The Winds of Heaven Read Online Free

Clementine had forgotten about the signs.
    Now here they were again. ‘
50 Miles to Griffiths Tea
.’ Fifty miles wasn’t far; this time she wouldn’t take her eyes from the window, she was determined not to miss
Griffiths Tea
, because it must be special. Why else would they have all these signs, as if the only point in all those miles and miles the train swallowed up was that they took you closer and closer to
Griffiths Tea
? It would taste like ambrosia, decided Clementine, ambrosia which Mrs Carmody said was thenectar of the gods. And you would drink ambrosia from thin blue painted cups, in a special, beautiful place: a jewelled palace, with great halls of silver and gold, with peacocks in the gardens, and a lake with white swans…
    30 Miles to Griffiths Tea
. And now the sky was changing, its bright blue grown dimmer, almost pearly grey, and at its edge there were bands of different colours: smoky purple, apricot and palest apple green, like a layer cake, the rainbow one Mum had made for the Christmas fete at school.
    5 Miles to Griffiths Tea
.
    A little further and the train slowed at a tiny station. Goolgowi, read Clementine, and she watched as a small, white-haired old lady stepped out from further down the train and was instantly surrounded by a ring of smiling people, men in big-brimmed hats and ladies in print dresses, little kids in pyjamas, all ready for bed when they got home. They stepped forward one by one to kiss the old lady, and Clementine thought it looked like they were taking part in a dance.
    With a single mournful hoot, the train pulled out from the station. The evening was deepening; the rainbow-cake stripes on the horizon had vanished and in their place was a scattering of big pale stars. But there was still enough light to make out the sign on the fence a little way out from the station, the sign that read quite plainly:
250 Miles to Griffiths Tea.
    She’d missed it. She’d missed the jewelled palace where princesses and grand ladies drank ambrosia from cups so fine the light shone through.
Griffiths Tea
was gone.
    Her mother had woken and was sitting up straight, pushing damp curly hair from her eyes. ‘How much
farther
isit to Aunty Rene’s place?’ Clementine demanded in a furious choking voice.
    Mrs Southey yawned. ‘What was that last station we passed? Did you see?’
    ‘Gool, Gool – ’
    ‘Goolgowi.’ She smiled at Clementine, mistaking the rage and sorrow on her daughter’s face for tiredness. ‘Not much farther now.’
    Clementine kicked at the seat. ‘I don’t
care
!’ And all at once she was crying – crying and crying like a little kid in Infants instead of a big girl in fourth class – great splashy tears that rolled down her cheeks and fell with a plop onto the front of her tartan frock and the worn shiny fabric of the seat.
    ‘Sweetheart! What’s the matter? Are you feeling sick?’ Mrs Southey put her hand on her daughter’s damp forehead, and Clementine pushed it away. ‘No, I’m not sick!’
    ‘Then what is it? Are you tired?’
    ‘No, I’m
not
tired!’
    ‘Then what?’
    ‘It – it’s the
Griffiths Tea
!’ wailed Clementine, flinging herself against her mother’s chest.
    And it really did seem like that: how it wasn’t the long long way to Lake Conapaira that was making her cry, or the strange dark roaring at the windows and the silent country outside; it wasn’t the way her dress felt damp and sticky and her eyes stung and her skin itched with gritty red dust; it wasn’t the scary memory of Aunty Rene screaming or Fan’s big sister running away across the prickly paddocks – it wasn’t even the thought of Dad coming home to the empty house and how he might forget them and go away.No, it really
was
because she’d missed
Griffiths Tea
, and the beautiful jewelled palace with its halls of silver and gold, and the peacocks in the gardens and the lake with white swans. It was as if a great wonder, a world more beautiful than you could ever