My Lovely Frankie Page 17
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Now I stand in Jellicoe Lane beneath the cherry trees and think of the gifts Frankie left to me. He left me what knowledge I have of loving someone, a handful of memories and blessed images, little things that will never leave me: he had a way of turning his head to look at you, turning it slowly, nonchalantly, as if you were the last thing on his mind, and then all at once fixing you with those laughing, inky-blue eyes. Indigo. He left me that indigo richness, and his sense of the loveliness of the world; a hawk hovering, a sea like quilted silk, a flag snapping in the breeze—
A few years back I worked in a parish in the western suburbs of the city. It was a place where young people began their sex lives early and instead of the shapeless smocks respectability demanded when I was young, the pregnant girls wore bright clinging tee-shirts which emphasised the curved shape of their bellies. They walked proudly with their shoulders back and stood with a hand curved protectively round the unborn child. They looked wonderful and whenever I saw them I thought how Frankie would have stopped in his tracks and gazed—not out of lust or concupiscence, those damning words that sprang from our books like blows—but out of sheer amazed delight and gratitude for the loveliness of the world. ‘Look, Frankie!’ I’d whisper then. Anyone could have heard me—I didn't care.
‘Look, Frankie.’
The moon is rising, and the air stirs with its perfume of damp grass and flowers and earth. These summer nights are so beautiful that sometimes for a moment I can almost feel that closeness of God I had when I was young, before St Finbar’s, before Etta, before Frankie—that sense of His hand outstretched and loving, poised tenderly above my silly head.
Or perhaps it’s Frankie up there, Frankie in his cloudless blue heaven, laughing, playing a little trick on me, his long brown fingers ruffling my sparse grey hair.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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, Starry Nights and the very popular and funny Al Capsella series. Kalpana’s Dream was an Honour 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 Literary Association’s Michael L. Printz Awards for Excellence in Young Adult Literature 2008. The Winds of Heaven was an Honour Book in the 2010 CBCA Book of the Year Awards and shortlisted for the inaugural Prime Minister’s Literary Award in 2010.
Judith’s books have been published in the USA and Europe to high acclaim.
MORE WONDERFUL BOOKS BY JUDITH CLARKE