The Winds of Heaven by Judith Clarke

dull a brown that in some lights it seemed grey. And this grey colour made you notice how Vinnie Sloane looked a little like Mr Meague, especially in those tense and airless moments when the pair of them were standing face to face before the class and Mr Meague was steadying Vinnie’s hand to get the cane.
    Vinnie Sloane got the cane every week, because every week Jilly or Kay Dimsey or Ba Purcell would whisper on purpose, and then Mr Meague would ask them to stand up and pick a boy and they’d choose Vinnie Sloane. Clementine couldn’t make sense of it. Mr Meague was a teacher, a grown-up. Surely he could
see
that Jilly and the others weredoing it on purpose? Of course he could! So why did he keep on letting them do it? Why didn’t he tell them to pick on someone else? Why didn’t he say, ‘I think this boy has been chosen quite enough’? Why did he make girls pick out boys anyway? Why didn’t he just give them detention or lines like all the other teachers? And why, when he’d finished caning Vinnie, or any other boy, did he recite, in a low, soft voice you had to strain to hear: ‘
I wasted Time, and now doth Time waste me’
? Why did he sometimes say, ‘Look what this girl has made you suffer’? pointing with his cane to the girl who’d picked the boy. You couldn’t work it out. You only knew it made the ground feel soft and tricky beneath your feet, made you want to cry out, like a tiny little kid who could hardly talk might do, ‘Bad! Bad! Bad!’
    Clementine’s work began to falter, her marks got lower in each of Mr Meague’s weekly tests. The sight of the diagrams in her textbook, the words right angle, obtuse angle, hypotenuse, gave her a sickish feeling deep down in her stomach. When she tried to do a homework exercise she couldn’t concentrate, her mind went veering off in all directions, like a willy-willy, senselessly. She hid her Geometry textbook down at the bottom of her school case beneath her gym bag and shoes, so she wouldn’t see it when she took out her books for other lessons. She hated Geometry now. It was as if she was scared of it, and this feeling made her think of Fan again – how Fan had hated reading and snatched Clementine’s books away from her, saying loudly, ‘Let’s go out and play!’
    She hadn’t seen Fan since that last visit. Her mother and Aunty Rene had made up their quarrel and every year Mum talked about going to Lake Conapaira. But nothing ever cameof it, and when Clementine asked if Fan could come down to spend the summer holidays with them, all her mother said was, ‘We’ll see.’ Mum was working part-time at the Bank now and she only got two weeks holiday, and in those two special weeks Dad rented a house for them down the coast at Stanwell Park. ‘We’ll go up to Lake Conapaira again one of these days,’ Mum kept on promising, but somehow they never did. It was nearly five years since Clementine had seen her cousin.

    On the nights before Mr Meague’s classes, Clementine took a long, long time to get to sleep. She lay awake hour after hour, thoughts whirling in her head, fears pinching like cruel fingers, her chest so tight that it was difficult to breathe. Would Vinnie Sloane get the cane again tomorrow? Or on Thursday, two days away? She’d come to hate Vinnie Sloane. She knew none of it was his fault, because how could he help being thin and weak and ugly, the exact kind of boy that girls like Jilly Norris picked on? But although she knew this, she couldn’t stop herself from hating him; she hated him for looking like a silly white rabbit and she hated the squealy blubbery sounds he made when he was caned, and the hunched way he walked back to his desk, head bowed, hands thrust into his armpits, shameful tears running down his pallid cheeks.
    Clementine tossed and turned beneath her bedclothes on those sleepless nights. Could tomorrow be the very day when Jilly somehow pushed her into talking? When she would have to stand up and pick a boy? And