He saw me, nodded and came across, nursing a slim briefcase under his arm. ‘Glad to see you again. You got my telegram? Good. Chris told me you had arrived.’ He gripped my hand, his eyes on mine, cold and calculating. And then he was introducing his companion, a quietly dressed man with a round friendly face. ‘This is Les Freeman. He’s chairman and managing director of Lone Minerals, a small but very go-ahead Sydney-based company.’ He glanced back at me, something in his eyes — a question mark, a challenge? ‘Les, I’d like you to meet Alec Falls of Trevis, Parkes amp; Pierce. He’s out here for one of the big London mining houses. Blackridge is one of the prospects he’s been asked to look over.’
I should have denied it straight away, but I was so stunned by the barefaced lie that I just stood there, saying nothing.
He was watching me closely, the thin line of his mouth just as I remembered it, like a steel trap. And he had remembered the name of the firm I had been working for when we had last met. ‘Have you been out to Blackridge yet?’ I heard myself say No, and he nodded. I could see the wheels turning in his mind, the way he was going to handle it. And I just stood there, silent, wondering what sort of a man I was. Later, of course, I told myself that it was Freeman’s fault for being so dumb. But that doesn’t give you absolution, and Freeman was a nice enough bloke, even if he was an accountant.
‘Where’s Chris?’ Kadek peered inside the terminal, saw him and gave a sharp, imperative jerk of his head that brought Culpin out in a hurry. ‘Did you book us in at the Palace?’
Culpin nodded. ‘I was lucky, a cancellation. But it’s just the one room. You’ll have to share.’
Kadek glanced at Freeman, who nodded. ‘Good, then let’s go.’ As we moved out to the ute, he dropped back beside me, speaking quietly. ‘Les knows nothing about mining. But his company badly needs a prospect, something he can feed the market with.’ He gripped my arm, squeezing it. ‘Don’t push it too hard. And keep it scientific. Your observations a little beyond his grasp. But not too far. Understand?’
I nodded. I understood all right. ‘We’ll talk about it later.’ I said. ‘After I’ve seen the mine. And I’ll want samples of my own analysed.’
He stopped then. ‘Why? What d’you mean?’ He was looking at me, his features hard and tense. But then he smiled, a conscious effort. ‘Nothing for you to worry about,’ he murmured, patting my arm. ‘The analysis is correct. And it was made by an independent firm.’
‘I know. I’ve seen Petersen.’
‘Then what’s your worry?’ His voice grated.
‘Surface dirt,’ I said.
‘And you want to dig down — do your own checking, eh?’ His face was still arranged in a smile, but I could feel his anger. ‘Well, let me tell you, I’ve done some checking myself. You start being awkward and I’ll be on to the Commonwealth Immigration Department right away. I don’t play for this sort of money with the gloves on.’ And then abruptly he offered me $2,000 — to help me find my feet out here. He smiled. It was a straight bribe and we both knew it, our eyes locked, each assessing the other, calculating. ‘Nothing for you to worry about,’ he repeated. ‘Petersen Geophysics has a good reputation.’ He glanced ahead to where his partner and Freeman had stopped by the ute. ‘And if anybody takes the can, it’s Chris.’
It was said cold-bloodedly and with no suggestion of any regret.
‘You mean, in the event of trouble, you’d — ’
‘I don’t mean anything,’ he snapped. ‘I’m just telling you. Freeman can get any geologist he likes. The surface dirt he picks up will confirm Petersen’s nickel percentages, and you’re in the clear whatever happens, Now, d’you want the money or don’t you?’
I hesitated. I’d less than twenty dollars left and that analysis to pay for. It was manna from heaven and I heard myself say, ‘Have you got it on you — cash?’
He nodded, still watching me closely as we moved on to join the others. ‘Alec’s coming out to the mine with us,’ he called out to Freeman. ‘Unless you’ve any objections? He hasn’t seen it yet, only the assay figures. He was out at the Geophysics lab checking with Petersen this morning.’
It was a thirty mile drive out to Ora Banda and I was in the back with the sun blazing down. At Broad Arrow we turned off the Leonora highway on to a dirt road, the dust streaming behind us and the truck rattling over the ribbed surface. It was a hot, uncomfortable ride. I was alone in the back, my shoulders braced against the burning metal of the cab, my eyes half-closed against the glare, watching the gums streaming by on either side, the sweat drying on my body as I thought of what I could do with that two thousand, and Golden Soak another Balavedra. It was the prospect of a fresh start that had sustained me through the long shipboard hours coming down across the world, and now the chance was there. I had always thought of myself as lucky, the man who could reach for the stars and grab hold where others were too scared, a loner to whom success was the essential life force. Maybe that’s why I had chosen mining. The pot of gold at the rainbow’s end.
If my younger brother had lived it might have been different. But he was stillborn, and after that my mother couldn’t have any more children. So I was the only one and had to make up for all the others. At least I think it was that, the need to live up to my mother’s expectations. And so, whenever I didn’t succeed I talked myself into believing that I had. My mother again, for my father was a local government official, a surveyor in the planning department, and she cast me in the role of buccaneer, somebody who could live on his wits and go right to the top. She was ambitious, and living always a little beyond our means, money had been tight. So money became important, particularly after I’d acquired Rosa.
Rosa! It wasn’t love. I realized that now. She was just the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. And because other men wanted her, I had to have her for myself. I closed my eyes. God! How I longed for her, that slim beautiful body, the perfect breasts and the way she’d sit, quite naturally, but her legs unconsciously arranging themselves in open invitation. It seemed incongruous to be thinking of Rosa on that bumpy, dusty ride, but I hadn’t had a woman now for over two months and in this hot country I was feeling the need. I wanted a drink, too. And then I was thinking of the rock samples I had left with Petersen, and that girl — gold and antimony and the snub nose, all those freckles like specks of gold. The heat blazed and my blood throbbed, but it wasn’t the same — no vision there to meet my need.
I was still dreaming of Rosa when the gums fell back and I saw the pockmarks of old mineworkings in the red soil either side of us. The truck slowed. A car passed us and through a haze of dust I saw the wood facade of an hotel, empty and desolate. We were in a wide dirt street then, flanked by empty buildings; an old concert hall, and opposite it, on the other side, more empty buildings — a meat factory and the words Ora Banda Dining Rooms on a faded noticeboard. Two or three homesteads, and that was it. A ghost town, the buildings all of wood, tin-roofed and surrounded by a rusty litter of discarded household equipment and old abandoned vehicles.
Up the slight rise we passed the State Battery with its crusher and a small tailings dump. It looked as though it were still in use. Shortly afterwards we turned off the dirt road on to a track that wound haphazardly through the bush, the red gravel overlaid with black drifts like the scatterings of a coal cart, and everywhere mounds of earth marking the shallow shafts of departed gold diggers, the rusted debris of their camps. We swung round the end of a trenched line of diggings and stopped beside two abandoned tip trucks that lay on their sides flaking in the sun. The track on which they had run was rusted, half buried under a thin layer of windblown sand. We were in a grove of bronze-barked gums.