Read Online Tourmaline by Randolph Stow - Free Book Online

an old man.’
    He looked at me with pity—with genuine pity, I swear it. It was too much, too much to bear. ‘But there’s Kes,’ he said. ‘And Tom, and Rocky. And Jack at the mine. And now Mike. What do you want?’
    ‘The law,’ I said. ‘The memory.’ But I could not express myself to him. He was young, and would have interpreted my sentiments as senile conceit, as a mere frightened fist-shaking in the face of nothingness. In the bright cool shade of the stone yard I felt alone and threatened, as if abandoned, by night, on the great shelterless plains through which the diviner had passed to come to Tourmaline.
    ‘You’ll live forever,’ he said kindly. ‘Don’t worry.’ Because he himself had discovered hope, only a few days ago, he could patronize me, flying his brand-new purpose from the masthead. He was absurd, but also touching.
    ‘Bless you, Byrnie,’ I murmured, with an irony not ill-intentioned. ‘I can manage to keep on.’
    He grinned, moving back into the gateway. ‘I’ll go and see Mike,’ he said, ‘and get this rod sorted out. And then you’ll see what’s going to become of Tourmaline.’ His blue figure, with a kind of salute, stepped out into the sunlight. ‘See you,’ he called back, and vanished around my walls, making for the road.
    I squatted, meanwhile, in my cool light well, deciphering a letter from a lady of Geraldton, who demanded with some force that her ex-de facto husband be compelled to contribute to the maintenance of the child he had inflicted on her. Her style was terse and embittered. She appeared to upbraid my predecessor, to indict in him all members of our sex. I was a long time pondering over this letter, which pleased me with its wealth of domestic detail, and in unearthing other documents of a later date, some of them in my own writing.
    So the morning passed away. And poor Byrnie, denied admission to the diviner, who was indisposed, settled down in the hotel to get drunk.
    *
    That evening he was singing, as usual, on the war memorial, his reformation already a thing of the past, apparently. Deborah came out to speak to him, kind but disapproving. He was far gone by then, and began to weep, abjectly, clutching his guitar and staring straight at her, like a child. She said: ‘Poor Byrnie,’ and went away again.
    Inside the pub, Horse Carson, who was also drunk, was having an argument with Kestrel. Horse’s bark face was slightly flushed, but not, of course, animated—nothing could have made that eroded, deep-channelled plain less immobile. But he gestured now and then with his mallee-root fists, and seemed concerned to prove something.
    ‘Would you throw the poor bugger back again?’ he demanded of Kestrel. ‘Is that the kind of bastard you are? You ought to be driving that truck yourself, by Jesus.’
    ‘Did I say that?’ Kestrel asked, in his curiously soft voice.
    ‘What did you say, well?’
    ‘That he ought to go back where he came from. What’s he want here? We don’t need him.’
    ‘“We don’t need him,”’ Horse quoted, with scorn. ‘Ah no, mate. We don’t need water. We got rum to wash gold in. If we ever feel like a shower, we can always come down here and get you to tip a bottle over us. What would we want with water?’
    ‘There isn’t any water,’ Kestrel said, with an edge.
    ‘So we got your word for it,’ Horse said. ‘When did you set up as a dowser?’
    ‘Look, d’you think no other silly bastard’s ever tried?’
    ‘This bloke’s no ordinary silly bastard,’ Horse affirmed. ‘This bloke’s something special. You only got to look at him.’
    ‘Ah hell,’ said Kestrel in disgust. ‘Rocky, talk a bit of sense into him.’
    ‘What makes you so sure he’s no good?’ Rock wondered. He was standing, sad and sober, beside Horse, and gazing into his drink, which he did not seem to want. ‘He’s the sort of bloke who might know something. I’d trust him. I’d even pay him to try his hand at it, if that was