The Winds of Heaven (25 page)

To the library. Even to speak that phrase aloud gave her a joyful feeling. It made her feel different; sort of hopeful and proud. It made her feel real.

Cash was staring at her as if he too had sensed the beginning of some happy change.

‘Hurry now,’ she said.

‘You mean we’re
really
going? Now?’

‘Of course. Didn’t I just say?’

‘Yes. But sometimes you say things and then you don’t do them.’

‘Well, I’m doing something now. Go and get your shoes on, sweetie. We haven’t got much time. The bus goes at a quarter past twelve.’

She wouldn’t take the pram, decided Fan. It was too big and heavy to get on the bus. She’d take Cash’s old stroller instead. Steadying Maddie against her shoulder, she hurried up the steps.

Inside the house she flew: it was later than she’d thought, almost twenty to twelve, and it would take them a good ten minutes to get down to the bus stop. She changed Maddie, dressed her, bundled clean nappies and a bib into a bag, made up the feeding bottle, and then an extra, just in case. But
when she began to strap the baby into the stroller, Maddie started to howl.

Cash came running. ‘She hates the stroller,’ he said.

‘I know. C’mon, Maddie,’ she begged, wrestling with the straps.

‘Here y’are,’ Cash put the dummy into his sister’s mouth. She spat it out and went on bawling, flinging herself from side to side, her tiny hands clenched into fists.

Fan’s own hands were shaking; she couldn’t get the buckle fastened round Maddie’s struggling little body.

‘Mum, it’s five to twelve!’

Fan tossed the straps aside and grabbed the squirming baby up into her arms. She’d have to carry her. Maddie wasn’t heavy and it wasn’t far to the bus stop. It was outside the baker’s shop, where the end of Palm Street met the main street of the town. She snatched her purse from the table and Cash grabbed the nappy bag, and they ran out of the house and down the path and through the gate into the wide red road.

And then, after all that, the bus was late.

‘I’m hungry.’ Cash stared into the window of the baker’s shop. ‘Mum, can I get something to eat in there?’

Fan looked down the road; there was no sign of the bus. ‘All right,’ she said, reaching into her purse. ‘But be quick. And if I call you, come straight away, okay?’

‘All right.’ He took the coins she gave him and ran into the shop; in less than two minutes he was out again, a bag of jam donuts clutched in his hand. ‘Want one?’ He held the bag out to her.

She shook her head. ‘Don’t get jam all over your clothes.’

‘Hello, Fan.’

She turned round.

Evie Castairs and Maggie Carmody had paused on their way into the baker’s shop to buy their lunch. They were girls she’d known at school, though they hadn’t really been friends. Now they worked in the council offices across the road, and she knew they were both engaged, she’d seen the notices in the local paper. In Lake Conapaira, at eighteen, any decent girl would be engaged – any later and it began to look like you never would be. Engaged at eighteen, working in a shop or with the bank or at the council offices, saving for your home, married at twenty-one, first child at twenty-two – that was how things should be. That was the proper way.

‘Waiting for the bus?’ enquired Evie.

‘Yes.’

‘Off to see your sister, eh?’

That was the thing about Lake Conapaira: everyone thought they knew all about you, even if you hardly ever spoke to anyone.

‘No. Just going into Lachlan.’

‘Oh?’ They waited, bright eyes fixed upon her face.

If she told them she was going all the way into Lachlan, dragging two little kids with her, simply to look for a book in the library, to try and find a poem she liked, they’d think she was crazy. And selfish.
Selfish.
Once you were a mother, people got busy with that word. They’d spread it all round. None of that mattered. What mattered was that she possessed only this one secret, this half-remembered poem which made her feel a kind of hopefulness, and she wanted it for herself. It was hers. She didn’t care if wanting it was selfish.

‘Lovely baby,’ said Evie, and she reached out her pretty hand, the nails varnished a soft pearly pink, and stroked Maddie’s cheek. ‘What’s her name?’

‘Madeleine.’

‘Madeleine. Ooh, posh!’ She winked broadly at the baby. ‘Whose little girl are you?’

The question drifted painfully along the winter street. Fan knew there were rumours round the town that Madeleine wasn’t Gary’s child.

Let them say anything they liked.

‘She’s ours,’ said Cash, laying a small protective hand on Maddie’s little arm. ‘She’s Mum’s and mine.’ He didn’t mention Gary.

The two girls looked at each other. Madeleine turned her face into her mother’s shoulder.

Now Maggie Carmody was gazing avidly at Fan, like a sharp-eyed bird sizing up a worm. Despite herself Fan felt angry tears welling in her eyes. She hated being stared at. If only the bus would come! ‘Had your one and sixpence worth?’ her mum would have said to them, but Fan wasn’t like that; she wasn’t good at fights like Mum. Mostly she didn’t let people get close enough to really look at her; she kept herself and the kids well out of their way. Only now she was trapped here, waiting for the bus. And she wasn’t going to walk off and miss it, she needed to find the book. She wanted to know the rest of her poem. She had to have
something.

‘Do you know you’ve got your cardie on inside out?’ asked Maggie.

‘What?’

‘Your cardie.’ Maggie leaned forward and pointed to Fan’s arm, where the seam showed plainly, wrong way round.

‘Oh!’

‘Here, I’ll give you a hand,’ said Evie, and she lifted the surprised Madeleine from her mother’s arms so Fan could take off her cardigan and put it back on right side round. ‘
Whose little girl, whose little girl, whose little girl are you?’
she sang to Maddie, and Fan realised from the tenderness in Evie’s voice and the gentle way she was jogging the baby in her arms, that there was no malice in the girl’s words; it was, quite simply, a question you sang to little babies, anyone’s little baby. And she saw that these two girls might be well meaning after all.

‘You never give people a chance,’ Caro was always saying. Caro wanted Fan to get out more; she’d offered to pay Mrs Darcy to look after Cash and Maddie while Fan joined the Young Country Wives Association, or helped out at the school canteen.

Only Fan had become scared of things like that. She imagined walking into a room where a group of proper Young Country Wives sat round a table, imagined how they’d all stop talking and stare at her …

‘People are kind,’ Caro said. ‘If you meet them half way. If
you’re
kind to them. If you’d stop thinking about yourself for a change, Fan.’

‘They’re kind to
you
,’ Fan had retorted.

But perhaps Caro was right, she thought, as Evie gently placed the baby back into her arms. Fan gave the girl a smile of such extraordinary sweetness that Evie would remember it later and say to herself, ‘Oh, I wish, I wish – ’

‘Thank you,’ said Fan.

‘That’s okay.’ Evie smiled. ‘Any time. It was lovely having a little hold of her; she’s gorgeous.’

Gorgeous.

‘Oooh! Aren’t your feet cold?’ Maggie was pointing.

‘What?’ Fan looked down. She saw it wasn’t
her
feet Maggie was exclaiming over: it was Cash’s. They were grimy and bare. ‘Where are your shoes?’ she demanded.

He blinked at her.

‘I thought I told you to put them on, your good black shoes, and a pair of socks!’

‘Yeah, but – ’

‘But what?’

‘I told you, I hate those shoes.’

‘Why didn’t you put your sneakers on, then?’

‘You said, not when we’re going to the library.’

‘But I didn’t mean for you to – ’

‘Here’s your bus!’ cried Evie.

It was crawling slowly up the hill that was Main Street and you could see the lake shining behind it, so that the battered old bus with its thick skirt of red dust resembled some tired old monster rising from the deep.

Fan was still staring at Cash’s bare feet as if she couldn’t believe her eyes. Would they let him into the library with no shoes? No, they wouldn’t. She’d have to buy him something for his feet in Lachlan.

‘It’ll be okay,’ said Evie, following her anxious gaze. ‘Joe’ll let him on the bus.’

‘Plenty of kids with no shoes round here,’ said Maggie stoutly.

‘It’s not the bus I’m worried about, it’s – ’ She was almost going to tell them about the library, but the squeal of brakes and a churning of the ancient engine drowned out her words. Evie took a hanky from her pocket and caught hold of Cash’s
hand. She pulled him to her. ‘Here, love, let me give you a bit of a wipe; your mummy’s got her hands full.’

He had jam all round his mouth as well. And a sticky screwed up paper bag in his hand, which Evie took from him and lobbed at the waste bin up the road. It missed and fluttered farther up the street.

‘Don’t forget this,’ said Maggie, picking up the nappy bag.

Fan took it wordlessly in her free hand.

‘You comin’ or not?’ called the bus driver. ‘I haven’t got all day.’

‘Haven’t you, Joe?’ cried Evie.

‘You could’ve fooled me,’ said Maggie.

The small family climbed on board. The bus drew away. Cash pressed his face close to the window and smiled against the glass. His hand sketched a small, uncertain gesture. ‘Those ladies are waving to us,’ he said shyly.

The library was almost empty at this time of day, the drowsy hour after lunch when people had gone back to work and Lachlan’s children were still in school. An old man sat reading the newspaper in a chair by one of the big windows that faced onto the street, two ladies stood chatting quietly to the librarian behind her desk. All four of them looked up as the doors opened and Fan walked in with Cash and Madeleine. The ladies at the counter stared and one of them leaned across and murmured something to the librarian. Fan was glad she’d stopped off at the store and bought a pair of rubber flip-flops for Cash’s bare feet.

‘Flip-flops?’ the storekeeper had marvelled. ‘You want a pair of flip-flops in the middle of winter?’ He’d winked at Cash. ‘Mum takin’ you to the beach, eh?’

Cash had looked down at the floor. ‘No,’ he whispered.

‘It’s only for today,’ Fan had explained. ‘Just till we get home. He forgot his shoes when we were coming out.’

‘Forgot his shoes, eh?’ The storekeeper’s disapproving eyes had flicked from Cash to Fan; they’d travelled all along her body and fixed midway down her legs. When she’d followed his gaze she’d seen that the hem of her skirt was coming down again; she must have caught it with the edge
of her heel as she came up the steps of the bus. She could see he was the type who thought forgotten shoes and broken stitches made her a bad mum.

‘Born lucky, you are,’ he’d observed.

‘What?’ She’d looked at him blankly, and he’d sighed, and when he answered it was very slowly and carefully, as if she wasn’t quite right in the head and might have difficulty understanding.

‘You’re lucky we have flip-flops in stock this time of year. They’re normally a summer item.’

‘Oh.’

As they left, he’d shivered and rubbed his hands together in a parody of chill. ‘Bit nippy outside, eh?’ He’d rolled his eyes at Cash. ‘Better watch out Jack Frost doesn’t get those toes.’