More candles going out. Creepy singing. Mum is bawling now. That long hair, those wonky eyes, those holes in him – it looks like my Dad. That’s who it is. Then it’s real dark and I get Mum up and take her out and people go ‘Ssh!’ at us and I tell them up their bum and take Mum out to the car.
‘I. Can’t. Drive,’ she sobs. ‘Cant. Drive. State. I’m. God.’
So I put her in the back, get her to lie down on the seat, and I drive the stolen 1958 FC Holden Special all the way home. In one gear. I thought it would be easy, but it’s not. The car goes all over the place. I knock down six fence posts and go into the storm gutter at the side of the road twice and get out again. Mum bawls in the back. I can hardly see out the windscreen. Rabbits run all over the road.
I keep it straight all the way down the drive, but I don’t stop properly and I take a bit off the back shed. I get Mum inside and put her in bed with Dad and she cuddles up to him, still crying. Everything is dark. Me brain is going flat-chat and I can’t keep still. I look in on Grammar. She’s asleep. I look in on Tegwyn. I see the big lump in the bed. I see Henry Warburton’s hairy arm. I see them in bed together and I go to my room and think.
I lie there thinking for a long time. I think about my Dad being a good man and him being smashed up for no reason. I think about God and Jesus and Henry Warburton and his dreams and his false eye. And I think about my sister Tegwyn who can’t love us. And I think about Grammar punching someone in the teeth with one hand and playing beautiful music with the other . . .
In the night I wake up.
‘Who’s there?’
I turn the light on. Grammar is calling.
I get up and go into the hall. I look in on Tegwyn and her and him are biting each other and hitting each other, with his hairy bum up and her making hate noises at him and the bed squealing.
I go down to Grammar.
‘Coming for me. Waiting a long . . . old I am. Too old.’
I go to sleep there.
Everyone is very quiet today. Henry Warburton works on the stolen car. Tegwyn paints her nails on the verandah. Mum cooks, quiet, not speaking. I see her hands shaking. The whole day goes away like that. Except that I see things. Those canisters change all day. The rubies and diamonds and things come and go all day. Mum doesn’t notice; like she’s seeing something far inside herself; birds look in the window. One flies against the glass and kills itself and I bury it. The fire in the stove keeps going out. And I keep lighting it. In the evening everyone stays in their rooms. I go to sleep early, like I haven’t been asleep all my life.
Chapter Twenty
IN THE MORNING I know. Mum is crying. I get up and do a check. My whole body is heavy, like I’m wrapped in a blanket. I can hardly walk. There’s this mist, like me eyes’ve got something in them. Cloudy. Through all the holes and cracks in this old house, there’s stuff coming in. It’s like cloud but it’s light. Coming in the cracks. Mum is in Grammar’s room. She’s half on the bed and Grammar is grey and all gone in the face and I know she’s gone.
‘She’s dead,’ Mum says, without looking up.
I feel sick and heavy, and all this light is pouring in like smoke and I go out into the hall again and open Tegwyn’s door. The bed is empty. Even the blankets and sheets are gone. I open a cupboard. Empty. I go into the loungeroom and see all Henry Warburton’s stuff gone and only his Bible on the sofa. Me heart is smashing around. The cloudy white light is coming in – I breathe it in; it’s warm and it tastes good. Me head’s nearly bursting. I go to the window. The car is gone. Big skid marks all over the drive. Birds shout in the trees. The smell of bush flowers comes in real strong. I can smell milk. I can smell the honey from the bees. The dying trees look strong and thick and all the colours come in the window like someone’s pouring them in on us. A bell ringing from the forest – it makes the china rattle in the kitchen and it puts tingles up me back and makes me hair electric. Everywhere, in through all my looking places and the places I never even thought of – under the doors, up through the boards – that beautiful cloud creeps in. This house is filling with light and crazy music and suddenly I know what’s going to happen and it’s like the whole flaming world’s suddenly making sense for a second and I run to the kitchen and grab the big bottle of SAFFLOWER OIL and back into the loungeroom and snatch up the big black Bible and burst into Mum’s room and there’s my Dad with these tears coming down his cheeks, pinpoints of light that hurt me eyes, tears like diamonds, I tell you. His eyes are open and they’re on me and smiling as I come in shouting ‘God! God! God!’ His face is shining. I’m shaking all over. ‘God! God! God!’
I get the lid off the bottle wading through the music, and the oil splashes all over him and Mum comes in laughing and the cloud fills the room till all I can see is his eyes burning white and I know that something, something here in this world is gonna break.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tim Winton has published twenty-one books for adults and children, and his work has been translated into twenty-five languages. Since his first novel, An Open Swimmer, won the Australian/Vogel Award in 1981, he has won the Miles Franklin Award four times (for Shallows, Cloudstreet, Dirt Music and Breath) and twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize (for The Riders and Dirt Music). He lives in Western Australia.
ALSO BY TIM WINTON
Novels
An Open Swimmer
Shallows
In the Winter Dark
Cloudstreet
The Riders
Dirt Music
Breath
Stories
Scission
Minimum of Two
The Turning
For younger readers
Jesse
Lockie Leonard, Human Torpedo
The Bugalugs Bum Thief
Lockie Leonard, Scumbuster
Lockie Leonard, Legend
Blueback
The Deep
Non-fiction
Land’s Edge
Down to Earth (with Richard Woldendorp)
Smalltown (with Martin Mischkulnig)
Plays
Rising Water
Signs of Life
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (Australia)
707 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3008, Australia
(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
Penguin Group (NZ)
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(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London, WC2R 0RL, England
First published by McPhee Gribble, 1986
This digital edition published by Penguin Group (Australia), 2012
Copyright © Tim Winton, 1986
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Cover design by John Canty © Penguin Group (Australia)
Cover photograph by Garry Moore
eISBN: 9781742537382
penguin.com.au
Tim Winton, That Eye, the Sky
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