The Winds of Heaven (6 page)

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 old 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.’

‘
Birrima
?’

Fan laughed. ‘Sort of.’ She turned from the lake and pointed in the other direction. ‘I’m going
there
!’

‘Where?’ All Clementine could see was the country that lay outside their bedroom window back at Palm Street: the endless paddocks, the rounded hills, the great aching arch of sky.

‘Where?’ she asked again.

‘I’m going to the blue hills,’ said Fan. ‘See those hills over there? They’re not blue today, but sometimes they are.’

‘I know.’

‘They look close, don’t they? They look like you could walk there in a single morning. Only you can’t. I tried it once, one day when I bunked off school – ’

‘Do you bunk off school?’

‘What do you think?’ Fan’s voice was full of scorn. ‘Anyway, there was this morning last winter when I didn’t want to go because everyone was cranky with me, so I packed my schoolbag with some stuff to eat and I pretended I was going to school, same as ever only I sneaked off down at the crossing and took the other road, and then – ’ Fan paused to take a breath.

‘And then what?’

‘I walked and walked and walked all morning, and those hills didn’t get the least little bit closer. No matter how far I went, they just seemed the same distance away.’ Her gaze drifted away towards the horizon where the hills crouched, mysterious in the haze, their round humped shapes blurred in heat and dust. ‘You know what? Next time I’m gunna go on Dad’s old bike. It’s still out in the shed; only needs the tyres pumping up.’

‘But what’s there?’ asked Clementine. She thought the hills had an empty look about them.

‘Oh, anything! That’s the secret!’ Fan’s eyes were shining. ‘I reckon there could be just about anything up there, any place you’d ever dream about – jungles and deserts and forests – ’

‘And the sea?’

‘And the sea.’ Fan spread her arms out wide. ‘Seas and seas and seas. And snow – ’

‘Snow!’

‘Yes! Anything you wanted might be up there. That’s what I reckon, anyway. And – ’ she gazed around her, at the shining lake and the grey-gold paddocks and the blue sky blazing over them, ‘and this place too, it could be up there, only without school in it or – or anything bad.’

Bad. Clementine thought of Aunty Rene’s fierce black eyes, her sharp little teeth like a bad child’s, that scream in her voice that made you feel weak and afraid.

Fan reached out a dusty foot and nudged at her cousin’s leg. ‘And there’ll be a palace made of jewels for you, with peacocks in the gardens, and swans on the lake, and a gold table and chairs where we can drink your
Griffiths Tea
, and it’ll taste like, like – what was it?’

‘Ambrosia,’ whispered Clementine.

‘That’s right. There’ll be ambrosia just for you.’

A great wave of tenderness flooded Clementine’s heart: she felt that in her whole life, even when she was grown up and married and had children of her own, even when she was a grandmother and very very old, there would never be anyone she loved so much as Fan.

They lay back on the grass and watched the clouds take on amazing shapes: three ducklings in a wobbly line, a kangaroo with a long curved tail like the one on the back of the two shilling piece Clementine’s dad gave her for her pocket money, and a bride with a long floating veil. The winds of heaven sailed them across the sky and changed their shapes so tenderly that the ducklings found a mother, and the kangaroo grew wings, and the bride picked up her floaty veil and danced for them, and you felt that everything beautiful was possible in the world.