The January Stars

by Kate Constable

  The train came thundering into the station. Tash gripped the handles of the wheelchair as the train roared by, slowing as it slid along the platform. Pa clutched the arm of his chair tightly as Tash trundled him toward the nearest set of doors. Clancy hurried to open them.

  ‘Careful, Tash, there’s a massive gap.’

  ‘I’ve got it,’ said Tash grimly, tilting the chair back.

  ‘Whoa!’ cried Pa.

  ‘Tash, watch out!’

  ‘Help me then!’

  ‘I can’t – I don’t—’

  Before Clancy had a chance to do anything, a brown-skinned young woman in a hijab darted out of the train and grabbed the frame of the wheelchair to help Tash lift it up and over the gap and safely into the carriage. A whistle blew, Pa cried out urgently, Tash leapt on board and Clancy scrambled after her just in time as the doors hissed shut.

  The train jolted and Clancy was thrown against the rail near the doorway. The wheelchair rolled and Pa gave another cry of alarm.

  ‘I’ve got you, I’ve got you.’ The young woman in the hijab guided the chair into a secure corner and expertly flipped on the brakes.

  ‘I can do that!’ said Tash.

  ‘It’s no problem.’ The woman sat down and smiled at Pa. ‘You’re supposed to ask the station staff to bring out a ramp, you know. You’re supposed to get on at the front, near the driver.’

  ‘We didn’t know,’ said Tash defensively. ‘We’ve never been on a train before.’

  ‘Never been on a train?’ The woman raised her eyebrows at Pa, who shrugged his shoulder, shook his head, and indicated his wheelchair.

  ‘Not since his stroke,’ said Tash. ‘He’s been on trains before. And so have we. Obviously. But not with him.’

  The woman smiled at Pa. ‘She doesn’t give you a chance to say very much, does she?’

  ‘Our grandfather can’t talk.’ Clancy jumped in to defend her sister as she would never have defended herself. ‘He can understand everything you say, but he’s got – um—’

  ‘Aphasia,’ growled Tash.

  ‘Oh, okay. That’s so sad.’

  The woman smiled at Pa again, but this time it was not a playful, conspiratorial grin, but a pitying smile, and suddenly Clancy felt furious. Yes, it sucked that Pa couldn’t walk, or speak when he wanted to, or even push his own wheelchair with his one good hand (not far, anyway), or live in his own house anymore. But this woman didn’t even know him. How dare she feel sorry for him. How dare she look at him like that!

  ‘He’s fine!’ said Clancy loudly. She laid her hand on Pa’s bony shoulder, and he reached up to give it a pat.

  ‘Sp-sp-sp,’ he said soothingly, and the young woman suddenly became very busy looking at her phone.

  At the next station, more people climbed on board. Even though it was summer holidays, the train was almost full of commuters. Tash and Clancy were crowded up against the wheelchair, shielding Pa. Some people glared at them, as if his chair were taking up precious space that actually belonged to regular travellers. Tash glared right back at them.

  Clancy wished she was brave enough to do the same. Instead, she stared rigidly into the middle distance and avoided catching anyone’s eye while being jostled helplessly this way and that by taller, heavier bodies.

  Are we doing the right thing, Nan? she asked silently, but realised even as she formed the thought that she couldn’t see out of the windows; she wouldn’t be able to see a sign from Nan even if her grandmother sent one.

  But then, just for a second, she caught a whiff of lily-of-the-valley. She twisted her head hopefully, but the scent had vanished. If she told Tash, her sister would probably say that it was coming from one of the other passengers. But Clancy felt comforted.

  The journey from Rosella to the city took an hour. When the train pulled into the central station at Flinders Street, at last, the squashed-in passengers burst from the doors as if a cork had popped, and scattered in all directions. Clancy was swept out onto the platform by the flood of people.

  ‘Tash? Tash!’

  She turned and tried to fight through the crowd, but she couldn’t push her way back onto the train. She was too small, and she couldn’t see. What if this wasn’t where Tash had wanted to get off? How would she ever find them again?

  But then, even in her panic, she caught sight of Tash, carefully backing Pa out of a different doorway with the help of a big burly red-haired man in a hi-vis vest. ‘No worries, love,’ said the man cheerfully as he strode away.

  Tash was scanning the crowd, peering back inside the train, swivelling her head in all directions. ‘Clancy?’ she called.

  The doors sighed shut. The train was moving.

  Tash screamed, ‘Clancy!’

  ‘I’m here, I’m here!’

  Pa touched Tash’s elbow and pointed as Clancy hurried over, waving.

  Tash grabbed her arm and shook her. ‘Where were you? I couldn’t see you! We have to stick together. Why didn’t you get off with us?’

  Tash freaking out was more scary than nearly being lost. Clancy’s throat tightened, and tears blurred in her eyes. Pa patted her arm, then Tash’s, and pantomimed wiping his brow. ‘Phew!’

  The train had roared away now, and the press of people was thinning out. Clancy wiped her face on her sleeve as Tash stared up and down the platform.

  ‘Okay. No police.’

  ‘Yay,’ said Clancy weakly. ‘We made it.’

  ‘So far,’ said Tash sternly. ‘We have to stick together.’

  ‘Like glue. Like magnets. Like gravity, holding planets in orbit—’

  ‘It’s not funny, Clancy!’

  ‘I wasn’t trying to be funny.’

  ‘I mean it. If we get separated, with no phone—’ Tash didn’t finish the sentence. Pressing her lips together in a firm line, she grasped the wheelchair handles, and pushed.

  Tash took Pa into the disabled toilet at the station while Clancy waited outside. Sometime, she guessed, maybe sometime soon, it would be her turn to hold the wheelchair while Pa hauled himself up and onto the loo, her turn to pull the chair out of the way and turn her back while he did what he had to do, to manoeuvre the chair back into position when he was done, and wheel him to the basin to wash his hands – or hand, in Pa’s case. But until Tash insisted, Clancy wasn’t going to volunteer. This was one eldest-grandchild privilege that Tash was welcome to hang onto as long as she wanted it.

  Clancy glanced up at the clock on the concourse. It was just before nine. If this had been a normal summer holiday morning, she wouldn’t have even been awake yet.

  The sun slanted between the buildings and the glass of the skyscrapers dazzled white and gold. Seagulls wheeled above the slow brown ribbon of the river, pigeons strutted on the pavement, and sparrows darted for crumbs. Plenty of birds for Pa to look at, anyway.

  Was the moon still there? Was Nan still watching over them, now that they’d left Rosella? There had been that hint of lily-of-the-valley on the train, but another sign would be reassuring. Clancy tried to catch a glimpse of the full moon between the towers as she followed Tash and Pa along the main street, but she couldn’t see it anywhere. She was so intent on peering up at the distant wedges of sky that she walked into Tash’s back.

  ‘What are you doing?’ said Tash crossly.

  Clancy thought quickly. ‘Just – looking for somewhere to eat. I’m starving.’

  They were passing a fast food outlet. Tash said scornfully, ‘We can do better than that.’

  ‘Sp-sp-sp,’ said Pa to himself. Well, I wouldn’t mind. Clancy guessed he didn’t get Maccas at The Elms.

  Pa gazed happily round at the shops and signs and pedestrians hurrying past. A fruit stall glowed with apples and oranges; buckets of flowers sparkled with dew. The smell of frying bacon and hot chips followed them down the street, and Clancy’s mouth watered.

  Clancy soon gave up looking for the moon. She was so nervous about losing Pa and Tash in the big, noisy, confusing jumble of people and tra
ffic and streets and buildings that she kept close to her sister, almost treading on Tash’s heels as she pushed Pa’s wheelchair steadily up the street, past the cathedral and the town hall, past souvenir shops and shoe shops and banks and clothing stores, weaving the wheelchair between tourists and students and skateboarders, buskers and beggars and businesspeople in suits.

  ‘Down here.’ At the top of the hill, Tash steered the wheelchair down a skinny side street, round a corner, and then another, into an even narrower laneway.

  ‘This is it.’ Tash tipped Pa’s wheelchair up a low step and into a tiny Japanese café that Clancy would never have noticed. The miniature lettering on the front window read Breakfast in Kyoto.

  The whole café was not much bigger than their cluttered living room at home, crowded with little wooden tables and cherry-red stools. Strings of silken red blossoms were looped across the walls, and paper lanterns dangled from the ceiling. Pa’s wheelchair nudged the flimsy furniture aside like a whale nosing through a school of dolphins. A few solitary customers sat by the walls, hunched over laptops and teapots. A pale freckled girl stood guard over the register; she wore a black T-shirt, and tattoos swirled over her arms and up the side of her neck.

  Tash gave her a brilliant smile as she steered Pa to a corner table. ‘Hi! Is Josie working today?’

  The pale girl shook her head. ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh, too bad. She’s a friend of mine.’ Tash flashed the brilliant smile again. This was a side of her sister that Clancy didn’t often get to see in action – public Tash, social Tash, charming Tash.

  But her charm seemed wasted on the pale-skinned girl. ‘Oh, yeah? That’s nice.’ She laid two menus down on the table.

  Tash handed them straight back to her. ‘We’ll have the breakfast special for three, thanks.’

  When the waitress had gone, Tash reverted to the sister Clancy knew. She thrust the backpack into Clancy’s arms and hissed, ‘I’m going to the toilet. Can you manage to not throw this under a truck while I’m gone?’

  Hurt, Clancy pulled up a stool, hugging the bag to her chest.

  ‘Sp-sp-sp?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Clancy whispered back. What did people eat for breakfast in Japan, anyway? Clancy wasn’t a massive fan of Japanese, or Thai, or even Chinese food. Just because her mother was Chinese, why did people always assume she’d love Asian food? Whatever this waitress was about to bring them, Clancy was sure it wouldn’t be anything she’d want to eat. Almost definitely not cereal.

  The girl who wasn’t Josie reappeared with a jug of water and three glasses. Clancy noticed she had dark eyeliner tattooed beneath her eyes to give them an upswept look. That must have really hurt.

  ‘Sp-sp-sp?’ Pa held out his left hand for the waitress to shake. He loved meeting new people.

  Pa looked expectantly at Clancy. Embarrassed, she mumbled, ‘This is Godfrey. My grandfather.’

  ‘Cool name. Nice to meet you.’ The waitress shook his hand, and her eyes slid from Clancy to Pa and back again.

  No, he’s not Asian, Clancy felt like yelling at her. Our mum is Chinese-Australian. Want to see my birth certificate?

  But the waitress didn’t ask. She drifted away as a customer got up to pay, and Clancy stared at the table, her cheeks hot. She was sure that everyone in the café was staring at her and Pa.

  At last Tash came back, damp around the edges of her face and hair as if she’d just had a good wash.

  ‘So what is the breakfast special?’ asked Clancy.

  ‘It’s Japanese,’ said Tash briskly. ‘You’ll love it.’

  ‘No, I won’t,’ muttered Clancy.

  ‘Soz.’ Tash shrugged. ‘You could have ordered something else.’

  Yeah, right, thought Clancy.

  When the food arrived, Clancy was duly unimpressed. There was a large bowl of white rice, small bowls of brown broth, a pot of green tea, and a plate of little yellow parcels that turned out to be rolls of omelette.

  Clancy sniffed at the broth. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Miso soup.’

  ‘Sp-sp-sp?’ said Pa.

  ‘It’s super healthy. Full of antioxidants.’

  ‘What are the green bits?’

  ‘Seaweed.’

  ‘For breakfast?’

  ‘Pfft!’ But Pa was game to try anything, and when Tash dipped an omelette in the soup, he eagerly copied her. ‘Mm!’

  Resigned, Clancy filled a bowl with plain rice and sprinkled it with soy sauce. ‘The first thing I’m going to do when we get home is make myself a giant bowl of cereal.’

  Tash poured herself a tiny cup of green tea. ‘Yeah, about that …’

  Clancy’s stomach, which had been feeling almost normal again with some food inside it, plunged like a rollercoaster. She put down her fork. ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t think we can go back to our place.’

  ‘What?’ said Pa.

  ‘Think about it. How could we carry the wheelchair up onto the tram? And then how would we lift it down again at our stop? Even the train was a nightmare, and that was all on one level.’

  ‘We could walk there,’ said Clancy desperately.

  ‘You think? Okay, you can push.’

  ‘Call another taxi then. We can borrow someone’s phone—’

  ‘I thought of that. That’s why I was hoping Josie would be here. But she isn’t. Anyway—’ Tash leaned across the table and lowered her voice. ‘It’s not safe. The police must have our descriptions out by now, and they’ll have found out our address. Big data, you know. They’re probably staking out our place right now.’

  ‘Sp-sp-sp?’ Pa looked bewildered.

  Tash stabbed an omelette roll with a chopstick. ‘Also …’ Clancy and Pa waited until she’d swallowed. ‘I’ve been thinking, and I don’t reckon Pa could live at our place. Our flat isn’t even big enough for us. Where would he sleep? On the couch?’

  Pa bowed his head. ‘I – understand,’ he whispered, one of those rare times when the words emerged all by themselves.

  ‘So …’ said Clancy. ‘What are we going to do now?’

  Tash scowled. ‘I don’t know. Why do I have to be the one who thinks of everything?’

  Clancy stared at her. ‘Because you’re good at it!’

  ‘Well, I’m sick of it. Someone else’s turn.’

  Clancy blinked at her bowl. Tash knew perfectly well that Clancy never had ideas, and even if she did, she wasn’t brave enough to carry them out. Clancy was not born to be an outlaw. Being fugitives on the run seemed exciting on television. But in real life, it wasn’t much fun at all.

  ‘If you dare cry,’ said Tash through gritted teeth, ‘I will personally wring your neck.’

  Clancy sniffed, and heroically managed to hold in her tears. Pa groped in the back pocket of his wheelchair and handed her a tissue.

  ‘I’ll pay.’ Tash opened the backpack and pulled out the biscuit tin. It was hard to be discreet in the tiny café, and Clancy was aware of the pale waitress staring. Tash glared back at her as she tucked the tin away and took some notes across to the register.

  ‘Wow,’ said the waitress, holding the money. ‘That’s a lot of cash you’ve got in there.’

  Other customers were watching now, over the tops of their screens, or twisted round on their stools.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Tash. ‘It belongs to our grandfather. He doesn’t like cards, he likes cash. You got a problem with that?’

  ‘It just seems like a lot of cash, you know?’

  ‘What, you think we stole it or something?’

  ‘I dunno. Did you?’

  ‘No!’

  Tash and the waitress stared at each other.

  ‘Maybe,’ said the waitress, after a pause, ‘maybe it was stolen from a poor old man who can’t look out for himself.’ Slowly her hand moved toward the phone lying on the counter.

  ‘Sp-sp-sp!’ cried Pa indignantly. He grabbed the rim of his wheel and pulled. The wheelchair crashed into a table; Pa changed direction
and knocked over a stool.

  ‘Clancy!’ yelled Tash.

  Clancy seized the handles of the chair and clumsily shoved Pa toward the door. Tash pulled the door wide, they bumped up and over the step and then they were racing up the laneway, bouncing Pa over the cobbles. Tash nudged Clancy aside and took the handles herself.

  ‘I didn’t – even – get the change!’ Tash panted as they ran.

  ‘Sp! Sp! Sp!’ said Pa jerkily over his shoulder.

  Tash groaned. ‘Yeah, you’re right. I can never go back there again.’

  Out in the strong summer sun, soaring towers of silver and glass glittered without mercy. The streets were glaring, dusty canyons, with no shade and nowhere to hide. Snatches of discordant music blared from shop doorways as they hurried past. And suddenly there seemed to be someone in uniform on every corner.

  Tash called to Clancy over her shoulder, ‘We need to get off the streets!’

  Clancy glanced around wildly. The city was a mystery to her. She had no idea where to go.

  Tash was already swerving the wheelchair down another side street, clearing the way with her cries of ‘Excuse me! Wheelchair coming through!’

  ‘Oh, Tash, no, not in there—’

  Her sister was heading for the doorway to one of the big department stores.

  ‘Nah, nah, nah,’ protested Pa.

  ‘Too noisy, too crowded!’ wailed Clancy.

  They halted in the middle of the narrow footpath to argue about it. ‘You got a better idea?’ demanded Tash.

  Clancy stared around desperately. Nan, please, I need a sign!

  Then she saw it: a mural of a blazing comet, streaking high across a wall above an old office building. Her heart leapt, and she flung out her hand. ‘This way!’

  Without waiting to see if Tash followed her, she plunged through the crowd, across a side street and along the block until she reached the site of the mural. Where to now? Gazing around, she caught sight of the Blue Moon Jazz Club, and headed for that.

  From the Lucky Star convenience store, to a Eureka flag with its five-star design outside a museum, to Planet Games, Clancy darted across the city, ducking down laneways, breasting waves of traffic, twisting this way and that to Nan’s next cosmic clue. Tash followed at her heels, grunting with effort, almost knocking pedestrians off the pavements as she swerved the wheelchair after her sister.