The Winds of Heaven (18 page)

Fan was waking in the old house in Palm Street, all by herself in the bed in the big front room that had once been her mum’s, and before that, in a time so distant she could barely remember it, her dad’s as well. All she could remember of her dad from those days when he’d lived with them was a smell of tobacco and wool grease, and the marvellous sensation of being lifted up and held against something big and warm, solid as a thick plank of red gum baked out in the sun. Then there was the time when he went off shearing and still came back home, and the rows and shouting and the pounding on the doors when Mum wouldn’t let him in. Then he was gone for keeps.

And good riddance to bad rubbish, murmured Fan sleepily, because that was what you said when they went away.

She lay in that comfortable space between sleep and waking, drifting in and out of memories, snatching at bits of dreams. And then a shaft of brilliant light, diamond hard in that first hour of the summer dawn, pierced a crooked slat in the blind and fell relentlessly across her face. She didn’t stir. She didn’t want to get up and straighten the slat because if she did then she’d be properly awake, properly awake at five o’clock in the morning with the whole long day ahead. She wanted to get back to sleep. Sleep was safe, it was like another country, a place where she felt strong and certain, where she wasn’t
confused and always knew what to do. Fan closed her eyes and turned her face into the pillow, but though she couldn’t see the shaft of light now she could feel it, like a warm hand laid firmly across the back of her head. ‘Go away,’ she whispered.

A dull sickish feeling began to swim about behind her eyes, a little like the beginning of a headache, only she knew it wasn’t that.

It was waking; it was fear.

Fear!

Who’d have thought it? When she was little she’d hardly been scared of anything. She hadn’t been scared of storms or the dark or ghosts like other kids. Even the sounds of Mum and Dad fighting hadn’t frightened her all that much, or the teachers shouting at her up the school. The only thing that really scared her was those times when Mum lost her block and went for the belt, or when Mum – but no, she didn’t want to think about that; it was something that would have frightened anyone. Now she’s all grown up – a mum with a little kid of her own, and she’s afraid of a slit in the blind that shows the day. Francesca Jameson, who had once been Francesca Lancie, was afraid of the day.

The trouble with the day was there were all these things to do in it, like washing and cooking and going down the shops, and she knew these things were important because how else could she and Cash keep living? And yet in her heart she had another feeling altogether: that those things weren’t worth doing, were joke stuff that took the place of something important she’d never managed to find. The old black man who’d been her friend, her
miyan
, he would have showed her how to find it, if he hadn’t gone away. He would have known what it was you really needed to live your life.
Sometimes she thought that if he’d stayed round, if he’d told her that thing she was sure he knew, then no matter what happened she’d have kept on being strong.

But now, as each day crawled along, a feeling would grow in her like a kind of anguished disappointment. It was the kind of disappointment you’d feel if you were in the desert and had this single flask of water you’d been saving and saving for the moment you got so thirsty you couldn’t stand it anymore – and then the moment came and you took the flask out and found the precious water had trickled away through a hole you hadn’t known was there.

Fan rolled over onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. It didn’t matter about the light stabbing through the blind now. It didn’t matter because she’d started thinking, and once she started thinking that was it – she was awake for good. She sighed and stretched her legs out, sinking deeper into the long hollow that made up her side of the bed. The other side, Gary’s side, was hard and cold and springy, almost as good as new. He was hardly ever there, that was why.

‘Never marry a shearer,’ Mum had warned her, but Fan had taken no notice. She’d thought that was, well, just Mum. Okay, Dad had been a shearer, and he’d run off, but who wouldn’t run off from Mum? The temper she had, and the way her voice rose up in a shriek that would scare the crows off, like a blunted chainsaw hacking at a gum. The way she used to lock him out when he came back from the sheds – Caro used to let him in, she remembered suddenly. Caro would wait till Mum was asleep and then she’d creep to the back door and let Dad inside, and he’d doss down in the lounge room, rolling out his blanket on the floor beside the
fire. In the morning he might be gone, or he might be in the big bedroom with Mum – you never knew. You crept about until you could be sure. Shearing had nothing to do with Dad pissing off; that’s what Fan had thought, anyway.

Except Trev Lawson had stuck with Mum, hadn’t he? It was over two years now they’d been together and Fan still found it hard to believe that Mum, Mum! was actually living happily with this bloke down at Coota. Good as married, and they would be married, said Mum, once they found out where Dad had gone and she could get a proper divorce. ‘The fancy man,’ Fan had called him, but there was nothing fancy about Trev. He was an accountant, of all things, and solid all the way through. You could have knocked her down with a feather the first time she’d set eyes on him in his suit and tie, holding on to Mum’s scrawny little hand like it was the one thing on earth he prized. ‘This is Trevor Lawson,’ Mum had said in a soft voice Fan had barely recognised. ‘Trevor, my younger daughter Francesca.’ Francesca! She’d never used that name before; Fan had almost forgotten it was hers.

You had to laugh sometimes. Mum and Trev had gone in for ballroom dancing now; they’d actually won a cup in last year’s State Finals. They were happy, Trev and Mum. Who’d have thought it, eh? Serious happiness they had.
Gadhaang.

Everyone had gone. First Dad, and then Caro down to Temora as soon as she’d got that job, and the old man, her
miyan
, the one she’d thought would always be there. And then Mum off to Coota with Trev. Fan was the only one who’d stayed, and yet when she was little she’d been sure that when she grew up she’d be living in one of those magical countries she’d imagined was out there in the hills. The blue hills, she’d called them back then.

She’d been there. Not with her cousin Clementine like they’d planned when they were kids, but with Gary – in the beginning, when he was still keen on her, before Cash had come along. They’d gone in his old ute, rattling along to the end of the narrow road where there was only a little town as ordinary as Lake Conapaira. Close up, the blue hills were grey-green, forested with eucalypt. From the lookout by the roadway the thick-leaved treetops had seemed all soft and billowy, like fat green pillows swayed gently by the winds of heaven.

‘It snows in this dump,’ Gary had told her. ‘Would you believe? Once in a blue moon.’ And Fan had imagined those treetops covered in snow, like pillows in pillowslips, or a fat white quilt you could jump into like a little kid, pull over your head and cuddle down to sleep.

‘Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey, anyhow,’ Gary had complained.

They’d parked the ute and walked the short length of the main street. There was nowhere to have a cuppa except for the service station; the single tea-shop had been boarded up a long time ago. Fan had stood in front of it, gazing through the fly-specked glass at the shadowy spaces where chairs and tables must once have been.

‘C’mon,’ Gary had kept nagging, pulling at her arm. ‘What’s there to see?’

But Fan’s attention had been caught by a faded sign in the corner of the window:
Griffiths Tea Served Here
, and she’d smiled to herself, remembering how Clementine had imagined jewelled palaces and peacocks, and princesses and grand ladies sipping – what was it? Oh yes, ambrosia – sipping ambrosia from cups so fine you could see right
through. Fan had put out a hand and slowly traced the faded letters, thinking about Clementine and what she might be doing down in Sydney and how they’d lost touch because Fan was no good at answering letters. She hadn’t even got round to telling Clementine about the baby that was coming, or even that she’d got married. She’d left it all to Mum. And yet the two of them had been close as sisters when Clemmie was here those times. My
gindaymaidhaany
, she thought and then nearly jumped out of her skin when Gary said, ‘What?’ She’d forgotten all about him standing there beside her; she hadn’t even realised she’d spoken the word aloud. ‘Nothing,’ she’d answered and then Gary had grabbed her arm. ‘Let’s get out of here!’ Even when he was in a good mood, Gary had a way of talking that was like a snarl. Big Man. ‘Place gives me the creeps,’ he’d growled. ‘There’s bloody nothin’ here!’

‘Satisfied?’ he’d asked her as they drove away, unable to leave it alone, because she’d wasted a whole Saturday afternoon when he could have been down the pub with his mates. ‘Yes,’ she’d answered. ‘Yes, I am.’

She’d thought about writing a letter to Clementine when she got home, just sitting right down and doing it, telling her about the old tea-shop and the sign for
Griffiths Tea
, but by the time they got back to the house the energy had drained out of her and the idea had begun to seem silly, anyway. Down there in the city, Clementine had probably forgotten all about
Griffiths Tea
.

Fan stared up at the ceiling, at the old damp stain in the very centre of it, shaped like a map of Tasmania. It had been there when she was little, and probably long before that,
when other people had lived in the house and then moved on. People did move on from Lake Conapaira, which made it even more strange that she was still here when everyone else had gone.

And still in the house on Palm Street. ‘Friggin’ waste a dough, paying rent on this dump,’ Gary had grumbled, aiming a kick at the scarred kitchen door of the furnished house they’d rented over near the common. ‘Now your mum’s hopped it down to Coota with Trev and your old man’s house is sittin’ empty, I reckon we should move in there.’

And so they had: moved themselves, the baby, and all their bits and pieces, and hardly had they settled in than Gary was off out west, just like Dad. Shearing, it had been that first time, and then it was the cane-cutting up north. He’d be coming back and then some other job would crop up; always further away, it seemed, further west and further north, and even south, one time for the apple picking down in Tassie. ‘We need the dough,’ he’d say, if she complained about always being by herself. And when he said this, he’d squint hard at baby Cash lying in his cot or cuddled up in her arms, as if poor little Cash, and she as well, were responsible for every blister on his hands.

Oh, he came back sometimes, but never for more than a few days, and after those few days you could practically hear him chafing at the bit. He’d go into a sulk and wouldn’t meet her eyes when she tried to talk to him. Once, when she’d put her hand on his arm, he’d taken it off and let it drop, like you’d pick something off your shoe. The time when he’d have given everything he had for one single glance from her seemed unimaginable, as unreal as those magical countries she’d once believed were up there in the hills.

Last time he’d come back had been one time too many. She hadn’t been over to the cottage hospital to check, but she knew she was up the spout again. Like a fool she’d gone and told Caro and Caro had got cranky with her, gone on and on about how she shouldn’t have let Gary touch her when he was hardly ever there. ‘Poor little Cash doesn’t even know who he is!’ she’d scolded.

It was all right for Caro to talk; she didn’t have a clue. What did she know? She’d been lucky; she had her lovely Frank, who was no oil painting and years older than her, but kindness shone out of him. He loved Caro. Really loved her. He would never, never ever, take her hand from his arm and drop it down.

Fan pulled the sheet up over her head. She knew it was better not to think about all this because there was no way out of it, not now, not with a baby coming, anyway. Thinking only made it worse.