The Touch (64 page)

Finally they reached the blind end of number one tunnel, to find some preparations already assembled for the blasting: a spool of insulated wire, an Ingersoll pneumatic drill perched on a tripod, the last section of steel pipe leading from the cylinder of compressed air in the gallery, a box of tools. One end of a heavy rubber hose was clamped by steel cuffs on to the steel pipe, the other on to the drill. Dynamite and detonators would not appear until it was time to set the charges, and then in proper custody. The magazine wherein the explosives were kept was a concrete bunker with only four keys: one each for Alexander, Lee, Summers and Prentice, the blasting supervisor.

“This blast is a bit of an experiment,” Alexander said after both of them had run their hands down the relatively smooth rock face as sensitively as if they caressed a woman’s skin. The lights blazed on it, throwing every fault line into prominence. “There’s no more gold for at least twenty feet, so I want to bring down more rock than usual. Start at the middle on that fault there, then explode the rest of the charges concentrically. Each group wired in series. I’ll drill the holes myself.”

Lee listened in some bewilderment; no one knew this art as Alexander did, but he wasn’t being very forthcoming.

“How much rock do you intend to bring down?” Lee asked, a frisson of fear streaking down his spine.

“Quite a few tons.”

“If you were anyone else, I’d forbid it, but I can’t very well do that to the master.”

“You certainly can’t.”

“But you are sure? You haven’t discussed it with me.”

“This is dear old number one. She likes me, the bitch.”

They turned to plod back to the gallery.

“When do you plan to blast?”

“Tomorrow, if it’s as nice a day as today—no winds to fuck up the ventilator shafts.” He gestured at a cage. “Up or down?”

“Up.”

There could be no more procrastination. Lee gulped, trying to find enough moisture in his mouth to talk. A thousand recitations through the night, choosing or discarding the words that he must use. Rehearsing the most important speech of his life.

“Now what’s this private matter?” Alexander asked briskly.

The steam engine powering the compressor was big enough to drive a freight locomotive, so it made a lot of noise as it forced the compressor to supply air to the gallery cylinder and its lines. Off to the far side the poppet heads engine chugged more gently, a stoker leaning on his grimy shovel, another man checking dials.

“Over here,” said Lee, leading Alexander to a spot on the parapet of the limestone shelf away from the engines, poppet heads and personnel on duty. There was nowhere to sit, so he hunkered down with his buttocks resting on his heels, Alexander following suit.

A leaf lay on the ground; Lee picked it up as if examining it, began to pick its dry fragility to pieces. And in the end, of course, every rehearsed word vanished from his mind. All he could do was get it out.

“I have loved you better than my father, Alexander, but I’ve betrayed you,” he said, shredding the leaf. “Not a plotted and planned betrayal, but a betrayal all the same. I can’t bear to live with a lie. You have to know.”

“Know what?” Alexander asked, as calmly as if what Lee had to tell him would turn out to be a minor peculation, a tiny fraud.

The leaf was gone; Lee lifted his eyes, swimming with tears, to rest them on Alexander’s face, his lips moving soundlessly as he groped for words. “I’m in love with Elizabeth, and when I found her eight days ago, I—I betrayed you.”

Some unnamable emotion flared briefly in the black eyes, which then went dull, opaque. Alexander’s face didn’t change. Nor did he say anything for what seemed an age, just squatted in the laid dust with his wrists propped on his knees, his hands as loose and relaxed as they had been before Lee spoke.

“I thank you for your honesty,” he said at last.

That immense dignity which had so drawn Alexander to a child eight years old was still very much at Lee’s core, and it kept him from pouring out excuses, self-exculpatory explanations, all the protestations of virtual innocence that a lesser man would have tripped over himself to make. If a lesser man could have screwed up the courage to confess to someone like Alexander.

“Easier to tell you than to live a lie,” Lee said. “I am to blame, not Elizabeth. When I found her she wasn’t herself, she was—was terribly distressed. But it happened, and it happened again yesterday. Elizabeth believes that she loves me.”

“Why shouldn’t she?” Alexander asked. “She’s chosen you.”

“It can’t be, I know that. So I should have broken it off yesterday. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.”

“Does she know that you’re telling me this, Lee?”

“No.”

“Does your mother? Is she in on this too?”

“No.”

“Then it’s our secret.”

“Yes.”

“Poor Elizabeth,” said Alexander on a sigh. “How long have you loved her?”

“Since I was seventeen.”

“Which is why you dreaded coming home to Kinross. Why you once disappeared off the map.”

“Yes. Though you must understand that I never expected or intended to do anything about it. I have always loved you too much to hurt you, but it happened when I had no defenses and she had no defenses. She was in no condition to resist. I caught her with her guard down.”

“That’s a victory,” said Alexander dryly. “I’ve never caught her with her guard down. If it had been me to find her instead of you, her guard would have stayed up. That’s the story of Elizabeth and me. I live with someone bled of all vitality. A ghost. I’m just so pleased that the fire does burn.”

He was taking it like the strong, honorable, unflinching man he was, Lee told himself. Which only made Lee’s suffering worse. The hideous hurt had to be there, but Alexander wasn’t about to show it.

“Anyway,” said Lee, “I have put her at great risk. She shouldn’t have children, I know that, yet I couldn’t help myself. Yesterday I went to talk to her, just talk to her, but it didn’t work out that way. And when I spoke of the danger, she laughed!”

“Laughed?”

“Yes. She refuses to believe there’s any danger.”

“There probably isn’t.” Alexander got up, extended a hand to Lee. “Come, we’ll walk a bit. I want to go up to the spot that lies over the end of number one tunnel. I like it there, my soul or spirit or whatever you want to call it communes with my gold mountain there.”

To the engine hands they looked what they were, the mine’s owners having some deep discussion about its future; of great interest to all employees.

“I couldn’t live a lie,” Lee said again when they reached the spot and perched on a couple of rocks.

“You’re too honorable, my boy, that’s your trouble. But she was happy to live a lie, wasn’t she?”

“Not because she’s naturally deceitful, honestly,” said Lee, laboring. “I think it’s how she’s organized herself over the years. And she so dreads your finding out. Oh, she’s aware of your kindness, your respect for her. Yet she’s afraid of you, and that is a complete mystery to me.”

“Not to me,” said Alexander, stroking the surface of his rock. “I’m an incarnation of Satan.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Elizabeth is the victim of two twisted, evil old men. They are both dead, but their influence will always be with her. I’ve been a way station for her, someone who sired her children, someone who houses her and shares her food. And there’s your mother, whom I’ll love until the day I die. Which Elizabeth well knows. My dear Lee, we can’t force other people to be or do what we want, though it’s taken me fifty-five years to find that out. For many reasons I don’t intend to go into, Elizabeth can’t bear me. A physical thing too. If I touch her, I can see her flesh crawl. I ceased to love her years ago,” he lied—spare Lee everything you can, Alexander—“if I ever did love her. I used to think I did in the beginning, but perhaps I was simply in love with the idea of what we might have been to each other if she had loved me. Is her love for you very recent?”

“She says not,” Lee answered, hating this detached, quite passionless interview for its very detachment. He wanted—he needed!—to be roared at, punched, kicked. Anything but this!

“Then both of you have suffered, yet you’ve remained loyal. That counts for much with me.”

“I know today’s an end, Alexander. I’m prepared for that.”

“Your bags are packed, you mean.”

“Metaphorically, yes.”

“And what of Elizabeth? Are you going to sentence her to yet more years of living with a man she can’t bear?”

“That depends on you. She won’t go without Dolly, and Dolly is your only grandchild. A court would award her to you—if Elizabeth could face a court branded an adultress.”

“Adultery is the only suitable ground for divorce. Cruelty is also a ground, but it doesn’t apply, and there’s many a judge beats his wife. However, she could divorce me for adultery with Ruby.”

“And wouldn’t that look wonderful? The divorced wife of the famous man then marries her former husband’s mistress’s son. A half-caste Chinese. The press would have a field day.”

“If she loves you enough, she’ll do it.”

“She does love me enough. But the scandal would follow us for years unless we moved abroad. Perhaps that’s the answer.”

“Yet I need you here, Lee, not abroad.”

“Then there is no answer!” Lee cried wretchedly.

Alexander changed tack. “Are you positive that she doesn’t know you intended to see me?”

“Yes, absolutely positive. She’s walled herself up in a new secret compartment, and she’s happy there.”

“And you’re just as positive that Ruby doesn’t know?”

“I am. It’s always been my habit to talk to her about anything, including my love for Elizabeth. A more worldly woman than my mother doesn’t exist. But I haven’t told her about this new development. She can keep a secret as well as Elizabeth, but I—I just couldn’t bring myself to tell her.”

Alexander lifted his head to look straight into Lee’s eyes. “I need time to think,” he said. “Give me your word that you’ll not mention this to anyone, even Ruby or Elizabeth.”

Lee got up from his rock and held out his hand. “Word of honor, Alexander.”

“Then that’s set in stone. Tomorrow, after the blast, I’ll give you my answer. Will you be there?”

“If you want me there.”

“I do, I do. Summers has ten thumbs and Prentice puts me off. He’s fine if he’s doing the blasting, but when I do it he hops up and down like a jumping bean.”

“I am aware of all that,” Lee said gently.

“I’m aware you’re aware. It’s just that I’m a bit knocked off center by your news. I thank you for your candor, Lee—very much. I knew I wasn’t mistaken in you, and I want to apologize to you for the way I treated you back in 1890. I’d grown too big for my boots.” He stamped the ground, which sounded a little hollow. “Now I wear the right-sized boots again. No man could ask for a loyaler or more capable second-in-command, and you’ll make a fine commander-in-chief one day.” He cleared his throat, looked wry. “But I’m drifting off the point, which is that I have to work out a way to keep you yet free Elizabeth.”

“I think that’s impossible, Alexander.”

“Nothing is impossible. Eight tomorrow morning in the main gallery. I’ll probably still be in number one tunnel, but don’t go inside. Powder monkey’s orders.”

And he swung in the direction of the cable car, while Lee headed for the snake path.

Suddenly Alexander called out. “Lee!”

Lee halted and twisted to look at him.

“It’s Dolly’s birthday today. Four o’clock at the house.”

I HAD FORGOTTEN Dolly’s birthday, thought Lee wearily as he donned a dark suit; with the festivities due to start at four, no evening dress, though of course the adults would sit down for dinner after the birthday party. Constance Dewy would be there.

He encountered Ruby coming down the corridor from her rooms, and waited for her. How beautiful she was! Her figure had improved, if that were possible, its bones carrying a little less weight than in his childhood, when voluptuousness was in fashion and men could indulge their natural preference for it. Her dress was of French crepe as green as her eyes, its bodice and leg-o’-mutton sleeves inlaid with pink and its knee-length skirt cut in long teeth ending in tassels. The under-dress, all the way to the ground, was pink, and her kid gloves were pink. A small green hat with a curled brim sat on her red-gold hair, its front adorned with pink roses.

“You look good enough to eat,” he said, kissing a silken cheek with eyes closed to savor the scent of gardenias.

She gurgled. “I hope Alexander thinks the same.”

“You shouldn’t say things like that to your son.”

“Well, at least you know what I mean, which augurs well for your birds of paradise.”

“My birds of paradise prefer the thrill of diamonds.”

They traveled up in the cable car to find Alexander, Elizabeth and Constance in the small dining room, decked with bunting. Everyone had to wear a party hat. Constance had brought them from Bathurst, where an enterprising Chinese shopkeeper had taken advantage of the Chinese skill in making tissue-thin colored paper; he sold streamers, party hats, fancy paper tablecloths and napkins, exquisite wrapping paper for gifts.

When Peony led Dolly in on some pretext they commenced a chorus of happy birthdays and showered the delighted child with presents. But it was a sad birthday party too: Dolly didn’t know any children around her own age. What does one give a seven-year-old? Lee had found a nest of Russian dolls that appeared, ever smaller, each from inside a bigger one. Ruby produced a German porcelain doll with jointed arms and legs, clad in the latest fashion, with a mop of real hair, real eyelashes around striated blue eyes that closed, and red lips parted to reveal teeth and a tongue that actually wobbled when it was pushed. From Alexander, a tricycle, and from Elizabeth, a gold bracelet of linked hearts that bore its first charm, a golden horseshoe for luck. Constance handed over a huge tin of bonbons.

Dolly blew out the seven candles on her cake, lovingly made by Chang and iced in her favorite color, pink.

“She’ll undoubtedly spend the night being sick,” Constance said as they repaired to the drawing room after games and a visit to the stables to see Dolly’s main gift, a Shetland pony.