The Winds of Heaven (27 page)

‘A bankbook won’t be any use, I’m afraid,’ said Mrs Stuckey. ‘It doesn’t have your address on it. How do I know it’s yours?’

‘But – ’

‘We need something that has your name on it, together with your address. An electricity bill would do, or a rates notice?’

‘No,’ said Fan. She was almost crying now. ‘I didn’t bring anything like that with me. I didn’t know you had to.’

‘Well, you understand, Mrs Jameson, that we do need to have documentary proof of identity – we can’t go lending our books to every Tom, Dick or Harry now, can we? To anyone who walks in off the street?’

‘But Mrs Stuckey, you
know
me. You used to live in the same street as me, when I was little. In Palm Street, at Lake Conapaira, remember? I was Fan Lancie – we lived up the top of the street, and you lived down the bottom. We were the Lancies, remember? Mum and Dad and my sister Caroline and me. And you used to teach RI up at the school, remember? When I was in first class?’

Mrs Stuckey sucked in her lips and frowned. ‘That was a long time ago, Fan. You can’t expect me to remember that far back!’

Fan didn’t believe her. She could tell from the way Mrs Stuckey said her name that she remembered, though it was so long ago. She’d known who Fan was the minute she’d walked through the door.

‘And even if I did remember,’ said the librarian, as if she could see the thoughts swirling round inside Fan’s head, ‘even if I lived right next door to you now, Fan, I still couldn’t issue you with a card without documentary proof of residence. Do you understand?’ She reached across and slid the fat anthology and the picture books onto her side of the desk.

Standing quietly beside his mother, Cash gave a small shocked gasp.

Mrs Stuckey pretended not to hear.

‘Now what I’ll do for you, Fan, is, I’ll put these books down here, under the desk, so no one else can take them out, see? And when you come back with your documentation, they’ll be right here, waiting for you.’ The librarian’s eyes slid uneasily towards the stricken Cash. ‘Right here, see?’

Cash said nothing. He didn’t protest or cry. He stood silent, as if all along he’d expected just this, as if it was an experience he knew all about and expected to have again.

Fan was silent too. What was the use of speaking? There was a deep, unbridgeable chasm between the pettiness of Mrs Stuckey’s demands and the intensity of their longing which no words of hers could ever get across.

She tried all the same. ‘If I promise to bring the proof first thing tomorrow, could we just take
one
book out today? That book?’ She pointed to Cash’s book of magical kingdoms.

Mrs Stuckey shook her head. ‘Rules are rules I’m afraid, Fan.’

They always said, ‘I’m afraid,’ when they were taking stuff away from you.

What was the use?

Fan took Cash’s hand and they walked towards the door.

They struggled up Palm Street towards home.

It was a bad, wild night; a night filled with noise, for the winds of heaven had broken loose and were raging in the sky. Doors banged and windows rattled, somewhere a sheet of iron clattered to the ground. Dust and grit flew through the air and an old chaff bag capered along in front of them like the ghost of a small white dog.

People of Mrs Stuckey’s kind made you feel like a beggar, thought Fan, anger boiling up inside her. They made you hold your hand out for what should by rights be yours – and then they teased you, like they’d tease a pup with a bone. And they enjoyed it; they loved what they could do.

‘Mum! Mum!’

She swung round. Cash was trailing along behind her, dragging the bag along the road.

‘Mum! Wait! Don’t go so fast!’

Fan slowed. Cash was such a serious, responsible little boy that she kept forgetting he was hardly four. She waited till he caught up with her, then she bent down to him. ‘Here, let me take the bag.’

‘No, let me! I can carry it. Just walk slower.’

She did. Only then she saw something she wouldn’t have noticed if she’d been walking fast. It was nothing really, an everyday sight round Lake Conapaira, especially in the
evenings; a girl and boy in the shadows of a sheltered laneway, their arms locked fast round each other. Only tonight, because of what had happened at the library and the feeling of shame which had taken hold of her, this ordinary little scene reminded Fan of something she kept shut out, tamped down fast inside her. Deep, deep down, concealed yet always present, like a spirit hiding in a haunted house, waiting for the exact right moment to leap out and take you for its own.

Now it sprang.

It was how Gary had left.

Oh, she hadn’t minded him leaving; she’d been glad. He was a useless bastard, they were better off without him. It was the
way
he’d left that had been unbearable: how, at the door, he’d suddenly put down his bags and moved towards her. She’d thought he was going to kiss her and she’d backed away. But kisses hadn’t been what he was after. Instead he’d taken her hand in his, and with his other hand he’d reached into his pocket and taken out a wad of notes. He’d put them into her hand and closed her fingers on them. They’d had a dead greasy feel and a smell had come from them, of beer and the old fat chips had been fried in, over and over again. The smell that came off Gary’s skin.

‘There,’ he’d said. ‘That’s two hundred pounds.’ And then, picking his bags up, he’d paused in the doorway and smiled at her. And he’d said, ‘I bet you’ve never had so much money in your hand in your whole tiny little life.’

Struggling up Palm Street, Fan gave a low, choked sob. How could anyone
do
that to you? Say that? How could they make you into a beggar? Make
her
into a beggar? Cast a bad spell on you, take away your real true
self,
like a stolen baby in a bag?

Because all along, no matter what Mum had said, or the teachers at school, or any of them, you were
Yirigaa.
You were the person your
miyan
had once called you:
Yirigaa,
the morning star.

‘I was
Yirigaa
!’ Fan cried out loud in the windstruck street. ‘I was!’ Tears poured down her face and were whipped away by the wind. ‘I
was
!’

‘Mum?’

She looked down and saw Cash. He was staring up at her with big frightened eyes. ‘Mu-um?’

‘Yes?’

‘Mum, when is Aunty Caro coming? Is she coming tonight?’

‘Don’t
say
that!’ she screamed at him suddenly. ‘Don’t
say
that! You’re always saying it. Don’t ever – ’

‘Mum! Stop! You’re hurting!’

She hadn’t realised she’d grabbed his arm. That she was shaking him, and shaking Maddie too, who rocked on her hip, wakened and screaming.

She didn’t know which one to comfort first. ‘Oh, Cash, I’m sorry, so sorry. Oh Maddie, sweetheart, it’s all right – ’

Cash pulled away from her and ran.

She stood there, pressing Maddie’s head into her shoulder.

Distantly, she heard the bang of their back door.

What frightened her most was the way there’d been the echo of another voice inside her own.

A familiar voice.

Mum’s voice in the old days. Mum when she’d lost it. And gone for the strap.

Mum’s.

As Clementine rushed out through her front gate, late for her train and her early morning lecture, the postman handed her a letter. ‘One for you,’ he said cheerfully, and Clementine shoved it into the pocket of her jacket without even looking and raced off down the road towards the station. Then she forgot all about it until her train was passing through Strathfield, when she reached for her handkerchief and found the letter there.

It was a plain white envelope, postmarked Temora. Temora? The name had a familiar ring; it was one of the stations you passed on the way to Lake Conapaira, wasn’t it? Who could be writing to her from Temora? Clementine turned the letter over. The name and address of the sender was written on the back:
Mrs Caroline Waters,
she read,
15 Meridian Street, Temora, NSW.

Caroline. The image came back to her, as it had ten whole years ago on the train to Lake Conapaira, of a long-legged girl with dark plaits, running over the rough straw-coloured paddocks of the central western plains. Running away from Aunty Rene and the house in Palm Street, leaving her little sister behind. Mrs Caroline Waters was Fan’s big sister, Caro.

Why would Caro write to her? Foreboding gathered
like cold in Clementine’s heart. Her hands trembled as she snatched the two folded sheets from the envelope. Another image rose before her: Fan in her faded dress, standing on the platform of Lake Conapaira station with little Cash, both of them waving; waving and waving until the train was out of sight. That was over a year ago now; she hadn’t heard from Fan since, and she hadn’t written either. And when Clementine thought about that last visit it seemed to her as if a much longer time had passed: those fifteen months might have been years. Lake Conapaira had become as dreamlike as the jewelled palaces where she’d once imagined princesses and fine ladies sipping the ambrosia of
Griffiths Tea
. It was hard to believe it was a real place, that she could actually get out at Central in ten minutes time, walk across to the booking office and buy a real ticket which would take her there.

What had happened to Fan? The letter had to be about Fan; there was no other reason why Caroline would write to her. Was Fan ill? Or was it something worse than that? With a little stir of fright, she remembered how Fan couldn’t get up in the mornings; she saw her standing outside by the clothesline, shouting, and how her beautiful face had taken on the look of a person who might do dangerous things.

Clementine unfolded the sheets and began to read. As her eyes sped swiftly over Caro’s neat blue sentences, the sense of dread lifted a little. Nothing bad had happened to Fan. Nothing really bad, anyway. Fan would be all right. Clementine folded the letter quickly and pushed it back into her pocket; but when the train passed Newtown she took it out and read it again, and walking up Broadway towards the
university, even though she knew she was late and would miss her lecture, Clementine sat down on the low stone wall of St Barnabas’ church and read Caro’s news once more.

Dear Clementine,
You may think it strange that I am writing to you, when we have never met (I am Fan’s sister, your cousin Caroline) but I am doing it because I am worried about my sister. Fan has not been herself for a long time, and especially since the new baby was born.

New baby? Clementine hadn’t known Fan had another baby. Yet how could she know, when Fan never wrote, and even Aunty Rene had stopped writing to Mum?

As you know
(though Clementine didn’t)
she and Gary separated for good last year, and though he was never around much I think Fan gets lonely in that old house with only the children for company and nothing much to do. I’m afraid she has rather let things get on top of her. I try to get her to go out more and I visit as often as I can, but it is sometimes difficult for me, what with running a house and having a job as well. Fan often talks about you, and I was wondering if you could write to her – a letter from you might cheer her up a little, only don’t expect an answer in a hurry! I know it’s a lot to ask, with all the studying you must have to do – Fan told me last year that you were at the uni – but perhaps when you have holidays you might be able to visit her for a few days. I have tried to get her to write to you herself, and she always says she will, but then she never seems to get round to it.

With best wishes,

Your cousin Caroline (Waters)

PS Please don’t mention to Fan that I wrote to you. She wouldn’t like me interfering. Only I felt I had to do something.

Clementine stared blankly at the sheets of paper in her hand. She couldn’t go up to Lake Conapaira! Not just now, anyway. The mid-year exams were only a few weeks away, and then in the holidays her boyfriend Phillip wanted them to go camping with his law school friends, and then the last half year was always a big rush. Perhaps in summer, thought Clementine; in summer she might go up there. She would write to Fan though, she would write to her this evening, as soon as she got home.

As Clementine began to fold the letter she noticed two grains of bright red dust stuck to the centre crease and they tugged at her heart, they stirred her memory, they brought back the narrow red road that led to the lake, and the tiny pieces of glass that glittered in the earth like diamonds. Red ochre. There was no other substance in the world that held so true a colour. It was like an ache in the soul, thought Clementine, and then wondered where that thought had come from.

She sat there for a long time, staring at nothing, while the traffic roared by along Broadway and passers-by glanced at her curiously, then she got up from the low brick wall and hurried up the road towards the university.