The Drover's Wife & Other Stories

by Murray Bail

When the show closed at the end of the first day the owners carefully tied their dogs to prevent them from wandering from the cubicles. They checked the supply of water, smoothed the sawdust, and said goodbye to the dogs. The lights were turned out and a few of the dogs howled.

  Early the next morning the owners returned as soon as the gates were opened. They exercised and groomed their dogs and by the time the crowds began to arrive they were all sitting quietly in the cubicles, spic and span.

  It was a long show and as the days passed the dogs became restless and the owners became tired. The dogs could scarcely wait for their morning exercise but the owners did not feel like walking a long distance with a dog straining at the leash. The heavy dogs, who needed more exercise, were the most tiresome.

  The old ladies with the small dogs now began to sleep in the building at night; it was easier than travelling home in the cold, and back again. Some slept in the cubicles in an upright position, others underneath with blankets and hot-water bottles. Within a few days all the owners were sleeping with their dogs. The main disadvantage was the cold. To give themselves extra warmth the owners took back the cushions and embroidered blankets they had made for their dogs. At the end of the first row someone rigged up a lavatory.

  The pieman who had his stall near the entrance of the Dog Show now moved inside the building. When the owners wanted something to eat they would shout to the pieman and he would serve them with pies.

  Eventually there was no point in owners leaving the cubicles. The dogs were not exercised or groomed; they were allowed to perform their natural functions anywhere. One after the other refused to eat dog biscuits so they were given pies and the owners nibbled the dog biscuits.

  For a while the stench in the pavilion became overpowering, but gradually it took on a mellow odour, something like a hall of cattle or pigs. People still walked along the rows looking at the dogs and staring at the owners sitting with them. The sign in front of the building had been altered to read: DOG SHOW—SEE THE DOGS, MEET THE OWNERS.

  Then gradually the owners moved their dogs off the shelves and made them sit underneath. It was too cramped otherwise. Each cubicle now became a sort of private room. There were urine stains on the shelves, and there were other smells, but the owners had grown used to discomforts. Their clothes were disgraceful. The men had not shaved and it was not long before the women ran out of make-up.

  That woman was still surrounded by the drinkers. She did not show any favouritism or discrimination. Every night the other owners could hear their animal noises.

  The younger men had turned very pale, probably due to lack of sunlight. It was only the electric globes dangling above them that saved the place from becoming a dingy hole. As their faces turned more yellow they squatted in their cubicles like blind dogs. They now wore only soiled underclothes, and shuffled and scratched incessantly. As they drank the dogs’ water their slobbering noises could be heard for quite a distance.

  The pieman kept his stall in immaculate condition. It did not take him long to realise his pies were being eaten by the dogs, so he began to sell pies only at eight in the morning and six at night. What they did with the pies did not concern him. The fact was that the dog biscuits seemed to taste better to the owners. They were satisfied to munch the biscuits and lap the water while the dogs ate the pies.

  It was summer and it began to get warm in the airless pavilion; a large volume of water was consumed. Squatting in their cubicles the owners slapped water over their bellies while people walked up and down staring at them, marvelling at the unusual noises.

  The days turned hotter and when the heat became intense the owners decided to discard their clothing. At night they covered themselves with the dog-blankets but during the day they wore nothing at all. The women looked strange sitting on their haunches. The one surrounded by the men rested on all fours, eyeing the people staring at her.

  Now a great many of the owners began to squat on all fours. It was comfortable. However, they had the presence of mind to tie leashes around their necks so they would not fall from the shelves. The shaggy men looked huge with their loose bellies hanging down. Ribs were visible on others.

  DOG SHOW—SEE THE OWNERS AND THEIR DOGS.

  The show goes on.

  Ore

  The list of publications Wes Williams read carefully, especially between the lines.

  Petroleum Intelligence Weekly

  Wolfrom’s Commodity Digest

  Financial Review

  London Financial Times (Sat. only)

  Sugar Review

  Tin International

  Skinner’s Mining International Yearbook

  Rydge’s

  Pamphlets from chartists. Annual reports.

  Statements from as far away as Detroit—when

  America catches a cold the rest of the world

  gets pneumonia. Sundry newspapers.

  In the saloon bar, legs apart, he spoke with a kind of mechanical earnestness, looking over the heads of the others. He and his friends wore the short-sleeve shirt; with a tie of course. They could have been tennis players showered and combed after a match. In fact they were from the one office, Wes has pale eyes like the water in one of those Sydney swimming pools, a small mouth and large wrist knuckles. About thirty odd.

  They were talking about the gold price.

  ‘It was a cert. It was on the cards. The Americans had to let it go,’ Wes said simply.

  Each was familiar with the other’s arguments, predictions, yet never tired of hearing them. ‘Shares’ were an infectious, endlessly comforting disease. It affected the nasal passages. If someone changed the subject, even to cars, Wes would look around, restless, till it returned.

  Wes had a few sugar shares—bought on the crest of the nickel boom. Everybody knew that. But Wes had recently moved into gold as well. He was keeping quiet about that, though anyone could tell, if they opened their eyes, he had assumed the complacent, almost deaf, manner of an ‘insider’.

  ‘Tell you what, copper’ll go next.’

  Ha, ha. Wes was always on about copper.

  ‘The currency crisis,’ Wes went on. ‘It’ll affect the commodities. Copper’s fucking low anyway.’

  ‘The Cobar mine’s doing all right.’

  Wes smacked his lips.

  ‘Give me Mt Isa any day.’

  Gazing over their heads he threw in a tonnage and price-earnings ratio. Then bulging his stomach, pressing his chin to his chest, he gave two short belches: something he always did after the first few mouthfuls of beer. It was a free country.

  The trouble was, the others could only go on about iron ore. The finer arguments on gold, copper and silver, their relationships to the dollar and so forth, were beyond them. Really, completely.

  Wes Williams first became aware he was different shortly after he had his teeth filled. Since buying his sugar shares he’d chewed sweets whenever he could and put too much sugar in people’s tea, including his own; and one day actually leaned on his secretary’s morning cake, destroying it ‘accidentally’: all in his own way to help raise, or at least hold, the world sugar price. He had only—what—forty-one ordinary shares, but it was the largest sugar company in the Southern Hemisphere. The distant logic that ‘every grain must count’ had spread throughout his mind to his arms and eyes, the way sugar itself is altered by moisture. He thought of the sugar that went into wedding cakes, and enjoyed all marriages. Empty trays in delicatessen windows caught his eye. Chewing gum in a gutter was another good sign. These things can really add up. A really pleasant dream, one he had replayed in broad daylight, was of a line of trucks leaving a refinery, each with a hole in the floor, the precious stuff running out like sand, or time, unknown to the driver, until the trucks arrived empty—although Williams was yet to hear of such a case. He took a keen interest in hurricanes if any were reported heading towards the Caribbean islands.

  His dentist went busy and grim. Williams needed seven gold fillings.

  The 196
9–70 mining boom possessed its own mythology now. It was incredible. Poseidon had been written up in Time magazine. ‘Great Boulder’, ‘Carr Boyd Rocks’, ‘Western Mining’ were names similar in feeling to ‘Burke and Wills’, ‘Leichhardt’, ‘Ayers Rock’, their modern equivalents perhaps, although that wasn’t why Wes preferred them to the industrials.

  The following day the price of gold fixed at $US35 an ounce was allowed to float. The wealth in Williams’ mouth doubled overnight.

  Hectic scenes were photographed at the Sydney stock exchange—men shouting and waving papers. Some experts were talking about $130 an ounce. Meanwhile his friends stood around talking, and looking, small-time.

  He could scarcely contain himself.

  Up to $117 in no time.

  Williams ran his tongue around his mouth. Main gold-producing countries: Russia, South Africa. If the blacks went mad now, destroyed a few mines…

  Wes nodded carefully.

  ‘It’ll crack a hundred and fifty, no worries.’

  The spread in holdings made him feel diversified, secured successfully. It seemed there were more things of interest in the world, more to occupy his mind. At home he had ‘files’ and a book where he kept track of his shares. Regularly he added up the dividends collected so far. Wes was a bit tight. Even Judith, his wife, could get irritated. But it wasn’t a bad flat. At six you needed sunglasses in the lounge.

  She had a part-time job somewhere, which helped.

  No, you had to be on the lookout. Since the nickel boom he’d missed—Christ—the land boom, the cocoa boom, and the rubber boom. So had his friends. And they were looking the other way when Persian carpets, then paintings by Australian artists, took off. Australiana books Wes knew nothing about; brass beds he’d heard were a good thing but already high; original bushranger posters few and far between. You never know. There was a chance of stumbling across a pair of real convict handcuffs one day. Abo axeheads. Where could you get hold of them now?

  Literally, the world consisted of objects beckoning, about to leap in value.

  ‘Mt Isa’ seemed to be waving from the share lists, signalling before it was too late. That was what it was like: a name detached itself with its stark pithead, geologist’s camp, future prospects…

  On the 27th, a Friday, gold topped $148 an ounce.

  Williams could think of nothing else. Much of his job at the office was done automatically, the attention he paid his wife became distracted noticeably. Food was tasteless.

  Mt Isa also had silver, lead. A large slab of the capital was held by the US parent. See, these were factors that his friends never took into account.

  Arriving home one night he told Judith about the market, as matter-of-factly as possible. He even sketched out the gold tier-system for her. She was painting her toenails. ‘Isn’t “bamboo” the most beautiful word in the world?’ she asked, not looking up. He noticed then she was naked.

  ‘What are you doing like this?’ he shouted.

  She wasn’t listening.

  ‘What’s this you’re reading?’

  He picked up Lasseter’s Last Ride.

  ‘Ion Idriess?’

  ‘Give it back, please.’

  He was about to, and would have chucked it; but he couldn’t put it down.

  Wes sat up with a headache and the taste of old pennies in his mouth. This was funny. He’d never felt crook in his life before.

  ‘You were talking in your sleep,’ his wife complained.

  ‘Nothing dirty, I hope.’

  This bloody headache!

  ‘Something about Mary Kathleen,’ said Judith in a flat voice.

  Perhaps no man can absorb as many numerical figures as Williams did at that time. While Judith was talking he studied his teeth in the bathroom and farted. That was better. He carried the world’s copper reserves around in his head, and much valuable supporting data, including core samples and lode depths, ‘promising situations’. Ordinary news failed to register. There was no room. Occasionally, he squeezed in a political movement from Zambia or Chile; but that was tied up with copper. Optical wonders such as an iron ball swinging through one of the city’s old buildings passed without his mouth opening.

  The headache came in waves. Stranger was the taste of pennies. It reminded him of the ore piled up outside Mt Isa; but then so did mould on his cheese at lunch one day. His head continued its slow cracking.

  No need to tell his wife.

  He found a doctor. Here was an eminent specialist, an expert in his field. He had a paisley handkerchief almost falling out from his lapel pocket. He wore tortoise-shell glasses.

  As he shone a torch down Wes’s mouth he constantly changed the shape of his own mouth. ‘And you’ve been off appetite?’

  Before Williams could nod a thermometer rose from his mouth. Mercury! Interesting, mysterious metal. How about mercury? Not traded enough though, not in the big league. Wes subsided. And he’d caught sight of the doctor’s cuff links: solid gold.

  ‘How long have you been out?’ Wes asked, stretching his legs. ‘I take it you’re from the UK?’

  Macquarie Street, thought Wes. He’d be doing all right.

  The doctor took the thermometer to the window.

  ‘It was actually a Friday morning, August, 1969.’

  ‘Just in time,’ Wes called out. ‘Poseidon, Western Mining. I s’pose you got some shares?’

  Everyone else did.

  ‘You seem to have a fever,’ the doctor said, shaking the thermometer. ‘Yes, I did as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Still goddem?’

  Wes relaxed. One of the things about the mining boom was its spontaneous camaraderie.

  ‘Still goddem?’

  ‘I am afraid so.’

  ‘Copper,’ said Wes loudly, in case he was speaking here with a man disillusioned with the market. ‘That’s going to move.’

  The doctor smiled.

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Well, I’d buy now,’ Wes advised him. ‘Hang on. Whoow,’ he said, suddenly sitting down. ‘I’m as dizzy as buggery. Fuck this!’

  Copper broke through the psychological £500 barrier at the London Metal Exchange; the Australian producers quickly followed. Big fall in warehouse stocks. The Zambian railway cut. China was reported buying.

  The taste in Wes’s mouth became so strong Judith must have noticed. On top of her he found he could hold off by picturing the layout of a famous open-cut mine. On the other hand, his head was so full of figures it rejected breakfast.

  At the doctor’s now he noticed the Financial Review alongside Punch and the Autocar.

  Wes thought he could slap him on the back; because of the terrific mood just then.

  ‘There you are, six hundred and fifty this morning. What did I tell you?’

  It left sugar for dead.

  The doctor gazed at him, tapping his teeth with a pencil.

  ‘Several of my colleagues,’ he said, ‘have expressed an interest.’

  Wes wasn’t sure what he was getting at.

  ‘We shall have to take a sample. A smallish operation. Your permission is required, of course.’

  ‘Well, you’re the experts,’ said Williams loudly.

  In case he was seriously ill or something he stumbled on. ‘I’d say it was a moot point whether to buy a copper share now, or a ton of the metal itself.’

  To his existing reserves Williams added discoveries of low-grade ore in Indonesia and Iran. Against that he put the latest consumption figures of the industrialised west; added acres of future cars and motorbikes, colour TV sets, fridges; eating into the known reserves. And what if Red China’s economy took off? He rubbed his hands.

  On the day, the doctor was unusually jovial yet didn’t introduce him: nodded at Wes to lie down.

  The others were ‘specialists’. Each had the Financial Review under his arm. One wore a cork helmet. Another a handlebar moustache and cigar, though it was not yet ten o’clock in the morning. The third carried a superb Engli
sh walking stick—worth a lot of money—but it was actually a theodolite. He was red in the face but grinning.

  ‘Hello, old boy.’

  ‘Pip, pip.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I say.’

  They crowded around.

  ‘Standing at $2.70, with a yield of 6.3,’ Wes began. He was a bit annoyed. They were now all calling him ‘Mr Williams’. All part of their act.

  They ignored his toneless predictions; lowered the bright lights, and murmured to each other. Some had their sleeves rolled up.

  The first exploratory drilling encountered grey matter, nothing else.

  The telephone rang.

  ‘788.’

  ‘5.6.’

  The third and the fourth holes struck ore of major density, just below the surface. Further intersections proved the reserves. Open-cut was feasible. They all agreed. They had the equipment. It became a rapid large-scale operation. Wes’s babbling went quieter, the figures became smaller, even dubious, until he was silent.

  ‘That will be all. Thank you. You might take these tablets if you feel anything.’

  Wes felt vaguely grateful. The others had gone; where were the others?

  ‘No headache now? Good. Thank you, then.’

  The doctor turned his back and began writing. Wes searched around for the taste of copper in his mouth. It too had gone.

  Macquarie Street outside was sharply defined and noisy. Another hot day. The bar was empty, but Wes thought he’d wait there for the lunch crowd. Nothing else he could do. He looked around. No worries though. He adjusted himself on the stool. Diamond drilling intersected ore of major density.

  Cul-de-Sac (uncompleted)

  ‘Nevertheless, you can get there and back in two minutes,’ said the Chief, wiping his hands. He said it a shade carelessly. Normally he was good at giving directions. Biv looked at the drawing board. It was necessary to move the T square. Then it was possible to see the position of the alleged, so-called cul-de-sac. Pencil lines converged towards it and stopped. So it was on the other side of town. This was going to take more than two minutes.