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

about.
    ‘It’s him,’ said Rock, as if to make quite sure that the diviner knew they had been talking about him. ‘Come over.’ He made a place for him at the bar.
    ‘It’s Mike,’ Byrne shouted, scrambling up from the floor. ‘Thought you were crook.’
    ‘I’m okay,’ said the diviner. But his voice was subdued and weary. He stood beside Rock, one elbow on the bar, and looked at Kestrel. ‘I came to say thanks,’ he said.
    ‘Don’t thank me,’ Kestrel said, offhand. ‘I haven’t done a thing.’
    ‘I hear you were going to take me on, only Mary grabbed me.’ It was strange what a tone of humility, of shame, almost, his voice acquired whenever he spoke of the manner of his coming to Tourmaline. ‘It was a nice thought.’
    ‘I’m full of them,’ Kestrel said. ‘Like, have a drink.’
    ‘I’ll buy him a drink,’ Byrne offered.
    ‘You’ve made a friend in the village idiot,’ Kestrel said. ‘Listen to him.’
    ‘It’s on me,’ Rock said.
    ‘It’s on the house,’ said Kestrel, bleakly, and poured a rum. I don’t think anything else is drunk in Tourmaline. ‘Get that down you. Better stuff than water.’
    ‘Tourmaline water, anyway,’ said the diviner, drinking with sober caution.
    ‘Things are gunna change,’ Horse called up happily from the floor, where he had made himself comfortable, apparently, and meant to stay. ‘There’s gunna be water in tankfuls.’
    ‘Get me to the river Jordan,’ said Kestrel, softly. ‘You’ve made a lot of converts here.’
    The diviner looked at him, and looked away again, uneasily. He was bewildered by this hostility, for which he could find no reason. It was hard for him, accepted everywhere as an unlucky invalid, the gallant victim of country not many would care to face, to understand that Kestrel actually mistrusted him. So he drank rather quickly, and the hand holding the thick glass trembled just a little. This Kestrel noticed, puzzled.
    ‘When are you going to start work?’ Rock asked, with carefully concealed hopefulness. ‘Not right now, I dare say.’
    ‘I don’t know,’ said the diviner, sounding confused. ‘I don’t know about going out in the bush—in the sun—now. And Byrnie’s got to make me a rod yet.’
    ‘I would have made it today,’ Byrne reproached him, ‘only you wouldn’t let me in to ask you about it.’
    The diviner painfully smiled. ‘My head was bad,’ he said.
    ‘Get me a drink, Byrnie,’ Horse called out. ‘Let’s drink to the water.’
    ‘Yair,’ said Rock, raising his glass, ‘to the water.’
    ‘To the water,’ said Jack.
    ‘To the water,’ repeated the diviner; with a certain diffidence.
    ‘Good luck,’ said Kestrel, smiling crookedly. But as he had no glass he couldn’t drink to it.
    ‘Where’s my bloody drink, Byrnie?’
    ‘Hang on,’ Byrne shouted. He lay down on the floor again, facing Horse. ‘To the water,’ they yelled in unison. Then they went back to their arm-bending contest, grunting and straining.
    ‘Your wife’s been pretty kind to me,’ the diviner said, constrainedly.
    ‘She’s a good girl,’ Kestrel agreed, with an expressionless face.
    ‘She’s a lot like Mary and Tom.’
    ‘Yair,’ said Kestrel. ‘I can’t cure her of it.’
    After that the diviner looked so extremely uncomfortable that even Kestrel was moved in the direction of sympathy, and went on: ‘Don’t get me wrong. I like Tom. I like Mary; but we have different ideas about most things.’
    ‘Ah, yair,’ murmured the diviner, twisting his glass about on the bar. ‘Bound to.’
    A shout of triumph came up from the floor, where Byrne had conquered Horse.
    ‘Where you going to live?’ Jack asked the diviner. ‘At Tom’s?’
    ‘Don’t think so,’ the diviner said. ‘Couldn’t do that to them. I’ll move in somewhere.’
    ‘Plenty of empty houses,’ Kestrel said. ‘Something Tourmaline has got.’
    ‘You’re welcome at the mine,’ Jack offered. ‘I live up there. She’s a