nothing of her cousin, or herself, except their feet. Her own left foot, in one of the ratty old black sandshoes she wore around the house, and Clementine’s right foot, elegantly shod in the most beautiful shoe Fan had ever seen, more beautiful even than those red dancing shoes she’d had when she worked down at Mr Chiltern’s. Clementine’s shoe was made of soft green leather with a narrow strap across the instep and a small square heel. And though nothing had happened in the dream, there’d been this feeling of closeness and ease between them which was like a kind of special love. Like being sisters, thought Fan. Gindaymaidhaany.

  She would never get to visit Clementine in Sydney, at least, not for a long, long time; not till Cash was a b
ig boy and even the baby that was coming had begun at school. Years, that would be, six or seven whole years, and only then if Caro could look after them down at Temora while Fan was away.

  And where would Clementine be by then? She could be anywhere. She could have gone overseas, to England or America like lots of Sydney girls. She might even be married herself, with a husband who didn’t care for visits from distant relatives. And Fan would be distant by then; she was distant now. Would Clementine even remember her after all that time? ‘Thou art lost and gone forever, Dreadful sorry, Clementine,’ sang Fan sadly as she flipped another pancake over in the pan.

  But why should it have to be like that? Perhaps it needn’t be …why shouldn’t Clementine visit her? Why shouldn’t she?

  A surge of excitement rose in her. It was a long time since she’d been excited about anything, and the feeling was strange to her, like suddenly seeing a person coming towards you down the street whom you’d thought was dead and gone. She turned the gas off under the pan and hurried to the sideboard drawer. She took out the pad and pencil, cleared a space at the table, and began at once to write.

  ‘What?’ asked Cash, pointing. ‘What?’

  ‘I’m writing a letter.’

  ‘To Aunty Caro?’ He clasped his sticky hands together like a little kid in an old-fashioned story book – the kind they used to have at school – a kid from the poorhouse who’d seen someone else’s Christmas dinner on the table. ‘Aunty Caro coming?’ The joy in his voice made her shiver. ‘No,’ she said, ‘No, she’s not.’

  She put down the pencil and smiled at him. The letter was finished, her pencil had flown; she’d drawn three kisses underneath her name.

  ‘Aunty Caro isn’t the only aunty in the world, you know.’

  ‘Yes she is!’

  ‘No she isn’t.’

  He scrambled down from his chair, ran round the table and climbed up into her lap. ‘Is.’

  ‘Isn’t.’ She put her arms round him and rested her cold forehead against his warm one. ‘You’ve got another aunty, Cash.’

  He looked up at her, astonished. ‘’Nother one?’

  ‘Yes. Her name’s Clementine. Aunty Clementine. She lives in Sydney. That’s who I’m writing to, see?’ She showed him the pad with the half page of writing on it, pointed to the neat little row of crosses on the bottom. ‘See these? They’re kisses.’

  ‘Kisses?’

  ‘Mmm. Like this.’ She kissed his cheek. ‘Mwaa. Only these are on paper, see? So we can send them to Aunty Clementine. Now you make one.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes, you.’ She turned him round in her lap and placed the pencil between his fingers, closed her hand round his, guided it onto the page. ‘Like this, see? One line that way, one line this way. There!’

  He stared at the kiss for a long moment, then turned to her, beaming. ‘Mine?’

  ‘Yours.’

  They both thought it was the most beautiful kiss in the world.

  Chapter Twelve

  Clementine was walking home down Leary Street when she saw old Mrs Sheedy leaning over her front gate, peering up and down the road. Old stickybeak! She could keep you hanging there for ages while she found out all your business and told you the business of everyone in the neighbourhood. And Clementine, a crisp brown paper parcel tucked beneath her arm, which held the dark green linen she’d bought at Grace Bros to make a summer skirt, was in a hurry to get home.

  ‘Clementine! Clementine Southey!’

  She’d been spotted; it was too late to cross the road and pretend she was going home by Newley Lane. Anyway, Mrs Sheedy would know she never went by Newley Lane if she could help it – Raymond Fisk lived there. He was thirteen now, and the scourge of Lowlands Tech, which everyone said was the worst school in the whole of Sydney, possibly the worst in Australia. You never actually saw him when you passed his house, but things flew out at you: bricks and sharpened garden stakes, chunks of rusty scrap iron, wet parcels of tea-leaves and ancient mutton fat.

  Tom had been taken away. He’d gone to live with his proper parents. Clementine hoped they’d won the lottery and bought a mansion on the harbour; she hoped they’d taken him to Disneyland for his birthday. She hoped they loved him now.

  ‘So you’re off to uni, eh?’ Mrs Sheedy greeted her. ‘Off there in March?’

  She even knew the month! Clementine would take a bet she knew the very date of Orientation Day as well. ‘Yes,’ she answered.

  ‘Uni!’ marvelled Mrs Sheedy. ‘Imagine that! I don’t think there’s ever been a girl from round here went to the uni.’ Her round blue eyes took on the distant scholarly expression which told you she was flicking through seventy years of oral research on the neighbourhood. ‘No, wait, I tell a lie. There was a girl called Sally Lomas lived down the end of Irrawong Road – ever heard of her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She was before your time, I expect; it was well before the war.’

  Before the war!

  ‘But Sally Lomas, she was a Chisolm College girl all right, just like you.’

  What was that supposed to mean?

  ‘And she got this idea into her head of going to the Teachers’ Training College – ’

  ‘And did she go?’

  ‘She went all right.’ Mrs Sheedy sucked her teeth and then shook her head sadly as if to imply that no good had come from Sally Lomas’s venture into higher education.

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘Well, no one knows, do they? And her mum and dad weren’t saying. Off she went to that dreadful teachers’ hotel place in the city – ’

  ‘Hostel.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s a hostel, where the Teachers’ College students live. Not a hotel, not a pub or anything.’

  Mrs Sheedy’s plump face mottled with outrage. ‘Well of course I didn’t think it was a pub! Don’t you give cheek to me, young lady!’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ protested Clementine.

  Mrs Sheedy looked her up and down. ‘Big ideas,’ she muttered.

  Better than having none, thought Clementine, and began to move away.

  ‘Hang on, where’s your manners, Miss? I haven’t finished talking yet.’

  Clementine sighed and retraced her steps.

  ‘Now where was I?’

  ‘Sally Lomas.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Mrs Sheedy settled her enormous bosom more comfortably on the top of the gate and went on with her story. ‘Well, when that young lady took herself off to whatever that place was, that teachers’ hotel, or hostel,’ she glowered on the word, ‘that was the last we saw of Sally Lomas round here.’ She sniffed. ‘Home wasn’t good enough, it seems. As for what happened to her, I suppose the little madam became a teacher somewhere. Then again she mightn’t have; for all we know she could be at the bottom of the harbour.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Mrs Sheedy looked suspiciously at Clementine, as if that one small syllable, like a primly dressed Teachers’ College student, concealed more than it showed. ‘I’ll tell you one thing, Clementine,’ she said.

  Only one?

  ‘Teachers’ Training College is one thing – and I won’t deny the teachers do a good job, mostly – but the uni!’ She narrowed her eyes and examined Clementine’s face intently, as if searching for some sign of latent criminality, or rot. ‘There’s never been a girl round here got up to that!’

  ‘Well, I’ll be off then, Mrs Sheedy. Nice to have a chat with you.’

  ‘Wait on!’

  Clementine kept on walking.

  ‘Posh.’

  The single word stopped Clementine in her tracks. She turned round.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Posh. Going to the uni.’

  Clementine flushed. Lots of people said this. They’d said it five years ago when she’d been accepted for Chisolm College and her mum and dad had let her go. The snob school, they called it, and university was ten times worse.

  ‘You won’t want to know us,’ said Mrs Sheedy, and
the metal curlers beneath her hairnet seemed to gleam with malice.

  ‘Yes I will,’ protested Clementine, though she would have given a great deal, at this particular moment, not to know Mrs Sheedy. Did that mean she was a snob? Probably, but she didn’t care. She didn’t want to be like the other girls in the neighbourhood: she didn’t want to get a job down the bank till she got engaged, or go into nursing because then you might catch a doctor for a husband. Or a rich patient who was too sick to say ‘no’. Jilly Norris had left school at the end of third year and was training to be a nurse at Parramatta Hospital. Imagine if you got run over and woke up on the operating table to find Jilly Norris leaning over you … No, Clementine didn’t want to be a bank teller or a nurse. She didn’t even want to go to Teachers’ College: Teachers’ College was for old maids, and so was Library School.

  ‘Now I know you young girls these days don’t like us old chooks putting our oars in,’ said Mrs Sheedy.

  Don’t then, thought Clementine.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Nothing. I didn’t say anything.’

  ‘I thought you did.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Well, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, though there’s hundreds wouldn’t.’ Mrs Sheedy stared hard into Clementine’s eyes. ‘Now as I was saying when I was so rudely interrupted – ’

  ‘But you weren’t.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I didn’t interrupt you.’

  Mrs Sheedy glared.

  Clementine went silent.

  ‘Now, as I was saying, the thing about us oldies you young ones don’t seem to realise is that we’ve been round a long time and we’ve seen a thing or two. Come here.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come up a bit closer and I’ll give you some free advice.’

  ‘What advice?’

  ‘Just come here and find out.’

  Clementine stayed where she was.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ demanded Mrs Sheedy.

  Clementine blushed. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I don’t bite you know. Least no one’s complained to me yet.’