Cloudland

Cloudland

Lisa Gorton

Pan Macmillan Australia

 

 

 

 

 

 

First published 2008 in Pan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited
1 Market Street, Sydney

Text copyright © Lisa Gorton 2008

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Gorton, Lisa.
Cloudland.

ISBN 978 0 330 42377 9.

I. Title.

A823.3

Typeset in 12.5/16 pt Cochin by Post Pre-press Group
Printed in Australia by McPherson's Printing Group

The characters and events in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Papers used by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

These electronic editions published in 2009 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
1 Market Street, Sydney 2000

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

 

Cloudland

Lisa Gorton

 

 

 

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For Kelso

Endless Rain

England

Thin Air

Cloudians

The Cloud Palace

The Citadel

Speaking Statue

Snugs

Fracta

Stratum

Flight

Refuge

Waking

Altovia

The Megalith

The Tunnel

Mist

Lost and Found

The Cave

Alkazia

Matches

Calling

Ice Fire

Breaking

The Rising

Home

I thank my publishers at Pan Macmillan – above all, Anna McFarlane, for her generous support and perceptive suggestions. It has been a pleasure to work with her and with all the wonderful editors who improved various drafts: Brianne Tunnicliffe, Ali Lavau and Julia Stiles. I'm also grateful to all those who gave early and, in some cases, late drafts a good deal of time and careful thought: Antoni Jach, Kim Kane and Eva Mills. Thanks to Will Gorton for helping with the letter. John Wentworth helped most of all.

Lucy found her seat on the plane. It was still raining. Outside, three workers in fluoro jackets loaded the last suitcases. Beyond them, the airport was almost deserted. In the last hour of daylight, its buildings and asphalt had faded to the colour of rain. Lucy felt as though it had been raining forever. Some days the rain beat upon the roof, some days it came in like mist, but it never stopped.

She remembered waking in the night at home, stumbling half asleep to the car where her father sat waiting, staring into the tunnel its headlights made. The silence of the pine forest had gathered around them and they had said nothing. They had driven
down the mountain listening to the windscreen wipers' soft complaining sound. Her father had eased the car around boulders in a litter of mud on the road. At the last turn, driving from the forest shadows onto the highway across the plains, they had seemed to come all at once into morning: a low white sky and the air dull with rain. They had passed a farmhouse sunk in water. The family had rigged up a makeshift shelter of corrugated iron and hay bales on the flat roof of their shearing shed. Lucy had seen a woman sitting on a chair up there with a rifle across her knees.

The highway had taken them through the outskirts of the city. Its flooded suburbs were deserted. Lucy had seen houses with dark windows smashed in jagged shapes. Most people had fled to government camps in the hills: tent cities of tramped mud, where last week a man had stabbed his brother-in-law in a fight over a loaf of bread.

Before the rain, they would have needed three hours to drive to the airport. Now they drove all day, keeping to high ground, taking small roads around the flooded valleys. They had to stop for police checks at every big crossroad. Near the airport, the highway diverted onto a railway bridge across the river. ‘Look at that!' Lucy's father had slowed the car. She had
thought at first he was pointing to the bloated cow, bumping among beer cans and plastic bags in an eddy of the river. ‘Amphibians,' he had whispered, and then Lucy had seen them: ten or twelve people huddled on loosely roped scraps of wood – doors and the top of a kitchen table. They were all in wetsuits and their hair hung down their backs in knobbly strands. Seeing a girl sorting through garbage, Lucy had imagined diving as that girl would dive into the muddy sway of floodwaters, into rooms with clothes still swaying in the cupboards, books on the bookshelves, all lost …

The pilot spoke over the loudspeakers. In the aisle, near the front of the plane, a smug-faced flight attendant brandished a life jacket. Lucy looked away from the window, trying to turn her thoughts from the rain. The plane was only half full. People needed permission to travel now.
They're all going to a hospital somewhere
, reflected Lucy, looking at the other travellers.
For a death or a birth
. She couldn't see any other custody children.

She had always liked flying. She liked the stunned hush that fell over people when they were killing time, waiting for the plane to land. More than that, even, she liked flying through cloud, looking out the window at its white, weightless mass, so full of light it made a silent hum. This time, though, waiting for the
plane to take off, she just felt washed-out and sad. She caught sight of her suitcase, tucked under the seat in front of her. It had belonged to her grandmother and it was still covered with the tatty corners of cruise tickets. Near the handle, the canvas was peeling away. Why did some things, familiar things, seem more real than people? Maybe because it was so much simpler to care about them. They were just as they seemed; they didn't have plans or secrets.

She thought of her father walking out of the airport with his shirt wrinkling over his shoulders. He would still be driving home, she realised. Already, he would be thinking about climbing the stairs into the turret, gazing up through its glass roof at the clouds. He was a meteorologist, and he spent hours calculating wind patterns and staring at the sky. He would settle into his armchair with his computer on his lap, forgetting about dinner, snacking on chocolate bars he kept in a box by his feet.

Lucy thought,
If I ever need to choose a side, I'll side with the Amphibians
. A woman from the Citizen Safety Guard had come to speak once at school. ‘In the CSG,' she had boasted, ‘we get food, water and a gun of our own.' The woman had been cheerful in an empty way but her eyes had been dull, as though she'd been looking at the rain so long it had washed
away her memories. These days, most people had eyes like that, even the ones who lived on high ground. If you tried speaking to them, they made you repeat everything you'd said. They stumbled over phrases:
last year
and
next year
. They only spoke about last week or tomorrow.

Finally, the engines started. Strings of rain on the window slid back. The runway turned shiny with speed. With a jolt, they lifted into the air and Lucy's vague unhappiness changed into something cold and certain. She was going the wrong way, to England, Christmas and next year, when all she wanted was to go back: back home, back to last summer, before the rain ruined everything. She pictured her mother, cuddled on the couch with her new husband and their baby daughter, Isn't-She-Adorable. Every time Lucy thought of them, she could see them leaning over the bassinet saying: ‘Isn't she adorable?' ‘Just a
dor
able!'

The plane was climbing steadily now, through rain and clouds into a sudden openness. Up here, above the weather, the air was black and still. Lucy's thoughts loosened and drifted until at last, she fell asleep. When she woke up it was dark outside and dark in the plane. Some passengers were crouched under thin beams of light, reading. The rest were
slumped asleep with their mouths hanging open. She thought how ugly strangers looked when they slept. Their faces fell out of their usual expressions and showed the pouches of purple flesh under their eyes, their caterpillar brows and the veins on their cheeks.

She turned back to the window. At that moment, a line of light divided the darkness. The sun was rising. She saw the sky fade, then all at once start shining, pale green, pink and smoky yellow. The light that shone on the clouds seemed to contain every other colour. Even its shadows were pale blue, not black. Lucy was tired but she didn't feel like sleeping anymore. It was so peaceful, looking at a place where there was no rain. She sat for a while without thinking. There was only the plane and, further off, two clouds – one bright, one dark – skimming towards it.