Free The Winds of Heaven by Judith Clarke

hesitate to bring a problem to the school. It was more than that, it was hope – they believed Chisolm College offered their children the chance to have better lives than their own. Clementine’s dad always said you made your own chances in life, but she could see that he and Mum had shy hopes of their own for her. She’d noticed how, on Sunday visits to the city, bus-rides through the waterside suburbs, the harbour glittering on one side, the beautiful houses in their long gardens on the other – her parents would grow wistful, even a little sad. It wasn’t for themselves – Mum and Dad didn’t want to live in grand houses, they didn’t want to be rich. They were happy with the house in Willow Street, but if their daughter wanted something grander, they wouldn’t stand in her way. When she was older, Clementine realised that they were modest even in that. She remembered how, as the bus idled roundthe tree-lined streets, her mother would point – not to the dazzling white mansions on the harbour shore, but to some small, plain weatherboard, half hidden in its garden, and say, ‘Imagine, Clementine! One day you might live in a house like that! If you do well at school,’ she would add. ‘If you study hard, and get into the university.’ Her voice would go dreamy on that last word.
    All the same, Clementine knew that if she’d been a boy and got whacked by Mr Meague because some girl had been talking in his class, Dad would have been up at the school like a shot. He wasn’t scared of teachers who wore long black gowns. Even if you begged and pleaded with him because the other kids would sneer at you for running to your dad, he’d have gone there just the same.
    Clementine was scared of Mr Meague. His brown dustcoat was exactly the same colour as the willy-willy she’d seen that time up at Lake Conapaira, tearing senselessly across the paddocks, gathering every weak, unrooted thing into its boiling heart. And though Mr Meague was so quiet, Clementine sensed in him the same kind of seething she’d felt in Aunty Rene; as if deep inside them was something urgent and unnameable and furious, desperate to get out. She never talked in his class – of course she didn’t – but what if, one day, despite herself, she did? What if Jilly Norris asked her a question she really had to answer? Or if she got so nervous that words suddenly spilled out from her lips and she said, ‘I hate Geometry!’ or ‘Only five minutes to the bell!’ right out loud in that deathly silent class. And then Mr Meague would make her stand up and pick a boy.
    She didn’t want to pick a Home Boy. The Home Boys reminded her of something else she’d seen up at LakeConapaira: a group of calves being herded down Palm Street to the saleyards, blundering ungainly creatures with the same long legs and knobbly knees the Home Boys had, and the same big heads, and large soft eyes which slid this way and that, as if they were looking for their mothers. No, if Mr Meague ever caught her talking she wasn’t picking out a Home Boy.
    But who could she pick, then? Because you had to choose a boy once Mr Meague caught you, there was no getting out of it. If you refused, a worse thing happened: Mr Meague picked one for you. And he picked a boy you liked, just as he’d chosen Andrew Milton for Annie Boland when she’d refused. Andrew was Annie’s boyfriend, and Mr Meague had known that. It wasn’t difficult to know because they always stood together in the playground at recess and lunchtime, holding hands and smiling into each other’s faces: they were easy to see.
    But Mattie Gaskin and John Larsen hadn’t been so easy; no one had ever seen them together, even Jilly Norris and her gang hadn’t known about Mattie and John. Only Mr Meague had known. He’d worked it out; a single stray glance, a smile – that was enough for him. He’d spotted it and marked them down. When Mattie Gaskin was caught whispering to Kay Dimsey in the seat behind her; when