The Winds of Heaven (16 page)

Last of all, because it seemed most important to her, and most secret, the kind of secret she would never tell the girls
at school – Clementine told Fan how at least once a week she walked past the King’s School, taking the long way to the station, hoping to catch a glimpse of Simon Falls in his dashing soldier’s uniform, out in the schoolyard or walking home with his mates. Not once had she seen him, and she began to wonder if Jilly Norris had got it wrong and Simon Falls’ family had moved away to Queensland, or even overseas. When Jilly wasn’t sure of things she simply made them up. There was no way Clementine could ask her anything about Simon Falls. ‘What do you think?’ she wrote to her cousin, but even though she knew she sounded desperate, there was still no reply from Fan.

Months passed, and the summer holidays arrived and all that came in the mail from Lake Conapaira at Christmas was a card for Mum from Aunty Rene. Clementine lost heart. Fan probably thought her letters were childish and boring – why on earth would she be interested in what went on at her cousin’s snobby school? They’d all seem like babies to Fan, little kids playing silly games. She’d think it stupid that Clementine walked past the King’s School like a lovelorn girl from a
True Romance
comic when she’d hardly known Simon Falls and it was over six months since he’d left their school.

‘Grow up, why don’t you!’ she imagined her cousin thinking, her clear blue eyes scanning the breathless pages of Clementine’s letters, her small nose crinkling with distaste.

Only she knew Fan wasn’t really like that. Fan might call her ‘Little Clementine’ and tease her with that silly old song of Grandpa’s, but she wasn’t the kind of girl who’d sneer at you, however childishly you behaved. Fan was kind. She’d never say, ‘Grow up, why don’t you?’ like other girls might do.

Growing up was something that still wasn’t happening
to Clementine. She hadn’t grown a fraction of an inch since she’d been at Lake Conapaira in August, and now it was the end of February. Six whole months! Her chest was so flat she couldn’t wear a two-piece cossie, and she was probably the only fourteen-year-old girl in Australia who hadn’t got her periods. At bad moments Clementine thought it was just possible she was some kind of biological freak. No one would ever want to marry her. She’d be an old maid school teacher like Miss Evelyn, who took them for Latin, who wore lisle stockings when she didn’t have to, when she could have worn nylon or silk; and whose glasses were rimless and looked like smoky pebbles from the bottom of a river bed. Anything was better than being an old maid.

A few weeks back Jilly Norris had sent Miss Evelyn a Valentine card, with ‘Love and Kisses from St Jude’ written inside beneath the printed verse.

‘St Jude’s the patron saint of hopeless cases,’ Clementine informed her mother.

Mrs Southey wasn’t impressed.

‘It’s true,’ said Clementine. ‘Jilly Norris read it in this magazine.’

The magazine had been in the doctor’s surgery, where Jilly had accompanied her mother when she’d gone to have a wart burned off her thumb. Mrs Norris claimed she’d caught the wart from the kitchen of St Swithin’s, from the family of toads she said lived behind the fridge. Jilly had intended to watch the operation but Dr Macpherson had made her go outside and sit in the waiting room where you couldn’t hear even the loudest scream. That’s where she’d stumbled on the information about St Jude.

‘I didn’t say it wasn’t true,’ said Clementine’s mother. ‘But sweetheart, don’t you see how cruel it is? Sending the
poor woman a card that makes fun of her – that practically says no one except a saint in heaven would ever love her?’

‘You should see Miss Evelyn! She looks like a – ’

‘That’s enough, Clementine. It’s cruel.’

Clementine looked down at the floor. She knew it was cruel. She’d giggled with the other girls when Jilly had told them what she’d done, because you wanted to think it was funny instead of sad, and somehow all Miss Evelyn’s fault. If you thought it was sad and not her fault then you might start feeling scared.

‘Jilly Norris and her lot are a bunch of nasty, cruel girls,’ declared Mrs Southey flatly.

Oh, they were nasty and cruel all right, thought Clementine, but at least they could wear two-piece cossies without the top half coming down, and little old ladies didn’t stop them in the street at Christmas time and ask them what they were getting from Santa Claus.

Anything was better than being an old maid.

‘Can you be a nun if you’re not a Catholic?’ she asked her mother one afternoon when she came home from school and of course there was no letter from Fan, and she had a French Unseen for homework, and as she’d turned the corner into their street there’d been this boy in the park who’d looked like David Lowell. When she’d first spotted him Clementine had felt a little surge of anger. But when the boy came closer and she’d realised it wasn’t the Home Boy after all, only some ordinary kid on his way home from school, the anger had drained out of her and a feeling surprisingly like loss had taken its place.

Clementine’s mother didn’t answer when her daughter asked about being a nun. She was doing the ironing. It was boiling hot, but she was ironing because today was Tuesday
and Tuesday was ironing day, just like Monday was washing day even if it poured with rain.

I won’t be like that when I’m grown up, vowed Clementine. If it’s hot I’ll leave the ironing till Wednesday and go off to the beach. At least if you were an old maid there wouldn’t be so much ironing to do. She wondered if nuns did ironing. And were they allowed to go to the beach?

‘Can you be a nun if you’re not a Catholic?’ she repeated, because it was obvious her mother wasn’t listening.

Mrs Southey woke from her ironing daze and looked around her. She seemed surprised to find herself in her own kitchen; she’d been miles away, at Luna Park on a Saturday night in 1938, riding the ghost train with a boy called Harry Cane. When she saw her skinny daughter standing there in front of her, Mrs Southey made a little sighing sound, like a breeze gathering in the garden just before a storm. ‘What?’

‘Can you be a nun if you’re not a Catholic?’ Now Clementine sighed. How many times did she have to ask?

‘A nun, eh?’ said Mrs Southey, trying not to smile.

‘Well, can you?’

‘No.’ Mrs Southey turned back to the frilly apron her iron had been dreamily negotiating.

No. So that way out was closed.

Mrs Southey put the iron down and looked at Clementine as if her daughter’s question had just registered. ‘Why do you want to know?’

‘It’s just this girl at school,’ said Clementine, her eyes avoiding her mother’s. ‘She wants to. Be a nun, I mean.’

‘Ah,’ breathed her mother, watching the tide of pink colouring her daughter’s face. And then, ‘Tell her they’ll shave all her hair off.’

‘What?’ Clementine gazed at her mother in horror. ‘Do they do that?’

‘First thing,’ said Mrs Southey. ‘The minute they’ve got them through the door.’ She folded the apron and bent down to the laundry basket to take out a shirt.

Clementine saw a great wooden door with iron studs in it, dropping down upon a floor of stone. ‘Oh,’ she said.

Yes, that way out was definitely closed.

‘Five,’ said Raymond Fisk.

‘Four,’ countered Clementine.

‘Five.’ Raymond’s voice was as sharp as his wedge-shaped face and narrow sneaky eyes. Though he was three years younger than Clementine and still in primary school, Raymond Fisk was the meanest kid in the street and normally Clementine wouldn’t have had anything to do with him. But Raymond had something Clementine wanted: a razor blade so sharp it could slice through a thick sheet of cardboard with the merest whisper of a touch, and with a flat steel edge so you could hold it firmly without cutting your fingers off.

Wanting Raymond Fisk’s razor had a lot to do with wanting to hear from Fan.

The screen door on the Fisks’ back verandah squealed open. Clementine looked up and smiled. ‘Hullo, Tom,’ she said.

Tom was the Fisks’ foster child – which meant there was something wrong with his parents and the government paid the Fisks for having Tom in their house, for giving him food to eat and a bed to sleep in and sending him off to school. He was the same age as Raymond, but smaller and thinner, and so beautiful he made you draw in your breath. He had brown curly hair and the large tender eyes of a fawn – he was
like Bambi, decided Clementine. Tom was the Fisks’ servant: he did housework and chopped wood and ran errands and helped Mr Fisk in the garden, and if anything got lost or broken Tom always got the blame. There were marks on Tom’s legs which made Clementine’s heart do a funny little tap-dance every time she saw them; she didn’t know whether it was the memory of that long-ago night when Aunty Rene had gone for Fan, or the closer one of Mr Meague and Vinnie Sloane, but she knew no matter how old she grew to be, she would never be able to bear the sight of those sort of marks on anyone.

There wasn’t a single person in their neighbourhood who didn’t think it was a crying shame the way the Fisks treated poor little Tom, but what could anyone do about it? There was no use calling the Welfare, because they were even worse. Round where they lived, no one ever called the Welfare.

Raymond’s pointy head swung round when he saw Clementine smiling at his foster brother. His narrow eyes gleamed and fixed on Tom.

‘You chopped that wood for Mum?’

Tom’s eyes jumped when Raymond spoke. His whole body juddered. He nodded silently.

‘Answer when you’re spoken to,’ said Raymond, lordly. ‘You chopped that wood?’

‘Yes,’ said Tom.

‘Yes, who?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Raymond darted a challenging glance in Clementine’s direction. When she said nothing he turned back to Tom.

‘Well, go and split some kindling then,’ he ordered. ‘Don’t just stand there doin’ nothing. What do you think
we feed you for? And make sure you split it right, or you’ll get what’s comin’ to you.’ He snapped his fingers and Tom ran round the verandah and down the side of the house. A moment later Clementine heard the sound of an axe from the backyard and shivered, thinking of Tom’s skinny arms and delicate frame – the axe would be nearly as big as him.

‘Lazy little bugger,’ observed Raymond, turning his attention back to the haggling with Clementine. ‘I want five,’ he said. ‘Five Phantom comics for that razor. It’s special, that is; my cousin give it to me before he joined the Army.’

Before he got nicked, you mean, thought Clementine, but she didn’t speak the thought aloud.

If Clementine’s English teacher had known she read comics, Mrs Larkin would have had a major fit. But all the kids in Willow Street read comics and they were always good for swapping. And every payday since Clementine could remember Dad had come home with two blocks of chocolate – Peppermint Cream for Clementine and Old Jamaica for Mum – and there’d be a
Women’s Weekly
for Mum too, and a comic for Clementine: her favourite
Phantom
or
Superman
, and sometimes
Archie and His Friends.
Only a few weeks ago Dad had asked her shyly if she’d like a change of comics now she was growing up. ‘I saw one down the shop last week called
Girls’ Crystal
, looked like it might be in your line.’ Clementine couldn’t help smiling, thinking of Dad down the newsagents, checking the girls’ stuff out. ‘It’s okay,’ she’d told him. ‘I like the ones you get.’

‘Five,’ said Raymond Fisk again, and Clementine knew he wouldn’t budge; he was like her granny’s granite doorstop once he’d made up his mind. Immovable. She handed the comics over, and Raymond gave her the blade.

‘Gunna cut someone’s throat, eh?’ he smirked.

She knew he thought she wasn’t game to do anything. ‘Pity someone doesn’t cut yours,’ she retorted and took off down the path. Half a flying housebrick followed her, bouncing on the pavement at her heels.

That Christmas Clementine’s parents had given her a new bicycle – a scarlet Malvern Star with a stripe and trimmings in brownish-gold, colours which made her think for a sad moment of the King’s School and Simon Falls in his soldier’s uniform. The bicycle had a basket on the front, and a big leather saddlebag on the back, and Dad had talked Mum round into letting Clementine ride it to school. ‘She won’t have to carry that heavy old case anymore,’ he said, patting the leather saddlebag proudly. ‘She can put all her books in here.’ He turned to Mum with a little air of triumph. ‘See, Cissie? Plenty of room!’