The Winds of Heaven Read online

  ‘So,’ Fan went on, ‘so he sang the tree and it flew right up into the sky with all the bad spirits hanging on to it. And when it was high, really high, right up in the clouds – ’ she stood on her toes and stretched her arms above her head, ‘then he called the winds of heaven and they made the tree shake like anything, like there was a big storm, a thousand storms, and the wicked spirits all fell down to the ground and changed into great big stones – ’

  ‘I’ve seen those stones!’ Clementine burst out. ‘I saw them when we were coming up in the train! They’re grey and they look like sheep sleeping in the grass!’

  ‘And did you see the pebbles? The little white pebbles lying everywhere?’

  Clementine shook her head. ‘The train was going too fast.’

  ‘Those pebbles are the bad spirits’ teeth. When they fell down all their teeth got knocked out and turned into little white pebbles and scattered all over the ground!’

  ‘Oh! And then what? What did the magic kid do then?’

  ‘What do you think?’ Fan jumped up beside Clementine, and the old wooden bed creaked and groaned beneath them. ‘Like an old cow having a calf, eh?’ giggled Fan. She reached up and yanked the curtains apart and together they peered out into the dark backyard, at the black shapes of Uncle Len’s shed and the big gum tree beside it, and beyond the sagging fence the night-time paddocks stretching on and on, all silvery with the moon. Fan pointed upwards to the vast black sky that was filled with stars. They were bigger than the ones Clementine saw in the city, they were as big as the magic dogs’ eyes in the story Mrs Carmody had read to them on the last afternoon before the holidays; as big as teacups, as big as mill wheels, as big as round towers.

  ‘That magic kid, he climbed up into the sky, of course,’ said Fan.

  A lot of her stories ended in this way, and it was strange how she could make something like climbing into the sky sound natural and easy – as if you could be somewhere quite ordinary, walking round the corner of Main Street into Palm Street, for instance, or standing outside the bank or the post office waiting for Mum and Aunty Rene, and suddenly it would happen: the winds of heaven would blow and the sky would come nearer and there’d be a kind of ladder in it where you could put your foot and climb up and be gone. Just like that. Before anyone else had noticed that something amazing was happening.

  ‘Do you make those stories up?’ asked Clementine, because they weren’t like the stories she’d read in books or the ones Mrs Carmody read to them at school. Fan couldn’t have got them from a book anyway, because she hated reading. She read like a little kid in Infants, or like Lizzie Owens and Christa Jorgensen; big girls who sat in the front row of the class, repeating the year they’d done before.

  When Aunty Rene made her read out the shopping list before they went on messages, Fan had to sound out all the bigger words – words like tomatoes and potatoes and kerosene, and when she got them wrong, Aunty Rene would say she was a dummy and make her sound them out again and again until she got them right. Clementine and Mrs Southey weren’t allowed to help; Aunty Rene made Fan do every single word herself, right to the bottom of the list, even though anyone could see how much she hated it. Her face would turn bright red and her eyes would slide in all directions, as if they were trying to run away from the words written out on the list. And whenever Clementine picked up one of the story books she’d brought from home, Fan would get this panicky look and she’d grab Clementine’s hand and say, ‘C’mon, let’s go outside and play.’ Even if they’d only just come inside.

  She was ten, a whole year older than Clementine, but when school started again in February, Fan would still be in fifth class, the same as Clementine. She’d had to repeat the year, like Lizzie Owens and Christa Jorgensen. ‘Because I’m a dummy, that’s why,’ she told her cousin.

  ‘No, you’re not,’ Clementine protested.

  ‘Ask anyone!’

  And it was true that on Clementine’s first day at Lake Conapaira, walking down Palm Street with Fan, two girls playing jacks in a dusty front yard had bawled out, ‘Dummy Fan! Raggedy Fan! Fan’s got a face like a frying pan!’

  ‘They’re just jealous,’ Clementine had said indignantly, because Fan’s face was as beautiful as ever.

  ‘As if I care!’ Fan had retorted, skipping on down the road.

  ‘Do you make those stories up?’ Clementine asked again, because Fan wasn’t listening, she was still gazing through the window at the star-filled sky where the magic kid had climbed.

  ‘Make them up? ’Course I don’t!’ Fan got down from the window and settled herself comfortably against Clementine’s pillow, drawing her legs up, resting her chin on her knees. She didn’t have pyjamas or a real nightdress; instead she wore an old green petticoat that was far too big for her, and which Clementine somehow guessed had also belonged to the vanished Caroline. The lace on the hem was all torn. Raggedy Fan. Her long bare legs were powdered with red dust. She hadn’t had a bath tonight; she’d taken off when Clementine’s mum had called them – across the yard, through the back gate, down the lane and out of sight. Mum hadn’t bothered to send Clementine after her. ‘Oh, let her go,’ she’d said wearily. ‘She’ll keep.’

  ‘They’re true, those stories,’ Fan said. ‘They’re from the Dreaming.’

  ‘The Dreaming?’

  ‘The oldest, oldest time.’

  ‘You mean like the Garden of Eden?’

  ‘The Garden of Eden!’ said Fan scornfully. ‘Older than that! They’re from when there was nothing’ – her two hands shaped a big round 0 – ‘and then the spirit ancestors came out of the ground and they sang up all the world.’

  ‘Did you learn that at school?’

  ‘’Course I didn’t. My friend told me.’

  There was something so soft and secretive in her voice that Clementine asked, ‘Is he your boyfriend?’

  Fan laughed. She had the most perfect laugh: it seemed to fly upwards, like drops of bright water flung into the air.

  ‘’Course he isn’t. He’s old.’

  ‘How old?’ asked Clementine, because Lizzie Owens had a boyfriend at the Tech who was fourteen.

  ‘Old as them,’ answered Fan, pointing through the window to where a distant line of rounded hills showed black at the edge of the silvery plains.

  They were the same hills Clementine had seen coming up on the train. ‘The blue hills,’ Fan said softly, and it was true that in certain lights those grey-brown hills did take on the smoky colour of Clementine’s mother’s best blue dress.

  ‘He’s my miyan,’ she whispered.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Oh, like – a sort of uncle?’ Fan frowned. ‘No, not an uncle exactly, more like, like – oh, it’s so hard explaining!’ She made a small flowing motion with her hands; you could tell that the shape they were making was strong and true and calm.

  ‘Someone who looks after you,’ said Clementine.

  ‘Sort of.’ Fan smiled. ‘Guess what he calls me.’

  Clementine shook her head.

  ‘Guess!’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Fan unexpectedly. ‘You’d never get it in a million years. No one would. It’s – ’ a faint flush of colour spread across her cheeks. ‘It’s Yirigaa,’ she said. ‘He calls me Yirigaa.’

  ‘Yirigaa?’

  She jumped from the bed and twirled round on the floor. ‘It means “morning star”.’

  Clementine didn’t know what to say. She sat there silently, sensing that her cousin had some other, richer life, a mysterious life that ordinary people knew nothing about.

  ‘I’ll take you to see him one day,’ Fan promised. ‘Only don’t tell Mum, okay?’

  ‘’Course I won’t.’ There was no way Clementine would tell Aunty Rene anything. She was frightened of her aunt’s sharp voice and bitter black eyes and the way she made you feel like walking on tiptoe. In the mornings Aunty Rene lay in bed till late, and this, like a kind of queer bad magic, made
the whole house feel unsafe. You didn’t know what she might do when she finally got up, and what kind of day she might make it be. Sometimes she sat in the kitchen with Clementine’s mum, or did things round the house; sometimes she sat on the back verandah by herself, smoking cigarettes and turning the pages of an old newspaper with small, yellow-fingered hands. Those days were all right.

  But there were other, awful days when a sudden fearful energy would take hold of her; when she’d wrench all the curtains down and boil them in the old copper, or go out the back and chop wood so fiercely that sparks flew from the axe and chips sprayed everywhere. Or she might go after Fan. She might suddenly decide to wash Fan’s hair, unbraiding the long plaits with fierce little tugs so the hair came tumbling down her back in heavy ripples and curls, right down past her waist. It was a dark streaky gold like the wild honey they spread on their toast at breakfast time, so silky that it looked precious, like something you might find in a pharaoh’s tomb.

  Aunty Rene didn’t think it was precious, she called it ‘a filthy mop’, and treated it like string, dragging the comb through the wet tangles till Fan screamed out loud and Aunty Rene hit her legs with the back of the hairbrush, and Fan screamed louder and called Aunty Rene a witch and then Aunty Rene would hit her again and shriek, ‘What did you say? What did you call me?’ Clementine’s mum would come running, crying, ‘Rene! Rene!’ And Clementine would put her hands over her ears and more than anything she’d want to run out the back and hide till it was all over. But she didn’t run; she had to stay with Fan.

  ‘And don’t tell your mum either,’ said Fan now, climbing into her bed and pulling the thin grey blanket right up to her chin. ‘Because she might tell mine. You know how they are, always whispering.’

  ‘They’re sisters,’ said Clementine, and she thought again how peculiar it was that someone nice like Mum could have a sister like Aunty Rene.

  There was a little silence. Perhaps Fan was thinking about her sister, Caroline. ‘Don’t tell your mum,’ she said again, her voice muffled by the blanket.

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Cross your heart and hope to die?’

  Clementine sketched a quick cross on the top of her pyjamas, then she got up and went to switch out the light.

  ‘No, leave it on,’ called Fan. ‘I like it on.’

  Clementine went back to her bed. She lay down beneath the prickly blanket and closed her eyes and listened to the sounds from the lounge room, where her mother and Aunty Rene sat talking by the fire. Though the summer days were burning hot, the nights at Lake Conapaira could be icy cold beneath that wide black sky. Mum and Aunty Rene spoke softly, so softly you could hardly hear, and sometimes they giggled, like the big girls did in the playground when they talked about boys. But every now and again Aunty Rene’s voice would turn all hard and hissy, and there were swearwords in it. ‘Bloody swine,’ Clementine heard her say now, and she knew Aunty Rene was talking about Fan’s dad, Uncle Len. ‘His Lordship,’ she called him, which wasn’t a swearword but sounded like it because the words were full of hate.

  Clementine’s mother asked a question in a low soft voice; you could tell it was a question because of the way her voice went up a little at the end.

  ‘Gunnesweare,’ hissed Aunty Rene in reply. ‘I told you before, Cissie.’

  Gunnesweare was the place where Uncle Len had gone off shearing months and months ago, and when Clementine heard it she pictured one of those small stations they’d passed in the train, the single sandy platform, the signs with the long strange names: Stockinbingal, Narriah, Goolgowi. Gunnesweare would be like that, she thought: a thin wedge of bare platform with no houses or shops behind it, only a narrow dirt road winding over the plains.

  ‘Gunnesweare!’ Aunty Rene shouted suddenly and for the first time Clementine heard the word properly, and realised that Gunnesweare wasn’t a little town, a real place you might find on a map. What Aunty Rene was shouting, what she’d always been shouting, was, ‘God knows where!’ Uncle Len had gone God knows where. ‘And I don’t care!’ cried Aunty Rene in a voice like a chair scraping back. A rough sobbing came through the wall, and Mum’s voice saying ‘There, there, there,’ as if Aunty Rene wasn’t a nasty cruel old witch but a little kid who’d fallen over and grazed her knee. Clementine glanced towards Fan’s bed and saw her cousin’s fair head burrowing beneath the pillow.

  There was silence from the lounge room now, a silence so complete you could hear the dry wood popping and crackling in the grate, and then there was the creak of someone getting up from one of the old wicker chairs and footsteps coming down the hall. Clementine sucked in her breath, but when the door opened it was only her mum come to kiss her goodnight. She kissed Fan too, easing the pillow from her grasp. ‘Goodnight, lovie,’ she whispered, and Fan whispered ‘goodnight’ back to her.

  ‘Do you want the light out?’ asked Mrs Southey, and Fan said, ‘No,’ but she didn’t tell her that she liked the light on all the time and Mum smiled at them both and went out of the room and down the hall towards the bathroom.

  Clementine waited. She waited for Aunty Rene’s steps coming from the lounge room, coming to kiss her daughter goodnight. She waited and waited, like she did every night, hoping that this night, this once, Aunty Rene would come.

  Aunty Rene didn’t come. She never did. She never would, thought Clementine angrily, stealing a quick, furtive glance across the room. Fan was sitting up again, the covers thrown back, picking idly at the hard stained soles of her feet.

  How awful to have a mum who never bothered to kiss you goodnight! And a sister who’d run away and a dad who went off shearing God knows where. And how odd it seemed to feel sorry for Fan, who was a whole year older, and beautiful, and hardly scared of anything.

  Fan sensed her gaze and looked up. ‘What are you staring at?’ she demanded.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Clementine quickly, and Fan lay down again and pulled the grey blanket and the raggy old sheet right up past her face.

  Late in the night Clementine woke up. Someone had switched off the light, and the house was silent, the kind of silence where you know at once that everyone else is asleep. She twisted and turned beneath the rough blanket, then she knelt up at the window and pulled the curtain across so the big stars couldn’t look in at them. The curtains didn’t meet properly: there was a big gap where the stars could still see inside, and Clementine gave up and lay down again.

  Oh, how different from home all this was! How different from thirty-three Willow Street! You could even smell the difference: a mixture of sun and dust, wild honey and the smoky tang from the old kerosene fridge on the back verandah. And you could smell feelings, too – Clementine was sure of it: you could smell anger and hatred and disappointment and jagged little fears. The anger smelled like iron and the disappointment smelled like mud. When she thought of Mum’s thick linen tablecloth with the red cross-stitched border and how she’d set the table every evening before Dad came home from work, it all seemed silly up here. The little sense of happiness she used to have, smoothing the creases from the cloth, laying it on the table, getting the edges exactly even, was like a toy given to a baby who had nothing to do but play.

  Everything had gone different. Like a changeling, this little room she shared with Fan had stolen the place of her own room back home, where when you looked out the window you saw the park across the road and the lights of the Brothers’ house shining through the trees. This old house had taken the place of their house in Willow Street: instead of Willow Street there were the red unpaved streets of Lake Conapaira with the tiny pieces of glass she’d thought were diamonds until Fan had told her, laughing, that they were only bits of old broken bottles crushed into the ground. And the heat of the day and the cold of the night, a different heat and a different cold, and the strange winds that Fan called ‘the winds of heaven’, which sprang up suddenly out of nowhere and blew about the vast empty spaces of the sky. Even the sky was different from the one at home.

  A
nd the frightening thing was that all of this, so strange in the first few days, was now after only two weeks so familiar that it seemed more real than the home she’d left behind, as if that home had only been a kind of dream. Even her dad seemed like a dream now: when she tried to picture his face she couldn’t remember it clearly.

  It wasn’t Dad who had forgotten her, it was she who’d forgotten him. Clementine flung herself back down on the bed.

  ‘Oh,’ she sobbed. ‘Oh, oh!’

  ‘What is it?’ Fan woke quick like a cat and sat up straight. ‘Are you crying, Clemmie?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes you are.’

  ‘No I’m not.’

  ‘You were so.’ Fan jumped out of bed and padded across the old linoleum.

  ‘Are you sad?’ she whispered.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is it the cold? Are you cold?’ She glanced towards the window where the stars in the gap between the curtains seemed even bigger now, as if they had come down closer to the earth. ‘You can have my blanket if you like.’ She dragged it from her bed and tucked it round her cousin.

  ‘No, you have it!’ Clementine tugged it out and threw it back across the room.

  Fan picked it up. ‘’S’okay, I don’t want it. I’m used to the cold.’ She looked down at Clementine. ‘Want me to come in with you?’

  ‘No!’ cried Clementine. And then she changed her mind and whispered, ‘All right then.’ She drew the covers back and Fan slipped in beside her. They lay close together, so close they were all tangled up, and Clementine could feel the grains of gritty red dust on her cousin’s legs and arms.

  ‘Soon I’ll take you to see my friend,’ promised Fan.