The Winds of Heaven (26 page)

‘Oh!’ Cash spotted the children’s section the moment they came through the door. You couldn’t really miss it: a wide bright space to the side of the main room, the shelves at child-height, fat with books in all shapes and sizes, small chairs and tables painted in vivid primary colours, posters of fairytale scenes all along the wall.

‘Mum?’ Longing made his voice go loud. He tugged at Fan’s skirt. ‘Mum – can we – can we go
there
?’

‘Shh.’ She put a finger to her lips. There hadn’t been a real library at her old primary school; only a shelf of books at the back of the senior classroom. You were only allowed to read them in the last slow hour of Friday afternoon, and total silence was demanded. ‘No talking in Library!’ the sixth class teacher, Mr Peterson, would roar, puffing his cheeks out like the big frill-necked lizard Fan had once disturbed at the bottom of
their backyard. If you talked you had to go and stand outside in the corridor. Fan had often been sent outside; something about school made her feel so jumpy and nervous that even when she wanted to be quiet, talk and giggling simply burst right out of her. She understood now that she’d been trying to shut things out. She was still shutting them out. You had to live.

Now she took one of Cash’s small hands in hers. ‘You have to speak softly in libraries, Cash. People are reading. They’re reading all kinds of lovely things and they don’t want to be disturbed, okay?’

‘But can we, can
I
, go there?’ He pointed across the room. ‘Am I allowed?’

‘Of course you’re allowed. But quietly.’

He ran. His flip-flops made only the faintest mutter on the carpeted floor; the three ladies at the desk turned their heads and watched him narrowly. Fan followed, Maddie slung across her hip, ducking her head as she went by the desk, sensing the gazes of all three watchers upon her, expecting any second to hear a stern voice demanding, ‘And just
where
do you think you’re going?’

No one said anything, no one stopped her; she heard their whispered conversation begin again the moment she’d passed by.

When she entered the children’s section, Cash had found himself a place on the floor beside the shelves of picture books. He sat cross-legged, a book already open on his lap.

‘Why don’t you sit at the table?’

‘I like it here. It’s
soft,’
he stroked the carpet, ‘and then when I’ve finished
this
book, I can just reach out and get another one. See?’ He beamed up at her, his face flushed with delight.

It was warm in the library; she took off Maddie’s parka, revealing the beautiful rose-pink dress with the scalloped hemline that Caro had knitted, and which made Maddie, with her silky curls and soft flushed cheeks, look like a little flower. Fan laid her lips against her daughter’s tiny, perfect ear. ‘My little rose,’ she whispered.

‘I’m going now, Cash,’ she told him. ‘Keep an eye on our things for me, eh?’ She nodded towards the nappy bag.

Cash looked up, alarmed. ‘Going? Where?’ He dropped the book from his lap and began to get to his feet. ‘I want to come with you.’

‘No, no, it’s all right, sweetie, I’m only going to the desk to ask the library lady something, and then I’ll just be over there. See those shelves?’ She waved a hand towards the adult section of the library. ‘You’ll be able to see me from here. Don’t worry, I’m not going outside or anything, I’m looking for a book, that’s all.’ She kissed the top of his head, and he sat down again and returned to the pages of his picture book.

He was afraid of being left, she knew that, though she didn’t quite know why. Was it because his father had left? But Gary had gone before Cash had turned two. And he hadn’t been round much anyway; it had seemed to Fan that Caro was right and Cash hardly knew that Gary was his father. He never asked her questions about his dad, like you’d think he would. Never.

She knew Cash loved her. She thought he loved her more than she deserved, but despite the love she could sense he didn’t feel quite safe with her. Perhaps it was because there were only the three of them – Cash and Maddie and her – and he was scared she might vanish and there’d only be Maddie and him and he wouldn’t know what to do. It
was only when Caro came that he relaxed and felt safe. You could tell: the minute Caro came in the door, alone or with her husband Frank, you could almost
see
Cash grow solid, as if some hollow place inside him had suddenly been filled and he wasn’t worried anymore.

Fan walked towards the desk, the flowery Maddie in her arms. The two women who’d been talking to the librarian had gone now, and in the corner by the window the old man had fallen asleep over his newspaper.

The librarian was sorting cards into a box, and she didn’t look up as they approached, though she must have heard Fan coming. She didn’t even look up when Madeleine stretched her hand out towards the vase of flowers on the desk, making a little sound of joy.

‘Excuse me,’ said Fan.

The librarian flipped the lid shut on her box. ‘Yes?’

‘I’m looking for a poem.’

‘A poem?’

There was something about the woman behind the desk that seemed familiar to Fan. Or was it simply that these ladies – ladies who had the kind of jobs where they could tell people what to do, or refuse to tell them something they needed to know – all seemed to have the same sort of faces? The teachers at school, the nurse at the Cottage Hospital, the Welfare lady, and now this librarian, all had the same alert, reproving eyes, the long floppy cheeks, the tight lips that reminded Fan of the steel clasp on an old leather purse her mother had once owned. And they were all so much older than her.

‘Um, y-yes,’ she answered, stumbling even on that simple, single word.

‘Just the one poem, is it?’

The librarian made it sound as if there was something not quite right with wanting only one. The colour rose in Fan’s cheeks; she said bravely, ‘Yes. I saw it in a book that belonged to my cousin. A long while ago.’

The librarian was silent.

‘It had a line which went – ’ Standing tall and straight before the desk, Fan recited, ‘
If a star were confin’d into a Tomb, Her captive flames must needs burn there; But when –
’

The old man over by the window jerked awake in his chair and clapped his hands. ‘Bravo! Clear as a bell!’ he said, smiling.

The librarian took no notice of him.

‘Name?’ she asked Fan.

‘Name? You mean
my
name? It’s Fan – ’

‘Not yours. I meant the name of the author. Or of the poem.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Do you know the title of the book it was in?’

‘No. I told you – it was a long time ago and I only saw it for a few seconds.’

‘Was that the first line of it? The line you recited?’

‘No.’ Fan was quite sure of this. The lines she had remembered had been near the end of her poem; she could picture them quite clearly in her mind. And she had the astonishing feeling that this poem, her poem, might save her if she could only see it once again. She felt it might somehow tell her what to do.

‘That’s a pity,’ said the librarian. ‘Because poems are indexed by their first lines, as well as by authors and titles, and if it had been a first line it might have been easier for you
to locate it.’ She paused, and her eyes fixed on Fan’s hand, the right one, where she’d torn her thumbnail last night, trying to open a tin of condensed milk. ‘If you remembered it correctly, that is.’

‘I remembered it correctly.’

‘Well, you’re going to have your work cut out, if that’s the only information you have. Are you sure you don’t remember anything else?’

‘It had a green cover. The book it was in.’

The librarian smiled at that, and when she smiled Fan remembered her. She knew who she was, now: Mrs Stuckey, who’d lived down the bottom of Palm Street years back, and who’d taught Religious Instruction at their school when Fan had been in first class. In those days Mrs Stuckey had owned a wonderful brown polished box in which she kept her felt board to tell Bible stories, with lots of tiny little figures, hundreds and hundreds it had seemed to Fan: people and animals and birds and even angels. She wouldn’t let you touch them, she wouldn’t let you stroke the little lamb’s fleece or the zebra’s stripes or touch the tiny golden beads that made the knowing eyes of Elijah’s ravens.

Fan had stolen one of the little zebras. She had never stolen anything before, and she’d never stolen anything since. It hadn’t felt like stealing because Fan had loved the little zebra so much that it seemed almost as if it belonged to her. Mrs Stuckey had never noticed its absence; she had so many little figures, and there was another zebra, though he wasn’t so special or lovely as the one Fan had taken. She’d called her zebra Clementine, and for a long time she’d kept it under her pillow to show when the real Clementine came on her next visit, but eventually it got lost, as tiny beloved
objects often do.
Thou art lost and gone forever, Dreadful sorry, Clementine.

‘A green cover,’ repeated Mrs Stuckey. ‘That’s not going to help you very much, I’m afraid.’ She raised a hand and pointed. ‘The poetry section’s over there, 821. We haven’t got all that much, but there’s enough for you to be getting on with.’

Fan found the section marked 821. The poetry books took up two small shelves near the floor. She knelt down and placed Maddie gently on the carpet, and the baby put a finger in her mouth and gazed up at the ceiling, where small round lights were set out at regular intervals, like orderly stars. Fan began to go through the books, volume after volume, poem after poem after poem. Words jumped out at her, lines and whole stanzas, names and titles, but never the line she was searching for, never the same brave sound of it. Never
her
poem.

‘Mum?’

She looked up. Cash was standing there, a picture book open in his hands.

‘What is it?’

He knelt down beside her and pointed to the page. ‘Look, Mum, it’s the magic kingdom! Exactly! Exactly like you told! Isn’t it?’

At bedtime she sometimes told him stories about a place she called the magic kingdom. The magic kingdom was a little like the countries she’d once imagined might be in the blue hills, though she never suggested to Cash such a place could be real or in the world. It was a fairy place, she told him, a place in your imagination, to think about before you went to sleep at night. To make you happy and give you good dreams. That was all.

‘Look! It’s even got
snow
!’ His voice trembled with the wonder of it. ‘I could look at this for ever and ever!’ He clasped the book to his chest.

‘You can borrow it if you like,’ she told him. ‘You can take it home for a few weeks.’

‘
Can
I? Can I really?’ His whole face blazed. ‘To our house? You mean I can have it in our house?’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘That’s what libraries are for. You can take out five books and keep them for three weeks.’ She’d seen the notice on the librarian’s desk. ‘So you go and choose some more you like, while Mummy finishes looking here.’

He raced back to the children’s section. His feet, in their blue flip-flops, seemed barely to touch the floor.

They didn’t have much longer now. The bus back to Lake Conapaira came through at half past four. They had spent too much time on other things before the library – buying Cash’s flip-flops, feeding and changing Maddie in the council rest-rooms, getting fish and chips and eating them at the windswept picnic table in the Memorial Gardens.

‘Maddie, no!’

Maddie had crawled to the bottom shelves and dragged out a book with her small fat hands, now, before Fan could stop her, she raised a corner to her mouth and began to chew.

‘No.’ Fan took the small volume from her, wiped the damp corner, and replaced it on the shelf.

Maddie began to cry.

‘Oh no, sweetheart, no,’ pleaded Fan. ‘Please, not now.’ She took the dummy from her pocket and held it out. Maddie made a grab and then sat examining it carefully, as if she’d never seen such a thing in her life. She thrust it in
her mouth, and, books forgotten, fell once more to gazing at the little lights up on the ceiling. The windows of the library were darkening now; Mrs Stuckey flicked a switch and the lights shone out and Maddie murmured, ‘Ah!’

Fan had found a fat book, 657 pages long; an anthology of English poetry; she wasn’t quite sure her poem was English, but she had a sense that it might be. There was no time to go through the anthology now, but, like Cash’s book of magic kingdoms, she could borrow it and take it home. She gathered up Maddie, found Cash, and together they took their books to Mrs Stuckey’s desk. Too late, she saw that one of Cash’s books had a large greasy thumbprint on its cover, like the signature of a poor person from the olden days who couldn’t read or write. The cover was plastic, hastily she took a tissue from her pocket and wiped the thumbprint off. When she placed the book back on the librarian’s desk she knew that Mrs Stuckey had been watching the whole operation, though her tight purse-face gave nothing away. ‘Now, you’re not a member, are you?’ she said. ‘Mrs – ?’

‘Jameson,’ said Fan, though she sensed that Mrs Stuckey already knew her name. ‘No, I’m not a member, but my sister told me anyone could join if they lived in Lachlan shire.’

‘That’s correct,’ said Mrs Stuckey. She opened a drawer beneath the desk and took out a clean white card. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘Proof of residency?’

‘What?’

‘Written proof that you reside in the Lachlan shire.’

‘But – but I
do
.’

‘Yes, I know that, but for the purposes of our records, and as a safeguard against loss – ’

‘Loss?’

‘You’d be surprised how many of our books go missing, Mrs Jameson.’

Fan flushed, remembering the little stolen zebra. ‘What kind of proof?’

‘A driver’s licence would do.’

‘I don’t have a licence. I haven’t got a car.’

‘Ah,’ said Mrs Stuckey, as if she had expected that. But why did she make you feel not having a car was wrong, as well?

‘Any kind of identity card?’

Fan shook her head. ‘I’ve got a bankbook,’ she said, reaching into her bag.