Dark Wind Blowing

by Jackie French

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  In the Blood

  Hitler’s Daughter

  About the Author

  Other books by Jackie French

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  FRIDAY, 8.10 A.M.

  The day began quietly, a normal day like many others. The kitchen smelt of eggs and burnt crumbs, mixed with the hint of cattle droppings seeping through the back door from the paddocks behind the house. Mike grabbed his bag from the floor.

  ‘Mike, your breakfast’s on the table!’

  ‘Mum, I don’t have time!’

  ‘Of course you do. It’s only ten past eight.’ His mother stuck her head around the laundry door, the iron in her hand. She was still wearing her dressing gown over her blue linen skirt and had on her ‘going to the gallery’ shoes.

  ‘Mum, no one has cooked breakfasts!’

  ‘Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.’ Her head vanished again.

  ‘Sheesh, Mum, I’m not a kid any more.’

  ‘Mike, remember your language.’

  ‘Sheesh isn’t swearing!’

  ‘Yes, it is. You know perfectly well what it stands for.’

  ‘Mum, you just don’t understand.’ Mike stopped. There was no point in telling his mum anything. She never listened, or when she did she always had an answer, the sort of ‘I must know best because I’m an adult’ answer … He slumped at the table instead and began to shovel down the scrambled eggs. One spoonful, two …

  Eggs, eggs, horrible eggs,

  They slide down your mouth

  And then feed your legs …

  There was an art to not eating Mum’s breakfasts. If you didn’t eat any of it she’d nag you till you did. If you ate only one slice of toast and eggs, she’d stress as well. But if you ate part of both slices, and drank a third of the glass of orange juice, the rest just looked like leftovers on the plate.

  ‘Finished, Mum! See you tonight!’

  There was a clang as the ironing board was shoved back in its corner and Mike’s mother came out of the laundry, adjusting the collar of her blouse. ‘What time will you be home?’

  ‘Dunno. Might go round to Budgie’s after.’

  ‘You’ll give me a ring at the gallery to let me know?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll give you a ring.’

  ‘Take care then.’

  ‘Look, Mum, I’m just going to school for Chr … Pete’s sake. What can happen to me at school?’ He hesitated, then kissed her cheek. If he hadn’t, she’d have looked unhappy and he’d have felt guilty and, and, and it just wasn’t worth it, thought Mike as he trudged out the gate, ducking to avoid the honeysuckle on the trellis above. Mum was too short to get a face full of honeysuckle leaves every time she went out the gate. She didn’t seem to notice that Mike had grown taller than her.

  Do all mothers stress like that, wondered Mike. Or was it just because his mum only had him to stress about.

  Mike hesitated on the footpath. The best way to go to school was to duck behind the house and wander along the creek and through the paddocks. But he was too late for that today. Or he could duck around the corner and up Wallace Street, but that took longer too.

  The quickest way was straight down the street then up the Gunyabah road, past Mum’s gallery and the post office and supermarket. But that meant going past Lance the Loser’s, which meant walking to school with Lance.

  The Loosleys lived next door, in an old wooden house like Mike’s, with a long garden rambling back onto the creek reserve and paddocks. But Mum had had their house done up before they moved in, with a new shiny roof and blue and white paint and a second bathroom, while the Loosley’s was still rust and sagging steps and cracked fibro on the veranda. Loser was always saying how his dad was going to build a granny flat for a bed and breakfast, or a spa and swimming pool, but somehow it never happened.

  Mike glanced at his watch. With a bit of luck Lance had already left, or gone the other way to school, assumed Mike.

  Mike began to walk up the footpath. It was a nice street. There was nothing wrong with the street, he thought gloomily. The wide-branched jacaranda trees were just starting to sprinkle their purple flowers on the ground, and the green gardens had solid fences and well-fed dogs …

  It was just … it was just … well, what was the point of it, thought Mike. Day after day, always the same — Mum and her fussing, the walk to school and Lance the Loser assuming they were friends just because they’d walked the same route to school since they were in kindergarten. What was the point of school every day, when there was nothing he really wanted at the end of it?

  If only something would happen! In a movie, if a kid was walking along a footpath like this, all peaceful and unsuspecting, you’d be waiting on the edge of your seat. The music would be all quiet and tra la la, then suddenly a car would come screaming round the corner blazing bullets, or someone would burst out of the house opposite, and then …

  ‘Hello, Michael!’ The voice from the Loosley’s gateway was soft and warm. Soft like fresh dog droppings and warm as a garbage bag in the sun, thought Mike, as he turned to face Loser’s father.

  ‘You’re looking very well, Michael,’ said Mr Loosley gently.

  ‘Thank you,’ muttered Mike. Loser’s father always complimented you, always in that soft, warm voice. If there was ever anything that needed doing in the community Mr Loosley was there, always smiling, always trying to take charge.

  You never saw Mrs Loosley around much. She even seemed to scuttle through the supermarket. She was always smiling, too, but her smiles were a bit more fixed than her husband’s, as though nailed onto her face.

  ‘Lance is just coming,’ said Mr Loosley.

  ‘Oh, great,’ said Mike, trying to sound like he meant it.

  ‘I saw your mother at the post office yesterday,’ said Mr Loosley, giving Mike one of his warm, wide smiles. One of his front teeth was hooked over the next one. Mike tried not to stare at it.

  ‘She is looking very well. I suppose the gallery’s progressing satisfactorily?’ Mr Loosley liked long words, too. Why not just say, Is it going okay?, thought Mike.

  ‘Yeah, it’s fine,’ he said. Mum never talked about how much her gallery made. But she’d suggested they might go to Vanuatu next holidays, or even to Hawaii, so he supposed things were looking good. Sheesh, he thought, going on holidays with your mum. Didn’t she understand?

  ‘… and I hope you’ll tell her if she ever needs assistance, she can always call on me,’ Mr Loosley was saying. ‘I can depend on you to tell her, can’t I Michael?’

  ‘Mmm, what? Oh, yeah, sure,’ said Mike, tearing his gaze away from the tooth again. He supposed Mr Loosley was hinting he’d like a job at Mum’s gallery. For some reason, Mr Loosley never held onto any job more than a few months, in spite of the fact that he smiled all the time and was so friendly.

  ‘Here’s Lance now,’ said Mr Loosley. ‘Have a good day you two boys. Study hard, won’t you.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Mike, as Loser jogged down the steps. Sheesh, thought Mike, the kid even walks like a loser, bouncing along as if his feet were trampolines, wearing those dumb com
bat pants Samson’s the Drapers had on special, and the shaved head that was supposed to make him look tough but looked more like a bruised egg.

  ‘Dumb old Lance, Wears combat pants,’ chanted Mike in his head, as Loser galloped down the path. What else rhymed with pants … ants? Dance?

  Loser shoved his glasses back up his nose, nodded to his father, gave a small wave to his mother’s face peering through the curtains, then began to walk beside Mike. He didn’t speak till they were past the house.

  ‘What’re you doing this weekend?’ he asked Mike.

  ‘Nothing much,’ said Mike. ‘Might go out to Dad’s, help him with the hay carting.’

  ‘Like a hand?’ asked Loser eagerly.

  ‘Nah, we’ll be right,’ said Mike guiltily.

  It was a lie anyway. Mum was going to drive him and Budgie over to Gunyabah to see Thrill Kill at the movies while she did some shopping, leaving Gail in charge of the gallery. But if he told Lance that, he’d want to come too.

  And if he told Loser there was no room in the car, Loser would tell his dad, and his dad would volunteer to drive them all in his old Kombi bus, and Mum would probably say, ‘How kind of you’, because then she could spend the day in the gallery without feeling guilty and then …

  ‘… anyway, I’m going out to Tenterfield,’ said Loser carelessly.

  ‘What, really?’ asked Mike, surprised. No one he knew had gone out to the old Tenterfield property since it had been sold.

  ‘Sure,’ said Loser airily. ‘Dad did some work there last week, and they asked me and Mum to have dinner out there too. I’ve been there every day after school since.’

  ‘How come you never said before?’ asked Mike suspiciously. You never quite knew if half the stuff Loser claimed was true. He was always boasting about something. Like the time he said he and his dad had gone pig hunting, and when Budgie asked, ‘What with?’, he said, ‘With my air rifle’, and Budgie had cracked up.

  ‘I haven’t seen you all week,’ said Loser, accusingly.

  Mike shrugged. He’d walked the long way all this week, and then there’d been Budgie’s after school and cricket practice … Loser was too clumsy to be on the cricket team …

  ‘What’s it like out there now?’ he asked.

  Some overseas people had bought the Tenterfield property the year before. No one knew exactly who they were. There’d been a lot of rumours in the town when the O’Connell’s had sold it, like how it was going to be a religious commune and stuff like that. But no one had turned up there for months, and when someone did it was just a few blokes in suits who’d arrived in a light aircraft.

  ‘Mum said some foreign company bought it as an investment,’ said Mike.

  Loser shook his head importantly. ‘They’re doing experiments there,’ he said.

  ‘Experiments? No way. Who’d want to do experiments way out there? What sort of experiments, anyway?’

  ‘Just stuff. You know. Test tubes and everything.’ Loser kicked at a thistle on the footpath.

  Mike snorted. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘It’s true. Look.’ Loser knelt on the neat, green grass (old Mr Halliwell mowed his lawn once a week, even the nature strip, and watered it every afternoon) and unzipped his school bag. ‘Look.’ He handed a test tube up to Mike.

  Mike took it warily. It was just like the ones in the science lab at school. But this one was filled with a dark brown powder, with a glass stopper at the end, well taped on as though for extra security. ‘What is it?’

  Loser hesitated. ‘It’s a new explosive,’ he said at last. ‘One drop of that would blow up the entire school.’

  Mike snorted. ‘You’re joking. You wouldn’t be carrying it round in your school bag if it could blow up the school. What if you bumped it or something?’

  ‘It needs a detonator,’ said Loser quickly. ‘There’s this other powder that they’re working on, except that one’s white, and you have to mix them together before they’re dangerous.’

  ‘Yeah, sure.’ Mike handed it back to him. ‘What sort of work did your dad do out there, anyway?’

  Loser bit his lip. Mike waited for him to say research chemist or something else impossible, but then he said, ‘They wanted him to fix the gutters and do some other stuff.’

  ‘Oh.’ It sounded vaguely possible, thought Mike. Even if Mr Loosley never did much work round his own place, Mike supposed he could fix gutters and do other handyman repairs. ‘Do they speak English, or what?’

  ‘Japanese,’ said Loser.

  ‘How do you know? You can’t speak Japanese.’

  ‘Well, it sounded like Japanese,’ said Loser defensively.

  ‘They could be Korean or Vietnamese. How did they tell you what they were working on anyway, if they spoke Japanese?’

  ‘A couple of them spoke English.’

  ‘So what are they? A religious group or something?’

  Loser hesitated again. ‘Yeah, sure,’ he said. ‘They’ve got this leader, but he’s in prison in Japan …’

  ‘You mean like that Japanese group that put poisonous gas in the Tokyo subway?’

  Loser nodded. ‘Like them.’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ said Mike. ‘So they’re brewing up poisonous gas outside town, they employ your father and then they ask you and your mum out to dinner there.’

  ‘They did! They did ask me and Mum out to dinner!’

  ‘And they’re making poisonous gas?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘I thought you said it was explosives.’

  ‘They’re doing that too,’ said Loser after a moment’s pause.

  Mike handed the test tube back. ‘Well, you’d better look after it.’ They were almost at the school now. Groups of young kids bounced through the gates to the primary school playground, pigeons pecked hopefully round the rubbish bins. Mike and Loser headed over the crumbling old bitumen towards the lockers.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Loser. ‘My dad says …’

  ‘Hey, Mike!’

  Mike turned and saw Budgie galloping across the road. ‘Hey, Mike, guess what’s on tomorrow? Thrill Kill is on a double bill with …’

  ‘I thought you were going out to your dad’s tomorrow,’ said Lance.

  ‘Yeah, well,’ said Mike.

  Budgie gave Loser a concentrated look of contempt then walked away. ‘Did you get your invitation to Jazz’s party?’ he asked Mike.

  ‘Sure,’ said Mike.

  ‘What party?’ asked Loser.

  Budgie ignored him. Mike hesitated and said, ‘Jasmine’s birthday party. It’s on Sunday, out on the river.’

  ‘No one told me,’ said Loser, then stopped. His face grew red. He pushed his glasses up his nose angrily.

  Budgie smiled at him. It wasn’t a nice smile. ‘Jazz probably made you a special invitation, Loser,’ he said. ‘I bet it’s pasted on your locker now.’

  ‘Was that where your invitation was?’ asked Loser.

  ‘Sure,’ said Budgie.

  ‘No it wa — ’ began Mike, then stopped.

  ‘You’d better go and look in case it falls off,’ suggested Budgie. ‘Jazz would really hate it if you missed her party.’

  ‘I …’ began Loser. He nodded suddenly and ran off towards the lockers, his long legs flickering like spider’s legs in his camouflage trousers.

  ‘There won’t be an invitation there,’ said Mike. ‘Jazz gave them all out yesterday. I thought she was inviting the whole class.’

  ‘Not him,’ said Budgie with satisfaction. ‘Caitlin told Jazz she’d give Loser his invitation after school, so Jazz gave it to her and Caitlin tore it up.’

  Mike stared. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Jazz’s new here. She doesn’t understand about Loser. Anyway, he’s got a crush on her.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’ asked Mike.

  ‘Loser and Jazz? Yuk,’ said Budgie.

  ‘You told Caitlin to do it, didn’t you?’

  Budgie shrugged. ‘Sure. But get this — guess wha
t Loser’s going to find taped on his locker?’

  ‘His invitation?’

  ‘Nah. A letter from Jazz saying he’s the coolest spunk she’s ever met and asking him to meet her round the back of the ag plot before school starts.’

  ‘Did Jazz really write it?’

  ‘Nah, of course not. I wrote it,’ said Budgie proudly. ‘Come on, we’d better get round to the ag plot or he’ll be there first. Jordie and the rest are probably already there.’

  ‘I …’ Mike paused. It wasn’t that he liked Loser. He didn’t. He disliked him and felt sorry for him and feeling sorry for him only made him dislike him more. Loser had no right to make people feel sorry for him.

  But all the same …

  ‘I’ve got to take some books back to the library,’ he said lamely. ‘I forgot to do it yesterday.’

  ‘But …’ Budgie shrugged. ‘Sure, suit yourself,’ he said, and ran off.

  Chapter 2

  FRIDAY, 8.35 A.M.

  Mike trudged across the tatty bitumen. Already the air was rising in small liquid shimmers above it, thick with the peculiarly school-like smell of old wood, kids and concrete.

  School smells hot, of books and rot, said Mike’s feet, as they tramped across the bitumen.

  It was cooler on the veranda. The thick brick walls were gloomy in winter — all cold-damp and streaked with pigeon droppings where the birds perched and waited for the bell, knowing that it meant a fresh lot of scraps were about to be delivered to the schoolyard — but you were glad of the shade in summer.

  It was an okay school, Mike supposed. At least there was plenty of space. The school had been getting steadily smaller for the past twenty years, as the shirt factory on the outskirts of town closed down and then the train line, and lots of families had moved away. There was even talk of closing the high school altogether, which would mean he’d have to bus it an hour each way to Gunyabah every day, or else go and board in Sydney, away from everyone he’d ever known.

  What was the point of high school anyway, thought Mike, as his footsteps clattered on the splintery wood. It wasn’t like there was anything he really wanted to do after he left school, not that doctor-lawyer-engineer-type stuff Mum was always on about, anyway. Sheesh, imagine being shut up in an office all day without even any school holidays …