I asked her where his survey party was operating, but she didn’t know. ‘Somewhere up north of Leonora.’ She was staring down at the photograph. ‘He and Chris — ‘ she hesitated, twining her fingers nervously around the frame. ‘I don’t know what it is, but the young don’t seem to look on money the way we older people do. But he’s happy, that’s the main thing. Seems interested in minerals for their own sake.’ Again that hesitation, as though she wanted to tell me something else. But then she said brightly, ‘Well, I’ll leave you now. I’ve got to clear up and there’s the pigs to feed. I’ll have sandwiches and coffee for you when you get back.’
I thanked her and she stood there hovering for a moment, her eyes darting about the room. Finally she left, closing the door quietly behind her. The room was stuffy and I pushed open the shutters, looking out on to a litter of rusting iron with the walls of the tailing dumps red in the sunset beyond the ragged tin of the fencing. Beside the desk there was a washstand with basin and ewer of blue china. The water was lukewarm but at least it got the dust of travel out of my skin. Then I left the house, heading across the wasteland towards the tailings.
The walls, when I reached them, were about thirty feet high, the sloping sides funnelled by occasional rain storms and reflecting the lurid red of the sunset sky. A wind had sprung up, and as the light died and darkness closed in, I came out through a defile between two of the dumps to a view of what looked like water with a sea mist hanging white and the line of a harbour wall yet another of those monstrous dumps.
I stood there for a while, feeling the strangeness of this land to which I had committed myself. And not just the land, the people, too. The way they behaved, the way they talked, their whole outlook. Above all, die remoteness of it. I felt a million miles away from anything I had known before and standing there, looking out across that misted sea that wasn’t a sea but a dust-filled plain, I was conscious of the need of something with which I could identify myself — a sheet anchor for my loneliness. And as night fell and I retraced my steps, walking slowly back through the tomb-like adobe walls, back across that black grit wasteland to the desolate isolation of the Culpin home, I was thinking of Janet and the rock samples I had taken from Golden Soak, wondering what the analysis would show.
It was dark when I got back to the house with the stars a pale glimmer that outlined the gums and the shack that was their latrine. The shack had a fly screen as well as a door. Inside it was pitch black, no light and the smell of disinfectant. And when I came out I had a sudden feeling that I was being watched. I stopped, conscious of the smell of pigs, the stillness all about me, no wind and the soft glow of an oil lamp in the house. And then I saw it, a figure standing motionless, so still, so black, it might have been the stump of a tree.
I stood there for a moment, rooted to the spot, sensing something primitive. And then the figure moved and the black lowbrowed face of an aborigine emerged from the shadows as he moved to my side without a sound.
‘What do you want?’
His hand reached out and gripped my arm, the thick lips moving below the broad nose; all I got was the name Chris.
‘He’s not here,’ I told him.
‘Where? Where I find’im?’
‘He’s gone into Kalgoorlie.’ I hesitated. ‘Are you Dick Gnarlbine?’
‘Am.’ A deep chesty sound, an affirmative.
‘He’s looking for you.’
‘No find’im.’ And he added, ‘Me film’im walkabout longa Red. Me come back, whitefella talk bad something. You tell’im Chris. Whitefella talk bad something. You got’im beer?’
I shook my head, uneasy at the hard-skinned touch of his hand.
‘You tell’im Chris. Kambalda man speak’im no good.’
‘What are they saying — ’ I asked.
But he wouldn’t tell me any more. He just said, ‘You tell’im Chris.’ Then he was gone.
I went into the house and Edith Culpin was waiting for me, coffee and sandwiches in the kitchen and her voice thin and complainful. I didn’t tell her about the aborigine, and as soon as I decently could I took myself off to bed.
I must have been very tired indeed for I didn’t wake until Edith Culpin brought my breakfast in on a tray. ‘Thought you’d like a nice lie-in seeing it’s Sunday.’ The time was almost ten-thirty and her husband had already left. I didn’t see him at all that day. Most of it I spent in Kennie’s room, examining his samples, and reading everything I could find that related to the geology of Australia. It was not quite so hot here as it had been in the Pilbara and in the evening I walked the whole length of the Golden Mile. I needed to be alone with time to think; also the exercise got some of the soreness of the long truck ride out of my muscles.
I went to bed early that night and woke with the sun. It was Monday now, the Culpins already up, and by the time I was dressed the house was full of the smell of bacon frying. The kitchen was hot, a blaze of light from the flyscreened window, and we ate our breakfast in silence. Culpin had the Kalgoorlie Miner propped up in front of him, his wife was reading a letter. ‘Kennie says they’re almost through with that survey.’ She looked at the date. ‘That’s Wednesday. He wishes us both a happy New Year.’
Her husband grunted, but made no comment, his eyes bleary. There was the sound of a car and she lifted her head, her thin dry hair a golden halo. The car stopped and she rose to her feet as the verandah door opened and a woman’s voice called to her. That’s Muriel,’ she said. ‘Mebbe he’s phoned her.’
While she was out of the room I told Culpin about his visitor of two nights before, and when I repeated what the aborigine had said, he stopped eating and leaned forward, his bloodshot eyes staring. ‘What do you mean — bad something?’
‘Just that. I don’t know what he meant. But he wanted to see you.’
‘Stupid bastard!’ he muttered. ‘I was all over town looking for him.’ He glanced over his shoulder. The door was open, the murmur of women’s voices. ‘What did he want to see me about?’ There was tension in his voice, his eyes searching my face.
I shrugged. ‘I told you what he said. Some white man had obviously been getting at him.’
‘Who? Did he say who?’
‘No. He just said to tell you. And he asked for a beer.’
‘Been drinking, had he?’
But I couldn’t answer that. I didn’t know whether he’d been drinking or not.
The verandah door slammed and Edith Culpin came back into the kitchen. ‘Muriel just had a call from Mr Kadek,’ she said. ‘He wants you to ring him back right away.’
Culpin had twisted round in his chair, the sunlight full on his face. A globule of dried blood showed by his left ear and his skin had a bad colour. For a moment he seemed to have difficulty in switching his mind. ‘What’s Ferdie want?’ He was frowning, his voice slow and heavy.
‘She didn’t say. Just to ring him, and it was urgent.’
He turned back to his breakfast, staring down at the remains of the bacon. Then he pushed his plate away, folded the newspaper and poured himself another cup of tea.
‘We ought to have the phone here,’ his wife said.
‘You say that every time I get a call,’ he snarled. Then added, ‘Mebbe we will, when this deal’s gone through.’ He drank his tea in quick gulps, then lumbered to his feet. ‘You coming?’
I nodded and went to get the rock samples, which were still in my suitcase. I stuffed four of them into my trouser pockets and went out to join him in the ute.
We stopped at the second house on the dirt street leading to the Kambalda road and he was gone about ten minutes. ‘Mickey Mouse have put on a special flight. That’s MMA, the local airline. Ferdie wants us to meet them at the airport.’ And he added, ‘Beer and sandwiches at Ora Banda and you’re to get yourself clued up so’s you can answer all the questions this feller Freeman’s likely to ask.’