The Winds of Heaven Read online

  ‘Of course I’m glad.’

  ‘You don’t look it.’

  ‘That’s because my chest still hurts.’

  ‘Does it?’ Jilly stared down at the striped top of Clementine’s winter pyjamas and shifted a little farther back down the bed.

  ‘It’s not catching,’ said Clementine.

  There was a small silence and then Jilly burst out, ‘But don’t you want to know what happened? I thought you’d want to know! I thought you hated Mr Meague!’

  Clementine shrugged. ‘What happened then? Did Vinnie Sloane’s dad come up to the school because we’d all been picking on him?’

  Jilly flushed. ‘’Course not. Mr Meague just left, no one knows why. It was really sudden.’ She snapped her fingers. ‘Like that, he was gone. The teachers say he went to another school, but none of us believe them. Some kids reckon the green cart might have come and taken him away to the loony bin. He was crazy, you know.’ Jilly sucked her breath in and pushed her chest out proudly, so Clementine could see how she’d grown. ‘Mad as a meat axe, don’t you think?’

  ‘Probably,’ agreed Clementine listlessly, though she thought that Mr Meague was the kind of person who only showed his craziness to kids. He’d be careful with adults and they’d think he was okay.

  ‘You know what I reckon?’

  Clementine shook her heavy head. She wished that Jilly would go.

  ‘I reckon he’s got a job at St Swithin’s, a secret job, you know, in the dungeons. My mum hasn’t seen him, but then she doesn’t go down the cellars, does she? She says she wouldn’t go down there for all the tea in China. The Home Boys swear he isn’t there, but then Home Boys never tell the truth, do they? Mum says they’re born with crooked tongues. What do you think?’

  ‘I think if you were born with a crooked tongue you wouldn’t be able to talk at all.’

  Jilly stared. ‘I meant about Mr Meague, stupid! Don’t you reckon he’s at St Swithin’s? He’d like it there, don’t you think? He’d fit right in with all those chains and whips and stuff.’

  Clementine remembered how her mum said Jilly had a nasty mind. ‘Jilly, there aren’t any dungeons at St Swithin’s, or any chains and whips and stuff.’

  ‘Yes there are, you should ask my mum.’

  ‘You just said she’d never been down the cellars. Anyway I reckon your mum doesn’t know what she’s talking about.’ Clementine hoisted herself up against the pillows. ‘Or you don’t.’

  Jilly bridled. Clementine had always wondered what that word meant, and one free period she’d looked it up in the big dictionary in the school library. To throw up the head and draw in the chin (as a horse does when reined in) she’d read, expressing pride, vanity, or resentment. Now she saw the word in action: Jilly’s head went up and her chin drew in, her eyes slewed inwards, resentfully, towards her nose. She sniffed. ‘All right, so you don’t believe me. But,’ she lowered her voice to a thrilling whisper, ‘have you ever seen a Home Boy’s back?’

  ‘No,’ said Clementine. ‘Have you?’

  ‘My mum has. She says they’re all over scars.’

  Clementine thought of David Lowell’s bowed head, the frail white neck above his stiff grey collar. She flinched.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ demanded Jilly.

  ‘Nothing.’ Clementine closed her eyes and wondered again why Jilly had come to visit her; she didn’t believe it was simply to tell her that Mr Meague had left the school. There had to be some other reason. Most likely Jilly wanted to find out what it had been like to nearly die. Because Clementine had nearly died, that’s what Dr Macpherson had told Mum and Dad. And Mum had told Mrs Sheedy up the road, who was a friend of Jilly’s Aunty Rose, and then Aunty Rose would have told Jilly’s mum, and Jilly’s mum would have told – Jilly.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Clementine opened her eyes. ‘Just a bit tired,’ she said, but Jilly didn’t take the hint.

  ‘Guess who else has left?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Guess who else has left the school?’

  ‘Vinnie Sloane?’

  ‘Nah.’ Jilly pulled a face. ‘Not him. He’s still there, worse luck, the little blubber. Didn’t you hate the way he used to squeal?’

  ‘But if you and the others had left him alone, then – ’

  ‘You picked on him too.’

  ‘I know I did.’

  A silence fell. Jilly interrupted it. ‘It’s Simon Falls who’s left.’

  Clementine could feel the heat of her visitor’s avid gaze. So this was why she’d come. I know who you love, she’d written on that note, and it was Simon Falls she’d meant, not David Lowell. She’d probably told Simon Falls that Clementine Southey loved him.

  ‘His dad’s sent him to the King’s School.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Good? Is that all you can say?’

  Clementine shrugged. The small movement hurt her chest.

  ‘His dad’s a doctor.’ Jilly smiled slyly. ‘Bet you wish he was your doctor.’

  ‘Why?’

  For a moment, Jilly was disconcerted. Then she rallied. ‘Oh, come on, everyone knows you’ve got a crush on Simon Falls.’

  Everyone. So Jilly had been telling. Clementine felt the blood rise to her cheeks; she was never going back to that school. She took a deep painful breath and said carelessly, ‘Do they?’

  ‘Oh, don’t be like that, Clementine. Think how beautiful he’ll look in that King’s School uniform. Like a soldier.’

  It was true, he would. The khaki jacket and trousers, the scarlet sash looped round the gallant slouched hat; they could have been made for him.

  ‘Oh, and David Lowell’s left, too.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know, that Home Boy with the spiky hair.’ There was no malice in Jilly’s voice, which meant she hadn’t noticed David Lowell talking to Clementine in the playground, had never seen the way the Home Boy looked at her.

  ‘Oh, yeah, him,’ said Clementine. She’d been right. David Lowell had turned fourteen and left to get a job – over at the flour mills or the brake lining factory, or out digging up the roads. She thought of his inky, elegant hands.

  ‘He won a scholarship to Fort Street,’ said Jilly. ‘You know, that place for really brainy boys. That’s where he’s gone.’

  Fort Street was far away on the other side of the city. Good!

  ‘Fort Street!’ crowed Jilly. ‘It’s miles! Way off in Sydney.’ She spoke as if they, living on the city’s outskirts, were in some distant galaxy. ‘He’ll have to get up so early! He’ll have to get up in the dark to go to school.’

  Get up in the dark. A memory stirred in Clementine: a big raggy old moon above the dark backyard, a rattling train carrying her through lightless suburbs. She closed her mind to it. She didn’t want to feel she had something in common with David Lowell. For a second she saw him, tall and gangly, waiting on a still-dark platform, a bulging old briefcase tucked beneath one arm. There were raindrops in his spiky hair.

  ‘What was it like to nearly die?’ asked Jilly suddenly.

  Clementine’s mother appeared like magic in the doorway of the room. ‘Jilly,’ she said, ‘Clementine isn’t quite better yet. She gets tired easily. This might be a good time to go.’

  She’d been out in the hall listening in to every word, you could bet on it, but for once Clementine was grateful, because now Jilly would have to leave.

  ‘Oh,’ said Jilly, getting up from her chair. Clementine heard her talking to Mum on the front verandah. ‘She looks awful, doesn’t she, Mrs Southey?’

  ‘Well, she’s been very ill, Jilly. But now she’s on the mend.’

  ‘Is she? She doesn’t look it. She looks like – have you seen that film called The Spectre of Hensbane Hall, Mrs Southey? It’s a Hammer Horror.’

  ‘No, I don’t think I have, Jilly. But I’ll look out for it, if you say it’s good.’

  ‘Oh, it is, Mrs Southey. It’s great. There’s this spectre in it looks just lik
e – ’

  ‘Off you go, Jilly dear. I’m sure your mother will be wanting to get on with the tea.’

  When Dr Macpherson said she was better, Clementine’s mum and dad didn’t send her back to school right away. There were only a few weeks to go before the August holidays, and they decided it wasn’t worth it. Instead, she was going up to Lake Conapaira. Dr Macpherson said a spell in the dry cold air up there would be just the thing for Clementine’s lungs, it would have them better than new. And Aunty Rene had written that she and Fan would be happy to have her. There was no mention of Uncle Len, who was obviously still at Gunnesweare.

  ‘But Mum, what about your job?’

  ‘You’ll be going on your own,’ said Mum.

  Clementine’s eyes widened. ‘On my own in the train?’

  ‘Your dad and I decided,’ said Mum. ‘Seeing as you’re better and Dr Macpherson says the trip will be good for you.’

  ‘You’re a big girl now,’ said Dad. ‘Second year at high school, getting on for fourteen. The guard will look after you, and your Aunty Rene will meet you at the other end. You’ll be right as rain.’

  Aunty Rene. For a moment, Clementine’s happiness clouded. She thought of her aunty’s fierce black glittering eyes, the bad child’s little pointed teeth. The seething. The strap.

  Mrs Southey must have noticed the shadow cross her daughter’s face because she came forward and hugged her close. ‘Things are better up there now,’ she said softly, stroking a damp strand of hair back from Clementine’s forehead.

  Clementine’s happiness broke through in a rush. ‘Oh, I can see Fan again!’ she cried. She could hardly believe it.

  ‘Oh, you and your precious Fan!’ said Mrs Southey, but not unkindly. ‘You just concentrate on getting strong again, that’s all.’

  Chapter Eight

  Fan had left school the minute she’d turned fourteen. ‘The very minute!’ she’d told Clementine triumphantly on the night that she’d arrived. ‘I checked up with Mum, see? I asked her what time I was born, exactly, and she said it was round two o’clock in the afternoon. So that day I went to school, and I waited till exactly two – it was right in the middle of old droopy-drawers’ bookkeeping lesson – and I just got up and marched straight out of there! She couldn’t do a thing!’

  Their room was the same back bedroom they’d shared on Clementine’s last visit, with Caroline’s old bed pushed up beneath the window and the view of endless moonstruck paddocks stretching away to the hills.

  ‘None of them could do a thing! I just walked out the gate and then I ran and ran and ran!’ Fan had flung herself across her bed in the same old way, shining hair hanging over the edge of it, narrow brown feet walking up the grubby wall, just like she’d done when she was ten. She was bigger now, of course, a whole head taller than Clementine, and beautiful as ever. More beautiful – her lips were fuller, sweeter; her eyes a deeper blue; and her hair had darker tones in it, streaks of rich treacle swirled into that colour of wild honey. Her legs and arms seemed burnished, as if they’d been polished by the red dust – like the big copper fruit bowl back home that Mrs Southey would shine with a gritty black powder and then hold up to gleam against the light.

  Fan was grown up. She was working. She was down serving in Mr Chiltern’s hardware store at the bottom of Main Street, five days a week and half a day on Saturdays. She loved it, she said; yet whenever Clementine thought of the dark little cave of Mr Chiltern’s cluttered store, and the way her cousin’s golden head seemed to shine there like a lamp, a feeling would rise up inside her like a sorrow to which she couldn’t give a name.

  Left to herself all through the weekdays, Clementine grew bored – bored with the books she’d brought with her, bored with idling round the lake and wandering the narrow tracks that meandered over the empty common and never seemed to get to anywhere except the paddocks and back to the lake again. The little waves still made their old dog lapping sound amongst the reeds, the winds of heaven blew and the clouds in their fantastic shapes still sailed majestically across the sky. On a lonely day that wide sky and grand sailing clouds could make you feel unreal.

  She did messages for her aunty, helped her hang out the washing, and even sat companionably beside her at the kitchen table, peeling potatoes or slicing beans or shelling sweet green pods of peas. ‘You’re a good kid,’ Aunty Rene said unexpectedly one morning – though then she’d gone and spoiled it by adding, ‘Not like that little madam of mine.’

  ‘Things have changed up there,’ Mum had told her, and the biggest change was in Aunty Rene. She wasn’t so scary now; the seething had gone out of her, her voice had lost the little scream inside it, and the leather strap no longer hung beside the kitchen door. Uncle Len’s name remained unspoken; and somehow you knew now he’d never come back from Gunnesweare. But one thing had stayed the same about Aunty Rene: most nights she went out after tea.

  ‘Where does she go?’ Clementine asked her cousin.

  ‘Down the club to try her luck.’

  A picture of the church fete swam into Clementine’s mind, and her dad saying, ‘Think I’ll try my luck.’

  ‘You mean they’ve got a chocolate wheel down there?’

  Fan burst out laughing. ‘I mean, she’s looking for a fancy man.’

  ‘Ah.’ Clementine knew about fancy men: Mrs Garrick in their street had one; it was what you called a boyfriend when you were middle-aged.

  ‘Can you imagine?’ Fan giggled. ‘At her age?’ And then she’d stood on her toes and spun round like a dancer and her full blue skirt had flared out perfectly around her slender dancer’s legs.

  Fan wore beautiful clothes now, clothes she chose from the mail order catalogue and paid for with her own money from the job at Mr Chiltern’s store: rope petticoats and tiered skirts in brilliant colours, blouses in fabrics so soft and silky they made you want to touch. Her long hair was gathered in a ponytail or twisted in a thick plait braided with narrow satin ribbons and pinned up on her head.

  Sometimes Fan went out at nights too. Secretly. Clementine would be woken by the soft tap of the bedroom door closing, a drift of sweet perfume in the air, and she would look across the room and see Fan’s bed empty, the sheet trailing on the floor. When she got back it might be almost light. ‘Don’t tell,’ she’d whisper, putting a finger to her lips.

  ‘Don’t tell’ was because Aunty Rene didn’t like Fan’s boyfriend, Geoff. Clementine had never seen Geoff because Aunty Rene wouldn’t have him in the house. Before Geoff there’d been a boy called John, and one called Charlie when Fan was still at school.

  ‘No-hopers every one of ’em,’ Aunty Rene told Clementine. ‘Boy-mad, that’s what she is. And we all know where it’s gunna end.’ Aunty Rene tossed her head and her new frizzy perm crackled with electricity. ‘But she’s too big to be told, isn’t she?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Clementine mumbled miserably.

  ‘Well, she’ll get what’s comin’ to her one day, mark my words,’ declared Aunty Rene, adding mysteriously, ‘We make our bed and then we have to lie in it.’

  Boy-mad. Back at Chisolm, Mrs Larkin called Jilly Norris and her gang boy-mad, but Clementine could see they were different from her cousin. Jilly and her friends didn’t have boys of their own like Fan did, or Annie Boland or Mattie Gaskin, and Clementine understood that this was why Jilly’s gang talked about boys all the time and hung round boys’ places, like football games and cricket matches and cadet parades. It was why they read the boring sports pages of the Telegraph and the Daily Mirror, so they would have something to talk about with boys. They were searching for boys of their own and they wouldn’t stop searching until they found one. And when one of them did, then that girl would peel off from the gang, like Annie Boland had done when she started going round with Andrew Milton. It was a bit like The Farmer in the Dell, thought Clementine. Everyone got taken, one by one by one.

  With Fan it was different. She didn’t have to do any searching; it was the boys who were looking
for her, one by one by one.

  It was the tail end of Saturday morning and Clementine’s very last day. By this time tomorrow she’d be on the diesel train, halfway to Cootamundra and the Riverina Express; by this time the day after tomorrow she’d be home in Willow Street. This time Tuesday she’d be back at school. School seemed unbelievable.

  Clementine turned the corner into Main Street: she was on her way to meet Fan after work. At the baker’s she stopped to buy some bread for Aunty Rene. ‘Two loaves,’ Aunty Rene had told her. ‘One white and one brown. Can you remember that?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Good.’ Aunty Rene had opened her purse and dropped a clutch of coins into Clementine’s hand. ‘And no pickin’ the crust off to eat on the way home, eh?’ She’d smiled at Clementine, a rusty sort of smile which showed her teeth, still small and pointy but somehow no longer those of a bad child.

  Though it was a cold day, inside the baker’s shop there was a smell of dust and summer beneath the scent of baking bread. It was the same in all the shops of Lake Conapaira, even Mr Chiltern’s dark little hardware store, as if, despite the frosty paddocks and the ice on puddles in the morning, summer never truly went away. It was hiding, seeped into the walls and floorboards of the shops and houses and the chilled red earth, waiting for the winds of heaven to bring the sun round again. ‘Two loaves of bread, please,’ she asked Mrs Ryland behind the counter. ‘One white and one brown.’

  ‘Righty-o.’ Cheerful Mrs Ryland took two loaves from the rack and slipped them into a big brown bag. ‘How’s your aunty today?’

  ‘She’s fine.’

  ‘Fan’s doin’ good down the hardware store, I hear. Old Mr Chiltern thinks the world of her.’

  ‘I know,’ said Clementine.

  ‘She’s a lovely girl, your cousin. It’s a pity that – ’ Mrs Ryland broke off, twirling the ends of the bag into neat little brown paper ears.

  ‘That what?’

  ‘Oh, nothin’.’ She handed the bag across the counter. ‘It’s none of my business, old busybody that I am. You just tell her to mind that Geoff Peterson, right? He’s the type who’s only after one thing, and we all know what that is, eh?’