Golden Soak

TWO

The news that the men were missing did not go out on the Jarra Jarra radio until five that afternoon. The search had taken us over three hours, for the way into the mine from the old shearing shed was no more than a pilot gallery barely 4 feet high. It had been driven from the second level in 1934, when the eastward end of the reef had become so narrow it was no longer workable, and there were innumerable offshoots where the miners had probed in the hope of striking a widening of the quartz band. All these had to be explored crawling on our hands and knees. That was after we had reached the second level and had found the gallery blocked by a new fall at the point where they had ceased mining the reef.

After he had sent the call out, Ed Garrety went straight to his room to have a bath. He looked grey and ill, and he didn’t want to talk about it. He was over fifty and had been in a Jap P.O.W. camp for two years during the war. Now he had been at full stretch for over thirty-six hours with no sleep and very little food. But he wouldn’t eat. Janet took him a cup of tea which was all he seemed to want. ‘He’s very tired.’ She looked very tired herself, the eyes overbright and her face pinched.

‘If he gets some sleep … I put some whisky in it. Do you think he’ll drink it? He doesn’t usually touch liquor.’ Her voice was flat with exhaustion, but it was more mental than physical — a note of uneasiness in it, too. ‘Would you like some?’

She gave us both a stiff whisky, pouring it from the bottle into tumblers, her hands trembling. We drank it neat while she cooked us a steak. And then we took the Land-Rover and went back to the mine. But it was a waste of time. We got as far as the shaft and that was all, the wooden head of it collapsed, the ladders gone and the open well of it blocked with debris about 140 feet down. There was dust and rubble everywhere, and remembering the poor sloping, the softness of the pillars, I didn’t reckon it was even worth trying to get in by the shaft. Any attempt to reach the men would have to be made from the other entrance, and it would be slow work in the cramped space of that pilot gallery.

There was nothing we could do, so we went back to the homestead. Janet met us with the news that the Shire Clerk would be arriving from Nullagine around midnight with a team from Grafton Downs. Also, a mining engineer from Mt Newman was waiting to see me. He was Italian, a thickset hairy man who talked with an accent that sounded distinctly Welsh. He had been sent up to assess the situation and Ed Garrety was with him. He listened to what I had to say about the conditions underground and the present state of the shaft, then said, ‘Tell me now, d’you mink there is any chance whatever that they are still alive?’

‘Frankly — no,’ I said. ‘I don’t think there’s a hope.’

‘And you, Mr Garrety, what do you think?’

But Ed Garrety didn’t answer. His head was bowed as though in prayer, the heavy-lidded eyes closed. His face, shaved now, had a grey sick look, the eye sockets dark hollows, the skin like parchment stretched over the skull.

‘Okay.’ The Italian got to his feet. ‘I go now. But don’t expect too much from us. Mount Whaleback is opencast, you understand.’

He left just as Andie drove in from Lynn Peak. Other station owners drifted in during the evening until there were five of them drinking beer and talking it over in their slow careful way. I left them to it and went to bed. Henry’s room had been made over to me again. It was hot and airless and, before turning in, I went out on the verandah and stood there for a while, smoking a cigarette, with the dark outline of the Windbreaks shouldering the stars. I was just turning back into the room when Janet’s voice said, ‘Is that you Alec?’ Her shadow emerged out of the darkness. ‘Can I have a word with you?’

‘Of course.’

She was hugging a thin cotton dressing gown to her, her hair hanging loose across her face. ‘Not out here.’ She moved into my room, turning to face me as I followed her. ‘I hope you don’t mind. I saw you smoking out there and… She hesitated. ‘Can you spare one please? It’s about what — happened — down there at the mine this morning.’ Her voice was nervous, not quite under control.

I gave her a cigarette and lit it for her and she said a little wildly, ‘I don’t know what to do. I must tell somebody, but …’ She stood there silent for a moment, and then suddenly she blurted out, ‘It was an accident, wasn’t it?’ Her eyes, momentarily lit by the glow of her cigarette, stared at me anxiously.

‘What else?’

‘You’ve been down the mine, haven’t you? The night after you left here. Andie drove over two days ago to tell us it was all over Nullagine — that you’d been down Golden Soak with that women Prophecy.’

‘She drove me over, yes.’ I started to explain what had happened, but she was more concerned with the effect the news had on her father. ‘He’s always had this thing about Golden Soak and when he heard you’d been down there …’ She subsided on to the end of the bed, staring at me, her eyes luminous. ‘What did you find there?’ her voice was urgent. ‘Please, I must know.’

I told her briefly, and she sat there, very still, listening to me, the cigarette trembling in her hand. ‘I see.’ There was a long pause, and then she said, ‘Ever since Andie was here, he’s hardly left the mine, except — ‘ She hesitated. ‘Except yesterday morning. He was here for several hours yesterday.’

‘Doing what?’

But she didn’t answer, just sat there, quite still, as though she’d been suddenly struck dumb.

‘What are you trying to tell me?’

‘I don’t know,’ she murmured, her lips compressed, an unhappy look in her eyes. ‘He was here, you know, when those miners lost their lives. He would have been in his early twenties then and it made a deep impression on him. And afterwards, when he came back from the war, he wouldn’t go down there himself and he wouldn’t let anybody else go down. I think he was afraid of it — afraid it would claim more lives. I tried to get him to sell. But he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t even consider it.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. Well, yes, I do in a way. I think at the back of his mind he always believed that ultimately Golden Soak would be our salvation. As long as we owned it he could at least hope.’ Her voice trailed off. ‘Do you understand?’

‘Yes, I think so. But now … What happens now?’

She shook her head. ‘God knows,’ she breathed. ‘He’ll have to give evidence, I suppose. He knew it was unsafe, that faulted area particularly.’ She paused, staring at me very directly. And then suddenly she leaned forward, a note of urgency in her voice. ‘You knew it, too. You were down there — you said yourself it was unsafe.’

‘Yes, the pillars supporting the overburden were rotten with oxidization.’

‘So it collapsed, just like that?’ She was staring at me. ‘There’ll be an inquest and you’ll be called to give evidence. You realize that?’

I hadn’t thought about it, but this was basically an English country, the same legal procedures. ‘I suppose so.’

‘Then you’ll tell the Coroner. You’ll testify it was dangerous and that was why Daddy wouldn’t let anybody down there?’ She was living the scene in her imagination, her voice low. ‘It was an accident.’ I didn’t say anything and she stubbed out her cigarette and got to her feet. ‘I’d forgotten for a moment that you were a mining consultant. That makes a difference.’

‘Well, naturally. It’s an expert opinion and they’ll accept that.’

She was moving past me then, out on to the verandah, but I caught hold of her shoulders. ‘Janet. What was it you came to tell me?’

‘Nothing.’ I could feel her trembling.

‘You said you had to tell somebody.’

‘Did I?’ Her voice was blank. ‘Well if I did, I’ve forgotten what it was. I think I just wanted to talk to you.’

She was lying. I knew that. But I couldn’t force it out of her and I let her go. I was too physically exhausted to care very much. But back in that narrow bed, with the lumps of the mattress all in the wrong places, I was nagged by the things Westrop had said, her father’s behaviour, and the thought that he might have seen them going into the old shearing shed. But clarity of thought was beyond me and, with my mind still groping for a reasonable explanation, I drifted off to sleep.

Andie woke me a little after one. The Grafton Downs men had arrived. Ed Garretty had given them an account of what had happened, but they wanted a briefing from me. There were seven of them, only three of them miners, and I had to tell them I didn’t think there was a hope in hell of their getting any further into the mine than we had, let alone find Westrop or the other two alive. ‘My guess is it’s a total collapse from the second level down.’

‘At least we must try to recover the bodies,’ the Clerk said.

‘But not at the risk of any more lives,’ I told nun.

The big Dutch foreman looked across at Ed Garrety, sitting bewildered and uneasy, the Alsatian at his feet. ‘You agree with that?’

‘Yes, of course. You mustn’t take any chances.’

‘No, vat I mean is, do you agree with your friend’s assessment of the situation?’

He hesitated, then nodded reluctantly. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

‘Okay. Then ve go.’

They finished their beers and got to their feet. Ed Garrety remained where he was. He seemed dazed and I wondered how he must feel with half the world attempting to break into his mine.

‘Anything we can do?’ one of the station owners asked.

The Dutchman shook his head. ‘From vat I hear there will be only room for one or two of us at a time. And it vill be very slow.’

He was right there. Kennie and I went down shortly after midday. They had shifted about ten tons of rubble, working on their hands and knees, and they were rapidly losing heart, even though Mt Newman had sent half a dozen volunteers. They had all of them been up the gully. They had seen how the old workings had become gaping pits. They had looked down the shaft, too, and they knew it was hopeless. The only thing that kept them going was the thought that Westrop and his companions might have been caught before they had gone any distance into the second level gallery.

We took our turn, but it was a gesture only. We had no hope of achieving anything. It was back-breaking work, the air was thick with dust and no room to move. As soon as we had finished our stint we went back up into the open air. Hot though it was, it still seemed wonderfully fresh after that narrow tunnel.

By the time we had got back to the homestead it was already dark and the local constable had arrived. He was with Ed Garrety, taking a statement. He took one from me, too, writing it all out laboriously in longhand, and when he finished, he went into Ed Garrety’s den to make his report on the radio. He was back a few minutes later with the news that the aborigine, Wolli, was alive. He had been found wandering in a state of exhaustion in the Mindy Mindy Creek area some 40 miles to the northeast. I remember the look on Ed Garrety’s face as the constable told us — a sort of shocked disbelief.

Janet saw it, too. She was staring at him, her mouth open, her eyes suddenly very wide. ‘If Wolli’s alive, then perhaps the others are, too.’

But there was no answering gleam of hope in her father’s eyes.

‘Hal Benton found him,’ the constable said. ‘He’s taking him into Nullagine now. He should be there in about an hour.’

We had some food and shortly after nine the constable went back to the radio. He was gone about ten minutes and when he returned his sun-crinkled face was grave. Benton had questioned Wolli on the drive to Nullagine and as a result he was able to confirm that Phil Westrop and Lenny Fisher had entered the tunnel by the old shearing shed entrance at least half an hour before the mine collapsed. They had left Wolli above ground, telling him to stay with their vehicle, which he had done until the noise of the disaster scared him and he had taken to the bush in panic.

There was no longer any doubt in our minds — both the men had had time to penetrate so deep into the mine that they would have been buried instantly. ‘No good risking our necks for nothing.’ Nobody said anything. We were all too shocked. Ed Garrety’s eyes were closed, his face grey and beaded with sweat. I thought for a moment he was going to pass out, he looked so bad. But then the heavy lids flicked back, the blue eyes staring. ‘Yes,’ he murmured, ‘there mustn’t be any more deaths.’

The constable nodded, standing there waiting. I think he was expecting Ed Garrety to go with him. But when nobody moved, he nodded again and ducked quickly through the flyscreen, disappearing into the night. A moment later we heard the engine of his Land-Rover.

A silence settled on the room, broken by Janet saying in a deliberately practical voice, ‘Well, there’s Cleo and the horses to see to, and the chickens — would somebody care to give me a hand?’ Kennie was on his feet in an instant. I watched them as they went out together and when I turned back to Ed Garrety, only the Alsatian was still there. His chair was empty.

I leaned back, closing my eyes and thinking of Westrop and the rumours surrounding his uncle’s disappearance. I must have dozed off, for the next thing I knew was Janet was standing there saying her father would like a word with me. ‘You’ll find him in his den.’ And she added as I got to my feet, ‘It’s upset him and he’s — not quite himself, see.’

I found him sitting at his desk with a glass in his hand and an old plan of the underground workings spread out in front of him. He looked up as I opened the door, his face flushed, his eyes too bright. ‘Come in Alec. Come in.’ I could smell the whisky before I had even seen the half-empty bottle. ‘Like a drink?’ He didn’t wait for me to reply, but reached into a drawer for another glass, the neck of the bottle rattling against it as he poured. ‘Now you sit down. Time we had a talk — just the two of us, eh?’ He spoke slowly and with care. He wasn’t drunk, but he had already had enough to make him choose his words with deliberation. ‘I’m told you went down on your own and brought up some samples. Right?’

I nodded, sitting there drinking his whisky and wondering what was coming, why he should choose this of all moments to talk about the reef he had found.

‘And then you hitched a ride to Kalgoorlie. Did you get those samples analysed?’

‘Yes.’ And I told him the result.

He emptied his glass and poured himself more whisky. ‘I don’t usually drink. But tonight…’ He sat there, savouring the taste of it, staring into space. ‘It helps sometimes.’ There was a long pause, and he was looking down at the plan again. ‘It’s the future I have to think about now.’ He tapped the plan with his finger. ‘That’s where I came across the reef. At the third level, 149 yards north of the main gallery. Five men died there and seven were injured and my father closed the mine, not knowing they’d found die reef.’

‘How did you know then?’

‘That old abo, Half-Bake. He always said he’d seen the quartz as the roof collapsed on him. But I didn’t believe him. Or perhaps I was afraid to go down there. I told you, didn’t I? That mine’s got a curse on it. And now there’s two more dead.’

‘Did you know they were in the mine?’

He looked at me, frowning. ‘No, of course I didn’t. What made you say that?’

‘Golden Soak didn’t collapse of its own accord.’ The words came out before I had really thought about them. Maybe it was the whisky, or just that I was too tired to think what I was saying.

He stared at me, the room suddenly deathly silent. There were beads of sweat on his forehead, gleaming in the light. Far away I could hear the hum of the generator. He was staring at me a long time without saying a word. Finally he nodded. ‘No, you’re right. It didn’t collapse of its own accord.’ Another long silence, and then he said, ‘But you saw it, the edge of the reef just showing. How else was I to discover there was any depth to it? I took a chance.’

And he’d killed two men. No wonder he was drinking now. He pushed his hand up over his eyes, the fingers slowly clenching, the fist coming down and hitting the desk. ‘I was desperate.’ He said it slowly, tight-lipped, his eyes with that blank stare, ‘Then why didn’t you let me do a proper survey for you?’

He looked at me slowly. ‘Why should I? Why should I trust you? You may be a mining consultant, but you didn’t come to Australia because of the nickel boom. You came here to escape.’

‘I don’t deny it.’ The man was saying what he thought, and he was right. ‘How did you guess?’

‘Australia’s always been a bolt hole for men like you. You’ve no money, y’see. Hitching rides, clutching at straws …’ He nodded, his bright blue eyes staring at me, not accusingly, more in sympathy. ‘I won’t ask you what you’re escaping from. But we understand each other. Right?’

Was that a threat? I wondered.

Then he said, ‘I have to think of Jan now.’ A sudden smile illuminated his face. ‘Don’t worry, my boy. I like you. We don’t see many people here. I liked you the moment I saw you sitting there reading that old Shakespeare. Reminded me of Henry. Something of the temperament, too.’ He looked down at the plan of the mine again, then folded it carefully and put it away in a drawer. ‘Well, that’s the end of the Golden Soak. All these years and now it’s finished.’ He saw my empty glass and without a word poured me another drink and then refilled his own, the silence dragging. Finally he said, ‘How did you know Westrop was Mcllroy’s nephew?’

‘The Kalgoorlie Miner. His wife’s maiden name was given as Westrop.’

‘You read the reports. I see.’ He leaned back, sipping at his whisky, looking at me straight in the face as he said, ‘He was crooked as a rattlesnake, but my father admired him. Don’t you think that’s strange? He actually admired him. Said he had guts, coming here, brazening it out, and then going off into the desert like that, convinced he’d make a fortune. A cocky little bastard. That’s what my father called him. He wasn’t a great talker himself. But Pat McIlroy …’ He paused, staring past me at the wall, at an old sepia photograph of a man with drooping moustaches and a battered hat standing posed beside a team of horses hitched to a wagon. ‘Well, not much difference between a mountebank and a remittance man — talkers, actors both. I didn’t see much of McIlroy and I was only a kid at the time, but I can remember his voice, the extraordinary magnetism of the man. He liked people, y’see. A flash, brash, cocky, bouncy little bastard, but he rode the outback here with a golden tongue and a rainbow in his eyes and within a year that bank of Father’s was bursting at the seams with money.’

‘What happened to him at the end?’ I asked.

He stared at me blankly. ‘In the end? I thought you said you’d read the newspaper reports.’

‘They never found his body.’

‘The Gibson’s a big desert.’

‘The police had native trackers.’

‘God in heaven!’ He breathed. ‘After thirty years, still the same rumours.’ The bottle, more than half empty now, rattled against the glass. He put his head down, his hands to his face. ‘After all this time it’s like a dream. Trouble is, sometimes I don’t seem to know what’s real and what isn’t. I was down at Meekatharra that day, y’see. Drove back through the night and when I got there he was gone. Nobody’d seen him. It was dark when he arrived and still dark when he left. And he was drunk, my father said. Drunk on whisky and visions of a great copper mine that would feed British industry in the war that was coming — a fortune waiting for him in the desert. That golden tongue of his …’ He sipped at his drink, and then his mind switched to Golden Soak and he asked me what the chances were of the reef extending along the line of the gully up towards the gap.

‘A possibility, no more.’ His guess was as good as mine. ‘If you’d let me do a proper survey — ‘

‘And have you kill yourself when I didn’t even believe the poor half-wit had seen the reef. I can remember my father recruiting those out-of-work miners, driving them to blast their way into the faulted area, knowing he was taking a hell of a risk. The day it happened I was riding the fences up beyond the Robinson Gap and I came down past Golden Soak at sunset just as the first bodies were being brought up.’ He lifted his glass, his hand shaking, staring at nothing. And I could see what he was seeing, remembering that drift offshooting north from the main gallery and the atmosphere that had clung to the third level. ‘Father never went down the mine again, and when I came back after the war I’d seen too many men die to try and reopen it.’

‘You were telling me about McIlroy,’ I reminded him. I didn’t like the glazed look in his eyes, the way his hands trembled. The death of two more men seemed to be affecting him the way the death of those miners had affected his father.

He nodded slowly. ‘A pity my father didn’t go with him instead of pinning his faith to Golden Soak.’ He pushed his hand up over his eyes again. ‘Mcllroy’s Monster.’ He laughed a little unsteadily. ‘Pat McIlroy died and my father went mad. Two sides of the same coin, and a whole era went when the Garrety empire crashed.’ He looked at me then, his head lifted, pride mixed with sadness as he said quietly, ‘It was an empire, y’know, by Australian standards. Father was the North West — the biggest man of a tough hard bunch. A piece of history you might almost say, like the Duraks further north.’ He smiled, sadly and with pity. ‘But nobody was sorry for him. He wasn’t the son of man. It was McIlroy they were sorry for. Something about him, and the mystery of his death — going out like that into the desert, chasing a dream.’ He turned his head to the picture on his desk, a full-length photograph of Big Bill Garrety in knickerbockers and a stiff collar. ‘So who won in the end?’ His voice was soft and slightly slurred. ‘My father slowly dying, a drunk, and that Irishman going out with a flourish that had everybody in the Pilbara talking about him, endless speculation.’

‘And nobody knows what happened to him?’ I asked.

He looked at me, a quick twist of the head, smiling a little crookedly. ‘Can I trust you? I can’t be sure, can I?’

‘No.’ By God we were being frank, and the whisky deadening tiredness, making it easy for us.

He nodded. ‘Well, it doesn’t matter now.’ He picked up his drink again. ‘McIlroy was a sick man. He had syphilis, y’know — suffered from blackouts, hallucinations. He should never have attempted an expedition like that. He knew it, and my father knew it. But he wouldn’t go with him. He wasn’t a gambler and anyway his mind was set on Golden Soak, not some mythical copper deposit. But when McIlroy left here he had with him the best of our native boys. I know that because, when I wanted Weepy Weeli to ride with me to check the fences beyond Yandicoogina, Father told me he’d gone walkabout. That was nonsense. Weepy — we called him that because he had an eye infection — would never have gone walkabout. He’d been at the station ever since I could remember.’

And then he was telling me how, about two weeks before the cave-in, Weepy had walked into Jarra Jarra alone. The man had been little more than skin and bone, so weak he could hardly stand. ‘I found him out there by the old forge and then — ‘ he hesitated, his hand gripped tight on his glass as though to prevent it shaking. ‘Then my father took him straight off to the sacred place of his people — Father knew all the ritual, he was blood brother to one of the elders of Weepy’s tribe. What happened there I don’t know, but afterwards Weepy wouldn’t even admit he was with McIlroy in the Gibson.’

‘He told his son,’ I said.

‘Yes, he told Wolli — when he was dying.’

‘So Wolli knows what happened.’

He shook his head. ‘No. No, I don’t think so.’ He sounded a little vague. ‘Old Weepy knew the sort of man his son was. He told him just enough to ensure the bastard would keep his job here in Jarra Jarra.’ And then so softly I could barely hear him: The sins of the father,’ he breathed, ‘All my hopes, my plans, all my dreams for this place….’ He took a quick gulp at his drink, spilling some of it down his chin, wiping the liquor clear with his hand. ‘I was a kid then. Just a kid.’ He said it as though it cleared him of responsibility. ‘There was a war coming, thank God, and after that I was in the army.’ His eyes stared at me with an appalling blankness. ‘I was in the army within a month and I didn’t see this place or my father again for six years.’ He picked up the bottle, holding it to the light, then shared out the rest of it between us. ‘Well, what are the chances?’ he asked abruptly. ‘I have to think of Jan now, and you’re a mining man.’

‘A possibility, that’s all,’ I said. His mind had switched and I thought it best to take advantage of it. Mcllroy’s death was none of my business. That’s what I thought then, sitting there in that little hot room full of rock samples and old photographs. ‘Are you willing to let me do a survey up the top of the gully?’

‘Was that why you came back with this young student fellow?’

‘Yes. I was hoping to persuade you to let me do a geophysical, then perhaps drill. And no cost to you. I have some money now, a job I did for a mining company down in Kalgoorlie. The same people might be interested in the development of Golden Soak, provided, of course, my survey results — ‘

‘Not the mine,’ he said. ‘You keep clear of the mine. I don’t want anybody else — ’ His voice trailed off and for a moment he sat there hunched over the desk, lost in thought, his eyes blinking so that I thought for a moment he was going to burst into tears. But then he seemed to pull himself together. ‘The rock samples here — they’re all labelled. Go through them if you like. But they’re most of them from the flat land to the east. I never took samples from above the entrance. The faulting — It didn’t seem right, and the depth so much greater.’

‘The faulting doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘With modern techniques — ‘

‘Yes, of course. I’m only an amateur, ye’see.’ He leaned back in his chair, pushing his hand wearily up through his hair. ‘Well, that’s settled then.’ His voice sounded very tired.

‘I can go ahead?’

‘That’s what you wanted isn’t it? And if the reef continues … then maybe Jarra Jarra will be safe for another generation. Jan loves the place, y’know. She didn’t like Perth. She was happy down there for a while, at school. But she wouldn’t be happy…’ He was staring down at his glass. ‘Nor would I.’ He murmured. Then he drained the rest of his drink and got carefully to his feet. ‘Good luck!’ He held out his hand as though saying goodbye to me for good, and he had to brace himself against the desk.

That was all the agreement we ever had — a handshake. And he was so full of whisky I wondered if he knew what he was doing. There were other things, too. But I only worried about them later, when the men from Grafton Downs and Mt Newman had given up and gone, and Kennie and I were collecting samples from the steep slope of Coondewanna.

The sides of the gully were bare outcrops of red rock — part of what Kennie called a banded iron formation. The sides rose to a rim, and beyond the rim Mt Coondewanna leaned a shoulder gently towards the gap. No outcrops here, the surface of the ground coarse-grained silica with a sparse covering of spinifex, occasional patches of mallee. This shoulder was roughly on the line of the faulting I had seen below ground and it was from here that we collected the most promising samples. The flies were bad and it was very hot. We camped at the head of the gully where the air was cooler, a slight breeze funnelling through the Gap, and as the sun set the land to the west took on the colour of dried blood.

That night we slept under the stars, the sky burnt to a diamond clarity and not a sound anywhere until a dingo started calling from the gully below us. I was tired, but sleep did not come easily, my mind on the Golden Soak, and the lost, lonely cry of that dingo reminding me of the lives it had cost. I was thinking of Westrop, his body buried now under tons of rock, wondering about McIlroy. Had Westrop been right? Was Mcllroy’s body down there, too? Was that why Ed Garrety had fired that charge? I was desperate, he had said. Desperate for money, or because Golden Soak held a secret that must be kept at all costs?

It was the heat. The night was very hot and my mind in a world of fantasy and reality. God knows, Big Bill Garrety had had reason enough to kill the man. But to tell his doctor and not his son … Whatever the truth of it, Ed Garrety must have known. I was thinking of Drym then, the reek of that room and the candle flame burning — the picture in that newspaper, the blackened beams a skeletal cap to the gutted house. We all have our secrets …

‘You awake, Alec?’ Kennie rolled over on his swag, his eyes open. ‘I thought I heard something — a cry.’

‘A dingo,’ I said.

He lifted his head, listening. ‘Yes — of course. This place gives me the creeps.’ He gave a nervous laugh. ‘D’you believe in Quinkans?’

‘Quinkans?’

‘Mythical abo beings. Ghosts, if you like — Quinkans is the Queensland name. I read a book about them, by an Ansett pilot. I don’t know the name for them here, but they’ll be the same breed. They come out at night, and if they’re bad they’re killers. All abos believe that.’ He was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘What time do you reckon we ought to leave tomorrow?

I didn’t answer, thinking of the inquest fixed for the day after and the evidence Ed Garrety would have to give.

‘Port Hedland’s a long way.’

‘We’ll decide in the morning.’ It would be an all night drive and at the end of it I would have to lie — unless Ed Garrety decided to tell them the truth. I was staring up at the stars, thinking of the Gibson and McIlroy and that abo walking out alive, trying to picture what had really happened, my thoughts ranging and the truth elusive. I lay there for a long time, dozing on the edge of my sleep, my mind groping for the solution to that thirty-year-old mystery and the sound of that dingo gradually fading until the next thing I knew the sun was up over the shoulder’s rim, a red-hot poker boring at my eyeballs.

Kennie was already up, a smell of wood smoke and the bacon sizzling. His body, crouched there, was a dark silhouette against the flaming sunrise. ‘Thought we’d better make an early start.’ He gave a little laugh. ‘Last night — that dingo startled me. I was only half awake.’

‘If we’d got a rig here,’ I murmured sleepily, ‘I think I’d take a chance and drill in that hollow over there.’

He nodded. ‘The best samples we got. But you haven’t got a rig and even if you had — ‘

‘We might be able to hire one,’ I said, remembering that Frenchman from New Caledonia.

We ate our breakfast, took final samples from the one part of the hollow we had not yet covered, and then we left. It was shortly after nine and we met Tom on the track to Jarra Jarra. He had a note from Janet to say that they had started at first light and that she was relying on me to make the coroner understand the dangerous state of the mine.

The inquest was held at 10 a.m. on the Tuesday and lasted all day. There should have been a jury of three since it was I

a mine accident, but the Coroner had dispensed with this on the grounds of possible prejudice — in any case there seems to be a natural reluctance on the part of West Australians to have anything to do with the courts of law. But that did not inhibit them from crowding into the little courtroom. The heat was stifling, and after lunch most of the men were so full of beer they were half asleep. The verdict at the end of it was ‘death by misadventure’. That should have settled it, but the evidence had taken a long time, a lot of witnesses had been called, and the coroner, a conscientious lawyer, had asked questions that undoubtedly jogged the memories of many of those present.

Who started the rumour I have no idea. Probably no-one in particular. Prophecy, when we saw her after breakfasting at the Conglomerate next morning, told me it was suddenly all round the bar that same night. And Andie, when we called at Lynn Peak for petrol, said he actually heard it the day before the inquest, from an engineer taking equipment into Port Hedland for servicing. Personally, I think it was one of those rumours that just well up out of the ground, based on half-truths and hearsay and fed by the envy and malice that exists in every isolated community. And though nobody could accuse Ed Garrety of being evasive, his evidence, and the impression he had made on the Court, was certainly a contributory factor.

I don’t think he had been drinking, but his face was flushed, his voice barely audible as he told the Court what had happened the day the mine had collapsed. Several times the Coroner had to ask him to speak up or repeat what he had said, and all this time he stood with his hands gripping the wood of the witness box, leaning a little forward so that the stoop, the slight rounding of his shoulders, made him look older.

‘You say you knew what you were doing because you had been down the mine as a young man and had watched the reef ore being blasted out?’ The Coroner was a big, friendly man, but he liked his facts straight. ‘Surely they drilled short holes even then to take their charges?’

‘Not always. Not if there were crevices.’

‘And you used a crevice.’ The Coroner glanced at his notes and nodded. ‘The rock was faulted, in fact.’

‘It was only a small charge.’

‘Yes, you said that before. But what I am getting at is this — ‘ The Coroner leaning forward, his glasses in his hand, his face blandly enquiring. ‘You were in a gallery of the mine that had caved in.’ The glasses went on again as he peered at his notes. ‘That happened in 1939. On April 4, 1939, to be exact. The gallery caved in with the loss of five lives. Right?’ He looked up, noted Ed Garrety’s nod and said, ‘So you knew just how dangerous it was.’

I saw his hands tighten their grip on the edge of the box. ‘I took a chance, that’s all.’

‘Because you were short of money?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you knew it was dangerous.’

‘I told you, I took a chance.’

‘You heard the witnesses, their description of what your small charge did to the mine.’ The Coroner paused. ‘Did it ever occur to you that you ought to make certain there was nobody in the mine or in its vicinity who might get hurt?’ I could not hear Ed Garrety’s reply, but the Coroner did and he said sharply, ‘Never mind whether they had the right to enter the mine. That’s not the point. What this Court must be concerned about is that you were very well aware these two mining men were wanting to get into the mine. Alec Fall’s evidence shows that you knew about the concealed entrance in the old shearing shed. And we heard it from Weeli Wolli how you stopped them at the main entrance the previous night. In fact you pointed a loaded gun at them. Why didn’t you check that there was no vehicle around the mine before donating your charge?’

Ed Garrety shook his head, the sweat glistening on his forehead. ‘It just never occurred to me,’ he breathed.

And then came the question I had asked myself — ‘Can you tell us why Westrop was so anxious to gain access to the mine?’

Again the shake of the head, the stoop of the shoulders more pronounced.

‘Was it anything to do with his uncle’s disappearance?’

‘I don’t know. It may have been.’ His voice was barely audible.

‘You spoke to him twice — the first time when he and the aborigine were camped by the old shearing shed, and then again the night before he died. Didn’t he refer to his uncle’s disappearance?’

‘No.’ The slight hesitation was noticeable.

‘He didn’t mention the name Pat McIlroy at all?’

‘Only to say that he was related to him.’

‘Go on.’ The Coroner waited, finally asking him in what context the relationship had been stated. There was a long pause, and then Ed Garrety said, ‘It’s not easy to remember his exact words, but he seemed to think his relationship gave him some sort of claim to the mine.’

‘And did it?’

Ed Garrety’s head came up. ‘No, of course not.’ And then in a voice that was hard and high and trembled slightly: ‘You know what happened to my father, to everything he’d worked for all his life. McIlroy destroyed him utterly. After that how could he, or any relative of his, have the slightest claim?’

There was a long silence. Finally the Coroner nodded, and after glancing down again at his notes, he told Ed Garrety to stand down.

We were near the end then, but before giving his verdict, the Coroner asked Wolli to come forward again. The tall, gangling aborigine had a scared look on his face as he slowly took up his position on the witness stand. He, too, was sweating, beads of moisture glistening on his black face, the whites of his eyes showing yellow in a shaft of sunlight. The Coroner spoke very slowly, very distinctly. Had Phil Westrop ever said why he wanted to get into the mine? Wolli’s eyes shifted from the Coroner to Ed Garrety. Then he shook his head. ‘No.’

‘Your father was with Pat McIlroy when he died. That right?’

‘Yah. Thas wot he tella me.’

‘And did he tell you how the white man died?’

Wolli shook his head. ‘He don’tella me that.’

‘Did he say anything about Golden Soak?’

‘Yah. He tell me plenty bad spirits longa that mine.’

‘So you were afraid to go down there.’ Wolli nodded dumbly. ‘Did your father ever say anything to you about Mcllroy’s Monster? Did he tell you whether they found it before he started walking out of the Gibson on his own?’

‘He not say in.’

And then the final, inevitable question. ‘Why didn’t he report the white man’s death to the police?’

Wolli glanced round the courtroom, no other black there and the whites all watching him. His gaze settled on Ed Garrety, and though his face remained impassive, no flicker of an expression, I sensed hostility. But whether for Garrety, or for white men in general, I could not be certain. And then he was answering the Coroner in that slow uncertain voice.’ ‘Fraid’im speak. Boss whitefella don’want’im speak.’

The Coroner leaned back, blowing out his cheeks, dismissing the witness with an irritable wave of his hand, while the murmur of voices filled the room, a buzz like flies as the older men recalled the whispers of the past. And though the verdict exonerated Ed Garrety officially, it did not stop the men who had been in that courtroom talking.

In sparsely populated country rumour travels fast. We made Kalgoorlie in just over thirty-six hours, which was good going, but the rumour was there ahead of us, and it had grown with distance. Chris Culpin gave me the Kalgoorlie version in the Palace bar.

That was after I had taken the samples in to Petersen Geophysics for analysis. I was in a state of wild excitement then, for while waiting for the girl to list them, I had picked up a copy of the West Australian. I wanted to see how Lone Minerals were doing, not only because I owned shares, but also because, if the analysis was at all promising, I intended wiring Freeman in Sydney. I thought it might make a difference if his shares were a firm market. I got a shock when I found the quotation. The price was listed at 79, up 12 cents on the day.

Petersen came in just before I left. ‘So, you are back again. What you got for me this time?’ And when I told him, he said, ‘Golden Soak, is it? Always Golden Soak. But you are lucky man you do not also lose your life, eh?’ He had read all about it in the Miner and the West Australian. ‘And Blackridge. They have a drill working here now and there is talk they make a strike.

So everything you touch …’ He grinned his horsey grin, slapped me on the back and added, ‘You want I should do this analysis fast like before, eh?’

I nodded. ‘If you can. I have to get backing.’

‘Ja. Everybody haf to get backing. But you are English. I like Englishmen, and very much when they are lucky. I haf two rush yobs first. Very important. Per’raps tomorrow evening. Okay?’

From there I had gone to the broker’s office in the Palace building and his wife had directed me to the bar next door where he was drinking with a client. I had a quick beer with him and he told me Kadek’s Newsletter tipping the shares had come out that morning. Lone Minerals were now 84 and he was convinced they would go higher. I arranged with him to sell at a dollar, which would give me just enough to take up the whole of the option Freeman had given me, and I left him with that heightened sense of living that comes with the excitement of gambling, like a man who has put his shirt on an outsider and sees it coming up on the rails to challenge the favourite.

I was pushing my way through the crowded bar, feeling in tune with all the hubbub of speculation around me, my mind leaping to the prospect of making enough to get an IP survey carried out, perhaps start a drilling programme, when my arm was seized and I turned to find Culpin beside me. He was unshaven, his hat pushed back on his head and his heavy features beaded with sweat. ‘Where’s Kennie?’

He had gone to see his mother, but I didn’t tell him that. ‘I’ve no idea,’ I said.

‘But he’s here with you?’ He didn’t wait for me to answer that. ‘You packed it in, eh? I don’t blame you. Nasty business.’ He stood there, swaying slightly. ‘It’s murder — near as dammit — from what I hear.’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ I asked him.

‘Golden Soak — an’ that man Garrety. I don’t want Kennie mixed up in it, see.’

The man was full of liquor and I started to move away from him. But his grip on my arm tightened. ‘Two men killed. That right, innit? An’ one of them Mcllroy’s nephew. Blew the whole mine down on top of them.’

‘It was an accident.’

‘Oh, sure.’ His voice was heavy with sarcasm. ‘But a bloody convenient one, eh?’

‘What do you know about it?’

He grinned at me slyly. ‘Not as much as you, I bet. But Christ! It’s obvious, innit? Westrop trying to get into that mine and Mcllroy’s body never found.’

I was shocked. It was as though my own thoughts had been projected all the hundreds of miles from Coondewanna to this bar. ‘Is that what they’re saying now?’

‘What else? They always was a law to themselves, the Garretys. Don’t forget I was up there as a kid. There was talk then.’ He reached to the bar for his drink, swallowed it at a gulp and banged the glass down on the counter. ‘I don’t give a bugger what happened to Westrop, or McIlroy for that matter. All I care about is what they were after, same as you. Think I don’t know you were checking at the Miner offices last time you were here?’ He leaned close to me, his voice a whisper, the smell of whisky strong on his breath and his eyes red-rimmed. ‘Well, where is it?’ he demanded urgently. ‘You’ve found out, haven’t you? You wouldn’t be here otherwise.’ And then on a wheedling note, ‘Come on, Alec. Be a pal. I let you in on Blackridge.’

I jerked my arm free, anger mounting as I thought of Janet’s father. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Sure you do.’ He was grinning again. ‘I’m talking about a mountain of copper somewhere out in the Gibson beyond Disappointment. That’s what it’s all about, innit — Pat McIlroy and his Monster.’

The sins of the father! I could remember the blank look in Ed Garrety’s eyes as he had said that.

‘Now come on, Alec.’ The wheedling note was stronger now. ‘You’re new out here. You’d never get through on your own. And all Kennie knows about living bush is what he learned from me. I’ve been a dogger all through that country, see?’

‘When did you first hear this rumour?’ I asked him. ‘Who told you?’

‘I don’t know.’ I watched him searching back in his fuddled mind, his forehead creased in a frown. ‘It was straight after the Miner had reported the inquest. They were all talking about it here in the bar. And then somebody — I don’t remember who it was — some Company man, he said it’d be worth hiring one of the Trans-West Cessnas an’ having a dekko. But nobody ever found anything just flying over the country, ‘cept that fellow Hancock. Iron ore’s different though, an’ if it could be seen from the air somebody would’ve found it by now with all them survey parties skittering around. No. You’ve got to hoof it into the desert, and that means an abo or somebody like me who knows how to live bush in that sort of country.’ He stared at me. ‘You think it over. You know where to find me. An’ tell Kennie …’ He hesitated. ‘Tell him to come home. Edith misses him.’ His hand was on my arm again and suddenly there were tears in his eyes. Tell him that, will you?’

* * * *

But Kennie was still with me when I started north again two days later. If his mother had been on her own he would have stayed, but not with his father there. ‘Mebbe I lack guts,’ he said. ‘But I’m scared of him. An’ he’s a b-bastard — a real bastard.’ This was after I had passed on Chris Culpin’s message, alone in the room we were sharing in the Norrises’ house on Cheetham. Now, as we headed up towards Leonora, with the late afternoon sun straight in our eyes, I glanced at his quiet, serious face and realized he wasn’t a boy any more. He had grown up a lot in the week we had been together.

Perhaps in saying that I am trying to evade responsibility and so lessen the sense of guilt I had before the end. Driving north that day all I knew was that I was glad he was still with me. We had grown accustomed to each other. And in my case, I think it was more than that. I had grown fond of him. He was the only real friend I had in Australia. No, not just in Australia — anywhere, in fact. I had no friends, no wife, no relations, nobody — only Kennie sitting there beside me, the young face set beneath the silky beard as he watched the tarmac reel out ahead of us, a dark ribbon between the red gravel verges. But the guilt remains with me, the feeling that I should have refused to take him. But even then I am not sure he would have gone back to his family. Anyway, he was old enough to make up his own mind. And once we had started north I had other things to think about.

The analysis had turned out much as we had expected, the rock samples blank but some of the din containing a percentage of quartz granules with just a trace of gold and antimony. Enough at any rate to foster the belief that far back in geological time, millions of years ago, the reef quartz had banded the slope of Coondewanna above the gully. But the slope was still the same iron formation, and though the rainfall was minimal, it was still sufficient to have washed the reef traces down from higher up on the mountain’s shoulder. Only the hollow offered a reasonable chance of the surface indications being repeated at depth.

My problem was really a financial one. I had been lucky. The broker had held off selling my Lone Minerals for another day, and by then the price had risen to 106. After taking up my option, I reckoned I had enough cash in my pocket to hire a rig and drill one hole, at most two. The alternative was an IP survey to give me readings that would register an anomaly if any existed. But I would still have to drill into that anomaly to prove that it was a continuation of the reef. So it was a question of either playing safe and proceeding step by step, or of cutting the corners and putting down a drill.

I had wired Freeman with enough information to whet his appetite. But to get a bid out of him, or even an agreement by which Lone Minerals would finance a proper development programme, I had to have reef samples that Petersen could report on favourably after laboratory tests. Allowing for one drill hole only, I would be pitting my geological wits against odds that time had made very long indeed. It was something that occupied my mind throughout that drive.

We lay up in the heat of the day and at dawn after the second night drive we left the Highway on the cut-off to Mt Newman, a black mare standing poised for flight beside a salmon gum, her neck arched above her foal. The stallion crossed the dirt road ahead of us, his tail so long it brushed the ground. ‘Brumbies,’ Kennie said. ‘Plenty up here. Gone wild like the camels.’ The stallion had halted beside the mare, his head up and facing us, his nostrils quivering, the three of them jet black and looking like thoroughbreds. I turned in my seat to see him shoulder the mare and her foal into the shelter of some cues, thinking of Jarra Jarra and the stock there dying for lack of water, while here horses that had reverted to the wild looked as though they had never known a drought.

The sun came up and by then I was dozing, not waking again until the wheels were humming on tarmac and we were almost into the Mt Newman township. Kennie had been there before, but to me it was a revelation — neat rows of houses, like the married quarters of a garrison town, the lawns sprouting green with sprinklers going. It was the absolute antithesis of old Kalgoorlie with its period clapboard houses and camel train wide streets, all the ordered neatness of it set against a wild background of iron ore hills red-brown in the sun. We turned down by the administration buildings and drew up at the Walkabout, a very modern motel of Moorish design with cabin rooms built around a swimming pool, great lumps of polished rock by the glass entrance doors to the restaurant and bar. Inside it was cool with pretty waitresses in freshly-laundered mini-skirts.

Even now I can remember the mini-skirts, the girls’ long legs and the enormous breakfast we ate. The coolness of it, the sense of being in some skeikh’s palace, an oasis of comfort set in the middle of nowhere; what a difference it made to have money in my pocket! And afterwards, shaved and refreshed and full of food, we drove to Whaleback, where 120-ton Haulpaks thundered down the mountain loaded with ore for the crusher, the whole world a dustbowl, the sun hazed in sepia red.

The mine manager’s office was air-conditioned, staffed by girls as well as men; we might have been in a city office, except for the faint background hum of giant machinery and the movement in and out of men in dust-brown overalls and yellow safety helmets. A young Australian, fresh out from his home town of Broken Hill across the other side of the continent, pinpointed the position of Duhamel’s drilling rig for me and we drove on up the mountain, giving way to the loaded Haulpaks coming down, their wheels higher than the Land-Rover.

The rig was on exploratory work, drilling a test hole high up on Mt Whaleback. Across from where it was spudded in the view was of a mountainside being gnawed to destruction by blasting and giant shovels. And beyond the huge stepped gashes of industrial erosion stretched the ever-endless wastes of the Australian outback, iron hills rising red out of the prevailing flatness and the heat throbbing through a miasma of ore dust so fine it hung like a haze that half-obscured the sun.

They were adding a fresh rod when we arrived, Duhamel and his off-sider working in unison, both of them stripped to the waist and red with the grime of ore dust. As soon as the drill started up again, he came across to me, his teeth white in a grin against the dustiness of his bearded face. ‘You looking for a job or just come to see how we earn our tucker here?’

‘I want to hire your rig,’ I said. I had to shout to make myself heard against the throaty throb of the diesel and the higher sound of compressed air forcing the dust from the tungsten bit to the surface.

His eyes widened a little in surprise and then he walked me along the ridge to a crumbling cliff edge where we could hear ourselves speak. Below us, on the flat platforms of the mining benches, giant shovels were loading Haulpaks, a strange ballet of mechanized Jurassic monsters. Beyond them, through the haze, the twin lines of steel ran ruler straight along the valley floor.

‘One hole, eh? What depth?’

I told him seven hundred feet, at most eight, and he nodded. ‘Above the water table?’

‘Down to it,’ I told him.

‘But not into it?’

‘No.’

‘And the rock?’

‘Softish till we hit the quartz — if we do.’

‘Okay. I talk to my mate. We finish our contract here end of this week. Maybe the boys want to go to Port Hedland, maybe not. We’ll see.’

Kennie and I waited there while he talked it over with his off-sider, the two yellow helmets huddled close against the noise of the rig. Then Duhamel came back nodding his head. He’d have to check with his other team, but he thought they’d do it provided there was plenty of beer and somebody to do the cooking. ‘Josh’ll bring his guitar and we make a party of it, see.’ He was smiling. ‘And if we strike the reef first go we get double. Right?’

I didn’t argue about that, or about his price. ‘When can I expect you?’ I asked.

‘We pull rods here five-thirty Monday. If there is no problems then we hitch-up and go. You meet us outside the mine manager’s office six o’clock. Okay?’

I nodded, but his eyes were on the bench down below. He glanced at his watch. ‘Better you wait now,’ he said. ‘They’ll be blasting in a few minutes and until then everything’s frozen.’ He walked us back along the ridge, to the crumbling cliff edge with its view of the gashed mountainside, and there we waited as a stillness, a sort of paralysis, crept over the whole scene. Benches and haul roads had suddenly become deserted. The shovels had stopped their prehistoric dance, and on the bench below us half a dozen Haulpaks had backed up against one of the expensive monsters, their empty truck bodies at maximum lift to shield it from the blast. A lone man moved quickly, checking white cable lines on an empty mining bench away to the right, then ran to his car and drove furiously up the haul road, the only vehicle in the whole of that mechanized operation that wasn’t frozen into stillness.

Two minutes later the mountainside below the shot cables heaved in a series of convulsions. The noise and the air blast hit together, the ground shock thudding at the soles of our shoes as two hundred thousand tons of ore collapsed on to the next bench down in a great billowing cloud of dust. ‘Okay, mon ami.’ Duhamel clapped me on the back. ‘You can go now. But don’t forget — see we got plenty of beer an’ the tucker’s good. An’ see you got the right place for us to spud in, hnn?’

We shook hands on it and then Kennie and I started back down the mountain, back to the Walkabout where we sat drinking ice-cold beer in the bar until it was time for lunch. We had brandy afterwards and then more beer, so that we were both of us in a happy frame of mind when we finally drove out across the tracks and took the cut-off to Jarra Jarra. It was blazing hot, the scrub shimmering and the leaves of the gums hanging limp, no breath of air. But I didn’t care. Even the flies didn’t bother me. I had the use of a drilling rig for four days and all I was thinking about was how to make the best use of it. I had two days in which to make up my mind the exact position we’d spud it in. And if we hit the reef spot on. …

I was still thinking about that as we climbed to the gap in the Ophthalmia Range, Parmelia Hill to our right and Mt Robinson a vague blur on the horizon. A piddling little operation compared with the huge ore complex I had just seen, but my own, with no outsider, no consortium of financial houses involved; I was singing softly to myself, thinking of Janet — how excited she would be.

We reached the boundary fence of Jarra Jarra shortly after six and a few minutes later I drove into the homestead, blaring the horn as I stopped under the big Mexican poinciana trees, my spirits still buoyed up by all the beer we had drunk. And when Janet came out to see what all the racket was about, I shouted to her that it was fixed — we had a rig and we were going to drill. ‘With luck you’ll have a new mine for Easter.’ And I picked her up and swung her round. ‘We’ll call it Coondewanna.’ I would have kissed her then, but she was stiff and wooden, no answering spark to my own excitement, and when I let her go I saw her eyes were sullen, her face flushed. ‘Can’t you understand what I’ve been telling you?’ I demanded.

‘You’re drunk,’ she said, and she looked as though she were on the verge of tears.

‘What the hell’s the matter? Where’s your father?’ At least he’d appreciate what I had achieved.

‘He’s had to go to Port Hedland again.’

‘Port Hedland?’ I felt suddenly deflated, the beer and the excitement drained out of me, everything flat. ‘Why?’

‘About the Watersnake. They’ve found our cattle there and they’re insisting we clear them off the Pukara at once.’

‘So what? Can’t you understand? If we strike the reef, the cattle don’t matter.’

‘But they do matter,’ she snapped. And she added with slow emphasis. ‘This is a cattle station and if we have to move them they’ll die.’

‘Then you get some more. If that’s what you want. We strike that reef at the head of the gully …’

‘You stupid, insensitive bastard — can’t you understand? Her voice was shrill, her eyes flashing. ‘We sweated our guts out to save those animals. They’ve got water now. They’re alive.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. I hadn’t thought of it that way. ‘It was just that I couldn’t think of anything …’

‘And there’s something else.’ The sullen, angry look was back in her eyes. ‘Rosalind’s here.’

It didn’t register for a moment. ‘Rosalind?’ I stared at her. ‘You mean she’s here — come all this way …’

She nodded dumbly.

‘But why?’

‘To see you, I imagine.’

So that was it. It wasn’t the cattle, but Rosa’s arrival that had upset her. ‘How did she get here?’

‘By plane. She came up from Perth yesterday and one of the Mount Newman men drove her over last night.’

The world seemed suddenly a much more complicated place. ‘Where is she now?’

‘Gone for a walk, I think.’ And she added with a trace of bitterness, ‘While I cook some sort of a dinner.’

‘Does she know I’m here?’

‘No. How could she?’

‘In Australia, I mean.’

‘Of course.’

‘You told her?’

She stared at me, those prominent eyes of hers very wide. ‘I said you’d gone to Kalgoorlie. Why? What did you expect me to say when your wife turns up out of the blue asking for you?’

So Rosa had guessed it was phoney — that I hadn’t died in that fire. But to come all this way … There didn’t seem any point. Or couldn’t she bear the thought of one man escaping her? ‘What’s she want?’ I demanded.

But Janet didn’t answer. She just stared at me for a moment, her eyes brimming with tears, and then she turned abruptly and walked back into the house, leaving me standing there.

‘What’s the trouble?’ Kennie asked.

‘Nothing,’ I muttered. ‘My wife’s turned up, that’s all.’ I got my gear out of the Land-Rover and went to my room, feeling dazed and suddenly tired. What the hell did she want? I lit a cigarette and sat on the bed trying to work it out. Rosa! Here. My body was suddenly trembling. I felt hot, conscious of the stale smell of sweat and my shirt sticking to my back. To come all this way on the off-chance…. But why? I lay back on the bed and closed my eyes.

I was on my third cigarette and still unwashed when Kennie put his head round the door to tell me supper was ready. ‘You all right?’

‘Yes, of course I’m all right.’ He looked so bloody clean, a fresh shirt and his hair slicked down with water. ‘Why?’

‘Well, I don’t know.’ He was staring at me uncertainly. ‘When a man’s wife turns up …’

‘Where is she now?’

‘Waiting for you — in the cook house. Janet, too. I’ll tell them you’re coming, shall I?’

I nodded and swung my legs off the bed. ‘Yes.’ It would be awkward in front of Janet, but the moment had to be faced. ‘I won’t be a minute.’ I had a quick wash and changed my shirt, and then I went down the passage into candlelight and an atmosphere of tension that reminded me of Drym. Rosalind was reclining in one of the cane chairs smoking a cigarette. She didn’t move as I came in, only her eyes, those large dark luminous.eyes. She looked cool in a neat, close-fitting linen frock, cut low to emphasize her breasts. Her breasts were just as I remembered them, small and firm, and the dark sheen of her hair falling about her face. The long slim legs were carefully arranged. By God, I thought, she did it well. And Janet, the silly little idiot, wearing a flouncy dress that was much too fussy instead of the practical simplicity of her hardworn jeans.

I stood there for a moment staring at my wife, our eyes locked and the other two waiting. What did they expect — a conventional greeting? ‘I thought you said you’d never go to Australia.’

‘I changed my mind.’ She was smiling.

‘So I see. Who paid for the flight — not your father surely?’

‘No. The insurance.’

So she’d got the insurance, and now that she knew I was alive … ‘So you changed your mind. Why?’

The dark eyes gleamed. Was it amusement, or something else? What the hell did she want? ‘I was curious, that’s all.’ That husky, almost throaty voice, so suited to the dark glow of a cocktail bar. Here it seemed strangely out of place. And yet … My legs felt weak, an ache growing deep inside me. Damn her! Damn her to hell! She always knew when I wanted her. I pulled myself together and went over and kissed her on the cheek. The same perfume and her hand on mine, a touch that was a promise of more intimate caresses. ‘You haven’t changed,’ she said. ‘And you’re still very much alive, aren’t you?’ The gleam in her eyes was sheer devilry. And then she looked across at Janet and in a cool voice said, ‘If we can’t have a drink, shall we feed? Now that we’re all here.’

The girl’s cheeks flamed. ‘If you like.’ She looked across at me, her eyes pleading. ‘There’s no beer, you see — they drank it all that night.’

‘I’ve a bottle of Scotch in the Land-Rover,’ I said.

She looked relieved and without waiting to be asked Kennie went and got it. The Scotch helped, but it was an uncomfortable meal. I couldn’t help thinking of the last dinner party we had held at Drym, the furniture all good pieces and gleaming in the candlelight, silver on the table and Chateau Beychevel ‘57 to go with the Diane. Right to the end we had done things in style, keeping up appearances. Here there was no style, everything run down and the old homestead haunted by memories and the reek of better days. Yet Drym was gone, Balavedra bankrupt, where here, in spite of everything, the house continued, a piece of Australian history that might yet come to life again if the Golden Soak reef continued.

I looked at Rosa, wondering what she was thinking as she sat there talking to Kennie and drinking Janet’s instant coffee. She was so cool and composed, so very elegant — and that low-cut dress catching Kennie’s wandering eye. Was she, too, comparing this with Drym? The candles, almost burned out now, were beginning to gutter. In the uneven light I caught her eyes and she smiled. But there was no warmth in it, just amusement. And I wondered again what the hell had brought her all this way, Janet rose and snuffed out one of the candles. Moonlight filtered through the gaps in the hessian. ‘So romantic,’ Rosa murmured in her huskiest voice. ‘If you had pot plants here we might be in a rather primitive conservatory.’ Her words conjured visions of English country houses.

‘I’m afraid there’s nothing romantic about Jarra Jarra,’ Janet said in a small tight voice that sounded distinctly girlish. ‘And I have to be up early so I’m going to bed.’ She gave us candles and then she left us, a Cinderella-like exit — one minute she was there, the next she was gone.

‘What an extraordinary child,’ Rosa murmured, and I could have slapped her.

‘She just about runs the station,’ I said.

‘I’m sure she does.’ She smiled at me sweetly. ‘But not very well from what I’ve been told. Their cattle herded on to somebody else’s property and not enough fuel to run their lighting plant. And their future apparently in your hands.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘The boy who drove me here. The word seems to have got around that you’re a mining consultant. With your old firm, too.’ Her eyes reflected the guttering of the last candle so that I couldn’t see their expression. ‘It seems they’re very simple people out here.’

I got to my feet. ‘We’ll be starting early, too.’

She sighed and got out of her chair. ‘Do I go with you?’

‘You’d find it very hot and dusty.’

‘I see.’

‘You don’t see at all,’ I said angrily. ‘We have to clear a track up a gully on the slopes of Mount Coondewanna.’

She smiled, and it was still that cool smile of amusement. ‘I gather we’re in separate rooms, so goodnight then.’

But it wasn’t goodnight. Stripped to my pants, I was sitting on my bed, smoking a cigarette and wondering what to do about her, when a shadow moved against the stars and I heard her voice, a whisper in the night: ‘Alec. Are you there?’ Something leapt inside of me, my blood pounding as I got to my feet and went to the verandah where she stood, quite still, just a shadow in the moonlight.

‘What is it? What do you want?’ But I knew. It had been like that from the moment we had first met, at a country club near her home in Hampshire. The chemistry of our bodies was something we had never been able to control. She didn’t answer, simply stepped past me into the deeper darkness of the room and then stood waiting. I followed her, knowing what would happen, the ache overwhelming, the sense of incompleteness. ‘I couldn’t talk to you out there,’ she breathed.

‘Do we have to talk?’

She came closer, not touching me, but I could smell her scent and her hair loose over her face, the flimsy garment falling apart, the pale breasts exposed. ‘Not if you don’t want to, darling.’ The voice so soft, so inviting. Damn her! She was like a bitch on heat. She had always been like that when it came to the moment. And my need, all these weeks. … I reached for her, grabbed hold of her, the softness of her yielding, coming against me, her lips on mine and her hands straying. And then we were on that narrow bed and she had the lumps as I took her in a fury of urgency. It wasn’t love. But it was something we both needed.

Released at last, we lay close, the sweat on our bodies cooling. ‘I wonder what they’d say if they could see you now?’ The whisper of her words and her hands like silk. ‘So very much alive!’

‘Are you glad?’

‘Haven’t I shown it?’

If she had kept her mouth shut we could have lain close like that all night. But her words had reminded me of the insurance money and I reached for a cigarette. If she could guess the truth, then others might reach a similar conclusion. The flare of the match showed our naked bodies and the spartan simplicity of the room. Even if she didn’t talk, her mere presence threatened everything I had achieved, the desperate attempt to rebuild my life.

‘I could do with a cigarette, too.’

I gave her one, lighting it from my own, and the glow of it as she inhaled showed the relaxed beauty of her features. ‘What are you planning to do?’ I asked.

‘I’ll wait,’ she said.

‘What for?’

To see whether you make it. A new mine — by Easter.’ The tip of her cigarette glowed and I saw her eyes laughing up at me. ‘I was there, between two of those cowsheds, wool sheds, whatever they are.’ She raised herself on her elbow. ‘You think I’ll let a chit of a girl like that take over my husband when he’s struck it rich?’ She laughed. ‘I’ve got you, Alec, haven’t I? Still talking big and reaching for the sky. But here, in this mineral-crazy land, you might just prove as big as your words.’

So that was it. She was going to hold that over me, and if I succeeded, we’d be back where we were before I’d lit that bloody candle and burned Drym to the ground. She’d be round my neck for ever then. And if I didn’t succeed, then I could rot for all she cared. ‘You can’t wait here,’ I said, keeping a tight hold on myself.

‘Of course not. Too damned uncomfortable.’

‘Where then?’

‘Perth. Or there’s an island called Rottnest. I met somebody on the plane who invited me there.’

‘A man?’

She gave a soft laugh. ‘I’m a perfectly normal woman. You should know that by now.’

My hands clenched, a cold fury sweeping over me. I could have taken her by the throat then. But suddenly the anger was gone, leaving only a feeling of disgust that she could still do this to me. And after that I didn’t say anything, the two of us lying there in silence until finally she leaned over me and stubbed out her cigarette. ‘I’ll leave you now. I’m sleepy and this bed is too small.’ She climbed over me and put on her dressing gown. ‘Goodnight, Alec.’

I watched her shadow disappear into the night, and long after she had gone I could feel the touch of her body as she had leaned over me.

In the morning, when I woke, it all seemed like a dream. But I knew it wasn’t, and there to remind me was the stubbed-out butt of her cigarette, red with lipstick. I got up, dressing slowly, wondering how I was going to face Janet. But at least I was spared that. Kennie was waiting for me, a pot of tea on the table. ‘Janet went about an hour ago. She left this note.’ He handed it to me: Sorry, but you’ll have to fend for yourselves. Back this evening. He poured me a cup of tea. ‘She was riding that camel of hers and she had Tom and one of the boys with her.’ The tea was lukewarm and I drank it quickly. ‘Well, let’s go,’ I said. ‘We’ve work to do.’ A hell of a lot, in fact, if that rig was going to be able to reach the drill site. ‘We’ll breakfast up the top of the gully.’

He nodded and got to his feet. ‘What about your wife?’ But that was a problem I didn’t want to face at this hour of the morning and I was hoping to God she was still asleep as I went out into the arid, blinding sunlight. A moment later we were in the Land-Rover and heading down the track towards Golden Soak.