The Winds of Heaven (7 page)

There were certain evenings when Aunty Rene would leave the house after tea, returning a few hours later, flushed-faced and strangely excited, to fall asleep almost at once in her chair beside the fire.

‘Where does she go?’ Clementine asked her mother, but all Mrs Southey said was, ‘It’s none of your business, Clementine.’

She didn’t ask Fan, because on those evenings when Aunty Rene went out, Fan’s face would close fast as the door behind her mother, and she’d run to her room and lie down beneath her blanket, even if it was only seven o’clock and still light outside. If Clementine went in to talk, Fan would pretend to be asleep, and then Clementine would take one of her books and sit with her mother in the lounge room.

‘Mum?’ she asked on one such night, speaking softly so that Fan wouldn’t hear them through the wall, ‘Mum, can Fan come and stay at our place next holidays?’

Her mother didn’t look up from her knitting.

‘Can she, Mum? In the May holidays? It’s only two weeks,’ begged Clementine.

Mrs Southey gave a sharp little tug to her grey wool, and then an even sharper one, as if it had refused to do what she wanted, and answered back, quite rudely.

‘Can she?’ persisted Clementine, and watched the skin between her mother’s eyebrows pleat up in a frown. ‘We’ll see,’ she murmured. It was the answer she’d given in the train when Clementine had asked if she’d be able to swim in Lake Conapaira. ‘We’ll see,’ Mrs Southey had said, when all along she’d known the lake was too deep and there were big leeches that fastened to your legs and grew fat and brown with sucking on your blood. ‘We’ll see,’ was what her mother answered when she wanted to say ‘no’ but didn’t want to say it yet; when she was hoping you’d forget all about the awkward thing you wanted. Clementine stumped off to bed.

It was hours later when Aunty Rene returned, and the bang of the door as she came in was so loud that the whole house shook and rattled and Clementine woke with a fright in her bed.

‘It’s all over town and of course I’m the last one to know!’ Aunty Rene was shouting from the lounge room.

‘Calm down, Rene,’ she heard her mother say in a frightened voice. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. What’s all over town?’

Aunty Rene didn’t answer her sister’s question; she went on yelling as if she hadn’t heard. ‘I hate this bloody place! I hate it, hate it!’

‘Rene, what’s the matter? What’s happened?’

‘Happened! As if we hadn’t sunk low enough! His Lordship off to Gunnesweare and that little madam in trouble up the school more than she’s out of it. And now she’s hangin’ round with boongs!’

‘What?’

‘You heard me! Hangin’ round with boongs!’

‘Are you talking about
Fan
?’

‘Who else?’

‘But – but I thought the Aboriginal people lived out of town, at the camp.’

‘Not him! Not that old bugger got a humpy the other side of the lake!’

‘The old black man? Rene, what on earth do you mean? What’s the harm there? Mrs Ryland at the baker’s was telling me about him only yesterday when I went down to get the bread. She said he’s some kind of storyteller…’

‘Storyteller!’

‘That’s what Mrs Ryland said. Her brother’s staying with her at the moment. He’s a historian from the university and he goes to talk to that old man.’

‘The university! Don’t talk to me about bloody universities!’

‘If people saw Fan out there, that’s what she’d have been doing: getting the old man to tell her stories. You know how she loves that sort of thing. What harm can it do?’

‘What harm?’ Aunty Rene’s voice was incredulous. ‘You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, Cissie! I’ll tell you what bloody harm! He might be old, and he might be some kind of storyteller, like you say – but he’s a boong, isn’t he? He’s got mates, young mates, take my word for it.’

‘
What?
’ Clementine felt the ring of shock in her mother’s voice.

‘You
heard
!’ There was a small sharp bang! followed by a broken tinkling, as if Aunty Rene had thrown a cup or plate against the wall and it had fallen in a shatter on the floor. ‘She’ll be out the bloody river camp, next! She’ll be hangin’
round there! And you know what they say about girls who hang round the river camp!’

‘Rene, you’ve got it all wrong, I’m sure you have.’

‘Got it wrong, have I?’

‘This is your own child you’re talking about, and Fan
is
a child, she’s hardly ten.’

‘Hardly ten, eh? Well, ten’s near enough to twelve, isn’t it? And twelve to fourteen? They start early up here, Cissie.’

‘Start
early
? Rene, I can’t believe you’re saying all this. How can you? Fan’s a good girl.’

‘A good girl? You tried talkin’ to her teachers?’

‘That’s only because she doesn’t do well at school. It’s got nothing to do with – with the sort of thing you – you mean.’

‘You sayin’ if she’s bad it’s my fault?’

‘No! Of course not! And she’s
not
bad. Listen, what I’m saying is that Fan – ’ Mrs Southey’s next words were drowned out because Aunty Rene had started screaming.

‘lt’s gunna happen!’ she shrieked. ‘I know it is! Look what happened to me!’

The silence that followed seemed to tremble with some kind of grief. Beyond it, Clementine could make out a muffled thumping sound, like dust being beaten from a dirty old mat, and a picture rose up of Aunty Rene’s small clenched fist thudding on her bony chest, over and over again. Was it that? Could it be? Clementine cast a quick furtive glance across the room towards her cousin’s bed. The rigid stillness beneath the blanket told her Fan was awake and listening too.

Aunty Rene was crying now. ‘I was a girl once, wasn’t I?’ she sobbed. ‘A pretty girl?’ Her voice lost its savagery and took on an imploring sound. ‘You remember, don’t you, Cissie?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘Remember that Tangee lipstick I used to wear?’

‘Yes.’ Mrs Southey’s voice was the barest breath.

‘And the Coty powder? Evenin’ in Paris scent?’

‘Oh, Reenie!’

‘Jeez, I was a fool!’ Another piece of china crashed and tinkled to the floor. ‘Dressed in me flim-flams, off to the Roxy – ’ Aunty Rene’s voice descended to a hiss. ‘And that’s where I met
him
, wasn’t it? That’s where I met His Lordship. And before I knew what hit me, there’s a bun in the oven, and – ’

‘Rene!’

‘Oh, leave me alone, Cissie! I’ll say what I like, now it’s too late for
me.
A bun in the oven and me hardly more than a girl and what was I to do? Then
he
carts me off up here! To this dump! This
place
! Bloody end of the world and I’m
stuck
in it!’ Aunty Rene paused to gulp in breath and when she spoke again her voice was hoarse with loathing. ‘And I’m tellin’ you, Cissie, what happens down there in the city happens sooner up here! And that little madam – ’

‘But she’s only
ten,
’ repeated Clementine’s mother helplessly.

‘Only ten and she’s gunna learn now before it’s too bloody late! She’s gunna learn something she won’t forget in a hurry!’ Aunty Rene’s voice soared up again. ‘And that’s to stay away from bloody boongs!’

Clementine sneaked another glance across the room. Fan was kneeling up on her bed now, straining for every word.

And now there came the sound of footsteps running to the kitchen, and a queer little noise from there, a small metallic chatter followed by a brief swishing sound. When
she heard this, Fan gave a little cry and leaped from her bed. She ran to the door, but she was too late, Aunty Rene was already halfway up the hall. Rushing. You could hear her, like the willy-willy, seething.

‘The window, quick!’ Clementine began to wrestle with the catch and Fan scrambled up beside her. Stiff with rust and ancient paint, the window wouldn’t budge. There was nowhere to go.

A small furious figure burst through the doorway, swinging a wide brown belt.

Clementine had noticed this belt in the kitchen, hanging from a hook beside the gas stove. She’d noticed, too, how her cousin’s eyes would sometimes swing towards it, and then swerve away. Once Fan had seen Clementine looking at it and whispered to her, ‘She uses the buckle end.’ Clementine hadn’t quite realised what her cousin had meant. Now, as Aunty Rene came seething across the room, one hand outstretched to grab her daughter, she knew.

Fan jumped from the bed and slid under it, but with the same single swift movement she used to gut a rabbit, Aunty Rene seized Fan’s ankle and pulled her out again. She dragged her to her feet and brought the belt down hard across her daughter’s legs. There was a fat fleshy sound and a bright red stripe appeared across Fan’s calves, beaded with drops of blood. Fan screamed, she strained like a dog on a leash, but Aunty Rene’s strong fingers held her fast.

She ran in a tight circle round her mother, who turned with her, bringing the strap down and down and down. Buckle end. ‘You’ll learn!’ Aunty Rene was screaming, over and over and over again. ‘You’ll learn!’

‘That’s enough, Rene! That’s enough!’ Clementine’s
mother was in the room now, pulling at her sister, struggling to get her away from Fan, but small as she was, Aunty Rene was strong. She flicked her sister off like a bothersome fly. Her black eyes glittered, her lips were pulled back from her bad child’s teeth, her chin was flecked with foam. Round and round they went – like a maypole or a hurdy-gurdy or something dreadful at a fair.

Clementine rushed past them, down the hallway, through the kitchen, out the door, down to the back of the yard where she crouched behind the woodpile and clamped her hands over her ears. She thought of home, the quiet house in Willow Street, the small park across the road, the lights from the Brothers’ house burning comfortingly all night. She thought of her father sitting in his chair in the lounge room, the lamp turned on beside it while he read through the
Daily Mirror
. And when he’d finished reading he’d unclip his pen from his shirt pocket, turn to the second-last page, fold the paper over and begin the crossword.

He wouldn’t have gone away, of course he wouldn’t – how silly she’d been to worry that he would! What a baby she’d been on that train! Though the journey was only a few weeks back, it seemed like years and years; she felt like a different person now. Dad would never leave them. He wasn’t like Uncle Len who’d run away to Gunnesweare. In her mind Clementine still thought of her uncle’s destination in this way: a small railway siding with nothing but a lonely road behind it, winding away into the dusty plains. Her dad would never go somewhere where you couldn’t find him; he’d keep on coming home in the evenings at five-thirty, the chain of his bicycle purring up the path beneath the kitchen windows while Clementine set the table for tea. She took her hands from her ears. From the
house she could hear her mum and Aunty Rene fighting, their voices rose and fell, full of anger and pain and tears. There was no sound from Fan, not even crying. Was she all right?

Clementine knew she should go inside and find out. She shouldn’t have run away in the first place, because wasn’t she Fan’s sister now? But when she tried to get up from her hiding place, she found she couldn’t move, her limbs had turned into some soft heavy substance like clay. She was afraid. ‘I want to go home!’ she sobbed treacherously, disloyally – because wasn’t she Fan’s
gindaymaidhaany
? ‘Fan can come home with us,’ she whispered to some silent, invisible accuser. She knew this wasn’t possible; they couldn’t take Fan away from her mum.

‘Oh, I want, I want – ’ she cried to the big bright watching stars, and then she stopped, because she didn’t know what she wanted, except that Fan could be safe and the world be different from the way it was tonight.

It was barely dawn when she woke the next morning. A pale grey light filled the room, and if Clementine had looked out through the window, she would have seen a band of bright unearthly pink along the horizon – the colour of the fairy floss her dad always bought for her at the Easter Show. ‘
Red sky at night, shepherds’ delight
,’ her mum would have recited if she’d seen it. ‘
Red sky at morning, shepherds’ warning
.’ But Mrs Southey was fast asleep and Clementine didn’t look through the window anyway; she looked across at Fan’s bed to see what would be there.

The bed was empty, and it frightened Clementine, for in some way she couldn’t quite understand – was it the way the tangled sheet looked cold as ice? And the pillow tossed
sideways to the wall as if it would never again be needed? – she knew that the bed had been empty for a long, long time. Perhaps it had been empty since Clementine had finally fallen asleep last night.

If only she’d spoken to Fan then, if only she had! But when Clementine’s mum had called her from the back door and told her to come to bed, and she’d tiptoed down the silent hall into the bedroom, Fan had been lying with the blanket pulled right over her face, like she always did when she didn’t want to talk to anyone. And so even though the room seemed full to bursting with her cousin’s sorrow, and Clementine’s own heart was full of it as well, she’d slid down beneath her own blanket without a single word.