The Winds of Heaven Page 18
‘All right.’ He took the coins she gave him and ran into the shop; in less than two minutes he was out again, a bag of jam donuts clutched in his hand. ‘Want one?’ He held the bag out to her.
She shook her head. ‘Don’t get jam all over your clothes.’
‘Hello, Fan.’
She turned round.
Evie Castairs and Maggie Carmody had paused on their way into the baker’s shop to buy their lunch. They were girls she’d known at school, though they hadn’t really been friends. Now they worked in the council offices across the road, and she knew they were both engaged, she’d seen the notices in the local paper. In Lake Conapaira, at eighteen, any decent girl would be engaged – any later and it began to look like you never would be. Engaged at eighteen, working in a shop or with the bank or at the council offices, saving for your home, married at twenty-one, first child at twenty-two – that was how things should be. That was the proper way.
‘Waiting for the bus?’ enquired Evie.
‘Yes.’
‘Off to see your sister, eh?’
That was the thing about Lake Conapaira: everyone thought they knew all about you, even if you hardly ever spoke to anyone.
‘No. Just going into Lachlan.’
‘Oh?’ They waited, bright eyes fixed upon her face.
If she told them she was going all the way into Lachlan, dragging two little kids with her, simply to look for a book in the library, to try and find a poem she liked, they’d think she was crazy. And selfish. Selfish. Once you were a mother, people got busy with that word. They’d spread it all round. None of that mattered. What mattered was that she possessed only this one secret, this half-remembered poem which made her feel a kind of hopefulness, and she wanted it for herself. It was hers. She didn’t care if wanting it was selfish.
‘Lovely baby,’ said Evie, and she reached out her pretty hand, the nails varnished a soft pearly pink, and stroked Maddie’s cheek. ‘What’s her name?’
‘Madeleine.’
‘Madeleine. Ooh, posh!’ She winked broadly at the baby. ‘Whose little girl are you?’
The question drifted painfully along the winter street. Fan knew there were rumours round the town that Madeleine wasn’t Gary’s child.
Let them say anything they liked.
‘She’s ours,’ said Cash, laying a small protective hand on Maddie’s little arm. ‘She’s Mum’s and mine.’ He didn’t mention Gary.
The two girls looked at each other. Madeleine turned her face into her mother’s shoulder.
Now Maggie Carmody was gazing avidly at Fan, like a sharp-eyed bird sizing up a worm. Despite herself Fan felt angry tears welling in her eyes. She hated being stared at. If only the bus would come! ‘Had your one and sixpence worth?’ her mum would have said to them, but Fan wasn’t like that; she wasn’t good at fights like Mum. Mostly she didn’t let people get close enough to really look at her; she kept herself and the kids well out of their way. Only now she was trapped here, waiting for the bus. And she wasn’t going to walk off and miss it, she needed to find the book. She wanted to know the rest of her poem. She had to have something.
‘Do you know you’ve got your cardie on inside out?’ asked Maggie.
‘What?’
‘Your cardie.’ Maggie leaned forward and pointed to Fan’s arm, where the seam showed plainly, wrong way round.
‘Oh!’
‘Here, I’ll give you a hand,’ said Evie, and she lifted the surprised Madeleine from her mother’s arms so Fan could take off her cardigan and put it back on right side round. ‘Whose little girl, whose little girl, whose little girl are you?’ she sang to Maddie, and Fan realised from the tenderness in Evie’s voice and the gentle way she was jogging the baby in her arms, that there was no malice in the girl’s words; it was, quite simply, a question you sang to little babies, anyone’s little baby. And she saw that these two girls might be well meaning after all.
‘You never give people a chance,’ Caro was always saying. Caro wanted Fan to get out more; she’d offered to pay Mrs Darcy to look after Cash and Maddie while Fan joined the Young Country Wives Association, or helped out at the school canteen.
Only Fan had become scared of things like that. She imagined walking into a room where a group of proper Young Country Wives sat round a table, imagined how they’d all stop talking and stare at her …
‘People are kind,’ Caro said. ‘If you meet them half way. If you’re kind to them. If you’d stop thinking about yourself for a change, Fan.’
‘They’re kind to you,’ Fan had retorted.
But perhaps Caro was right, she thought, as Evie gently placed the baby back into her arms. Fan gave the girl a smile of such extraordinary sweetness that Evie would remember it later and say to herself, ‘Oh, I wish, I wish – ’
‘Thank you,’ said Fan.
‘That’s okay.’ Evie smiled. ‘Any time. It was lovely having a little hold of her; she’s gorgeous.’
Gorgeous.
‘Oooh! Aren’t your feet cold?’ Maggie was pointing.
‘What?’ Fan looked down. She saw it wasn’t her feet Maggie was exclaiming over: it was Cash’s. They were grimy and bare. ‘Where are your shoes?’ she demanded.
He blinked at her.
‘I thought I told you to put them on, your good black shoes, and a pair of socks!’
‘Yeah, but – ’
‘But what?’
‘I told you, I hate those shoes.’
‘Why didn’t you put your sneakers on, then?’
‘You said, not when we’re going to the library.’
‘But I didn’t mean for you to – ’
‘Here’s your bus!’ cried Evie.
It was crawling slowly up the hill that was Main Street and you could see the lake shining behind it, so that the battered old bus with its thick skirt of red dust resembled some tired old monster rising from the deep.
Fan was still staring at Cash’s bare feet as if she couldn’t believe her eyes. Would they let him into the library with no shoes? No, they wouldn’t. She’d have to buy him something for his feet in Lachlan.
‘It’ll be okay,’ said Evie, following her anxious gaze. ‘Joe’ll let him on the bus.’
‘Plenty of kids with no shoes round here,’ said Maggie stoutly.
‘It’s not the bus I’m worried about, it’s – ’ She was almost going to tell them about the library, but the squeal of brakes and a churning of the ancient engine drowned out her words. Evie took a hanky from her pocket and caught hold of Cash’s hand. She pulled him to her. ‘Here, love, let me give you a bit of a wipe; your mummy’s got her hands full.’
He had jam all round his mouth as well. And a sticky screwed up paper bag in his hand, which Evie took from him and lobbed at the waste bin up the road. It missed and fluttered farther up the street.
‘Don’t forget this,’ said Maggie, picking up the nappy bag.
Fan took it wordlessly in her free hand.
‘You comin’ or not?’ called the bus driver. ‘I haven’t got all day.’
‘Haven’t you, Joe?’ cried Evie.
‘You could’ve fooled me,’ said Maggie.
The small family climbed on board. The bus drew away. Cash pressed his face close to the window and smiled against the glass. His hand sketched a small, uncertain gesture. ‘Those ladies are waving to us,’ he said shyly.
Chapter Fifteen
The library was almost empty at this time of day, the drowsy hour after lunch when people had gone back to work and Lachlan’s children were still in school. An old man sat reading the newspaper in a chair by one of the big windows that faced onto the street, two ladies stood chatting quietly to the librarian behind her desk. All four of them looked up as the doors opened and Fan walked in with Cash and Madeleine. The ladies at the counter stared and one of them leaned across and murmured something to the librarian. Fan was glad she’d stopped off at the store and bought a pair of rubber flip-flops for Cash’s bare feet.
Cash had looked down at the floor. ‘No,’ he whispered.
‘It’s only for today,’ Fan had explained. ‘Just till we get home. He forgot his shoes when we were coming out.’
‘Forgot his shoes, eh?’ The storekeeper’s disapproving eyes had flicked from Cash to Fan; they’d travelled all along her body and fixed midway down her legs. When she’d followed his gaze she’d seen that the hem of her skirt was coming down again; she must have caught it with the edge of her heel as she came up the steps of the bus. She could see he was the type who thought forgotten shoes and broken stitches made her a bad mum.
‘Born lucky, you are,’ he’d observed.
‘What?’ She’d looked at him blankly, and he’d sighed, and when he answered it was very slowly and carefully, as if she wasn’t quite right in the head and might have difficulty understanding.
‘You’re lucky we have flip-flops in stock this time of year. They’re normally a summer item.’
‘Oh.’
As they left, he’d shivered and rubbed his hands together in a parody of chill. ‘Bit nippy outside, eh?’ He’d rolled his eyes at Cash. ‘Better watch out Jack Frost doesn’t get those toes.’
‘Oh!’ Cash spotted the children’s section the moment they came through the door. You couldn’t really miss it: a wide bright space to the side of the main room, the shelves at child-height, fat with books in all shapes and sizes, small chairs and tables painted in vivid primary colours, posters of fairytale scenes all along the wall.
‘Mum?’ Longing made his voice go loud. He tugged at Fan’s skirt. ‘Mum – can we – can we go there?’
‘Shh.’ She put a finger to her lips. There hadn’t been a real library at her old primary school; only a shelf of books at the back of the senior classroom. You were only allowed to read them in the last slow hour of Friday afternoon, and total silence was demanded. ‘No talking in Library!’ the sixth class teacher, Mr Peterson, would roar, puffing his cheeks out like the big frill-necked lizard Fan had once disturbed at the bottom of their backyard. If you talked you had to go and stand outside in the corridor. Fan had often been sent outside; something about school made her feel so jumpy and nervous that even when she wanted to be quiet, talk and giggling simply burst right out of her. She understood now that she’d been trying to shut things out. She was still shutting them out. You had to live.
Now she took one of Cash’s small hands in hers. ‘You have to speak softly in libraries, Cash. People are reading. They’re reading all kinds of lovely things and they don’t want to be disturbed, okay?’
‘But can we, can I, go there?’ He pointed across the room. ‘Am I allowed?’
‘Of course you’re allowed. But quietly.’
He ran. His flip-flops made only the faintest mutter on the carpeted floor; the three ladies at the desk turned their heads and watched him narrowly. Fan followed, Maddie slung across her hip, ducking her head as she went by the desk, sensing the gazes of all three watchers upon her, expecting any second to hear a stern voice demanding, ‘And just where do you think you’re going?’
No one said anything, no one stopped her; she heard their whispered conversation begin again the moment she’d passed by.
When she entered the children’s section, Cash had found himself a place on the floor beside the shelves of picture books. He sat cross-legged, a book already open on his lap.
‘Why don’t you sit at the table?’
‘I like it here. It’s soft,’ he stroked the carpet, ‘and then when I’ve finished this book, I can just reach out and get another one. See?’ He beamed up at her, his face flushed with delight.
It was warm in the library; she took off Maddie’s parka, revealing the beautiful rose-pink dress with the scalloped hemline that Caro had knitted, and which made Maddie, with her silky curls and soft flushed cheeks, look like a little flower. Fan laid her lips against her daughter’s tiny, perfect ear. ‘My little rose,’ she whispered.
‘I’m going now, Cash,’ she told him. ‘Keep an eye on our things for me, eh?’ She nodded towards the nappy bag.
Cash looked up, alarmed. ‘Going? Where?’ He dropped the book from his lap and began to get to his feet. ‘I want to come with you.’
‘No, no, it’s all right, sweetie, I’m only going to the desk to ask the library lady something, and then I’ll just be over there. See those shelves?’ She waved a hand towards the adult section of the library. ‘You’ll be able to see me from here. Don’t worry, I’m not going outside or anything, I’m looking for a book, that’s all.’ She kissed the top of his head, and he sat down again and returned to the pages of his picture book.
He was afraid of being left, she knew that, though she didn’t quite know why. Was it because his father had left? But Gary had gone before Cash had turned two. And he hadn’t been round much anyway; it had seemed to Fan that Caro was right and Cash hardly knew that Gary was his father. He never asked her questions about his dad, like you’d think he would. Never.
She knew Cash loved her. She thought he loved her more than she deserved, but despite the love she could sense he didn’t feel quite safe with her. Perhaps it was because there were only the three of them – Cash and Maddie and her – and he was scared she might vanish and there’d only be Maddie and him and he wouldn’t know what to do. It was only when Caro came that he relaxed and felt safe. You could tell: the minute Caro came in the door, alone or with her husband Frank, you could almost see Cash grow solid, as if some hollow place inside him had suddenly been filled and he wasn’t worried anymore.
Fan walked towards the desk, the flowery Maddie in her arms. The two women who’d been talking to the librarian had gone now, and in the corner by the window the old man had fallen asleep over his newspaper.
The librarian was sorting cards into a box, and she didn’t look up as they approached, though she must have heard Fan coming. She didn’t even look up when Madeleine stretched her hand out towards the vase of flowers on the desk, making a little sound of joy.
‘Excuse me,’ said Fan.
The librarian flipped the lid shut on her box. ‘Yes?’
‘I’m looking for a poem.’
‘A poem?’
There was something about the woman behind the desk that seemed familiar to Fan. Or was it simply that these ladies – ladies who had the kind of jobs where they could tell people what to do, or refuse to tell them something they needed to know – all seemed to have the same sort of faces? The teachers at school, the nurse at the Cottage Hospital, the Welfare lady, and now this librarian, all had the same alert, reproving eyes, the long floppy cheeks, the tight lips that reminded Fan of the steel clasp on an old leather purse her mother had once owned. And they were all so much older than her.
‘Um, y-yes,’ she answered, stumbling even on that simple, single word.
‘Just the one poem, is it?’
The librarian made it sound as if there was something not quite right with wanting only one. The colour rose in Fan’s cheeks; she said bravely, ‘Yes. I saw it in a book that belonged to my cousin. A long while ago.’
The librarian was silent.
‘It had a line which went – ’ Standing tall and straight before the desk, Fan recited, ‘If a star were confin’d into a Tomb, Her captive flames must needs burn there; But when –’
The old man over by the window jerked awake in his chair and clapped his hands. ‘Bravo! Clear as a bell!’ he said, smiling.
The librarian took no notice of him.
‘Name?’ she asked Fan.
‘Name? You mean my name? It’s Fan – ’
‘Not yours. I meant the name of the author. Or of the poem.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you know the title of the book it was in?’
‘No. I told you – it was a long time ago and
I only saw it for a few seconds.’
‘Was that the first line of it? The line you recited?’
‘No.’ Fan was quite sure of this. The lines she had remembered had been near the end of her poem; she could picture them quite clearly in her mind. And she had the astonishing feeling that this poem, her poem, might save her if she could only see it once again. She felt it might somehow tell her what to do.
‘That’s a pity,’ said the librarian. ‘Because poems are indexed by their first lines, as well as by authors and titles, and if it had been a first line it might have been easier for you to locate it.’ She paused, and her eyes fixed on Fan’s hand, the right one, where she’d torn her thumbnail last night, trying to open a tin of condensed milk. ‘If you remembered it correctly, that is.’
‘I remembered it correctly.’
‘Well, you’re going to have your work cut out, if that’s the only information you have. Are you sure you don’t remember anything else?’
‘It had a green cover. The book it was in.’
The librarian smiled at that, and when she smiled Fan remembered her. She knew who she was, now: Mrs Stuckey, who’d lived down the bottom of Palm Street years back, and who’d taught Religious Instruction at their school when Fan had been in first class. In those days Mrs Stuckey had owned a wonderful brown polished box in which she kept her felt board to tell Bible stories, with lots of tiny little figures, hundreds and hundreds it had seemed to Fan: people and animals and birds and even angels. She wouldn’t let you touch them, she wouldn’t let you stroke the little lamb’s fleece or the zebra’s stripes or touch the tiny golden beads that made the knowing eyes of Elijah’s ravens.
Fan had stolen one of the little zebras. She had never stolen anything before, and she’d never stolen anything since. It hadn’t felt like stealing because Fan had loved the little zebra so much that it seemed almost as if it belonged to her. Mrs Stuckey had never noticed its absence; she had so many little figures, and there was another zebra, though he wasn’t so special or lovely as the one Fan had taken. She’d called her zebra Clementine, and for a long time she’d kept it under her pillow to show when the real Clementine came on her next visit, but eventually it got lost, as tiny beloved objects often do. Thou art lost and gone forever, Dreadful sorry, Clementine.