The Winds of Heaven Read online

  In a little while they were both asleep, a single hump beneath the thin sheet and worn grey blankets. The old house creaked in the cold and outside the window the big stars grew closer and closer, till they were like cold faces peering through the glass. And the winds of heaven sprang up and blew above the paddocks and rocked in the great spaces of the sky.

  Chapter Three

  Fan marched out through the back gate and began to walk away quickly down the lane, so fast that Clementine had to run to keep up with her.

  ‘Wait! Wait for me!’

  At the end of the lane Fan stopped and turned round. Her beautiful face, which was always so bright and lively, had gone pale and still. Her eyes gleamed with unshed tears.

  At breakfast that morning something bad had happened. In Clementine’s house at Willow Street it wouldn’t have been bad, only a little accident which could happen to anyone and didn’t matter in the least.

  Fan had knocked over her cup of milk. Clementine’s mum had been sitting next to her, and some of the milk, only a little bit of it, had spilled onto Mrs Southey’s skirt.

  Aunty Rene had jumped up from her chair. She was like a match being struck. ‘Get the cloth!’ she’d screamed at Fan. ‘Get the cloth!’

  Her scream flew into every little nook and cranny, exactly as Clementine had imagined when she was coming up in the train. It got into things and made them weak: you felt that if you picked up your cup it would shatter, a spoon might give off an electric shock.

  ‘Get the cloth!’

  Fan got to her feet. Usually sure-footed, she stumbled now, as if the scream had sucked her balance away.

  She brought the wrong cloth, the dirty dish one from the sink instead of the clean tea towel, and it made greasy streaks all down Mrs Southey’s skirt. ‘It doesn’t matter, Rene,’ Clementine’s mum had protested when Aunty Rene began shrieking some more at Fan, telling her she was a dummy and a retard, a thing that should never have been born. ‘It’s only an old skirt, no harm done. And Fan didn’t mean to – it was an accident, Rene.’

  ‘Nothing’s an accident with that little madam!’ Aunty Rene’s eyes had glittered. ‘They say she’s backward up the school.’

  Backward. There’d been a kind of triumph in the way she’d spoken that word; she’d licked her lips on it as if it was chocolate, rich and sweet. A wave of bright crimson had flooded Fan’s cheeks, so quick and sudden you barely caught it before it was gone again and Fan’s face turned pale as milk. She’d dropped the cloth on the floor and run out of the room, and Clementine had run after her, out of the house, across the yard and out into the lane.

  ‘Wh-where are you going?’ Clementine asked this silent, angry Fan.

  Her cousin said nothing for a moment. With the big toe of one bare foot she drew a curved shape in the red dirt of the lane. Then she drew lines around it, like the rays of the sun.

  ‘I’m going to see my friend.’

  ‘Can I come?’

  Fan took a long time making up her mind. Clementine could have said, ‘You promised!’ but she knew today was different, the kind of day when you didn’t remind people of the promises they’d made.

  Fan raised her eyes and looked at her cousin. She studied her.

  Clementine stood very still.

  ‘All right,’ said Fan at last. ‘You can come.’

  The house in Palm Street was on the very edge of town. At the end of the lane real country began. On their left lay blazing paddocks, to their right a narrow red road that led towards the steely sheet of water that gave the town its name. Lake Conapaira.

  ‘This way.’ Fan turned onto the red road. It was hot. There was a sky like a brass band. From here the lake seemed far away, yet glittered so fiercely you had to narrow your eyes to look. It was so bright the sun might have fallen down beneath the water and be lying on the muddy bottom with the leeches and little fishes, the rusty old tins and jagged stones. The lake was dangerous; however hot the day was, you could never swim in there.

  A dust-filled shimmer hid the farther side. ‘What’s over there?’ asked Clementine. She wanted her cousin to talk; she wanted her to be the Fan she knew again.

  ‘The land,’ replied Fan, and her voice lingered on the word, so that it seemed to come out in two falling syllables, la-and, like part of some mysterious song.

  ‘Oh,’ said Clementine.

  They turned off the red road onto a clay track between tall banks of reeds. Water gurgled in amongst them, and Clementine heard small quick scurrying sounds, and then a single, heavy ‘plop’. A line of black ants crawled in single file along the dry edge of the track.

  Clementine stooped to pick up a small white pebble. It felt warm and smoothly perfect in her hand. ‘Look,’ she said to Fan. ‘Look what I found.’

  Fan took the pebble and examined it closely, turning it this way and that, holding it up to the light. ‘Reckon it might be one of those teeth them bad spirits lost,’ she said at last.

  Clementine dropped the pebble onto the track. She shuddered.

  ‘Hey!’ Fan touched her arm. ‘It’s all right, I was only kidding.’ She picked up the pebble and began tossing it from hand to hand. ‘Those teeth didn’t fall down here. It was some other place, honest, miles and miles away.’ She held out the small white stone and Clementine took it and thrust it deep into the pocket of her shorts.

  Fan was kind, reflected Clementine. And she was clever, too, no matter what Aunty Rene said, or those kids who sang stupid songs in the street. It didn’t matter that she read badly and had to repeat at school, you could tell from her face and the things she said that she was clever. She knew all the secret tracks and places round the lake, and words from another language, and stories other people didn’t know. And she was clever with thoughts and feelings, too: she grasped things no one else could see. When Clementine had told her about the Griffiths Tea signs, Fan had understood exactly how Clementine had imagined the jewelled palace and the tea that tasted like ambrosia, and the way she’d felt when she’d missed the place and begun bawling like a little kid.

  Even Mum hadn’t understood about Griffiths Tea. She’d told Clementine it was just an ordinary old tea you bought in an ordinary grocer’s shop and the signs along the railway line were only advertising. ‘You haven’t missed a thing, sweetheart,’ she’d said. ‘There’s nothing to cry about.’

  But Clementine thought there was, and Fan had agreed with her.

  ‘You were crying for gadhaang,’ she’d said.

  Gadhaang. It was the kind of word you just knew meant something important.

  ‘That’s happiness,’ Fan had explained. ‘Proper happiness. Serious happiness. That’s what you thought Griffiths Tea might be.’

  Serious happiness. Even Clementine’s best friend Allie wouldn’t have understood so well, and as for girls like Lizzie Owens and Christa Jorgensen, if Clementine had so much as breathed a word to them about Griffiths Tea they’d have said she was barmy and the green cart would be coming to her house that very night to take her to the loony bin for ever and ever, amen.

  They walked and walked and there was no other sound except their footsteps and the rustle of the reeds and the steady lapping of the lake water against the crusty mud of the shore – lap, lap, lap, like an old dog licking at a sore. The sun was right up high in the brassy sky, blaring like trumpets and drums, and Clementine could feel the heat of the earth beating up through the thin soles of her canvas shoes. ‘Don’t your feet get burned?’ she asked Fan, and Fan stopped and lifted one bare foot in her hand and examined its bright stained sole. ‘Nah,’ she said, dropping the foot and walking on again. ‘Guess I’m used to it.’

  ‘Are we nearly at your friend’s place?’

  ‘It’s just up here.’ Fan pointed to a steep stony slope that rose away from the shore. ‘C’mon!’ She grabbed Clementine’s hand and pulled her up the hill.

  At the top was a small plateau surrounded by a hedge of dusty bushes; sheets of rusty corrugated iron and a curtain of ol
d sacking formed a makeshift shelter between two spindly gums. A few battered tins lay beside a circle of blackened stones, and the bits of glass that looked like diamonds were crushed into the ground.

  ‘Does your friend live here?’

  ‘Sometimes. And sometimes he goes away.’

  ‘Where to?’

  Fan stretched her arms out wide. ‘Birrima,’ she answered dreamily. ‘A place far, far away.’ She went up to the shelter and drew the curtain aside. She beckoned to Clementine. ‘See?’ she whispered.

  Behind the sacking an old black man was lying on a bed of flattened reeds. He was old as the hills, just like Fan had said: the deep grooves and wrinkles on his face were grey against the dark skin, as if they were filled with ash. He lay so still he didn’t seem alive; one of the small black ants they’d seen on the track was crawling along his arm.

  Clementine swallowed. ‘Is he dead?’ she whispered fearfully.

  ‘Of course he’s not. Can’t you see his chest going up and down? He’s asleep, that’s all. And we mustn’t wake him up.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he might be away from here,’ said Fan.

  Clementine stared at her cousin. ‘But he isn’t away. He’s there. He’s lying there.’

  Fan shook her head gravely. ‘He’s a magic man. Sometimes when he’s asleep his spirit goes out walking.’

  ‘Walking?’

  ‘Over the land. It might be a long, long way from here and if you wake him up, then his spirit mightn’t be able to get back, see?’

  ‘And if it can’t get back, then what happens?’

  Fan didn’t answer. She slipped through the sacking curtain and crouched down beside the sleeping man, placing one hand softly over his, light as a moth settling on a crumpled leaf. She closed her eyes.

  The quiet inside the shelter was like peace. Clementine remembered the shape Fan had made with her hands when she’d been trying to describe her friend, the shape that showed strength and calm. And when Fan got to her feet and came back out to Clementine, her face had lost its sadness and anger and become brave and sweet again, as if some kind of strength and comfort had been passed from the old man to her, and the harsh scene at breakfast had faded from her mind. She was smiling. ‘Let’s go!’ she cried, skipping lightly across the clearing, disappearing through the thicket of dusty bushes at its edge.

  Clementine hurried after her, pushing her way through the bushes where sharp little twigs snatched at her legs and arms. On the other side of the thicket a rutted track snaked between grey-gold paddocks and Fan was running along it, little puffs of red dust rising like smoke about her feet. ‘Hurry up!’ she called when she saw Clementine.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘My hidey. Well, it’s not a hidey, really, it’s just my special place. You’ll like it, there’s shade. It stays really cool there.’

  Cool. Out here, coolness seemed an impossibility; the air was so hot that simple breathing was like sucking in a flame. Above the paddocks the sky had turned a strange colour, a dull reddish-grey, and a little wind was stirring in the bristly grass. Clementine caught at her cousin’s arm. ‘Is there going to be a storm?’

  Fan glanced up at the peculiar sky. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s just dust.’ Her gaze swerved over the rustling grasses, and then out to the horizon. ‘Reckon there’s a willy-willy not far off, though.’

  ‘A willy-willy?’

  ‘Yeah. See? Over there!’ She pointed over the paddocks and Clementine saw a tall hazy figure in a long brown robe moving rapidly over the dry grass, rushing first one way and then another as if some invisible demon was chasing after him. Where he ran the grass bowed down before him, and twigs and straw rose up round his brown skirts in a flurry: it was as if someone immensely strong and angry was stalking over the land and everything that wasn’t rooted firmly in the earth was gathered into his whirling robe. As she watched, a whole branch from a dead tree was plucked up into the air.

  Clementine clutched tighter at her cousin’s arm. ‘Is that his spirit coming back?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The old black man’s spirit?’

  Fan gazed at her in astonishment. ‘Of course it isn’t.’

  ‘Who is it, then?’

  ‘Who? No one. I told you, it’s a willy-willy, that’s all. A sort of whirlwind, with all dust and stuff in it. It’s not a person, it’s not anything alive.’ Fan took Clementine’s hand from her arm and grasped it firmly. ‘Don’t be scared. It won’t hurt us. It’ll come close but not right here.’

  How did she know? Clementine wanted to run, only how could you know which way to run? The whirling brown column seethed this way and that, first in one direction, then another – it could get you whichever way you ran. There was a rushing sound, dust swirled in the air. ‘Close your eyes,’ ordered Fan, and Clementine closed them and stood there, trembling, holding tight to her cousin’s hand while heat and dust surged round her and the air itself seemed to boom. The booming passed them and the air went still. ‘It’s going now,’ she heard Fan say calmly. ‘See?’

  Clementine opened her eyes. The willy-willy was far away over the paddocks, a long thin figure in a brown robe again. And though it was tall and looked like a man, the strange thing was that it reminded Clementine of Aunty Rene. It was the way the thing seethed, the way it veered from place to place, the way it sucked things inside it like Aunty Rene sucked in griefs and spite until she was made of them.

  They walked on. The track curved back towards the lake, to a hollow in the bank above the water, a shady place between two she-oak trees. They lay down on grass which was still soft and green and watched the clouds racing across the sky. The lake lay spread beneath them, making its sad old dog lapping sound. A flock of black cockatoos wheeled out over the water, shrieking.

  ‘Bilirr,’ murmured Fan dreamily.

  ‘Does that mean cockatoo?’

  ‘’Course it does. Fan reached across and laid a finger on Clementine’s lips. ‘Now you say it, Clemmie.’

  Clementine felt shy. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Yes you can. It’s easy. Go on.’

  ‘Bilirr,’ said Clementine, very slowly and carefully, in the way you might carry someone else’s precious object across a slippery floor.

  ‘That’s it.’ Fan’s delighted laughter flew up into the air.

  ‘Bilirr,’ said Clementine more confidently, and a single gleaming black feather floated down onto the grass beside her, just like the pigeon’s feather had floated down at Central Station, only now Mum wasn’t here to snatch it away. She picked it up and studied its colour – if you held it one way it wasn’t black at all, but a deep, deep blue, and the blue sheen stirred a long-ago memory of Fan’s big sister. Caroline’s hair had had that same blue sheen. ‘You know your sister?’ she blurted. ‘The one who ran away?’

  She’d forgotten how Fan never talked of Caroline. Beside her on the grassy bank she felt her cousin tense and draw in her breath.

  ‘Who told you that?’ Fan demanded angrily. ‘Who told you she ran away?’

  ‘N-no one,’ stammered Clementine. ‘I just thought – ’ she tailed off, because how could she explain the desolate feeling the old house in Palm Street stirred in her, or the picture she’d imagined so clearly in the train, of the black-haired girl running away across the paddocks. ‘Mum said she went away because she found a job,’ she mumbled.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Fan sharply. ‘That’s what she did. She found this job in Temora and went down there. That’s all. She didn’t run away and anyone who says that’s a liar!’

  There was a silence. Clementine didn’t know how to break it. She’d never seen Fan get angry before, except with Aunty Rene, and she was afraid she might say the wrong thing again and make everything worse. So she stayed quiet, and it was Fan who finally spoke. ‘She visits us sometimes,’ she said in a low grudging tone. ‘Only – ’ now her voice trembled – ‘only she doesn’t stay long. Temora’s a long way, and Caro doesn’t
get many holidays, see?’ Fan puckered her lips and her next words were spoken in a voice that didn’t sound like hers at all, and which Clementine guessed was an imitation of her sister Caroline’s. ‘By the time she gets here, it’s practically time to go home again.’ Fan tore up a handful of grass, studied each blade carefully, and then scattered them over the ground. ‘Anyway, I don’t care!’ She lifted her chin defiantly, and Clementine saw she was angry with Caro for going away and leaving her alone.

  ‘You’re lucky having a sister; I wish I did, even if she lived a long way away.’

  ‘You think so?’

  Clementine nodded. ‘I’ve always wanted a sister. Always.’

  ‘I could be your sister.’ Fan smiled and her lips became soft and generous again. She grasped the ends of her plaits and twisted them up on her head. ‘If – if you wanted me to be, that is.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘But you might like a different kind of sister. Someone more sort of – ’

  ‘More sort of what?’

  Round went the plaits again, twisting.

  ‘I dunno. More like other girls. Like your friends down in Sydney.’

  ‘Oh, no! I’d like you.’

  ‘Honest?’ Fan’s face shone with delight. She tossed the plaits gaily over her shoulders.

  ‘All right then,’ she said, and leaned forward to place a soft kiss on Clementine’s lips. ‘Now we’re sisters, see.’

  ‘Sisters,’ echoed Clementine.

  ‘That’s gindaymaidhaany. Say it.’

  ‘Gingaymaid –’

  ‘Gindaymaidhaany. It’s hard, I know.’

  ‘Gin-gindaymaidhaany.’

  ‘Got it! And now I’ll tell you a secret, eh? A special, serious secret, like you told me yours about the Griffiths Tea. But you mustn’t tell anyone. Promise?’

  ‘Promise.’

  ‘Okay. It’s this: Caro didn’t run away, but I’m going to, one day.’

  ‘Honest?’ But Clementine knew she’d run away if she had a mum like Aunty Rene.

  ‘Honest! And guess where I’m going.’