Read Online Tourmaline by Randolph Stow - Free Book Online Page A

what he was after. But he isn’t, by the looks of it. He just wants to stay here.’
    ‘He’ll be a social asset, all right,’ Kestrel said. ‘One of Mary’s mob—a man with religion.’
    ‘Ah, so what?’ Horse said. ‘You don’t drink now, do you? Everyone’s got some little virtue that craps someone else to death.’
    ‘Lay off, Horse,’ Jack Speed said.
    ‘I’ll lay off when Kes lays off the new bloke,’ Horse replied.
    In the meantime Byrne had come in, trailing his guitar, and had pushed himself in between Horse and Rock. ‘Give us a drink?’ he asked Kestrel.
    ‘You’ve had a bellyful,’ his cousin said. ‘Go and ask your mate for a bucket of water.’
    ‘Buy me a drink, Horse.’
    ‘Sure,’ said Horse, who had credit (in gold) with Kestrel. ‘Give the poor sod a glass.’
    ‘You’re a bludger,’ Kestrel said to Byrne.
    ‘Yair,’ said Byrne. ‘Makes you thirsty, don’t it?’
    ‘Bludge off me then,’ Kestrel said coldly. ‘Not off your mates. I’ll make sure you work for it.’
    ‘Okay, okay,’ said Byrne, ‘I’ll bludge off you, Kes. Keep it in the family.’ But he helped himself, absent-mindedly, to Rock’s glass while he was waiting.
    ‘Kes doesn’t think too highly of the bloke across the road,’ Jack Speed said.
    ‘He’s a good bloke,’ Byrne asserted, rather slurred in his speech by this time.
    ‘Who, Kes?’
    ‘Kes is a good bloke,’ said Byrne, sentimentally. ‘Mike’s a good bloke. We’re all good blokes, all us bastards. Horse’s a good bloke, now,’ he further particularized, putting his arm round Horse’s shoulders and leaning on him heavily. ‘He’s a real good bloke, old Horse. I like you, you old bastard.’
    ‘Yair, well, get off of me,’ Horse said, removing himself.
    Byrne staggered a little. ‘Mike’s crook again,’ he rambled on, in his drunken monotone. ‘He gets these headaches. Will he be like that all the time, d’you reckon, Rocky?’
    ‘How do I know?’ Rock said. ‘Could be.’
    ‘Hope he gets over it. He’s a good bloke, that one.’
    ‘You seem to have said that,’ remarked Kestrel.
    ‘Don’t be that way, Kes.’
    ‘I’m sick of the sound of this joker,’ Kestrel confessed. ‘But what the hell. He hasn’t done anything to me.’
    Byrne belched, and drank, and then, still muttering something about good blokes, planted his elbow on the bar, forearm up. Horse did the same, and they grasped hands. Rock and Jack moved aside, as the struggle began, to see who could force down the other’s arm; a long deadlock, tedious to watch, a commonplace event in that bar of Kestrel’s. Byrne’s tongue protruded with the effort. Horse’s face was red.
    ‘That’s his drinking arm, Horse,’ Kestrel said. ‘See if you can break it.’
    ‘Come on, Byrnie,’ Jack Speed said, ‘he’ll have you in a minute.’
    Byrne grunted in denial. He was right. Horse’s elbow suddenly skidded in a pool of liquor, and he went staggering away, to land, after some complicated manoeuvres designed to preserve his balance, on the floor. Byrne gripped the bar and stood panting.
    ‘I won,’ he claimed.
    ‘Like hell you did,’ Horse growled from the floor. ‘That wasn’t a fair contest.’
    ‘Replay,’ ordered Rock, the universal umpire.
    ‘Here,’ said Horse, ‘on the floor. Can’t fall then.’ He rolled over on his stomach and put his arm up. So Byrne lay down, facing him, and the battle resumed. But as they were no longer in anyone’s way, no one troubled to watch it.
    In any case, it didn’t last long, owing to another diversion. For Kestrel, who was talking to Rock, suddenly looked up from his forefinger tracing wet patterns on the bar, and fixed his pale grey eyes on the doorway. And there, politely hesitating, was the diviner.
    They looked at one another for awhile. No one but Kestrel had seen him. They just stood there, learning each other’s faces.
    Then: ‘Come in,’ Kestrel called to him; and everyone turned