The January Stars

by Kate Constable

  ‘So many, many spiders,’ announced Tash. ‘And I can’t find it.’

  ‘Didn’t Pa say it was above the door?’

  ‘You have a look.’

  Clancy hung back. ‘But – spiders!’

  Tash groaned theatrically and disappeared back under the house. There was more swearing, less muffled this time, and then a howl of triumph. ‘Got it!’

  Tash sprinted up the path, brandishing an old, dirt-encrusted brass key attached to a miniature model of the Eiffel Tower. ‘Is this it, Pa?’

  Pa examined the key and the key ring. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Clancy. ‘How many years has that been there?’

  Pa held up five fingers, flashed five again, five again, looked slightly lost, and shrugged.

  ‘A long time, anyway,’ said Clancy.

  ‘Moment of truth. Are you excited?’ Tash wiggled the key into the front door lock, paused for dramatic effect, and grinned at Pa. ‘It’s open!’

  ‘Tash, do you think we should …?’ began Clancy nervously, but Tash talked over her.

  ‘Hey, we could stay here for dinner! We could get pizza delivered!’

  There was a short pause. Clancy said cautiously, ‘If we did get pizza – hypothetically – would we have enough money for the taxi back?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Tash after a moment. ‘I think so.’

  ‘I don’t think we would,’ said Clancy.

  The sisters stared at each other.

  ‘Sp-sp-sp?’ said Pa.

  ‘Oh, nothing. It’s just Clancy always has to ruin everything,’ said Tash bitterly. ‘Because she’s a ruiner.’

  ‘Sp-sp?’

  ‘She thinks we’re going to run out of cash!’

  As if that was a totally ridiculous idea, instead of a rational, reasonable thing to worry about, thought Clancy crossly.

  Pa gave a sudden gasp, as if he’d had an electric shock. ‘Hah!’ He jabbed his finger urgently back at the side of the house. ‘Sp-sp-sp!’

  ‘What?’ Tash frowned. ‘You don’t want to go inside? You want to go round the back?’

  Pa shook his head impatiently. ‘Yeah – no!’

  ‘Do you need the toilet again?’ asked Clancy.

  ‘There’s something else under the house?’ guessed Tash. ‘A secret tunnel? A trapdoor?’

  ‘Pfft!’ Pa held up his finger. He mimed pushing his way through a jungle, or a curtain, peering into darkness, then grasping something in his hand. ‘Aha!’

  ‘But I found the key already.’ Tash pushed the front door open and sighed. ‘I’ll go and look. Clancy, ruiner, you take Pa inside.’

  ‘But Tash, are you sure we’re allowed? Is this legal?’

  Furiously Tash grabbed the wheelchair handles. ‘Okay, I’ll take Pa in, and you go and look.’

  ‘Tash, don’t be mean!’ wailed Clancy, as if she and Tash were still six and eight, instead of twelve (about to start high school) and fourteen (playing in a football team with adult women, and able to learn to drive next year). But Tash had already trundled Pa inside.

  She can’t make me.

  But somehow, an ancient force of obedience to her older sister drove Clancy down the path to the little wooden door. The dugout under the house was like a cave, where Pa had kept his chainsaw and ladders; but the tenants had asked Polly for a proper garden shed instead. Maybe they didn’t like spiders either. Shuddering, her hands held out protectively in front of her, Clancy shuffled into the darkness.

  She stood there, blinking, while her eyes adjusted. Tiny stars of light shone through the ventilation grilles, and soon Clancy found that she could see veils of cobwebs strung across the low-roofed cavity.

  ‘I’m not going any further in!’ she said aloud.

  Stepping back, she heard a crunch and her heart jumped as her foot came down on something – a snake? A rat trap? No, it was just a long stick. Instinctively she picked it up like a sword and slashed it back and forth until most of the cobwebs were gone. Tash had had it easy, with the key above the door. Whatever the other thing was that Pa wanted, it was obviously hidden right at the back of the dugout. Maybe it was even buried. How would she ever find it?

  A sudden memory returned to Clancy, from when she was very little. She remembered coming down here with Nan, and her grandmother holding her hand. The dark is nothing to be scared of, Nan had said; without the dark, we wouldn’t have the stars. And with Nan’s hand gripping hers, Clancy hadn’t been quite so scared to go under the house.

  The memory was so vivid that Clancy even caught a whiff of the lily-of-the-valley perfume that Nan had always worn, as if her grandmother were standing right beside her.

  ‘Nan?’ whispered Clancy. She inched forward, her sword-stick raised in front of her. The ladders and boxes and chainsaws Pa had stored down here had been cleared out before the house was rented. Polly had probably already found whatever it was Pa had hidden … although she hadn’t discovered that spare key.

  Come on, Clancy. Nothing to be scared of.

  Narrow rods of sunlight poked through the grilles as she edged forward. Was that something moving in the shadows? Clancy whirled around, but the space was empty – there was nowhere to hide. She crept right up to the earth wall at the very back of the dugout and touched it with her fingertips. And there was the scent of lily-of-the-valley again, just for a split second, stronger this time in the stale air.

  ‘Nan? Am I getting warmer?’

  Clancy tapped the wall with her stick, then she ran it along the top of the wall where the cavity joined the underside of the house.

  The tip of the stick struck something. Something metallic, something hard.

  Clancy’s heart bumped. She stretched up on her toes and swept the stick across the rough ledge at the top of the wall. A rusted old biscuit tin jumped out and clattered at her feet.

  For a second she stood there frozen, disbelieving. Then she picked up the tin and hugged it to her chest as she stumbled to the doorway. Sunlight blinded her as she ran up the path to the front door, and burst into the house.

  ‘Is this it, Pa? Is this what you were talking about?’

  Pa was in his wheelchair in front of the big glass doors that opened onto the deck. Tash was just pulling back the curtains so he could see the view.

  Clancy dropped the tin in his lap and Pa gave a shout of delight. He struggled to prise off the lid with one hand, but he couldn’t manage it, even with Clancy holding onto the tin.

  ‘What’s that?’ Tash took the tin and yanked off the rusted lid.

  Crumpled orange and purple and blue banknotes fluttered to the floor like a cloud of butterflies.

  ‘Aha!’ cried Pa. ‘Sp-sp-sp!’ He launched into one of his long, incomprehensible stories, with many gestures and much arm-waving. But he seemed to realise quickly that it was hopeless this time, and shrugged his shoulder to say, well, there it is, anyway.

  ‘So you hid the money under the house?’ said Clancy. ‘What for?’

  ‘Sp-sp-sp,’ explained Pa.

  Tash knelt down and began gathering the notes into piles. ‘There’s about five hundred dollars here! Did you rob a bank? Was it in case the house burned down in a bushfire? Or were you hiding it from the tax office?’

  ‘Sp-sp-sp!’ said Pa indignantly.

  ‘And Polly doesn’t know about this?’ asked Clancy, thrilled. ‘Or Dad, or Mark, or the twins?’

  ‘Nope,’ said Pa smugly.

  ‘Did Nan know?’

  Pa’s face softened. ‘Yes.’

  Clancy almost told them then, about the scent of lily-of-the-valley, and that sudden vivid memory that had pushed her forward. But she knew Tash wouldn’t believe her. She wasn’t sure she believed it herself. Instead she said vaguely, ‘Maybe Nan helped me find it. Maybe she was, I dunno, guiding me.’

  ‘Lucky she didn’t guide the tenants.’ Tash sat back on her heels. ‘Well, we are definitely getting pizza now.’

  It was strange being in Pa’s empty house, with no furniture, no
books on the shelves, and none of Nan’s photographs on the walls. The echoing rooms felt bigger than Clancy remembered. The house was cool and dim and shadowy, with the musty smell that rooms acquire when they’ve been closed up for a while.

  Pa didn’t seem very interested in the house itself. He was gazing out at the view of the national park, the slopes blanketed with deep grey-green, and the huge, overgrown garden with its towering gum trees.

  ‘Sp-sp-sp!’ He gestured impatiently and Tash pushed him out onto the deck.

  Nan and Pa’s house had been built on a double block, more like a patch of bushland than a garden, except for the section near the deck where he’d tended his vegetable beds and fruit trees. A cockatoo screamed from the top of a massive eucalypt, then swooped over the roof with sunlight dazzling on its bright white wings.

  ‘Sp-sp-sp!’

  ‘Even I don’t need to look up that one,’ said Clancy.

  Pa clucked his tongue as he noticed the dandelions and wild onion grass that had sprung up in the vegetable patch, and the rotting, fallen fruit beneath the lemon and orange trees. ‘Sp-sp-sp,’ he said gloomily.

  Tash leaned precariously over the railing. ‘But check out the apples, Pa.’

  The apple tree was laden with golden fruit like Christmas baubles. ‘Ha!’ said Pa, pleased. ‘So-it-is.’

  Tash gave him a teasing nudge. ‘They grew all by themselves, without any help from you!’

  ‘Nah!’ protested Pa. ‘Sp-sp-sp.’

  Tash ran down the steps from the deck and picked an armful of apples. She and Pa and Clancy sat out on the deck as the golden sunshine slanted through the trees, crunching and slurping. The apples were sweet and crisp and juicy. Far away, a kookaburra let out a joyous laugh, and Clancy forgot to be worried about being there. If her grandmother’s ghost was haunting the house, she thought, Nan would be glad to see them sitting here together, eating apples, just like when she was still alive and Clancy’s family had lived there with her and Pa. Clancy had eaten apples then, too. Nan had cut them up for her. She was sure she could remember that. Clancy took another bite.

  While they waited for Pa to finish in the toilet, Tash propped herself against the wall as she scrolled through her phone.

  ‘Streaks?’ said Clancy.

  ‘Ordering pizza.’

  ‘Oh! Were you serious about that?’

  ‘Of course. Why not?’

  ‘But – shouldn’t we take Pa home soon? Won’t they be worried?’

  ‘They’re not expecting him at The Elms. That nurse said we should keep him overnight at Polly’s, remember? And I’ve got his pills. Anyway,’ added Tash, ‘Pa is home.’

  Clancy scuffed the carpet with her toe and said nothing.

  ‘Come on, Clance!’ hissed Tash. ‘Don’t ruin this as well. Pa’s so happy. We can’t take him back to that horrible place. He’d much rather be here.’

  ‘You always think you can read Pa’s mind!’ whispered Clancy fiercely. ‘But you don’t know what he’s thinking.’

  Pa banged on the wall to say he was ready to come out. Tash wheeled the chair into the bathroom and helped him shuffle round and drop into the seat. ‘You don’t want to leave yet, do you, Pa? You want to stay a bit longer?’

  Pa laid his hand on his heart, gazed at the ceiling and murmured. He gestured all around, then pressed his hand to his heart again.

  Tash gave Clancy a look. ‘I’m taking that as a yes.’

  Clancy sighed. ‘Okay, okay.’

  They took Pa on a tour of the empty house while they waited for the pizza to arrive: the yellow master bedroom, Mark and Tim’s blue room, the green-painted room that had once been Polly’s, the pink bedroom that the twins had shared. The old-fashioned bathroom had a deep tub that Tash and Clancy and Bruno had all fitted in together on weekend visits. (Tash shuddered. ‘Thank God Nan never took a photo of that!’)

  There was a built-in cupboard tucked into a corner of the dining room where Clancy used to hide (she could hardly squeeze into it now) and a broad window seat where Nan used to sit and read.

  ‘And she had a telescope out on the deck, didn’t she?’ said Tash. ‘I wonder what happened to that?’

  ‘Sp-sp-sp,’ said Pa; but of course they didn’t understand.

  ‘Nan had a telescope?’ said Clancy. ‘Is that where I get it from?’

  ‘Clancy has this thing about space,’ Tash told Pa.

  ‘Ah!’ Pa pointed up to the roof, then made a circle with his fingers and mimed peering through it. ‘Hm.’ He looked expectantly up at Clancy.

  ‘Nan liked stars, too?’ said Tash. ‘Is that what you’re saying, Pa?’

  ‘Yes, yes!’

  Pa fumbled for Clancy’s hand and squeezed it.

  If only Nan hadn’t died, thought Clancy sadly. They could have talked about astronomy. Nan could have taught her how to use a telescope and they could have watched the stars together. Maybe she and Nan would have become special friends, the way that Pa and Tash were. Maybe Clancy would have been Nan’s favourite grandchild, the way Bruno was the favourite of Po Po, their Chinese grandmother in Sydney. But now she’d never know.

  Holding hands, she and Pa gazed out of the window in silence.

  By the time they’d eaten the pizza, twilight was creeping over the hills, and Clancy was fidgety.

  ‘Tash? Are you going to call the taxi now?’

  Tash looked across at Pa. ‘You don’t want to go back to The Elms yet, do you?’

  The light went out of Pa’s eyes, and his head drooped. ‘No,’ he whispered, so softly that Clancy barely heard him.

  Tash put her arm around his shoulders. ‘We could stay a bit longer.’

  Clancy stared at her. ‘Stay? You mean, stay here?’

  ‘Why not? No one will even know. The staff at The Elms think he’s at Polly’s, they won’t care.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Pfft!’ Pa walked his fingers through the air, flicked them, shielded his eyes to scan the horizon, and gave an exaggerated shrug.

  ‘Even if they did know he was here, they wouldn’t care,’ translated Tash. ‘They don’t even want him back. You heard what that nurse said – he’s always in trouble.’

  ‘Sp-sp,’ agreed Pa.

  ‘Neneh,’ murmured Clancy.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That nurse – her name’s Neneh.’

  ‘Whatever,’ said Tash irritably.

  There was a short silence.

  Clancy said, ‘But there’s no furniture. Where are we going to sleep?’

  ‘Curtains,’ said Tash matter-of-factly. ‘And Pa can sleep in his chair. He sleeps in his chair all day at The Elms.’

  ‘Sp-sp,’ said Pa. Watch this. Awkwardly, one-handed, he wheeled himself across to the window seat and raised his left foot to rest it on the ledge. ‘Ta-da!’

  ‘See?’ said Tash. ‘He’ll be fine.’

  ‘Ah!’ Pa pointed to his open mouth.

  ‘Are you still hungry? Do you want more pizza? A drink?’

  Pa shook his head.

  ‘Medicine?’ guessed Clancy.

  ‘Yes!’ Pa beamed at her.

  Tash clicked her fingers. ‘Good call, peanut.’

  Clancy glowed with pride.

  They filled a water bottle for Pa, and Tash poured the evening’s allocation of pills into his palm. ‘Seven – eight! What are they all for?’

  Pa shrugged stoically as he swallowed them all down.

  ‘Wow,’ said Clancy, who would rather suffer a headache than force herself to choke down a painkiller. ‘That is a lot of pills.’

  Tash unhooked the bedroom curtains and Pa propped his feet on the window seat, cuddled himself under folds of drapery and gave the girls a thumbs-up. He was so tired that he fell asleep almost instantly.

  ‘They put them to bed at six-thirty at The Elms,’ said Tash.

  It was nearly dark outside. Clancy slipped out onto the deck to gaze up at the sky. The full moon was pasted above the black bulk of the hills like a disc of
silver foil. The trees blocked out some sections of the sky, but there was a clear patch where Clancy could see a scattering of stars. They were much sharper than the stars she could make out through the window at home, and there were more of them. If only she had Nan’s telescope, she might have been able to find some planets, she might have been able to read the January stars …

  Nan? thought Clancy experimentally. Are you here? She sniffed tentatively, but she couldn’t detect any lily-of-the-valley.

  And then a point of light streaked across the sky, plunged behind the hills and vanished.

  It was so fast that Clancy wasn’t certain she’d really seen it. But her heart was pounding hard, and she knew, she knew, it was a sign from her grandmother.

  She jumped as the sliding door behind her rasped and Tash came out onto the deck. ‘What are you doing out here? I’ve made us beds out of curtains. Come and look.’

  ‘I saw a meteor, Tash! I asked Nan for a sign, and then there was a meteor! She’s here, she’s watching us!’

  ‘Yeah, right. Nan’s ghost can set off shooting stars. I thought you believed in science?’

  ‘I do – I know – but still … Can you smell that?’

  ‘All I can smell is gum trees and your sweaty socks. Why, what can you smell?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Clancy. ‘It’s gone now.’

  Tash folded her arms and squinted at the sky. ‘Hey, Nan! Are you listening? Send us another meteorite.’

  ‘It’s a meteor when it’s in the atmosphere,’ said Clancy. ‘It’s only a meteorite when it hits the ground.’

  Tash flourished her arm. ‘Whatever it is, I’m not seeing it. Or smelling it.’

  Maybe she did it for me because I’m her favourite, thought Clancy. But she didn’t say so.

  ‘Go on, make her do it again,’ said Tash.

  ‘Magic doesn’t work like that,’ said Clancy stubbornly.

  ‘How convenient,’ said Tash. ‘Come inside.’

  Tash had made nests for them both from the soft netting of the curtains. Clancy wriggled about. ‘I wish I had a pillow.’