Tourmaline (9 page)

‘Okay now?’

‘Don’t go yet,’ Byrne said, or pleaded. ‘Sit down for a bit.’

The diviner seated himself rather gingerly on the bed, and let his flaking countenance be gazed upon.

‘Ah, mate,’ said Byrne at last, with a long sigh, and took the diviner’s hand. He was thoroughly maudlin.

The diviner drew back involuntarily, but conquered the temptation in an instant and bent over Byrne with savage eyes. The yellow lamplight gave those eyes a greenish tinge, more sea-like than ever. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ he demanded, softly, but with an angry insistence. ‘Why are you like this?’

‘I’m damned, Mike,’ said Byrne, crying. ‘I’m damned.’ It was very curious. His father had been a Catholic; but that Byrne should have remembered anything of him was barely possible, one would have thought. ‘Don’t go yet.’

‘I won’t go,’ said the diviner, with his fingers biting into Byrne’s lean shoulders. ‘Not till you drop this crap you’re giving me. What’s up?’

‘You wouldn’t know,’ Byrne said, tragically.

‘No,’ the diviner agreed. ‘Not without you telling me.’

‘It doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter, Mike.’

‘It doesn’t matter a cracker to me. But it does to you, plain enough.’

‘I’m drunk,’ Byrne said.

‘I know you are.’

‘I’ll be right in the morning. I’ll work for you. Up at the mine.’

‘You’re a good bloke,’ said the diviner, rather grudgingly.

Then Byrne reached up with both arms and hugged him in a rib-cracking embrace. It was one of those funny, embarrassing, touching gestures to which some drunken men are prone, when the last barriers are down and they stand revealed, quite naked, in their loneliness. And the diviner bore it very well. But he asked, after a while: ‘Can I go now?’

‘Yair,’ said Byrne, ‘go now. I’ll see you in the morning.’

So the diviner rose and went, with an uncertain expression about his mouth. And Byrne’s dark face turned on the pillow to watch him, and his black eyes were fixed on the door long after he had disappeared.

In the morning Charlie Yandana came and squatted outside my door; and as on that day I was feeling well-disposed, I went out and spoke to him. I asked what news he had. He thought for a while, and said that Byrnie was drunk and singing all last night.

I said I had heard him.

Charlie had an odd sympathy for Byrne. ‘Byrnie went up the mine ’s morning,’ he informed me, as his next item of interest. ‘New fella went with him. Gunna make something.’

There was a light, dustless breeze blowing, and the day was not unduly hot by Tourmaline standards. I decided that I would go and spy on them; for I was consumed with curiosity about the diviner’s doings. So I fetched my hat and set out, across the flat stretches north of the road, for the falling masts and grey roof of the sad dead Sons of Tourmaline mine.

Ah, but it was not cool. I sweated, climbing among the chaotic slate of the hill. Heat rose from the rocks around me. I feared for my heart. And such desolation everywhere. The slope honeycombed with the shafts of fossickers, predecessors and inheritors of the mine; broken walls and collapsed sheds, chunks and sheets and cylinders of useless iron, half buried in the grey sand of the mullock hill, with whose sterility no mere desert can ever compare. Such ruin I could not well describe in a language that has not, as yet, lost hope.

The mine office faced me as I crossed the ridge. Very handsome it is, of the same pale stone as the gaol, brought here from miles away, in the time of prosperity. It has two high gables at either end, each pierced by a round window with slats of green-painted wood, and each with a bay window at ground level. The long section joining these is recessed, making the slate-paved veranda very wide in that part. The veranda surrounds the building on all four sides, and is garnished above with wrought-iron lacework. In ancient times it was shaded with pepper trees, but these are dead now, like all the trees of Tourmaline.

I walked up the veranda to the end where I knew they would be, in the high cool hall where Jack Speed, for a small fee, does the smelting. Only this part is ever used now. It was long ago, when I was a young man at Laceys, that Tourmaline died (‘died in the night’, as old-timers used to say) and no equipment worth moving was left behind. The rest of the building, apart from Jack’s living quarters, is an echoing shell, undisturbed even by vermin.

They were standing side by side, a short way from the forge, with their backs to me, as I entered. They were very alike; I had to look carefully at their hair to distinguish them. The diviner was holding the rod in his outstretched palms, experimentally.

‘Is it done?’ I asked. And, turning to see who it was, they showed me their downcast faces. So I knew that something was wrong.

‘It’s done,’ Byrne said, ‘but it isn’t what he wanted. I dunno.’

‘It’s all right,’ the diviner said. ‘It’s fine.’ But he obviously didn’t think so.

It seemed to be a simple Y of heavy-gauge wire, the loop of the foot forged solid and a small hook at the junction. From this hook hung a small pill bottle, filled with red-brown water. It looked a very crude contraption to base such extravagant hopes on.

‘It’s okay,’ the diviner said again. ‘Thanks, Byrnie.’ He held it delicately in his open palms, as if questioning it.

‘Ah well,’ said Byrne, with resignation, ‘we’ll see, anyway.’ He turned back to the forge, on which a black billy was sitting, and threw in a handful of tea from the packet he was holding. Then he picked up the billy with a pair of tongs and rotated it. ‘Come and have a cuppa with Jack,’ he invited me, leading the way out and along the veranda. So I drifted after him. But the diviner stayed behind, examining his new rod with a look of gloom.

Jack’s room contained a sagging iron bed, a table, two chairs, a couple of kerosene cases, and a fifty-year-old calendar with a photograph of a partly nude girl hiding among balloons. On the table were a few cracked cups, a spoon, a bottle of sugar, and a small cube of gold.

I picked it up; asking: ‘Whose is this?’

‘The old fella’s,’ Jack said. He was lying on the bed, limp with boredom. ‘He don’t want it.’

A strange man, Dave Speed. I asked after him.

‘He’s all right,’ Jack said. ‘Least, I reckon he is. Hasn’t been in for a couple of months. Last time he brought the stuff for that.’

‘He does well,’ I said.

Jack scratched his head, indifferent. ‘He knows where to find it.’

‘Anyone with him now?’

‘Old Jim. Jimmy Bogada. That’s all.’

‘What do they do for water?’

‘There’s a well,’ Jack said. ‘Old stock route well.’ He laughed. ‘You ought to see it. They pull up half a bucket of mud, give it a day to settle, and then skim off the water. About a cupful.’

I weighed the gold in my hand; so rich, so heavy. ‘But he finds it.’

‘He’s an old hand,’ Jack said. ‘He don’t need no water. If it’s a dollying show he knows all about it.’

He spoke with a certain pride of this man he hardly knew.

Byrne poured out the thick black tea and shouted for the diviner. He came presently, still carrying the rod, which he laid on the table in front of him. Tasting the tea, he grimaced.

‘It’s lousy water,’ Jack apologized. ‘You get used to it.’

‘He’s not going to have to,’ said Byrne.

The diviner gave a perfunctory smile.

‘What do you plan for today?’ I asked him. When one is old one tends to take this tone.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘What is there?’ And again he seemed to be going through one of his fits of inertia, which so profoundly depressed us all.

‘Where have you been?’ I asked, battling the listlessness. ‘Have you seen the gaol? Or the church? Or the garden?’

‘No,’ he said; ‘nothing like that.’

‘Come with me, then—if you’re not doing anything?’

‘Now?’ He pushed away his cup, languidly. ‘All right, if you want to.’

‘Have you got a hat?’

‘Out there,’ he said, going to get it. I rose too, picking up the rod, and thanking Jack for his hospitality.

‘Come again,’ he said, from where he lay sprawling. ‘Bet you haven’t been here for years.’

‘No,’ I began to say, ‘not since——’ Then I saw Byrne and Jack glance at one another, and caught back the reminiscence. Ah, but they hurt me, the young.

The diviner came back to the doorway, wearing his hat. We moved away together, down the broad-flagged veranda; which was once cool with shade and sharp with the smell of pepper trees, droning with bees through the brief month of spring.

‘What a place to let go,’ the diviner said, looking back as we picked our way through the flotsam of the mine.

I sighed. And we went on in silence, until the edge of the hill was reached, and Lake Tourmaline stretched out to the north of us like a flat pink desert. Towards the horizon it was flooded with mirage, very sky-blue, mirroring a few dead trees on the far shore.

‘This is the lake,’ I said. ‘The bird life is interesting in a good season.’

He laughed, scanning the outlook. Far away to the east, by the lake edge, the remains of another and older mine were still visible. Before us, the roofs of a few very derelict tin shanties glared and shimmered.

‘What’s that?’ he asked, pointing.

‘The native camp,’ I said. He nodded.

We went on down the hillside, picking our way between the disused shafts, some partly hidden with dead brushwood and sheets of old iron, others still keeping the forlorn remnants of shelters. On the flat ground between the two hills it was the same. But a proper track led up the easier gradient to the church. I was relieved, I confess, for my heart was beating heavily.

In front of the church stood the dark oleander, flowering in this season; and in front of the oleander, as we came up, an old coloured woman was squatting to urinate. When she heard our footsteps she sprang to her feet and vanished, instantly, like a bird.

The diviner burst out laughing. ‘Who was that?’

‘I think it was Gloria,’ I said. ‘Deborah’s grandmother.’ And I too began to laugh, until I felt quite helpless, and he looked at me strangely. ‘I do believe,’ I tried to explain to him, ‘she’s been keeping that tree alive all these years.’

We stood on the beaten earth before the church, looking up. The stone cross rose sharp and pale against the sky. Sheets of iron had fallen from the roof; the glass was missing from most of the narrow windows, the wooden bell tower, a little removed from the door, was far gone in ruin. But it was beautiful: especially beautiful in the smell of flowers. I stood inhaling the fragrance of the oleander, wondering whether this scent was known to Byrne, to Jack, to Kestrel.

The diviner pushed the cracked door, which shuddered and scraped across the floor as it retreated. He took off his hat. We went into the cool place, half shadow, half sunlight, roofed in part by the sky. The pews were there still. It was very bare. It was also very clean. I was surprised.

And on the altar, which stood, at that time of day, in the light—on the altar there were oleander flowers in a tin mug, brilliantly glowing. And ranged about them were pieces of packing-case wood, on which someone had written in charcoal: MARY MOTHER OF GOD; GOD THE FATHER; JESUS LOVER OF MANKIND; FATHER SON AND HOLY GHOST. And also: GOD SAVE OUR QUEEN. I stood amazed.

‘It must be the old woman,’ the diviner said, very hollowly in that empty place. And he stood staring, reverent.

‘The queen of heaven, I suppose,’ I said at last, for the sake of speaking. He did not respond. I tried to remember something of Gloria—but what was there to know? A nondescript old woman, whose name I would never have noted if she had not been Agnes Day’s mother.

And he was very serious about it: so serious that he moved aside to a pew, and knelt, to my great astonishment, and I suppose said a prayer. I cannot tell why this harmless gesture impressed me so uncomfortably; but I found that I could not stay there with him, and so went out again to stand beside Gloria’s tree, inhaling its heavy sweetness as I looked over Tourmaline.

He joined me presently, saying nothing. But he took his knife and cut off a branch of oleander, and trimmed this into two short lengths, which he forced onto the ends of his rod as handgrips. And again he affected me unpleasantly, in a way I cannot define. There was something too easy, uncalled for, in this pious act. I made no remark on it.

When he had done paring the sticks, which cannot have been very suitable for his purpose, he came over to stand beside me and look at the town. I pointed out my gaol, which he had not seen before, and the dusty greenish square of Rock’s vegetable garden, surrounded by an iron fence to keep off the searing winds. Beyond, pale shapes were moving.

‘The goats,’ I said, as he pointed. ‘There’s a trough there. But we can’t keep many. There isn’t the water.’

He asked, idly, if there were wild goats; but agreed immediately afterwards that it was a foolish question. All the while his eyes were moving up and down the township, and the rod quivered in his thin hands.

‘Where will I live?’ he asked at length.

‘You can choose,’ I said, waving my hand at the prospect. ‘It’s all yours.’

‘Where’s Byrnie’s place?’

I pointed along the hillside. He looked, but only with difficulty distinguished the three miners’ huts I meant him to see: mere boxes of piled-up stone, daubed here and there with mud, and roofed with loose sheets of iron weighed down by boulders.

‘It’s not much,’ he said.

‘He hasn’t got much—poor Byrnie.’

‘Who else lives there?’

‘Only Byrnie. The other two are empty.’

‘I’ll go there,’ he said; and stood meditating.

‘You haven’t got much in the way of money,’ I began to say; hesitantly, because I was not sure how he would take it. And he looked round sharply.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘you know that.’

‘But everyone will help you out. Let them. We need you, badly.’

‘I’ll go in with Jack and Byrnie,’ he said. ‘I’ll go prospecting.’ And he went on, in a quick shy mumble: ‘I’ve got a—a gift, in that line,’ as I remembered having heard him say before.

He brooded over the town. ‘Who wants money, anyway? Who wants it here? Or gold, rather.’