The Winds of Heaven (12 page)

Slowly, very slowly, because her whole body felt heavy and strange, a body that might have belonged to someone else instead of her, Clementine crawled back to her room and fell across the bed. She struggled to sit up so she could look out through the window and see the lights of the Brothers’ house. She wanted to tell Fan that the Brothers hadn’t finished their net and there was a hole in it right near where she was dancing – but her back felt all crumbly and her legs wouldn’t move at all. She couldn’t get up to the window, she couldn’t even sit up. ‘Huf!’ went the little cough again and then something stabbed deep and hard inside her chest and there was a pain so bright she could almost see the colour of it: a fierce wild crimson like a big, amazing flower.

Clementine didn’t remember anything more until she woke up in the hospital. Inflammation of the lungs, they called it, and she had to stay in hospital for days and days and days. As she lay there she remembered how her friend Allie had once been in hospital. It had happened when Allie was very small, only three years old, and she’d needed to have
her appendix out, only Allie hadn’t known that because her parents had told her she was going on a holiday. Although she was so little, Allie had felt it was strange how when they got to the place they told her was a holiday hotel, her mum had undressed her and put her into bed in a long room that was full of other children. Then they’d left. ‘We’re just going to get you an ice-cream,’ they’d told her, ‘and then we’ll be straight back.’

Except they didn’t come back. Allie had got out of bed and waited at the window while the afternoon faded and the evening came on – waited and waited and waited for her parents and the ice-cream that never arrived. And even though they’d come next day at the visiting hour – ‘I’ve never trusted them since then,’ Allie had confided.

Allie was gone now. She and her family had moved to New Zealand at the end of primary school and Clementine had never found a new best friend. She had her cousin, a cousin who’d promised to be her sister, her
gindaymaidhaany.
Only she never saw her. Fan wouldn’t know she was sick, not for a long time, and if she were to die she would never see Fan again.

Clementine stayed in hospital for ten whole days and her parents visited every evening. Then she was allowed to go home, where she had to stay in bed for three weeks more. She didn’t remember much about the first week except for one morning when she woke just after sunrise, knelt up at her window to look out at the world again, and there in the park she saw David Lowell. He was standing quite still, gazing across the road at her house, and despite the distance between them she could swear he saw her at the window. She could feel his eyes lock on hers.

He still liked her then. She’d got Vinnie Sloane caned, she was as bad as Jilly and the rest of them, and yet he still liked her. How tall he looked, standing there, almost as big as a man. He must be nearly fourteen, and Home Boys always left school when they turned fourteen. David Lowell was clever, but all the same he’d leave because he had to get a job and then she wouldn’t have to see him anymore.

He wouldn’t come to the park again either, she knew. This was the only time.

‘Go away,’ she whispered, and as if he’d heard her, the Home Boy snatched his eyes from hers and began to walk away. As he crossed the park, sunlight flashed suddenly from the windows of the Brothers’ house and glinted on his spiky hair so it looked for a moment as if his head was rimmed with fire.

When she was starting to get better, Jilly Norris came to visit her. Clementine was surprised. Jilly wasn’t really a friend.

‘You look awful,’ said Jilly, plonking herself down on the edge of the bed, staring at Clementine’s thin white face.

Clementine didn’t reply. There wasn’t all that much you could say to a remark like that.

‘Honest you do,’ said Jilly. ‘You look like something the cat dragged in.’ She moved farther up the bed, till she was sitting right next to Clementine’s sore flat chest. ‘Guess what?’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Mr Meague’s left.’

‘He has?’ Clementine should have been overjoyed, but Mr Meague and everything else at Chisolm College still seemed very far away. Even her glimpse of David Lowell in the park might well have been a dream.

‘Aren’t you glad?’ urged Jilly. ‘Aren’t you glad that old creep’s gone?’

‘Of course I’m glad.’

‘You don’t look it.’

‘That’s because my chest still hurts.’

‘Does it?’ Jilly stared down at the striped top of Clementine’s winter pyjamas and shifted a little farther back down the bed.

‘It’s not catching,’ said Clementine.

There was a small silence and then Jilly burst out, ‘But don’t you want to know what happened? I thought you’d want to know! I thought you hated Mr Meague!’

Clementine shrugged. ‘What happened then? Did Vinnie Sloane’s dad come up to the school because we’d all been picking on him?’

Jilly flushed. ‘’Course not. Mr Meague just left, no one knows why. It was really sudden.’ She snapped her fingers. ‘Like that, he was gone. The teachers say he went to another school, but none of us believe them. Some kids reckon the green cart might have come and taken him away to the loony bin. He was crazy, you know.’ Jilly sucked her breath in and pushed her chest out proudly, so Clementine could see how she’d grown. ‘Mad as a meat axe, don’t you think?’

‘Probably,’ agreed Clementine listlessly, though she thought that Mr Meague was the kind of person who only showed his craziness to kids. He’d be careful with adults and they’d think he was okay.

‘You know what I reckon?’

Clementine shook her heavy head. She wished that Jilly would go.

‘I reckon he’s got a job at St Swithin’s, a
secret
job, you
know, in the dungeons. My mum hasn’t seen him, but then she doesn’t go down the cellars, does she? She says she wouldn’t go down there for all the tea in China. The Home Boys swear he isn’t there, but then Home Boys never tell the truth, do they? Mum says they’re born with crooked tongues. What do you think?’

‘I think if you were born with a crooked tongue you wouldn’t be able to talk at all.’

Jilly stared. ‘I meant about Mr Meague, stupid! Don’t you reckon he’s at St Swithin’s? He’d like it there, don’t you think? He’d fit right in with all those chains and whips and stuff.’

Clementine remembered how her mum said Jilly had a nasty mind. ‘Jilly, there aren’t any dungeons at St Swithin’s, or any chains and whips and stuff.’

‘Yes there are, you should ask my mum.’

‘You just said she’d never been down the cellars. Anyway I reckon your mum doesn’t know what she’s talking about.’ Clementine hoisted herself up against the pillows. ‘Or you don’t.’

Jilly bridled. Clementine had always wondered what that word meant, and one free period she’d looked it up in the big dictionary in the school library.
To throw up the head and draw in the chin (as a horse does when reined in)
she’d read,
expressing pride, vanity, or resentment
. Now she saw the word in action: Jilly’s head went up and her chin drew in, her eyes slewed inwards, resentfully, towards her nose. She sniffed. ‘All right, so you don’t believe me. But,’ she lowered her voice to a thrilling whisper, ‘have you ever seen a Home Boy’s back?’

‘No,’ said Clementine. ‘Have you?’

‘My mum has. She says they’re all over scars.’

Clementine thought of David Lowell’s bowed head, the frail white neck above his stiff grey collar. She flinched.

‘What’s the matter?’ demanded Jilly.

‘Nothing.’ Clementine closed her eyes and wondered again why Jilly had come to visit her; she didn’t believe it was simply to tell her that Mr Meague had left the school. There had to be some other reason. Most likely Jilly wanted to find out what it had been like to nearly die. Because Clementine
had
nearly died, that’s what Dr Macpherson had told Mum and Dad. And Mum had told Mrs Sheedy up the road, who was a friend of Jilly’s Aunty Rose, and then Aunty Rose would have told Jilly’s mum, and Jilly’s mum would have told – Jilly.

‘Are you all right?’

Clementine opened her eyes. ‘Just a bit tired,’ she said, but Jilly didn’t take the hint.

‘Guess who else has left?’

‘What?’

‘Guess who else has left the school?’

‘Vinnie Sloane?’

‘Nah.’ Jilly pulled a face. ‘Not him. He’s still there, worse luck, the little blubber. Didn’t you hate the way he used to squeal?’

‘But if you and the others had left him alone, then – ’

‘You picked on him too.’

‘I know I did.’

A silence fell. Jilly interrupted it. ‘It’s Simon Falls who’s left.’

Clementine could feel the heat of her visitor’s avid gaze. So this was why she’d come.
I know who you love
, she’d written on that note, and it was Simon Falls she’d meant, not David
Lowell. She’d probably told Simon Falls that Clementine Southey loved him.

‘His dad’s sent him to the King’s School.’

‘Good.’

‘Good? Is that all you can say?’

Clementine shrugged. The small movement hurt her chest.

‘His dad’s a doctor.’ Jilly smiled slyly. ‘Bet you wish he was
your
doctor.’

‘Why?’

For a moment, Jilly was disconcerted. Then she rallied. ‘Oh, come on, everyone knows you’ve got a crush on Simon Falls.’

Everyone. So Jilly
had
been telling. Clementine felt the blood rise to her cheeks; she was never going back to that school. She took a deep painful breath and said carelessly, ‘Do they?’

‘Oh, don’t be like that, Clementine. Think how beautiful he’ll look in that King’s School uniform. Like a soldier.’

It was true, he would. The khaki jacket and trousers, the scarlet sash looped round the gallant slouched hat; they could have been made for him.

‘Oh, and David Lowell’s left, too.’

‘What?’

‘You know, that Home Boy with the spiky hair.’ There was no malice in Jilly’s voice, which meant she hadn’t noticed David Lowell talking to Clementine in the playground, had never seen the way the Home Boy looked at her.

‘Oh, yeah, him,’ said Clementine. She’d been right. David Lowell had turned fourteen and left to get a job – over at the
flour mills or the brake lining factory, or out digging up the roads. She thought of his inky, elegant hands.

‘He won a scholarship to Fort Street,’ said Jilly. ‘You know, that place for
really
brainy boys. That’s where he’s gone.’

Fort Street was far away on the other side of the city. Good!

‘Fort Street!’ crowed Jilly. ‘It’s
miles
! Way off in Sydney.’ She spoke as if they, living on the city’s outskirts, were in some distant galaxy. ‘He’ll have to get up
so early
! He’ll have to get up in the dark to go to school.’

Get up in the dark. A memory stirred in Clementine: a big raggy old moon above the dark backyard, a rattling train carrying her through lightless suburbs. She closed her mind to it. She didn’t want to feel she had something in common with David Lowell. For a second she saw him, tall and gangly, waiting on a still-dark platform, a bulging old briefcase tucked beneath one arm. There were raindrops in his spiky hair.

‘What was it like to nearly die?’ asked Jilly suddenly.

Clementine’s mother appeared like magic in the doorway of the room. ‘Jilly,’ she said, ‘Clementine isn’t quite better yet. She gets tired easily. This might be a good time to go.’

She’d been out in the hall listening in to every word, you could bet on it, but for once Clementine was grateful, because now Jilly would have to leave.

‘Oh,’ said Jilly, getting up from her chair. Clementine heard her talking to Mum on the front verandah. ‘She looks awful, doesn’t she, Mrs Southey?’

‘Well, she’s been very ill, Jilly. But now she’s on the mend.’

‘Is she? She doesn’t look it. She looks like – have you seen that film called
The Spectre of Hensbane Hall
, Mrs Southey? It’s a Hammer Horror.’

‘No, I don’t think I have, Jilly. But I’ll look out for it, if you say it’s good.’

‘Oh, it is, Mrs Southey. It’s great. There’s this spectre in it looks just like – ’

‘Off you go, Jilly dear. I’m sure your mother will be wanting to get on with the tea.’