Tourmaline (25 page)

Deborah came to the hotel door with a lamp, and called: ‘Byrnie, are you going to keep that up all night?’

‘It’s like old times,’ he said. But she didn’t hear, and thought he had decided to ignore her, so she went away.

He went on playing, not singing, just fingering over old tunes. It was the diviner’s music he was playing.

And the diviner, as if summoned, suddenly loomed up out of the darkness, breaking into the small sphere of light.

The yellow glow turned his terrible eyes green. He looked sick; haggard. And furtive, too, like someone expecting to be set upon.

‘I thought you weren’t coming here any more,’ Byrne said, watching his own moving fingers.

‘I don’t know why you thought that,’ said the diviner.

‘There’s no one awake.’

‘I can tell the time.’

‘Fine,’ said Byrne, with a shrug.

The diviner burst out, in a rage: ‘Look at me when you talk to me. What’s wrong with you? Am I such a miserable sight you can’t stand it?’

‘I never was much good at looking people in the eye,’ Byrne confessed. But he lifted his ruined face, and did his best.

‘Dear God, you’re ugly,’ the diviner remarked to himself. ‘It isn’t fair.’

He sat down beside Byrne and looked up at the stars.

‘Getting windy,’ Byrne said.

The diviner said: ‘Uh-huh.’

‘Could be a dust storm.’

‘Who cares?’

They listened to the wind for a while, and the guitar.

‘Where’s Deborah?’ the diviner asked, after a time.

‘Give you one guess.’

‘Ah, the harlot.’

‘It’s her husband, mate. Fair go.’

‘What does he say?’

‘What does he say about what?’

‘About me?’

‘He says he’s sorry for you.’

The diviner laughed, making deep creases in his unshaven cheeks.

‘You’ve got a funny sense of humour,’ Byrne said.

‘I’ve got no sense of humour at all,’ said the diviner.

He sat with the lantern between his feet, his head bent over it. The spikes of his dishevelled hair shone yellow at the points. The bones of his long hands shone too, gripping his sharp blue knees.

There was nothing to him: only his ferocious pride, and his yearning.

Byrne played on. He knew it was no use to talk, at that stage. The diviner was not interested in his opinions, or his sympathy. He didn’t believe in Byrne’s existence. For him, the world was a desert island, and it was up to him to make what he could of it.

So he brooded, over his lantern, like a sullen castaway seeking his future in the fire.

Dust began to blow around them.

‘I did my best,’ the diviner said. ‘No one can say otherwise.’

‘Sure,’ said Byrne. ‘No one does, either.’

‘Why did I wake up this morning?’ the diviner wondered. ‘It wasn’t fair.’

‘Why don’t you go and sleep now?’

‘Never seen it so dark. So dark.’

‘Take the lantern,’ Byrne said.

The diviner held out his hands, warming them over the heat rising from the small flame. ‘Cold, too,’ he said. He was shivering.

‘Are you crook?’ Byrne asked. ‘You don’t look too good.’

The diviner looked round at his spoiled face, and looked down again. ‘I won’t say it,’ he decided.

‘Ah, quit taking it out on the dog.’

‘Do you care?’ said the diviner, surprised by a new thought.

‘What about?’

‘The way you look.’

‘No, I don’t care,’ said Byrne, with a happy laugh. ‘Far as anyone knows, I’m the ugliest bloke in the world. It’s an honour.’

‘I couldn’t live,’ said the diviner.

‘What do you want me to do? Shoot myself?’

‘No,’ said the diviner. ‘Not you. They’d only call you a bloody nuisance.’

Byrne kept on strumming. ‘Anyone ever tell you you were a bastard?’ he enquired.

But the diviner was turned off, as it were; not receiving any further messages.

He stood up, shivering in the wind, which tossed the shining points of his hair.

‘You going?’ Byrne asked, looking up at him.

‘Yair,’ he said, distantly. ‘Going home.’

‘Take the light.’

‘I don’t need it.’

‘You’ll go down a shaft. Looks like I’ll have to come with you.’

‘I’m not going that way,’ the diviner said.

‘You flying or something?’

‘I’m not going to the hut,’ the diviner said. ‘I’m going home.’

And Byrne stared up at him, out of a dark face pitted with shadows.

‘You’ll never make it,’ he said. ‘Mike——’

‘Home,’ said the diviner, in a dream.

‘Don’t be stupid. You’ll die.’

‘Give me one reason why not,’ said the diviner; not speaking to Byrne, as it appeared.

‘Yair, I will,’ Byrne said, in stress and pain.

‘Well, what is it?’

‘Ah no. You won’t call it a reason.’

‘Why shouldn’t I go?’ asked the diviner, smiling at the dark horizon.

‘Because—ah no.’

‘Why?’

‘Let me help you,’ Byrne pleaded.

‘Why?’

‘Because I reckon I love you, mate,’ Byrne whispered. And he waited, with his terrible secret (he thought it a secret) at last confessed, to be struck by lightning.

‘Oh God,’ said the diviner, laughing. ‘Oh God.’

‘I haven’t sinned,’ Byrne said. ‘I was damned without that.’

And the diviner went on laughing.

‘Stay here,’ Byrne said, from the depths. ‘Stay here, Mike.’

‘What,’ said the diviner, ‘to be equal with you? God forbid.’

And he went away, towards the leaning fence that marks the end of the road. Dust blew back from where his thick boots fell.

‘Mike,’ Byrne called. He dropped his guitar and went after him.

But the diviner broke into a sprint, and leaped the trailing barbed wire of the fence, and ran away laughing, into the gathering wind.

The wind had got up, and was moaning in all the houses, through the spaces where the iron walls meet the roof. The country lay wrapped in dust like a light red mist.

Kestrel crossed the road, head lowered, and went to the door of the store, which was closed. When he opened it, the wind tore it away from him and sent it crashing against a table inside. A nest of billy cans came clattering down.

‘Mind!’ Mary called, appearing from the kitchen. ‘Oh, the dust.’

Tom was sitting in front of the shop window, staring out. ‘I thought you’d come, sooner or later,’ he said, not looking round.

‘Hand of friendship,’ Kestrel said. ‘After all, we’re related.’

The dry wind whistled among the rafters.

‘So you’re the diviner now,’ Tom said. ‘I might have seen it coming.’

‘Someone had to take charge.’

‘Had to?’

‘Was bound to.’

‘Oh, sure. He left a gap, didn’t he? And the organization was there.’

‘What will you do, Kes?’ Mary was wondering.

‘Carry on where he left off.’

‘And the church?’

‘The same. It can survive without him.’

‘And you’ll be high priest,’ said Tom, contemptuously.

‘Someone will. That—power—is worth having.’

‘That “power”,’ said Tom.

‘Will you join us, Tom?’

‘No,’ said Tom. ‘I’m an old man. Let me sleep.’

‘You’re the only weak link.’

‘And proud of it,’ said Tom. ‘Leave me to die in peace.’

‘And you, Mary?’

‘Yes,’ she said, looking at Tom, hesitantly. ‘I will.’

‘That’s good to hear,’ Kestrel said. ‘That’s all I wanted.’ And he turned, lifting his hand to the door.

‘Kes,’ said Tom, still intent on the whirling dust.

‘What?’

‘Honour the single soul.’

‘I think in thousands,’ Kestrel said, ‘and tens of thousands.’

A flurry of dust ran across the room as he opened the door, and then quickly subsided.

The dust flowed by the windows like turbid water. At midday, sitting writing at my table, I had all the lamps alight.

Then the door burst open, and dust showered on the page in front of me. Kestrel was there, and Byrne behind him, looking ownerless, pushing the door to with his back.

It was some time before the flames of the lamps calmed down.

‘So you’ve come,’ I said, with resignation.

‘I certainly haven’t surprised anyone,’ said Kestrel.

‘No.’

‘What do you say?’

‘I haven’t much choice, have I?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Not much.’

‘You want the gold?’

‘No,’ he said, surprised. ‘You can be the banker. It’s Tourmaline’s gold. I’m not claiming it.’

‘But you are, of course,’ I perceived. ‘And everything else as well. All your eggs in one basket, called Tourmaline.’

He grinned. ‘That’s one way of putting it.’

The dust was leaking in under the door, in ripples, like miniature dunes.

‘He’s dead,’ I supposed, remembering his brightness. Kestrel was so dark, like steel. And infallible.

‘I guess so,’ said Kestrel.

‘Ah, who was he?’

‘Search me,’ said Kestrel, with a shrug. ‘Some nut, who thought he was Moses or something.’

‘Not Moses,’ Byrne said. ‘Lucifer.’

I had forgotten him. A voice from the dead. His eyes were dead too, lightless, mere black holes in a face that meteorites throughout the ages had riddled with craters.

‘He thought Christ was Lucifer too. Trying to make good and go home.’

‘I told you,’ Kestrel said. ‘A pisswit of the first water.’

And I watched the tiny red sandhills struggling in under the door.

‘Ah, go,’ I begged them. ‘Go, please.’

‘There’s one thing,’ Kestrel said.

‘What?’

‘You’ll hear the bell, when this is over. Come to the church.’

‘To the church,’ I repeated, sighing. ‘Why?’

‘I’m the pope here now,’ said Kestrel. And grinned. With silver eyes and black lashes.

I couldn’t look at him any longer. I laid my head down, among the pages of my testament.

‘Come on,’ Kestrel said to Byrne. Then a great blast of wind came in, fluttering the papers under me until the door slammed again. And when I looked up the lamps had blown out, and I was alone. In a room of pale stone, ledges heaped with dust, a safe filled with gold in one corner. It was nearly dark. Only a thick red gloom came in through the windows, like the glow of a dying fire.

I went down the road, battling the wind. Everything was flowing; insubstantial. The obelisk and the hotel would appear through the dust and then, in an instant, melt away.

I opened the door of the store. It tried to break from me. I leaned on it to close it.

Tom was asleep at the counter, his head resting on his forearms. There was dust in his thinning hair. So peaceful he looked. I felt calmed.

The wind hissed through the rafters, and among the bridles and halters and saddles rotting and rusting there. Occasional sounds of pots and dishes came from the kitchen.

‘Tom,’ I said. He did not stir.

I reached over and touched his arm, gently.

Dust lay on his arm. There was nothing I could say.

In the kitchen Mary was kneading dough. I took her floury hands. ‘Mary,’ I said. ‘Oh Mary. Tom is dead.’

And she cried as a child does, looking straight at you, and crumpling.

I walked out, into the thick red wind.

It was like swimming under water, in a flooding river. Dust sifted into my lungs; I was drowning.

And the bell, up on the hill, kept tolling. Purposeless; moved by the wind.

There was no town, no hill, no landscape. There was nothing. Only myself, swimming through the red flood, that had covered the world and spared me only, of all those who had been there.

Dust lay over the chimneys of Lacey’s Find; over the lone billiard table in the desert. It silted up the stock route well at Dave Speed’s camp. It heaped in the sockets of the diviner’s eyes.

Wild beasts were loose on the world. Terrors would come. But wonders, too, as in the past. Terrors and wonders, as always.

I have seen rain in Tourmaline. Can you believe that? How can you? You have not seen that green, that green like burning, that covers all the stones on the red earth, and glows, gently, upward, till the grey-green leaves of the myall are drab no longer, but green as the grass, washed in reflected light. And the fragrance then; the turpentine weed, the balm. Birds in the air; sheep in the far green distance. And pools, lakes, oceans of blowing flowers.

I have seen rain in Tourmaline. I am not young.

And Kestrel’s hair is growing thinner.

There is no sin but cruelty. Only one. And that original sin, that began when a man first cried to another, in his matted hair: Take charge of my life, I am close to breaking.

The bell tolled. The thick wind whirled. Caught in the current, drowning, I ceased to struggle, and let it bear me up the road. There was no town, no landscape. What could this be if not the end of the world?

Then the wind dropped for half a minute. And I saw my tower, the boundary of Tourmaline, waiting.

Dancing on Coral

Glenda Adams

Introduced by Susan Wyndham