Kal (31 page)

‘The Palace Hotel, I suppose. Or the Australia, or the York.'

‘Exactly!' Gaston sat back, triumphant. ‘Hotels. Not restaurants. The dining rooms of hotels. Elegant hotels, grand hotels, I grant you, but hotels, my friend.'

He rose and started pacing about the terrace. He was genuinely excited by his idea. If spending time in Kalgoorlie did not carry with it the threat of divorce, he would settle there himself for however long it took to realise his dream.

‘Restaurant Picot,' he exclaimed. Already, in his mind's eye, Gaston could see the large gilt-edged menus:
Gastronomie de Gaston Picot
, and listed beneath would be his favourite classic dishes. He would employ a leading French chef who would invent new dishes too, ones which would bear his name,
Beouf á la Picot
, or
Fraiches de Gaston
. And the facade and decor of the restaurant would be the most luxurious Kalgoorlie had ever seen. Restaurant Picot would change the social face of the town.

For several years now, it had been evident to Gaston that there was not only wealth on the goldfields, there was a rapidly growing sense of refinement. It was high time Kalgoorlie palates were educated accordingly, he decided. And he, Gaston Picot, was the one to do it.

The interior of the restaurant would be jarrah-pan-elled, he declared. ‘Like my billiards room.' And there would be a large crystal chandelier. ‘Like the chandelier upstairs,' he said. ‘You have seen the ballroom?'

Harry nodded. He had indeed seen the ballroom. It was the first stop on Gabrielle's guided tour of Maison Picot the day after he'd arrived. The chandelier must have been six feet in diameter and of course it had been imported ‘at great expense'.

‘So, down to business,' Gaston said, satisfied that he had painted a sufficiently impressive picture of his restaurant. ‘I would like you to manage the project for me.' He returned to his chair and studied Harry's reaction. ‘You are welcome to invest in the property with me if you wish, but it is no matter if you do not. I have adequate funds available.'

‘I should like to invest.' Harry finally found his voice. The prospect was unbelievably exciting. ‘After all, I have the money from the Clover sale.' He grinned and the Frenchman grinned back.

‘Of course you have,
mon ami
.' Gaston leaned back in his chair and laughed. ‘We both have money from the sale of the Clover.' Gaston was delighted that Harry wanted to invest, although he had assumed the man would—it guaranteed a total commitment. And Gaston had a long-term plan. With a little grooming, Harry Brearley would make the ideal partner.

‘You have been involved with the local council over the past year or so, have you not?' he asked. Harry nodded. ‘Good. The more respectable the profile the better for the co-owner and manager of Restaurant Picot. So now we increase the stakes,
oui
? I presume that you would be happy to accept the office of mayor?'

‘Eh?' Things were suddenly moving too fast for Harry.

‘The mayoral office, that is what we aim for. I shall
finance the campaign. We should accomplish it in, what do you think? Two? Maybe three years?'

An hour later, they toasted their partnership with Dom Perignon, chilled, vintage '87. Already giddy with exhilaration, the champagne went straight to Harry's head. He could barely believe the turn of events. Not only was he now the official co-owner and manager of Restaurant Picot, he was also the manager of all other Picot interests in Kalgoorlie.

‘With the exception of the Sheaf Hotel,' Gaston added, ‘and of course my shares in the Midas.' He was thoughtful as he sipped his champagne. ‘Although, indirectly, those too will be at your disposal in the near future. Over the next several years, I intend to sell off my Midas shares. And the monies will be invested in real estate, particularly in Restaurant Picot.'

Harry was surprised. Gaston Picot's wealth was legendary. Surely the man didn't need to sell his shares to subsidise his other interests.

‘I shall be selling off gradually,' Gaston continued. ‘I do not wish to call attention to the fact. So I would appreciate your discretion, Harry.'

‘Of course,' Harry quickly agreed. ‘But why are you selling?'

‘Richard Laverton is a fool. He is riding for a fall. And one day the Midas will suffer as a consequence.'

Harry was fascinated. ‘What has he done?'

But Gaston decided that he had said enough. ‘Time will tell,
mon ami
.' He leaned across the table and clinked glasses again. ‘To the future Mayor of Kalgoorlie.'

Just as Gaston had intended, the toast distracted Harry completely. Mayor of Kalgoorlie, he thought. Imagine! How proud Maudie would be of him. And Jack. And the twins. And as for Hannan's! They'd be queueing up to speak to him at Hannan's.

‘You will not forget now,' Gaston was saying, ‘three
o'clock tomorrow. Jeanne is expecting you.'

Gaston had told him that he was booked on the mid-morning train to Kalgoorlie and that Jeanne Renoir was expecting him at her house the following afternoon. The Frenchman had obviously taken it for granted that his terms would be agreed upon and Harry was not at all offended. Why in God's name should he be? He was being offered the chance of a lifetime.

‘Do not be late,' Gaston instructed. ‘Jeanne demands punctuality. But then, do not be early either,' he smiled. ‘She is a woman.'

Evan Jones had been right when he had spoken of the magic world of the Midas. Certainly Giovanni would have preferred to be back at the Clover. He would have preferred to be master of his own destiny, wielding his own pick and working his own mine. But, for one who loved the world beneath the surface of the earth, the beauty of the Midas was awesome.

Each morning Giovanni assembled with the miners at the main shaft and, as the open cage with its team of men started its descent, he felt a sense of belonging. He stood with the others in the blackness, clutching his candle and his ‘crib', or lunch pack, and he succumbed to the sense of peace that pervaded him. It was a welcome feeling. There was no peace for him elsewhere. At home Rico's anger was still breeding tension in Teresa and fear in the children. And it was even worse when Rico and Teresa fought, which they inevitably did. Just as inevitably, they made up and then Giovanni would lie in the room next door, the sounds of their love-making driving him close to madness as the image of Caterina engulfed him.

But hundreds of feet below the crusty red surface, in the very bowels of the earth, Giovanni felt at peace. And when he stepped out of the cage into the carved chamber where the rock face glowed in the eerie light of
the oil lamps, he was thrilled by the subterranean world that surrounded him.

There were no oil lamps in the drives that extended from these chambers, or ‘plats', which had been excavated at the junction of the shaft and each work level. Deep in the drives, the men mined the rock face with no light to guide them but the feeble flickering from their candles which they wedged in niches or hung from ledges in wire ‘spiders'.

Giovanni was a ‘trucker', part of a three-man team. They drilled holes in the working face of the rock, then placed explosives in them and retired to safety. After the charges had been detonated, they would wait for ten or fifteen minutes until the fumes had cleared before returning to load the ore into a tipping truck. The truck was then hauled along its tracks back to the plat and the ore tipped into skips which were later loaded aboard the cages and taken above ground. There the ore went through its seemingly endless treatment in the crushing mills and cyanide plants and filter presses.

Giovanni did not much care for the above-ground world of the big mines. At the end of his work shift, when he stepped out of the cage at the poppet head, he felt harshly jolted back to reality. The glare of the day was unbearable, and the ugly, barren landscape confronting. The tangled mess of machinery belched forth a mixture of smoke and dust and the noise from the stampers and crushers and saw mills was deafening. Everywhere amongst the chaos busy colonies of people scuttled like ants. That was the world of the Golden Mile. Some people found it exciting, Giovanni supposed. Not for him. For him the variety and beauty of the ever-changing rock formations in the dim candlelight below ground. For him the camaraderie between the miners and the comfort of their voices in the dark of their cocoon. And when a drive or a cross-cut broke through
to a cavern the size of a cathedral, the awestruck silence they shared as they held their candles high.

It had taken Giovanni no time at all to become friends with his workmates, particularly with the senior member of the three-man team, Alwyn Llewellyn, a tall, gangly man of around forty with shoulder-length hair and a handsome beard. Alwyn had been working underground since he was twelve years old. In his native Wales to start with, alongside his father and his uncles and brothers; but when half the male members of his family had been wiped out in a mine explosion in the eighties, he'd emigrated to Australia. ‘No more coal for me,' he swore. ‘I dig only for gold now.' It was safer to dig for gold, he said. ‘No gas, you see.' Alwyn was a likable man and Giovanni warmed to him immediately. But then everyone did. Alwyn was not only an engaging companion, he was a man one could rely upon, an experienced miner, a fond father of five daughters and a fine singer into the bargain.

‘If you could learn Italian, Alwyn,' Evan had said as he introduced them, ‘and if you could learn Welsh, Giovanni, you'd sing the finest duets a man could hear, the two of you.' As the men shook hands, Evan had introduced the third member of the team. ‘And this is Freddie. He's no singer but he'll outwork any man at the Midas.'

Freddie grinned proudly and shook hands with a grip of iron. He was a dark-haired, well-built young man, just turned eighteen, with the eyes of an eager puppy and a beard and moustache that looked oddly out of place on a face so young. He'd only been working at the Midas for six months and Alwyn was obviously his hero.

As the leader of the team, Alwyn was responsible for the blasting of the rock face, but he was happy to teach Giovanni and from the outset had generously
shared his skills. ‘You drill a larger borehole in the centre of the face, you see,' he had explained. ‘The secret is in sequencing the explosions. The centre charge will be fired first and that will create a hole in the middle of the face. That reduces the pressure. When the smaller charges around the hole are blasted in sequence, the face will crumble to the ground rather than shatter out into the drive. Much safer.'

Giovanni was flattered that Alwyn was taking the time to teach him but had felt a little self-conscious that the Welshman wasn't including Freddie.

‘Don't you worry,' Alwyn had winked, sensing Giovanni's discomfort, ‘Freddie doesn't want to know about explosives, do you, Freddie?'

‘Eh?' Freddie straightened up and leaned on his pick. He hadn't heard, he'd been attacking the larger blocks of ore with the relentless energy of a pile driver.

‘I said you don't want to know about explosives, do you?' Alwyn repeated patiently.

‘Nah.' Freddie returned to his work.

‘It's not a job for Freddie,' Alwyn explained and Giovanni had realised then that Freddie was a little simple.

After the working face was blasted, the team would stand aside and wait for the underground boss to conduct his inspection. With a pick, Evan would ‘feel the ground', prodding the roof and the walls of the freshly exposed area before proclaiming whether or not it was safe to continue.

It was during these daily exchanges that Giovanni became aware of the friendship that existed between the two Welshmen. When Evan had finished his survey he and Alwyn would stand together in the darkness and listen for several minutes. Alwyn's question was always the same.

‘What are they saying, Evan?'

At first, Giovanni didn't understand the question
and he thought it better not to enquire. He noticed that even the exuberant Freddie was standing quietly reverent on the sidelines.

‘There's a massive cave ahead of us and above us,' Evan answered one day. ‘Do a shallow blast tomorrow. We don't want to risk a rock fall.' Alwyn nodded his agreement. Evan tapped the overhang with his pick to produce a hollow sound. ‘And this bad rock'll need to be timbered.' Then he prodded a portion of the freshly exposed wall where the earth was soft. ‘This'll need to be dug out and timbered too,' he added. ‘I'll send a team in.' At the Midas, the timbering of the drives was subcontracted.

The following morning, sure enough, when the debris had been cleared, they found they had blasted through to a huge cave with ceilings thirty feet high.

‘But how did Evan know?' Giovanni asked, marvelling at the spectacle.

‘The rocks told him.'

Giovanni peered back at Alwyn. Through the darkness it was difficult to tell Whether or not the man was joking but it didn't sound as if he was.

‘They talk, you know, the rocks.' Alwyn could sense the Italian's confusion. ‘Press your ear against them and you can hear them breathing. Go on, man, do it,' he urged when Giovanni hesitated.

Giovanni pressed his ear to the rock wall. It was a strange experience. The rock was cool against his skin and, in the deathly stillness, it was easy to imagine he could hear something.

‘Well?' Alwyn asked. ‘Are they breathing or are they not?'

Giovanni straightened up a little self-consciously, still unsure as to whether or not the Welshman was making fun of him. ‘I don't know about breathing but …'

‘But you can hear something, eh?'

‘And sometimes they talk,' Freddie interrupted, nodding eagerly. ‘Not to me, they never talk to me. But some of the others hear them. Alwyn hears them. Don't you, Alwyn?'

The Welshman nodded. ‘But no one hears them the way Evan Jones hears them. The rocks never talk to the rest of us the way they talk to Evan.'

It was crib time so they walked back along the drive to the plat where they would meet up with the other miners. There, they would sit on the benches carved in the rock, heat their billy tea with their candles and share their stories.

‘And do you know,' Alwyn continued, ‘the man says he doesn't believe it?' He laughed but there was affection in his voice. ‘He says that it's fanciful to think that the rocks are talking to him. He says that it's the echoes that tell him what lies ahead. Just the sounds he hears when he taps the rocks, just that and nothing more, he says.' The smile died on Alwyn's lips and, in the gloom, his voice was deadly earnest. ‘But he's wrong. It's a whole lot more. And deep down, Evan knows it.' Ahead, they could see the light from the oil lamps in the plat. ‘He knows that the rocks are talking to him. And, whether it's fanciful or not to admit it, he knows that he listens to them.'

As they drank their tea, the miners exchanged stories of disasters, probably to impress the newcomer in their midst, and Giovanni realised that Evan had been right. Working in one of the big mines was a far more dangerous proposition than working one's own lease for alluvial gold.

The explosives caused the most number of accidents. Anything could go wrong when one was dealing with explosives, he was told: one could be blown up, smashed to death by rock shards or asphyxiated by fumes. Then,
of course, there were the cave-ins—many a man had been buried alive—and the accidents involving the main shaft and the cage. That was what had happened to Freddie's predecessor, they told Giovanni. He'd leaned out of the cage and his arm had been crushed. He'd lived, but he'd lost the arm and could no longer work in the mines. And there was the shocking time when six men had been killed. The brakes had failed at the fifth level and the cage had simply plummeted to the bottom.

‘I remember that day,' Alwyn said. ‘A Friday. A terrible Friday. It was the afternoon shift. Late in the afternoon. I'd long since finished work and I was at the pub when I heard the sirens. Those sirens make a man's blood run cold. The whole town streamed up to the poppet head. No one knew who'd been in the cage when it crashed. There were twenty men under the ground and no one knew who were the ones who were dead, you see. They had to wait till they hauled them up.

‘The faces on the women as they waited, I'll never forget it. Some screamed and some prayed and some just stood there, with their babies in their arms and their children clutching at their skirts. It was a bad day.'

The men were silent as Alwyn finished the story. They all knew of that black Friday six years ago, although none of them had been working at the Midas at the time.

‘There was talk that it was the winding-engine driver's fault,' Alwyn continued as he swigged at his billy tea, ‘but it was never proved. Thank the Lord.' The men exchanged looks of complicity. It was rare for a death to be labelled anything other than accidental—the miners made sure of that. If human error was proved to be the reason, the mines did not pay compensation.

Six months after the investigation into the deaths, the engine driver had suicided. ‘He did the right thing, poor man,' Alwyn said. ‘He waited until the case was
cleared and each of the widows had received compensation.'

 

E
VAN HAD DELIBERATELY
teamed Giovanni with Alwyn Llewellyn. He knew that Alwyn would accept the good-natured Italian at face value and he knew that Alwyn's acceptance would help to dispell any ill-will amongst the others. Despite the fact that a number of Italians worked above ground at the Midas, Giovanni was the first of his countrymen to be employed as a miner and Evan was aware that he might well be courting trouble. To his relief, however, there appeared to be relatively little discontent amongst the ranks. The odd remark came from the quarters which, if there was nothing to grumble about, would invent something anyway. Nevertheless, Evan decided that any such reaction should be nipped in the bud and that an open display of his personal approval might serve as a warning to the dissident minority.

‘You must come to dinner on Friday, Giovanni, I insist, and you must bring your concertina.' Before Giovanni could reply, Evan continued. ‘Alwyn will be there. You two can learn each other's songs.'

Giovanni, fully aware of the reasons for the invitation, had no option but to accept, although the thought of seeing Caterina was almost more than he could bear. For a month now he had worked hard at the Midas, rarely allowing his thoughts to stray to her. After the work day, he drank a moderate amount of beer at the Sheaf, played billiards in the backroom, and went home to a family dinner. Then he went to bed and the next morning rose early and repeated the entire exercise. Day after day. It was only in his bed, late at night or in the early hours of the morning, that the image of Caterina tormented him. The rest of the time, she was there certainly, but in the recesses of his mind, like a beautiful
memory. Giovanni had control of his obsession. Until now.

 

‘H
ARLECH CYFOD DYFANERI
,

Gwel y gelyn, ennyn yni

Y Meirionwyr oll i weiddi

‘Cymru fo am byth!'

Giovanni accompanied the men on his concertina. He had picked up the melody easily enough, it was simple march time. But the song was a stirring one. A battle song. ‘Men of Harlech' they'd called it. And, although he didn't understand the words, Giovanni admired the three-part harmony and the Welshmen's voices and the power of the song itself.