Tourmaline (12 page)

He had no luck with that, however, and before he could begin another the diviner was on his feet again, pushing back his dank hair and replacing his hat. From his pocket he took a little knob of gold, and put it into the bottle that hung from his rod. Then he walked down to the foot of the hill. Byrne ambled after him, at a distance.

He looked quite absorbed, so Byrne told me later, standing there, with the rod between his hands. He held it with his palms up, forcing the forks slightly apart, and his eyes were fixed on the end of it. Frowning, very tense, he seemed to be entering a sort of trance; and he inspired such awe in his talkative friend, as he stood watching, that not one question escaped him. Throughout the progress of the ritual Byrne followed in a doglike silence.

With his stiff neck bent a little, the diviner stepped out, and began to follow around the foot of the hill; very slow in his movements, and still concentrating profoundly on the tip of the rod. These proceedings occupied ten minutes or more. Then he stopped dead in his tracks, quite rigid, and looking (said Byrne) as if he were listening to something. The rod was still steady and level.

He turned left and went on, away from the hillock, out towards the stone-littered plain. And Byrne, trailing behind, saw the rod straining in his hands. Suddenly it had defeated him, and was pointing downwards—straight downwards. And the handgrips of ecclesiastical oleander had disintegrated in his hands. He took another step, and stopped. The rod fell to the ground. He looked up, exhausted.

‘There’s a reef,’ he said, very quiet and weary. ‘Few feet of overburden. Old-timers missed it. Mark it, will you.’

Then he picked up the rod and went up the slope again to the rock-shelter. And there he lay down and went to sleep.

Byrne, in the meantime, in a haze of doubt and excitement, made a pile of stones on the spot where the diviner had stood and went to fetch his pick and shovel. Having almost no water he could not be subtle about testing the surface for gold. He simply dug.

And the reef was there. The cap of the reef was there.

With a great shout he bounded up the hill to the diviner.

In my terrible loneliness I grow elegiac. The news of this find, so great for Tourmaline, in which the diviner promised that all who cared to work it might have a share—this news left me less elated than melancholy. For I remembered how once it would have been received, with what rejoicings in the bar and pilgrimages over the countryside (not quite treeless, at that time) to the site of the discovery, with what prognostications of further greatness for Tourmaline. That was in the days of hope, in the days of tree-lined streets, the days when the verandas of the hotel and other buildings were shaded with vines, and oranges grew in what is now Rock’s garden. Though they mock me for it, how can I forget? The glow of oranges in shining leaves, passion-fruit and -flower; the reds of oleander and bougainvillaea, the pepper trees’ green-white drizzling flowers, sharp-smelling and loud with bees. These were the things I remembered, in my loneliness, when the news came of the diviner’s find.

The town was moved, certainly, even excited. But gold means little now. It was the method of its tracking down that was the talk everywhere, the cause of all rumours and arguments. It was of water, not gold, that all thought after this miracle.

‘What do you say now?’ Byrne asked Kestrel. He was in the bar, but quite sober. ‘Can he divine, or can’t he?’

‘I say he’s a bloody good prospector,’ said Kestrel; ‘and the best bullduster I’m likely to meet.’

‘You’re so mean and jealous,’ Deborah hissed at him. ‘It’s horrible.’

He turned on her, for a second, a bitter parody of a smile.

Tom Spring would say nothing. Divining, he confessed, he did not understand. He sat behind his counter like a small ivory statue of a sage, smiling luminously at Jack Speed, who brought the news.

‘Don’t you care?’ Jack asked, incredulous. ‘If he’s as good as that, what about the water?’

‘The water,’ Tom mused. ‘The water. I’m waiting, sure enough.’

‘You sound like my old man.’

‘I’m not,’ Tom said. ‘I believe in the boy—for some things. But the water: I’ll wait and see about that.’

Rock brought me the tidings, his deepset brown eyes very bright and hopeful. He too thought less of the gold than of the augury.

‘Kes is right to call him the witch-doctor,’ he considered. ‘Not natural, somehow.’

‘He told us he had a gift,’ I said. ‘It looks as if he has.’

‘I’m scared,’ said Rock. ‘Scared to hope too much.’ And he looked across the road at the iron fence of his garden. ‘Are we going to get this water? If we are, how long’s it going to be?’

‘How long?’ I echoed, looking about me in a sort of trance; seeing trees spring up and flowers in the street, hearing sounds of sheep and birds in the far green distance. Why, in my great hope, did I remember the easter lilies in our old garden; the smooth pink lilies, so tough, so delicate, that sprang up leafless from the baked ground, before the earliest rains?

And the diviner, all this time, was in the church. What did he do there? I cannot truly say, for only one person ever saw him. That was old Gloria, self-appointed vergeress, who perhaps at that very moment was engaged in watching him. He was kneeling, she told me, before the altar, his head bowed, in a patch of sunlight. And I can see him, clearly enough, in the raw blue of his new clothes; his red young neck encroached upon by golden down, red dust on his boots and at the hip-pockets of his trousers. And his hair burning bright, like chaff in a thread of sunlight, such as may steal in through a nail-hole in a shed roof; and did, long ago, at home.

I imagine him striving, striving to empty his mind, as Tom seemed dedicated to do, awaiting some infusion of force and wisdom. I imagine him. That is all. Ah, but how difficult it is to re-create this young man, who to everyone meant something, and to no two people the same. Can I trust the testimony of Gloria Day, who also knelt before the altar, and was the only one to do so, if he did not? He remains obscure, confusing. I cannot pin him down.

He was there, at any rate, when she came in. And he heard her, and came quickly before she could escape.

‘Here you are,’ he said. ‘I’ve been waiting for you. For days.’

The old dark woman, with her hair tied in a gaping rag, only looked at him. Glowing, mistrustful eyes she had.

‘How long have you been coming here?’ he asked her. ‘Cleaning the place, and writing’ (he pointed at the altar) ‘these?’

She stood with her hands clasped across her stomach, searching him.

‘Don’t be scared,’ he said. ‘How many years?’

‘Ah, long time,’ she said at last, unwillingly, in her rather rich and deep voice. ‘When the roof was on I start coming.’

‘Why?’ he gently asked.

‘For God,’ she said, quite simply.

‘You love God?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you know why?’

She never moved or looked away from him. ‘God very big,’ she said.

‘Very big.’

‘I want him to come.’

‘Here?’

‘Here. I keep this house clean for him. Might be he come some day. I keep asking him.’

‘And what if he comes?’

‘Water,’ she said. ‘Kangaroo, duck, everything. People pretty hungry in the camp now.’

‘What do you ask him?’

‘I ask him to make it rain,’ she said. ‘And the stones, I give him.’ She pointed at the altar, where two round black pebbles, unnaturally smooth, lay before the wilted oleander flowers. ‘Rain stones,’ she said. ‘He can make rain if he want to.’

‘And no one else comes here to ask him that?’

‘Only me. I come. No one else love God now. They all forget.’

‘Everyone? Everyone forgets?’

‘I think might be old Dave Speed and Jimmy Bogada love God too. But they don’t live here. They don’t care about his house.’

‘Tom Spring, too? Mary Spring? Don’t they love God?’

‘I dunno,’ she said. ‘No one love his house. Only me.’

They stood gazing. She was in the shade, he in the sunlight. A rectangle of sky was above him. Over her shoulder, through the open door, the flowering oleander burned in the sun.

‘You love God?’ she asked, after a time.

‘Yair,’ he said. ‘Yair.’ His eyes were brilliant. He was looking into the light of the doorway. ‘I love God, now. He’s saved me.’

‘Always?’ she questioned. ‘Always you love him?’

‘No, not always. How was I to know?’

‘He save you, all the same?’

‘Against my will, maybe. Yair. He sent me to Tourmaline.’

‘You still young,’ she said.

‘D’you know who I am?’

‘’Course. You the diviner.’

‘D’you believe I’ve found God?’

‘I dunno,’ she said. ‘How you tell?’

‘Through pain,’ he said—half-laughing, she told me, in a very strange way. ‘Shame. Weakness. He makes me suffer. Persecutes me. Won’t let me go. So I know I’ve found him.’

He lifted his hand to push back his flopping forelock. His hand was shaking.

‘You don’t hate God?’ she asked, uncertain.

‘No, no, I love him. Have to. There’s nothing else.’

‘Nothing else,’ she repeated. ‘Only God. Nothing else.’

‘Pray for me.’

‘How? How you want me to pray for you?’

‘At the altar,’ he said, drawing her with him. ‘Here.’

He knelt. And she, after a moment, went down beside him.

‘No, not for me,’ he said. ‘Just pray. So I can hear you. Please.’

So she prayed, bowing her rag-wrapped head in the hot sunlight; on the hot stone floor, before the stone altar in the open shade.

‘Our Father, which are up in Heaven, hallered be Thy name. Give us today our daily bread, and give us our trespasses, as we give them to trespassers ’gainst us. Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done. And deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory. For ever and ever. Our men.’

Then it was quite still in the church. And he whispered, at length: ‘The water?’

‘Dear God,’ she said, ‘we all poor sinners. We don’t know how we going on much longer. Make it rain, dear God. You very big, dear God, and we don’t look much next to you. But your world look real pretty before you take the water away, and might be you like to see it looking pretty again. I hope so, God. I only telling you because I love you. And this young fella here love you too, and he say the same. Make it rain, dear God. Bless you. Our men.’

She let her clasped hands fall to her thighs, and knelt in silence for a time. Then the diviner murmured: ‘Pray for me.’

‘I dunno what you want,’ she said, uneasy.

‘Peace,’ he said. ‘Just peace. Talk to him for me.’ He begged her, almost.

So she prayed, uncomfortably. ‘Dear God, give this young fella peace. Make him happy, God. Our men.’

Then she stood up, bowing, and moved back into the shade. But he stayed where he was, though he went on talking to her.

‘There’s a place for everyone,’ he said. ‘Isn’t there? In God’s kingdom.’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘You were told that, when you were young?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t know much about it,’ he confessed; still with his head bent and his back to her. ‘I’ve found him for myself. Or he’s found me.’

‘You talk to him?’ she asked.

‘I’ve shouted at him,’ he said, very quiet. ‘What’s the use? What’ve I done?’

He was trembling, she noticed, even in that posture.

‘Did I sin before—before? Dear God, did I deserve it?’

She could not understand him. His emotions defeated her. He sounded wild, she told me, very wild. And I can imagine it. His ferocity, that had in it almost nothing of self-pity, exploded before the altar like a grenade. He had had enough, he seemed to be saying. But of what?

‘I’m not—cast out,’ he suddenly claimed, in a loud voice. ‘If I was, I could have—I could have—ah God, what do you want me for?’

Astonishingly (I was astonished when she told me) the old woman murmured: ‘One talent.’

‘One talent,’ he repeated, foolishly. ‘One talent. Is that it?’

‘Let your light shine,’ she said. ‘No good hiding it under a bucket. Let it shine.’

‘My talent,’ he said; or groaned. ‘My talent.’

She would not move closer to him; but she did, with her voice, try to give comfort. ‘I dunno what’s wrong with you,’ she said, ‘but God loves you. Don’t you forget it, because he don’t.’

‘What love,’ he muttered. ‘What love. Ah hell. My head’s beating like a drum.’

He sprawled. He laid his forehead on the cool altar step, in the shade.

‘You crying?’ she asked him.

‘No.’ His answer came back muffled by the stone. ‘You reckon I could?’

‘Pray,’ she said. ‘Pray.’

‘I am,’ he cried. ‘I have, for days, for weeks. Why am I here? Am I meant to stay? Or can I go on?’ He beat on the step with his palm. ‘God. God. Tell me where I stand.’

‘I got to go now,’ Gloria said, in a low voice.

He did not hear. She moved back to the door; seeing him, as she left, still prostrate before the altar; hearing, as she passed the empty windows, broken incoherent phrases of his pain and praying.

Byrne sang, sober and melancholy on the war memorial, a lament of his own devising.

So quietly his guitar grieved, as though played at the horizon. So tender, heartbreaking, his nasal tenor voice.

‘I wish he wouldn’t sing that one,’ Mary Spring said.

‘Listen to the idiot,’ said Kestrel.

‘And yet he doesn’t feel like that any more,’ Tom said. ‘He believes in young Michael. More than anyone.’

‘If I say I love you,’ Kestrel said, ‘tonight, this minute, do I have to promise to be the same every second for the rest of my life?’