I was trying to remember what exactly the Journal had said about the cave-in, but the sweat was caking salt on my forehead, the glare blinding and I found it difficult to concentrate, heat exhaustion building up and the rush of air through the open window oven-hot. Everywhere along that road there were anthills so big they looked like primitive adobe dwellings. And the hills throbbing in the heat, my eyes tired. Soon all I could think of was the dryness in my mouth, my need of a cold beer. And then at last we were on tarmac, coming down into Nullagine, and my companion woke.
It wasn’t much of a place, a huddle of houses roasting on the slope of a hill and the verandahed hotel at the corner where the road turned to the right. I stopped by the petrol pump. ‘Can I offer you a drink?’ I asked him as I got stiffly out. But he shook his head, rubbing his eyes and stretching. ‘No, I got to get on.’ He moved over into the driving seat, watching me till I’d got my case out of the boot, and then, with a nod and a slight lift of the hand, he drove on.
I went into the bar and it was comfortingly dark after the glare outside. I hesitated a moment, accustoming my eyes to the change of light. There were only three men there, two locals and an aborigine. They turned their heads to stare at me, their movements economical of effort and no word spoken. A youngster appeared behind the bar counter that ran the length of the room. He was fair-haired and had an English accent. I ordered a beer and drank it fast, feeling dehydrated, dirty, sweaty, utterly drained. ‘Anywhere I can get a wash?’ I asked him.
‘The wash-house is across the road.’
I turned and saw a small building like a dilapidated public lavatory beyond the sun-glare of the tarmac. I ordered another beer and drank it slowly, brushing away the flies and taking stock of the aborigine. He wore a blue shirt and blue jeans and his wide-nostrilled features were black as jet under the broad-brimmed hat. ‘Your name Wolli, by any chance?’ I asked him.
He stared at me, the whites of his eyes yellow, the pupils dark brown, his face expressionless.
‘ Yuh give him a beer, mate, an’ he’ll talk,’ one of the locals said, a small man with a ferrety face and narrow eyes. ‘But his name ain’t Wolli. It’s Macpherson. That right, innit?’
‘Arrrhh.’ The big lips spread in a tentative grin.
‘You know where Wolli is, Mac?’
The black shook his head vaguely, his eyes on me, hopeful of that beer.
‘Yuh want Wolli,’ the little man said to me, ‘yuh better ask Prophecy. She’s in there playing cards.’ He nodded to the open hatch at the end of the bar. ‘She got nothing to do all day now but play cards an’ get drunk.’
Through the hatch I could see there was a sort of saloon bar with rickety tables and a dart board. The drivers of the two trucks I’d seen parked at the side of the hotel were sitting there, wolfing down steak and chips, and at another table was a big gipsy-looking woman with greying hair and a hard, tough, lively face lined with wrinkles. She was alone, drinking whisky and playing patience, a cigarette dangling from her lips.
‘If a fly craps, Prophecy knows about it. She knows everything goes on here.’ The little man leaned towards the hatch. ‘Don’t yuh, Prophecy?’
‘Yuh shut yer bleedin’ face, Alfie.’ She moved a card, slowly and with deliberation, without looking up. After that there was silence as though the expenditure of that amount of energy was enough for the day.
I finished my beer and went across the road to the wash-house. The men’s section had a wash-basin, lavatory and shower. Flies crawled on the bare concrete. But it was quite clean, and though the water from the tank on the roof was almost too hot to stand under, I felt a lot fresher when I returned to the hotel. The woman called Prophecy was still sitting with the cards laid out and the whisky beside her. ‘Mind if I join you?’ I asked.
‘Please yerself.’ The beady eyes in the sun-wrinkled face watched me curiously as I pulled up a chair and sat down facing her. ‘Fresh out from the Old Country, arntyuh?’ And when I nodded, she said, ‘Thought so. And you’re looking for Wolli — yuh a mining man?’ ‘Yes.’
She turned up a red ten, placed it slowly on the jack of spades and moved across four cards headed by the nine of clubs. ‘Yuh brought me luck that time. Yuh reckon you’re a lucky man?’
‘I hadn’t noticed it,’ I said.
She looked at me sharply. ‘Golden Soak never had no luck — not since I come to live in this dump.’ I stared at her and she gave her cackling laugh. ‘Yuh like me to tell yuh fortune?’ The cackling ended in a smoker’s cough. ‘No, you wouldn’t would yuh?’ They don’t call me Prophecy for nothin’. I might be too right, eh?’ Her eyes watched me, sharp as a bird’s. ‘Yuh don’t want Wolli. Wolli’s a bum. It’s that gin sister of his you want. She got second sight where gold’s concerned.’ And then she was telling me how this aborigine girl had found gold on a claim she’d pegged over towards Bamboo Springs. ‘Set me up for life, she did. Better’n a dowser any day. Yuh go and see Little Brighteyes. Yuh won’t get any sense out of Wolli.’
Talking to Prophecy was like panning for gold in the muddy waters of a creek in spate. Her real name was Felicity Clark. She had been born in Leytonstone, north-east London, and had come out to Australia with her husband in 1946. He had been badly shot up in the battle for the Falaise Gap and doctors advised him to move to a drier climate. ‘So we picked on the Bar and Christ that was dry enough. The air was so thin Nobby couldn’t hardly breathe in the dry with half his lung shot away.’ He had died five years ago leaving her with a Land-Rover and a caravan and not much else. ‘A fella don’t make his fortune working on the roads, an’ all the dust — it’s a wonder he lasted as long as he did.’
From Marble Bar they had moved to Nullagine and when he wasn’t driving his grader he had spent his time fossicking around old prospects. ‘Always reckoned he’d strike it lucky one day. Might’ve done, too, if he’d lived. Knew a lot Nobby did, and when he kicked the bucket I just sort of carried on, living bush and pegging the odd claim.’ She had a small pension and when Wolli had gone into trouble, stealing tools from a mining outfit up near Bonnie Creek, she had taken his sister Martha to live with her in the caravan. ‘Reck’n it was the best thing I ever done. She knew things about this country I’d never’ve nutted out for myself — ‘bout plants an’ animals an’ how to live bush. Never knew a girl with such sharp eyes, and then by Jesus if she doesn’t spot the glitter on a claim of mine. I’d never’ve seen it meself, not in a million years. But she spotted it. That’s when I began calling her Little Brighteyes. Wouldn’t take any money, not a penny, but she’s got a bangle I bet no other gin’s got from Darwin right down to Esperance.’
All this was mixed up with a spate of gossip about local people and their affairs. She forgot about the cards. She even forgot about her drink. I was somebody new to whom she could tell her story all over again. And I was fresh out from England. I think that was important to her. She wasn’t home-sick. She had been out here too long. But there was an under-current of nostalgia. And I sat there and let her words wash over me remembering what I thought was relevant as I drank another beer and had some food. Then, when I had finished my steak and chips, she said, ‘Okay, we’ll go and see if Little Brighteyes is home. She’s shacked up with a man from Grafton Downs, so weekdays she don’t know what to do with herself.’ And she added, ‘Martha can tell you a thing or two about Golden Soak. But she won’t go near the place, not her — not even for Wolli.’