The Winds of Heaven (9 page)

All the same, Clementine knew that if she’d been a boy and got whacked by Mr Meague because some girl had been talking in his class, Dad would have been up at the school like a shot. He wasn’t scared of teachers who wore long black gowns. Even if you begged and pleaded with him because the other kids would sneer at you for running to your dad, he’d have gone there just the same.

Clementine was scared of Mr Meague. His brown dustcoat was exactly the same colour as the willy-willy she’d seen that time up at Lake Conapaira, tearing senselessly across the paddocks, gathering every weak, unrooted thing into its boiling heart. And though Mr Meague was so quiet, Clementine sensed in him the same kind of seething she’d felt in Aunty Rene; as if deep inside them was something urgent and unnameable and furious, desperate to get out. She never talked in his class – of course she didn’t – but what if, one day, despite herself, she did? What if Jilly Norris asked her a question she really had to answer? Or if she got so nervous that words suddenly spilled out from her lips and she said, ‘I hate Geometry!’ or ‘Only five minutes to the bell!’ right out loud in that deathly silent class. And then Mr Meague would make her stand up and pick a boy.

She didn’t want to pick a Home Boy. The Home Boys reminded her of something else she’d seen up at Lake
Conapaira: a group of calves being herded down Palm Street to the saleyards, blundering ungainly creatures with the same long legs and knobbly knees the Home Boys had, and the same big heads, and large soft eyes which slid this way and that, as if they were looking for their mothers. No, if Mr Meague ever caught her talking she wasn’t picking out a Home Boy.

But who could she pick, then? Because you had to choose a boy once Mr Meague caught you, there was no getting out of it. If you refused, a worse thing happened: Mr Meague picked one for you. And he picked a boy you liked, just as he’d chosen Andrew Milton for Annie Boland when she’d refused. Andrew was Annie’s boyfriend, and Mr Meague had known that. It wasn’t difficult to know because they always stood together in the playground at recess and lunchtime, holding hands and smiling into each other’s faces: they were easy to see.

But Mattie Gaskin and John Larsen hadn’t been so easy; no one had ever seen them together, even Jilly Norris and her gang hadn’t known about Mattie and John. Only Mr Meague had known. He’d worked it out; a single stray glance, a smile – that was enough for him. He’d spotted it and marked them down. When Mattie Gaskin was caught whispering to Kay Dimsey in the seat behind her; when she’d begun to cry so much she couldn’t pick a boy, then Mr Meague had gone and chosen John Larsen.

What would happen if Clementine refused? Would Mr Meague know about Simon Falls?

Simon Falls shared Clementine’s Maths and English classes. He was a tall, quiet boy with thick dark hair and a serious expression in his long-lashed eyes. ‘He’s got
bedroom eyes,’ Jilly Norris had whispered to Clementine when Simon Falls had handed back the English tests for Mrs Larkin. And then she’d added, with a knowing gaze into Clementine’s face, ‘You like him, don’t you?’

‘Of course not,’ Clementine had replied.

Except she did. She wasn’t sure if he liked her. Once in History class, she’d glanced up from her work and caught him staring at her from his seat across the aisle, but she didn’t know if that meant he was interested in her. She never knew things like that, which seemed to come so naturally to other girls. Perhaps he’d really been looking at Kay Dimsey, who sat next to Clementine in History. A week ago she’d passed him in the corridor outside the staffroom and she’d felt a blush spreading right across her cheeks. She hated the way she blushed so easily; it meant everyone could see the feelings she struggled so desperately to hide. The staffroom door had been open; what if Mr Meague had been in there and spotted her blush when she saw Simon Falls? He’d have marked it down, and if ever he caught her talking – if Jilly Norris asked her that question she really had to answer – he’d know who to choose if Clementine refused to pick a boy.

She didn’t think Simon Falls had noticed her that day outside the staffroom. He’d been gazing off in another direction, through the window that looked out onto the playground; he probably hadn’t even seen her passing by.

She knew she wasn’t the sort of girl boys noticed. She wasn’t like Mattie Gaskin or Annie Boland, or even Jilly and her gang – girls who hung round the oval when the boys had football practice and stayed late after school to watch the cadets march round in uniform. She’d remained small for her age, she could easily have passed for a kid in sixth class,
still at primary school. And though she was thirteen she hadn’t started her periods and her chest was flat as Mum’s old wooden washing board.

Only one boy had ever approached her, and that was David Lowell.

David Lowell was a Home Boy. Clementine had been amazed when, crossing the lower quadrangle one morning, she’d felt a tap on her shoulder, turned round and found David Lowell. He’d asked her if she’d like to be his guest at St Swithin’s Easter Fete.

His guest!

A Home Boy’s guest!

At a Home!

Clementine had stood there, paralysed with shock. For almost a minute she simply couldn’t speak. No one went out with Home Boys. She hadn’t even known they were allowed out, except for school. Jilly Norris’s mum said they were kept locked up at weekends. ‘And a good thing too,’ she’d declared, ‘or we’d never sleep safe in our beds!’

Even at school you didn’t talk to them, not like you talked to other kids. And Home Boys didn’t speak to girls. Not normally. So how come David Lowell thought he could speak to
her
? Why did he think it was all right to ask
her
out? What was wrong with her?

She hadn’t been able to stop herself from staring at him: at his long gangly legs, too long for his Home Boy trousers, which were school uniform trousers but of a distinctive darker grey, the cloth so coarse and stiff it would surely chafe and burn. His socks were thick and hairy, the kind of socks a gorilla might have knitted, Clementine had thought nastily, if someone had taught it how. They slumped clumsily above
his ugly boots, and between their tops and the bottoms of his awful trousers a narrow strip of pallid shank showed, stippled with fine black hairs. Yuk!

And yet his voice was mild and gentle, which was confusing because you didn’t associate gentleness with Home Boys.

‘I could come and pick you up,’ he’d said unexpectedly. ‘At your place.’

At her place! Would he just! Clementine had barely suppressed a gasp of outrage. At
her
place! Every stickybeak in the street would be hanging over their gates to goggle, the minute they saw a Home Boy at her door. It would be the talk of the neighbourhood.

‘Do you know Clementine Southey’s going out with a Home Boy?’

‘She’s
never
! She’ll be murdered in her bed!’

‘Or something …’

‘Some people must be hard up for a boyfriend, that’s all I can say!’

‘Right hard up!’

‘Comes of going to that fancy school. They get ideas.’

‘She’s a funny little thing
. Very
small for her age, isn’t she?’

‘Chest like a washing board!’

‘He could have a grand game of marbles on it, heh, heh, heh!’

Clementine’s gaze had darted frantically across the playground. What if Jilly and the others saw her with a Home Boy? There’d been kids everywhere, shouting and running and jostling, but she’d seen no sign of Jilly and her gang, or anyone else in her class. Only there, leaning on the railing of the upper quad, his pale blank face intent, she’d spotted Mr Meague.

‘Clementine?’

The Home Boy was still waiting for an answer. He wouldn’t go away.

‘Clementine?’ He’d used her whole name; he hadn’t called her Clem, or Clemmie, like the other kids.

Clementine thought her name was ridiculous. Her mother had chosen it; she said it was from her father’s favourite song. Clementine wished heartily that Grandpa Clements had been struck dumb before he’d sung a word.

The Home Boy had spoken the hated name softly, slowly, as if he loved saying it and didn’t want the word to end, and when it did he said it over again. ‘Clementine?’

‘I can’t go to the fete with you,’ she’d said coldly. ‘I’m not allowed to go out with – ’ she’d stared at his uniform, that dark, unhappy grey, ‘with boys.’

‘Oh,’ he’d said, and gazed for a long while at her face, as if he was learning it for some peculiar, solitary exam. ‘I’m sorry, Clementine.’

As if, she thought furiously, it was
she
who’d been refused,
she
who’d missed out on something.

She’d run away then, leaving the Home Boy standing there. She’d run down the steps to the library, where she often spent her lunchtimes, and grabbed a book of poetry from the shelves. It was called
The Shropshire Lad
, and no one had taken it out since I944. ‘
What are those blue remember’d hills?
’ she’d read, and thought of her cousin and those low rounded hills at Lake Conapaira where Fan said everything beautiful might be.

As she’d sat there reading, a shadow had fallen sharply across the page. She’d glanced up and seen a face looking in through the window at her. Clementine’s vision had blurred with terror. Who was it? Had the Home Boy followed her?
She’d blinked and her sight cleared and she saw the face belonged to Jilly Norris, who’d paused to stickybeak into the library as she passed by on her way to better things. Jilly had pressed her lips against the glass in a pure round shape which obviously said ‘swot’.

That was the only time a boy had asked Clementine out. And Mr Meague had seen them talking, but it didn’t matter because Clementine knew that if she got caught and wouldn’t pick a boy, Mr Meague would never choose David Lowell. He’d sense she didn’t like the Home Boy. Mr Meague only went after boys you liked.

Jilly Norris and her gang started picking on Vinnie Sloane. Vinnie Sloane wasn’t tough like the Home Boys. He didn’t give cheek or get into fights, and he’d never been caned in his life. He was small and weak-looking and his eyes were pink like a white rabbit’s, and Clementine knew this was why Jilly and the other girls had picked him out. They’d chosen him because of his looks, because he was pale and skinny and wore his hair combed flat, hair so dull a brown that in some lights it seemed grey. And this grey colour made you notice how Vinnie Sloane looked a little like Mr Meague, especially in those tense and airless moments when the pair of them were standing face to face before the class and Mr Meague was steadying Vinnie’s hand to get the cane.

Vinnie Sloane got the cane every week, because every week Jilly or Kay Dimsey or Ba Purcell would whisper on purpose, and then Mr Meague would ask them to stand up and pick a boy and they’d choose Vinnie Sloane. Clementine couldn’t make sense of it. Mr Meague was a teacher, a grown-up. Surely he could
see
that Jilly and the others were
doing it on purpose? Of course he could! So why did he keep on letting them do it? Why didn’t he tell them to pick on someone else? Why didn’t he say, ‘I think this boy has been chosen quite enough’? Why did he make girls pick out boys anyway? Why didn’t he just give them detention or lines like all the other teachers? And why, when he’d finished caning Vinnie, or any other boy, did he recite, in a low, soft voice you had to strain to hear: ‘
I wasted Time, and now doth Time waste me’
? Why did he sometimes say, ‘Look what this girl has made you suffer’? pointing with his cane to the girl who’d picked the boy. You couldn’t work it out. You only knew it made the ground feel soft and tricky beneath your feet, made you want to cry out, like a tiny little kid who could hardly talk might do, ‘Bad! Bad! Bad!’

Clementine’s work began to falter, her marks got lower in each of Mr Meague’s weekly tests. The sight of the diagrams in her textbook, the words right angle, obtuse angle, hypotenuse, gave her a sickish feeling deep down in her stomach. When she tried to do a homework exercise she couldn’t concentrate, her mind went veering off in all directions, like a willy-willy, senselessly. She hid her Geometry textbook down at the bottom of her school case beneath her gym bag and shoes, so she wouldn’t see it when she took out her books for other lessons. She hated Geometry now. It was as if she was scared of it, and this feeling made her think of Fan again – how Fan had hated reading and snatched Clementine’s books away from her, saying loudly, ‘Let’s go out and play!’

She hadn’t seen Fan since that last visit. Her mother and Aunty Rene had made up their quarrel and every year Mum talked about going to Lake Conapaira. But nothing ever came
of it, and when Clementine asked if Fan could come down to spend the summer holidays with them, all her mother said was, ‘We’ll see.’ Mum was working part-time at the Bank now and she only got two weeks holiday, and in those two special weeks Dad rented a house for them down the coast at Stanwell Park. ‘We’ll go up to Lake Conapaira again one of these days,’ Mum kept on promising, but somehow they never did. It was nearly five years since Clementine had seen her cousin.