The Winds of Heaven Read online

  She didn’t know the rest of it. She’d never been good at memorising stuff, because how could you keep your mind on school work when all the time you were worrying and worrying about what you might find on the kitchen floor when you got home?

  ‘Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,’ she’d whisper, and then she’d push the gate open and tiptoe up the path (as if a dead mother might hear) and up the steps to the verandah. There she would stop again, take a deep breath if she could, and push the screen door open, gently, slowly, with one fingertip, little bit by little bit (as if a dead mother might jump out at you) and then she’d creep on down the hall and edge into the kitchen with her eyes screwed up tight. ‘Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, Look upon this little child – ’ And she’d open her eyes and there Mum would be, sitting at the kitchen table reading the paper or calmly slicing vegetables for tea.

  Fit as a fiddle. Right as rain. As if she’d never said that stuff to you in the morning before you left for school, as if that had been another person altogether. And Fan knew that if she’d asked Mum about that other person, Mum would have shrieked at her, ‘What? Who? What are you talking about?’

  For a little while you might feel safe.

  Only you could never feel properly safe, could you? Because then there was the next day, and the next. ‘One day when you come home from school,’ Mum would say, and one day, well, that could be any day, couldn’t it?

  That’s why she’d stolen Mrs Stuckey’s little zebra, Fan realises suddenly. The soft little felt zebra she’d called Clementine and hidden beneath her pillow. It was because she had to have something.

  Oh, imagine saying that sort of thing to Cash! Imagine, in a year’s time, saying to him as he went out the door in the morning, his little schoolcase in his hand: ‘One day when you come home from school – ’ Imagine if it was poor little Cash running up Palm Street, heart clenched in his chest like a panicked fist, terrified of what he might find in the house.

  She’d never say stuff like that to him – she wouldn’t, never, never, never, cross my heart.

  Only you can’t ever really know what misery might make of you, over years and years. Even Mum had been nice once. Caro had told her this. She’d said, ‘Mum was nice once, when I was little and Dad was here.’

  No, Fan doesn’t want to get like Mum. She doesn’t want to pass her sorrows on to Cash and little Madeleine, like Mum had passed hers on to Fan. And she doesn’t want to pass on her beggary. She doesn’t want her lovely children turned into beggars like her. And it will happen, she knows. Because it wasn’t only her Mrs Stuckey had treated like a beggar in the library, she’d done it to Cash as well. She wouldn’t have treated him that way if he’d gone in there with Caro. Caro would have seen that his hands were clean before he touched a book. Back at the house, before they left, she’d have noticed he wasn’t wearing shoes.

  It’s time for Fan to leave. Cash will be starting school next year. She doesn’t want the teachers picking on him because he’s hers, because he’s that awful Fan Lancie’s child. ‘Another no-hoper from that lot in Palm Street,’ that’s what they’ll say. And the things that had happened to her would start happening to him, and then to Maddie, and later on to their kids, on and on and on. It’s like a wheel, she thinks, going round and round, spinning senselessly because no one knows how to stop it. No one’s game.

  She has a sudden flash of that rainy morning years ago when Mum had given her a belting and she’d tried to ride away to the blue hills on Dad’s old bike. Only she couldn’t get there and when she came back Clemmie was waiting for her in the middle of the paddocks, bawling her eyes out in the rain. She’d been bawling too, and she’d chucked the bike down on the track to run to Clemmie, and its wheel had gone on spinning, hissing in the rain. And she’d put out her hand and stopped it with a finger. She’d been strong in those days…

  If Cash and Madeleine belong to Caro, no one will put them down. They won’t even be going to Fan’s old school, they’ll be going to some school in Temora that Fan has never seen. She may not have seen it, but Fan can imagine Cash quite plainly, going through the school gate on his first day, in his new clothes and with his little kinder case, clutching tight to Caro’s hand.

  A terrible anguish rolls over her. She gets up from her chair. It’s time to go.

  ‘It’s only for tonight, Mrs Darcy,’ she begs, standing on her neighbour’s doorstep with the two children, a small cold wind from heaven tugging at their hair and clothes. ‘My sister will be here on the morning train.’

  Though it had been difficult with Caro.

  ‘But what’s the matter, Fan? Why do you need me there at such short notice? Is Maddie sick? Cash?’

  Caro’s voice goes tender on their names.

  ‘No, they’re fine. It’s – ’

  ‘It’s what?’

  ‘It’s me. I’ve – I’ve caught some kind of bug, Caro. It’s just come on, and I can tell it’s going to get worse by tomorrow. That’s why I came out now to ring you, while I could still get down to the phone box.’

  ‘You’re down at the telephone box? Where are the kids? You haven’t left them in the house alone, have you?’

  The telephone box is down in Main Street, outside the bank, a good ten minutes walk from home.

  ‘No, no, of course not. They’re here, with me. Cash is outside on the bench, minding Maddie in the stroller. I can see them from here. Caro, look, I know the bus has gone, but can you come tomorrow, on the morning train?’

  Caro grumbles a bit, and ums and ahs about how the train comes through Temora at three o’clock in the morning and she’ll be up all night, but the thought of Cash and little Maddie with only a sick Fan to care for them wins her round, as her sister knew it would. ‘I’ll be there in the morning,’ says Caro. ‘I’ll be on the train. Look, go home and feed the kids and take some aspirin and all of you go to bed, okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ says Fan.

  ‘I can’t leave them alone,’ Fan pleads with Mrs Darcy.

  ‘Alone?’ Her neighbour stares at her, shocked. ‘Of course you can’t. But what on earth’s the matter? Where are you going? What – ’

  Fan interrupts. ‘They won’t be any trouble, Mrs Darcy, I promise.’ She turns to Cash. ‘You’ll be good for Mrs Darcy, won’t you, Cash? And keep an eye on Maddie?’

  Cash nods, his fist stuck in his mouth. He’s always liked Mrs Darcy. Fan often sees him down the bottom of the yard, chatting to her through the gap in the fence while she pegs out her washing on the line. Except that this evening he seems wary of their neighbour; he won’t look at her face. He keeps his head down, and his fingers bunch tightly on the hem of his mum’s dress.

  ‘And they’ve had their tea,’ adds Fan.

  ‘As if that mattered,’ cries Mrs Darcy indignantly. ‘As if I’d grudge a pair of little kids their tea.’

  ‘Sorry,’ whispers Fan. ‘I know you wouldn’t, Mrs Darcy.’

  ‘Fan,’ says Mrs Darcy, softer now. ‘Fan, love, what’s the matter?’

  ‘I don’t want to go and leave them, but I have to,’ Fan says. ‘It’s an emergency, Mrs Darcy.’

  ‘What emergency?’

  ‘Someone – someone’s sick.’

  ‘Your mum? Your mum’s took sick?’

  ‘No, no,’ says Fan. ‘Not Mum. She’s away in America, with Trevor.’

  Mrs Darcy is knocked all of a heap for a moment. Rene? Rene Lancie is in America? She wouldn’t credit it except that Fan isn’t the kind of person who tells those kind of lies, and anyway, Mrs Darcy is old enough to know that wonders never cease.

  ‘At a dancing competition.’

  ‘A dancing competition!’ marvels Mrs Darcy. So pigs do fly. ‘Who’d have thought it, a few years back, eh?’ she says to Fan. ‘Talk about leopards changing their stripes! Or is that tigers?’ She shakes her head wonderingly and then gets back to the problem at hand, which is Fan and the kiddies standing here on her front step. ‘So who is it then, love, this emergency?’


  ‘A friend,’ says Fan.

  ‘A friend?’ Mrs Darcy sounds doubtful.

  ‘Yes. Someone I knew at school.’

  ‘From round here, then?’

  Fan doesn’t answer. Mrs Darcy knows everyone in town. Instead she says, ‘She’s down at Stockinbingal and she needs me right away. She – she hasn’t got anyone. There’s no one.’

  ‘Ah,’ says Mrs Darcy, and Fan can see she doesn’t believe her. She probably thinks Fan’s going off to meet some man.

  ‘But Fan, can’t you – ’

  ‘I have to get the Coota bus tonight!’ Fan cries out, and Cash’s fingers tighten on her skirt.

  ‘Tonight? The six o’clock, you mean? But Fan, it’s quarter past five now.’

  ‘I can still make it.’

  ‘You’re not thinking straight, love. What if I’d said no? What if I’d been out, over at my daughter’s place? What would you have done?’

  Fan says nothing.

  There’s something funny about all this, thinks Mrs Darcy. She can’t put her finger on it, but definitely something’s not quite right. ‘That’s theirs, is it?’ Her gaze fixes on the bag in the girl’s hand. ‘Got their things in there, have you, love? Their little nightclothes, nappies for the baby, her bottle?’

  ‘Yes. Everything’s in there.’

  But where’s her bag? wonders Mrs Darcy. Where’s her bag, if she’s going down to Stockinbingal on the Coota bus? Ah well, perhaps it’s still in the house. She thinks it’s pitiful the way this girl’s been left all on her own. And with two little kiddies now. ‘Sleep through, does she?’ Mrs Darcy asks, nodding at Madeleine. ‘After the ten o’clock feed?’

  ‘Yes.’ Fan’s voice is almost a whisper. ‘She sleeps right through.’

  ‘Well, come on then, lovies.’ Mrs Darcy swoops Maddie into her arms. ‘Say bye-bye to Mummy,’ she tells her, waving the baby’s tiny hand.

  ‘Bye,’ whispers Fan, leaning forward to kiss the top of Maddie’s head. ‘Goodbye little Madeleine.’

  Thou art lost and gone forever,

  Dreadful sorry, Clementine.

  She won’t remember me, thinks Fan. She’s too little.

  ‘C’mon, Cash, love.’ Mrs Darcy reaches for Cash with her free hand. ‘Let go of Mummy’s skirt and pick up your bag, there’s a good boy.’

  Cash picks up the bag but the fingers of his other hand are still clenched tightly in the fabric of his mother’s skirt. Fan loosens them gently and kisses each cold finger one by one. ‘There,’ she says. ‘There.’

  Cash’s eyes turn up towards his mother’s face. There’s a terrible darkness rising in them, as if he actually knows.

  She kisses his forehead. ‘Cash,’ she whispers. ‘My little Cash. Be good, little Cash.’

  Abruptly he draws back from her with a terrible, anguished howl.

  Mrs Darcy grabs his arm. ‘Come on, lovie, no water-works,’ she tells him. ‘Be a big boy, now. Mummy’s only going for a little while, and in the morning, when you wake up, your Aunty Caroline will be here.’

  For once Cash’s face doesn’t light up at the promise of his Aunty Caro. Instead he goes all quiet. Pulling away from Mrs Darcy’s grasp, he turns from his mother and slips round the neighbour’s ample body into the lighted passage, and then through another door into Mrs Darcy’s kitchen. There. He’s gone. Fan stands staring down the empty hall.

  ‘And you’d better get your skates on, love, if you’re going to make that bus.’

  Fan sucks in her breath; she wants to howl like Cash did. She feels like an animal caught in a trap, a vixen who has to gnaw and tear her limb off to get free and give her cubs a life. She turns and runs towards her house, and behind her, back at Mrs Darcy’s place, she hears the front door slam.

  Inside, she drags on her parka and zips it up against the coming night. Checking her purse is there in her pocket, she runs out again. Palm Street is unlit but all the same she keeps to the shadowy places and averts her eyes from Mrs Darcy’s house in case a small face is watching for her at a window. Halfway down the road she slips into a narrow lane behind the houses, a lane that turns away from the direction of Main Street and the bus stop and leads her eventually to the track beside the lake.

  She walks on, slowly now, the small winds of heaven ruffling her hair and rustling the reeds beside the track, the lake lapping at the stones, the cold of the earth striking through the thin soles of her shoes. When she reaches the place where the old man’s camp used to be she lies down in the soft winter grass, her hands behind her head, and gazes up at the stars in the sky. Has her miyan climbed up there? Can he see her? What would he say if he knew where she was going? What would he say to her?

  She doesn’t know. ‘Come back,’ she whispers. ‘Just for a moment, please. Come back and tell me things.’ And she screws up her eyes and clenches her fists and curls her toes and wishes and wills him, but her miyan doesn’t come.

  She turns her face into the grass as if it was a pillow and whispers into it. ‘Yirigaa,’ she says. And ‘gadhaang,’ and ‘birrima’. Morning star and happiness and a place far away… all the words come back to her; she hasn’t forgotten one, and it seems to her they are more beautiful than any poetry and carry the very sound of the earth. She closes her eyes and for a little while she sleeps, quite dreamlessly, and then wakes up again.

  Long before dawn she’s on her feet again, hands thrust deep into her pockets, eyes set straight ahead, striding on towards the road that leads to the blue hills.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Fan reaches the mountain highway a little before dawn. It’s wider than the narrow dirt road from Lake Conapaira and its surface is newly sealed; cars and trucks pass along it, speeding over the ranges to towns and properties on the other side. It’s very early, still dark, but already there are people travelling: road and railway workers, tourists and salesmen, a farmer setting out to distant saleyards, or coming home again after a rough night in a Main Street country hotel.

  Fan stands and waits by the side of the road, patiently. There’s a gleam of light at the edge of the sky now, and paddocks and trees are separating, like pale blobs of cheese in turning milk. From here the blue hills look very close, rising steeply from the edge of the plain, but Fan knows there’s still a long, long way to go. Headlights show far away down the road and as they come closer she steps out from the shadowy verge, waving.

  The town has grown a little since that time a few years back when Gary brought her here, but it’s still small, the kind of place people pass through rather than linger or stay. There was talk of building a tourist park last year but nothing ever came of it. The views from the lookout have a rare splendour but there’s not much else to see. Only trees, as Fan once told her cousin – trees and more trees, rocks and stones and trees.

  ‘Sure this is where you want to go?’ the old farmer asks as he slows his truck at the side of the deserted main street. Place looks dead as a doornail, he thinks, but then it always does. He’d been over to Condo to visit his married daughter; her eldest isn’t much younger than this girl sitting beside him. He turns his head to look at her again – yeah, she’d be around Luce’s age. Fan, her name is, a name you hardly ever hear these days.

  ‘Yes,’ says Fan. ‘Yes. Just here will do.’ She points vaguely in the direction of the tea-shop which had once sold Griffiths Tea.

  ‘You’ll need to dry off those clothes of yours properly,’ he says. The back of her parka and skirt were soaking wet when he picked her up, and though he turned the heater on full blast she still looks damp and cold. Shivering.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ she mumbles at him.

  ‘You won’t think that when you come down with bloody pneumonia,’ he says, but all she does is laugh. Kids!

  ‘You got someone you know lives here?’ he asks as she jumps out from the cabin. Luce would tell him he’s an old stickybeak but he’s concerned about this kid. What was she doing out there by the crossroads so early in the morning? She doesn’t look like a hitchhi
ker; she’s got no bag for a start. She’s got nothing and she looks like she’s slept rough out there in the bush last night. When he left Condo at four this morning it was only forty-one degrees Farenheit, cold enough to ice the windscreen over and freeze the puddles on the road.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says softly. ‘Thank you for the lift.’

  She’s not a city girl. He’d take a guess she’s a local lass, it’s there in her voice and the way she moves, a thing you can’t explain, but it’s there.

  ‘Got someone you know round here?’ he asks again, because she seems to be in a bit of a daze, standing out there on the footpath, like she doesn’t know where to go.

  ‘My cousin,’ she says quickly. ‘My cousin lives here.’

  ‘Want me to drop you off at her place?’ He’d like to see this cousin.

  ‘No, no!’ she stares around the deserted street. ‘I’ve got to do something here, first.’

  ‘She know you’re comin’?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘This cousin of yours.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says angrily, flushing. ‘She does.’

  Now he’s done it; he’ll get no more out of her. He shakes his head and takes the brake off. What can you do? ‘That’s all right then,’ he says, giving her a long, long look before he drives away.

  It’s only a little after eight o’clock. The post office isn’t open yet. Fan wanders up the hill to the small memorial park and sits on the steps of the bandstand. There are bandstands just like this in little towns all over the Central West: there’s one in Lake Conapaira, and one in Lachlan, and Temora, and Coota, and in other towns she distantly remembers driving through in Dad’s truck when she was very little and he was still at home. She’s seen a lot of bandstands but never once has she seen a band. The idea strikes her as funny and her lips curve in a smile.