Tourmaline (17 page)

Outside, by the war memorial, a bonfire was burning. Charlie Yandana and his brother Gentle Jesus had built it, and people came continually from the camp with roots and branches to feed it, and stood to watch, black and spidery against the blaze. The white store was sunrise-red in that light, and so was Tom, observing from his doorway. But Deborah and Mary were inside, in the green sitting-room, with the door locked.

‘What this for?’ Charlie Yandana asked, prowling barefoot in the empty dining room.

‘It’s a party,’ Byrne said, with a bottle in his hand. ‘Yippee. It’s a party.’

He lifted the bottle to his mouth, and swigged, and coughed.

‘Give me some of that,’ Charlie said.

‘Get some for yourself,’ Byrne said. ‘In the kitchen. Or the bar. Take a bottle. Take a few.’

‘Give me that,’ said Charlie. And he took it.

‘You looking for a fight?’

‘Yair,’ said Charlie, ‘I’m looking for a fight. There gunna be some fighting tonight, by Jesus.’

‘You watch yourself.’

‘You not gunna hurt nobody,’ said Charlie, ‘poor old Byrnie.’

He wandered away with the bottle, towards the bonfire. And Byrne went out to the kitchen for another.

In the lounge Kestrel lolled in a dust-impregnated chair.

‘What’s this for?’ I asked him.

‘That’s what I’m wondering,’ said Rock, with a bottle in his hand.

‘Not for anything,’ said Kestrel. ‘Just a small party for my friends.’

‘Why aren’t you drinking?’

‘I don’t any more,’ he said. ‘My young cousin out there’s a pretty solemn warning.’

‘That’s no reason,’ I said.

‘It runs in the family,’ he assured me, ‘like wooden legs. I’ve got to be careful.’

I was not deceived. ‘You’re trying to wreck Tourmaline. To start fights going.’

‘There could be cheaper ways of doing it,’ he said.

‘Then why? What are you doing?’

‘I’m saying goodbye to the licensed victualling trade,’ he said. ‘This is it, mates. There’ll be no more grog in Tourmaline.’

Outside, by the fire, an argument had started already. A woman from the camp was shouting at another, the wife of Pete Macaroni or Bill the Dill. And then Byrne’s guitar began, and his voice with it, singing:

‘I don’t get it,’ Rock said. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Nothing,’ said Kestrel. ‘Nothing at all.’

‘And how will you live?’

‘I’m a rich man. I’m the gaping mouth you all feed with gold.’

‘Is this what Deborah wants?’ I asked him, squarely.

‘I don’t know what she wants,’ he said. ‘And for the time being I don’t care.’

‘That I can’t believe,’ I said. And he twisted his mouth at me, sardonically.

‘I get the feeling,’ Rock said, ‘that I don’t know what’s happening. And what are they doing out there?’

The windows shone red with the firelight outside, and shadows moved across them occasionally.

‘Celebrating,’ Kestrel said, ‘while they can. Why don’t you? She’ll be a dry town tomorrow.’

Then Charlie Yandana began one of his dirges, drowning out Byrne.

‘I’ll go,’ I said, ‘and see—what’s happening.’ Because his presence, Kestrel’s, was stifling me. I went out into the hall, where the big front door, so seldom opened, was standing wide, and the blaze by the obelisk luridly lit what little there was to light: a leather sofa, a spidery table holding a jardiniere, two coloured photographs of race-horses, slightly damaged by insects. There was a crowd around the fire. Even old Gloria was there, sitting quietly on the ground. Charlie went wailing on, squatted beside the war memorial. And Byrne, on a step of it, above him, had ceased to compete with him, vocally, and was trying to accompany him on the guitar. Everyone, as far as I could see, had a bottle, and some seemed half drunk already, more because they wished to be than because they had, at that early stage, consumed much liquor.

Tom was standing in his doorway, red with firelight. I went to him.

He looked rather solemn.

‘You don’t feel like joining in?’ I asked him.

‘What’s he up to?’ he wondered, abstracted.

‘He says it’s the last liquor we’ll ever see in Tourmaline.’

‘If I believed him,’ Tom said, ‘I might be in it.’

‘But you don’t trust him?’

‘He couldn’t lie straight in bed,’ said Tom.

‘He’s changed,’ I said. ‘Changing. Something’s going to happen.’

‘You say that once a week,’ Tom remarked, ‘but nothing ever has.’ He spoke absently, with no intent to offend me.

‘I can’t help,’ I said, ‘my fears. My intuitions. Something’s ending. And I keep thinking of—out there.’

Deborah came to us, from the dim flamelit depths of the store. She asked: ‘What’s he doing, Pa?’

‘We don’t know,’ Tom said. ‘But he says he’s going to close down the pub.’

‘That’ll hurt some people,’ she said.

‘Don’t go out,’ Tom said to her.

‘I’m not going to. Mary and I are locking ourselves in.’

The firelight made a hemisphere, with the tip of the obelisk its zenith. I looked up at the other hemisphere that enclosed it. Deep, deep blue, like the darkest sea, strewn with white conflagrations. Below, there was silence for a time. Then Byrne began singing again.

‘Come inside,’ Tom said, moving away. So Deborah and I followed him, into the green sitting-room where Mary was, and we settled there, to wait for whatever might happen. Not that we were in any great anxiety. But Tourmaline has a young heart, and a whole town can’t get drunk without involving itself in a few scuffles. While we were sitting there we heard two heavy-footed men race around the house, and the one who was being pursued was laughing like a lunatic, or like a very small boy. ‘I think it’s Horse,’ Mary said. ‘He’s been pushing someone over.’ She pulled back the curtains, but they had gone by then. The fire seemed to grow brighter every minute, and in the Springs’ yard the lavatory, of once-white corrugated iron, was striped rose and grey-blue with light and shadow. It was rather beautiful.

‘Has Michael come?’ Mary asked.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think he’s likely to, either.’

‘He’s a puritan,’ Tom said, amused. And Deborah looked unhappy suddenly.

Two hours went by. The noise level outside rose steadily, punctuated with bursts of singing and wild laughter; and then the guitar, very loud and twanging, began to play a dance, and hands began to clap, and someone (I think Charlie Yandana) broke in every now and again with a most accomplished yodel. It made me feel old and bored and superfluous, like a matronly chaperon at a Bacchanalia, if such a thing can be imagined; and it came to me all at once that I have never, in all my life, been anything else. What could be more wretched than to discover, in one’s extreme age, that one has had no youth to remember? I see myself again as a boy; a long solemn face, obsessed with responsibilities never more than an illusion, wearing unreasoned habit like a straitjacket. I was a good lad, alas. A tool, a dupe. What price have others paid for my arrogant simplicity?

‘This will never end,’ said Mary. ‘I must go to bed.’

‘So must I,’ said Deborah, rising.

‘It could go on for hours,’ Tom said to me. ‘Let’s have another look.’

‘Or days,’ I said, following him. ‘Like the old race meetings.’ And saying that I thought of horses, with great sadness.

As we came into the firelit store an uproar rose in the road outside, and then abruptly died into two voices only, shouting at one another. Dicko’s was one of them, I recognized, and the other, we found when we reached the door, was Harry Bogada’s. They were preparing to fight. The cause, I gathered from the insults that were flying, was Dicko’s wild-looking wife Analya, who had retreated to the hotel veranda and was watching from there, in a spirit of dark contempt, while the two men took up their postures of defiance. In the red light there was something ancient, pathetic, ludicrous, about those black shapes, those traditional words.

‘We must stop this,’ I said. Because I knew sides would be taken.

‘I don’t think you’d better try,’ said Tom.

But I thought it my duty, and went forward. As I came into the light there were shouts. ‘The Law! The Law!’ they called. And there was laughter, too. I stopped, astonished.

Then Dicko hit Harry. And the fight was on.

I stepped towards them, quickly, to separate them. But I was seized from behind, my arms pinioned, so that I couldn’t move. And Horse Carson said in my ear, quite gently: ‘Why don’t you go to bed, you silly old bugger?’

Then I knew that I was old, and I could have wept.

Meanwhile, the fight ramified and became a riot. The Yandanas and the Bogadas made up one faction, and anyone else who could still stand joined the other. Horse released me, and leapt upon Gentle Jesus. Bill the Dill staggered into the fire, and staggered out again. The flames danced and danced, and from the other side of the obelisk came constant aimless chords of the guitar, twanged out by Byrne in a semi-stupor. A thrown bottle shattered above his head, and he cursed.

Across the fire, by the hotel, I saw Kestrel. I called to him: ‘Can’t you stop this?’

He laughed. I saw that, though I heard nothing. But he had a habit of laughing soundlessly.

I looked up, and saw the endless white conflagrations, that age cannot humiliate.

I looked down, and saw ageless Gloria, humped in the dust like an anthill.

And walking down the road, into the firelight, the diviner.

He came and stood beside me, with eyes like blue glass.

‘Can you do anything?’ I said. ‘Can you?’

‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked, all taut and still.

‘Stop this. Send them home. Because our unity—our esprit de corps——’

His bubbling laugh welled up, mystifying me. He was elated. He was watching Kestrel, who was watching him, across the fire, with the flame dancing in his pale eyes.

‘Can you?’ I pleaded again, in my helplessness and my humiliation.

And he said, quietly: ‘I think so.’ And suddenly he was among the flames, kicking away the burning wood, and leaping back, and then again attacking the fire, embers and brands scattering from his heavy boots. The fighting ceased. Kestrel jumped aside as a flaming stick struck him. The light rose and fell, like breathing.

Then he stopped. And he stood there, ringed with the dying fire, all blue and golden, but cold as ice, and silent.

‘Michael!’ That was Deborah calling, from behind Tom.

While he burned, in the fading light, all blue and golden.

I saw Kestrel turn and go into the hotel. And one by one the lamps went out, behind the painted windows.

The diviner stepped over his fence of fire. He stooped to help old Gloria to her feet. And we watched him go away, while the small flames died in the embers, and the old cold starlight took hold of everything.

In the middle of the street the blackened sticks still lay. Men sat in the dust, under the verandas of the store and the closed hotel. The afternoon light was severe, and many hid their eyes from it, with arms clasped round sharp knees.

I turned, coming down the road, and saw the diviner following. I waited for him. In the normal light he looked, once again, ordinary and prepossessing, except for those eyes, which were of a colour no one has seen before, and a little disturbing on that account.

I said: ‘Good day,’ and no more, not knowing how to mention the previous night. And nor did he, and nor did any of those about us.

Byrne was sprawled on the step of the war memorial, asleep, with a greasy hat over his eyes. We went and sat beside him, in the draining sunlight. He did not stir.

Ahead, the red road ran straight as a fence, through the boundless and stone-littered wilderness, towards the blue hills piled on the horizon like storm-clouds.

At last, another cloud showed. And the truck, in a puff of red dust, with a glint of metal, came crawling towards us.

We got up, all but Byrne. A murmur rose. ‘The truck. The truck.’ And Mary appeared at her doorway. But Kestrel’s door was closed.

And the truck came on, with its yellow hand dangling beside the driver’s door, and swept around the obelisk, and drew up before the hotel. The cab-door opened, and the small insect-driver descended, looking for Kestrel.

Then the front door of the hotel creaked back, and Kestrel called out: ‘Come in a minute.’ And the small man, wiping his hands on the seat of his trousers, speaking to no one, stepped through and vanished.

The diviner was staring, expressionless.

‘Something’s wrong,’ I said.

Byrne slowly sat up, the hat falling from his head, and rubbed his eyes with black-nailed fists, sighing.

Four men were on the back of the truck, unloading. Rock shouted through the open doorway: ‘What about the grog, Kes?’

‘Leave it,’ came Kestrel’s voice. ‘It’s going back.’

‘What are you doing in there? Want a hand?’

‘We’re right,’ Kestrel called, coming nearer. Then the driver appeared, and behind him Kestrel, and between them a wooden chest with rope handles, whose weight made them stagger.

‘You can help us get this aboard,’ Kestrel said. And four men, straining, lifted the box on to the truck, while he stood back.

I was not watching the chest. I was watching Kestrel. He was dressed in neat khaki, and wore a most respectable hat.

The diviner was staring.

The men jumped down from the truck. The driver looked at the load and approved of it. He climbed up into the high cab behind the wheel. Then he opened the passenger door. And Kestrel, passing in front of the truck, over which the air shimmered like running water, climbed up beside him.

Byrne had been next to me, tense with suspicion. Suddenly he shouted: ‘Kes!’ and ran forward. He looked berserk. Kestrel had not yet slammed the door, and Byrne, with a single leap, had piled in on top of him.

The diviner called out something.