The Winds of Heaven (4 page)

‘He sang to it?’ asked Clementine. ‘He sang a song to a
tree
?’

‘No, not sang
to
it. He
sang
it.’ Fan stood still for a moment. ‘That’s a kind of magic,’ she explained. ‘It’s making things. It means he made the tree
be
there.’ With small quick hands she shaped a tree growing, spreading the roots wide and deep, raising the trunk, stretching her arms out to make a thick canopy of leaves and branches, her movements so sure and tender that Clementine wouldn’t have been surprised if a real tree had suddenly sprung up through the floor. You could
feel
a tree.

‘So,’ Fan went on, ‘so he sang the tree and it flew right up into the sky with all the bad spirits hanging on to it. And when it was high, really high, right up in the clouds – ’ she stood on her toes and stretched her arms above her head, ‘then he called the winds of heaven and they made the tree shake like anything, like there was a big storm, a thousand storms, and the wicked spirits all fell down to the ground and changed into great big stones – ’

‘I’ve seen those stones!’ Clementine burst out. ‘I saw them when we were coming up in the train! They’re grey and they look like sheep sleeping in the grass!’

‘And did you see the pebbles? The little white pebbles lying everywhere?’

Clementine shook her head. ‘The train was going too fast.’

‘Those pebbles are the bad spirits’ teeth. When they fell down all their teeth got knocked out and turned into little white pebbles and scattered all over the ground!’

‘Oh! And then what? What did the magic kid do then?’

‘What do you think?’ Fan jumped up beside Clementine, and the old wooden bed creaked and groaned beneath them. ‘Like an old cow having a calf, eh?’ giggled Fan. She reached
up and yanked the curtains apart and together they peered out into the dark backyard, at the black shapes of Uncle Len’s shed and the big gum tree beside it, and beyond the sagging fence the night-time paddocks stretching on and on, all silvery with the moon. Fan pointed upwards to the vast black sky that was filled with stars. They were bigger than the ones Clementine saw in the city, they were as big as the magic dogs’ eyes in the story Mrs Carmody had read to them on the last afternoon before the holidays; as big as teacups, as big as mill wheels, as big as round towers.

‘That magic kid, he climbed up into the sky, of course,’ said Fan.

A lot of her stories ended in this way, and it was strange how she could make something like climbing into the sky sound natural and easy – as if you could be somewhere quite ordinary, walking round the corner of Main Street into Palm Street, for instance, or standing outside the bank or the post office waiting for Mum and Aunty Rene, and suddenly it would happen: the winds of heaven would blow and the sky would come nearer and there’d be a kind of ladder in it where you could put your foot and climb up and be gone. Just like that. Before anyone else had noticed that something amazing was happening.

‘Do you make those stories up?’ asked Clementine, because they weren’t like the stories she’d read in books or the ones Mrs Carmody read to them at school. Fan couldn’t have got them from a book anyway, because she hated reading. She read like a little kid in Infants, or like Lizzie Owens and Christa Jorgensen; big girls who sat in the front row of the class, repeating the year they’d done before.

When Aunty Rene made her read out the shopping list
before they went on messages, Fan had to sound out all the bigger words – words like tomatoes and potatoes and kerosene, and when she got them wrong, Aunty Rene would say she was a dummy and make her sound them out again and again until she got them right. Clementine and Mrs Southey weren’t allowed to help; Aunty Rene made Fan do every single word herself, right to the bottom of the list, even though anyone could see how much she hated it. Her face would turn bright red and her eyes would slide in all directions, as if they were trying to run away from the words written out on the list. And whenever Clementine picked up one of the story books she’d brought from home, Fan would get this panicky look and she’d grab Clementine’s hand and say, ‘C’mon, let’s go outside and play.’ Even if they’d only just come inside.

She was ten, a whole year older than Clementine, but when school started again in February, Fan would still be in fifth class, the same as Clementine. She’d had to repeat the year, like Lizzie Owens and Christa Jorgensen. ‘Because I’m a dummy, that’s why,’ she told her cousin.

‘No, you’re not,’ Clementine protested.

‘Ask anyone!’

And it was true that on Clementine’s first day at Lake Conapaira, walking down Palm Street with Fan, two girls playing jacks in a dusty front yard had bawled out, ‘
Dummy Fan! Raggedy Fan! Fan’s got a face like a frying pan!
’

‘They’re just jealous,’ Clementine had said indignantly, because Fan’s face was as beautiful as ever.

‘As if
I
care!’ Fan had retorted, skipping on down the road.

‘Do you make those stories up?’ Clementine asked again,
because Fan wasn’t listening, she was still gazing through the window at the star-filled sky where the magic kid had climbed.

‘Make them up? ’Course I don’t!’ Fan got down from the window and settled herself comfortably against Clementine’s pillow, drawing her legs up, resting her chin on her knees. She didn’t have pyjamas or a real nightdress; instead she wore an old green petticoat that was far too big for her, and which Clementine somehow guessed had also belonged to the vanished Caroline. The lace on the hem was all torn.
Raggedy Fan
. Her long bare legs were powdered with red dust. She hadn’t had a bath tonight; she’d taken off when Clementine’s mum had called them – across the yard, through the back gate, down the lane and out of sight. Mum hadn’t bothered to send Clementine after her. ‘Oh, let her go,’ she’d said wearily. ‘She’ll keep.’

‘They’re true, those stories,’ Fan said. ‘They’re from the Dreaming.’

‘The Dreaming?’

‘The oldest, oldest time.’

‘You mean like the Garden of Eden?’

‘The Garden of Eden!’ said Fan scornfully. ‘Older than that! They’re from when there was nothing’ – her two hands shaped a big round 0 – ‘and then the spirit ancestors came out of the ground and they sang up all the world.’

‘Did you learn that at school?’

‘’Course I didn’t. My friend told me.’

There was something so soft and secretive in her voice that Clementine asked, ‘Is he your boyfriend?’

Fan laughed. She had the most perfect laugh: it seemed to fly upwards, like drops of bright water flung into the air.

‘’Course he isn’t. He’s
old.
’

‘How old?’ asked Clementine, because Lizzie Owens had a boyfriend at the Tech who was fourteen.

‘Old as them,’ answered Fan, pointing through the window to where a distant line of rounded hills showed black at the edge of the silvery plains.

They were the same hills Clementine had seen coming up on the train. ‘The blue hills,’ Fan said softly, and it was true that in certain lights those grey-brown hills did take on the smoky colour of Clementine’s mother’s best blue dress.

‘He’s my
miyan
,’ she whispered.

‘What’s that?’

‘Oh, like – a sort of uncle?’ Fan frowned. ‘No, not an uncle exactly, more like, like – oh, it’s so hard explaining!’ She made a small flowing motion with her hands; you could tell that the shape they were making was strong and true and calm.

‘Someone who looks after you,’ said Clementine.

‘Sort of.’ Fan smiled. ‘Guess what he calls me.’

Clementine shook her head.

‘Guess!’

‘I can’t.’

‘You’re right,’ said Fan unexpectedly. ‘You’d never get it in a million years. No one would. It’s – ’ a faint flush of colour spread across her cheeks. ‘It’s
Yirigaa
,’ she said. ‘He calls me
Yirigaa.
’

‘
Yirigaa
?’

She jumped from the bed and twirled round on the floor. ‘It means “morning star”.’

Clementine didn’t know what to say. She sat there silently, sensing that her cousin had some other, richer life,
a mysterious life that ordinary people knew nothing about.

‘I’ll take you to see him one day,’ Fan promised. ‘Only don’t tell Mum, okay?’

‘’Course I won’t.’ There was no way Clementine would tell Aunty Rene anything. She was frightened of her aunt’s sharp voice and bitter black eyes and the way she made you feel like walking on tiptoe. In the mornings Aunty Rene lay in bed till late, and this, like a kind of queer bad magic, made the whole house feel unsafe. You didn’t know what she might do when she finally got up, and what kind of day she might make it be. Sometimes she sat in the kitchen with Clementine’s mum, or did things round the house; sometimes she sat on the back verandah by herself, smoking cigarettes and turning the pages of an old newspaper with small, yellow-fingered hands. Those days were all right.

But there were other, awful days when a sudden fearful energy would take hold of her; when she’d wrench all the curtains down and boil them in the old copper, or go out the back and chop wood so fiercely that sparks flew from the axe and chips sprayed everywhere. Or she might go after Fan. She might suddenly decide to wash Fan’s hair, unbraiding the long plaits with fierce little tugs so the hair came tumbling down her back in heavy ripples and curls, right down past her waist. It was a dark streaky gold like the wild honey they spread on their toast at breakfast time, so silky that it looked precious, like something you might find in a pharaoh’s tomb.

Aunty Rene didn’t think it was precious, she called it ‘a filthy mop’, and treated it like string, dragging the comb through the wet tangles till Fan screamed out loud and Aunty Rene hit her legs with the back of the hairbrush, and Fan screamed louder and called Aunty Rene a witch and then
Aunty Rene would hit her again and shriek, ‘What did you say? What did you call me?’ Clementine’s mum would come running, crying, ‘Rene! Rene!’ And Clementine would put her hands over her ears and more than anything she’d want to run out the back and hide till it was all over. But she didn’t run; she had to stay with Fan.

‘And don’t tell
your
mum either,’ said Fan now, climbing into her bed and pulling the thin grey blanket right up to her chin. ‘Because she might tell mine. You know how they are, always whispering.’

‘They’re sisters,’ said Clementine, and she thought again how peculiar it was that someone nice like Mum could have a sister like Aunty Rene.

There was a little silence. Perhaps Fan was thinking about
her
sister, Caroline. ‘Don’t tell your mum,’ she said again, her voice muffled by the blanket.

‘I won’t.’

‘Cross your heart and hope to die?’

Clementine sketched a quick cross on the top of her pyjamas, then she got up and went to switch out the light.

‘No, leave it on,’ called Fan. ‘I like it on.’

Clementine went back to her bed. She lay down beneath the prickly blanket and closed her eyes and listened to the sounds from the lounge room, where her mother and Aunty Rene sat talking by the fire. Though the summer days were burning hot, the nights at Lake Conapaira could be icy cold beneath that wide black sky. Mum and Aunty Rene spoke softly, so softly you could hardly hear, and sometimes they giggled, like the big girls did in the playground when they talked about boys. But every now and again Aunty Rene’s voice would turn all hard and hissy, and there
were swearwords in it. ‘Bloody swine,’ Clementine heard her say now, and she knew Aunty Rene was talking about Fan’s dad, Uncle Len. ‘His Lordship,’ she called him, which wasn’t a swearword but sounded like it because the words were full of hate.

Clementine’s mother asked a question in a low soft voice; you could tell it was a question because of the way her voice went up a little at the end.

‘Gunnesweare,’ hissed Aunty Rene in reply. ‘I told you before, Cissie.’

Gunnesweare was the place where Uncle Len had gone off shearing months and months ago, and when Clementine heard it she pictured one of those small stations they’d passed in the train, the single sandy platform, the signs with the long strange names: Stockinbingal, Narriah, Goolgowi. Gunnesweare would be like that, she thought: a thin wedge of bare platform with no houses or shops behind it, only a narrow dirt road winding over the plains.

‘Gunnesweare!’ Aunty Rene shouted suddenly and for the first time Clementine heard the word properly, and realised that Gunnesweare wasn’t a little town, a real place you might find on a map. What Aunty Rene was shouting, what she’d always been shouting, was, ‘God knows where!’ Uncle Len had gone God knows where. ‘And I don’t care!’ cried Aunty Rene in a voice like a chair scraping back. A rough sobbing came through the wall, and Mum’s voice saying ‘There, there, there,’ as if Aunty Rene wasn’t a nasty cruel old witch but a little kid who’d fallen over and grazed her knee. Clementine glanced towards Fan’s bed and saw her cousin’s fair head burrowing beneath the pillow.

There was silence from the lounge room now, a silence
so complete you could hear the dry wood popping and crackling in the grate, and then there was the creak of someone getting up from one of the old wicker chairs and footsteps coming down the hall. Clementine sucked in her breath, but when the door opened it was only her mum come to kiss her goodnight. She kissed Fan too, easing the pillow from her grasp. ‘Goodnight, lovie,’ she whispered, and Fan whispered ‘goodnight’ back to her.