Tourmaline

by Randolph Stow

  ‘Sorry, Kes, sorry,’ Byrne was muttering.

  ‘Why do you keep tempting me? Ah, you shit!’

  ‘Sorry, Kes.’

  ‘Why don’t you die? Why don’t you just die? What good are you to anyone? Why don’t you just drop dead?’

  ‘Oh, stop it,’ Deborah called out, weeping again, with pity and indignation. ‘What good are you, or anyone? Leave him alone, Kes. You’ll make him kill himself.’

  ‘Why don’t you die,’ Kestrel said, almost pleading, in a tone like incantation. ‘You stink already. Go on, Billy boy, die for us.’

  ‘I hope God will strike you dead,’ said Deborah, sincerely.

  ‘You stink,’ Kestrel said again; and stood up.

  ‘Poor Byrnie,’ Deborah wept. ‘I wish you’d get up and kill him.’

  But Byrne could only lie there, on his side, with his blood on the paving and his poor abject eyes bemused, wondering what had happened. ‘’S all right,’ he kept saying. ‘I was asking for it. I might hit him if I wasn’t, but I was asking for it.’

  ‘You hit me?’ Kestrel said, laughing. And he suddenly kicked Byrne, in the belt buckle or thereabouts, and went away, rather fast.

  Byrne, clutching his stomach, coughing and groaning, got to his feet somehow, and staggered across to a veranda post, where he supported himself. He began to vomit.

  And Deborah came towards him, weeping her generous tears.

  ‘Don’t,’ he managed to gasp out. ‘Don’t come near me. I stink. I’ve spewed all down my strides.’

  ‘What does that matter?’ she said, holding his thin shoulders till his breath came back.

  ‘Ah hell,’ he said at last. ‘I shouldn’t have done it.’

  ‘Byrnie, Byrnie,’ she said, half-laughing, half-crying, ‘you’re a saint, and a bloody fool.’

  ‘I know I’m a fool,’ he said.

  ‘You could buy all the grog in his bar. You’re rich, Byrnie.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘From the gold. From Michael’s reef.’

  ‘Forgot that,’ he said, without elation.

  ‘He didn’t forget. He knew damn well all the time.’

  ‘Mistake,’ Byrne said.

  ‘No, it wasn’t.’

  ‘He’ll get over it. I’ll go home for a while.’

  They stood among the crates, the bottles, the blind eyes of the dusty windows.

  ‘Don’t go up there,’ she said. ‘You’re too drunk anyway. Go to Tom and Mary.’

  ‘Not like this. What’d Mary think of me?’

  ‘They’d rather see you like that than never see you again.’

  He turned round, wiping his mouth, and looked at her, hopeful. ‘You reckon?’

  ‘Your friends’d do a lot for you. And you’ve got plenty.’

  ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll go there, for tonight. Ah, but,’ he said, shaking his head and grimacing in disgust, ‘God, I’m a dirty bastard. A dirty bastard.’

  ‘Go to Tom,’ she said after him, as he crossed the yard. ‘Go straight there.’

  And he muttered ‘Okay’, disappearing through the little alley between the hotel and the tin garage.

  When he had gone the valiant girl, with the blood of her mother’s mothers working (no doubt) at pretty high pressure in her veins, stooped to pick up a bottle. It was a very old bottle, one of those green ones with a deep concave base, and it was furry with ancient dust.

  She grasped the neck in her right hand, and went into the kitchen, where Kestrel was sitting at the table. He did not look round.

  ‘Is he all right?’ he asked, with a faint suggestion of remorse.

  ‘He’s all right,’ she said. And as she spoke the bottle descended. She was surprised that it didn’t break.

  He went over like a shot emu.

  After pausing to make sure he wasn’t dead, she went into the bedroom and collected up her clothes. Then she crossed the road, appearing beside Byrne at the store counter.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ said Tom, all luminous. ‘Clothes too, this time?’

  ‘I’m here forever,’ she said. ‘Poor Pa.’

  NINE

  I suppose that this day (a day of extraordinary activity for Deborah) might have ended tragically. But as it happened Kestrel was able to pick himself up before very long, and stagger off to his bed and lay himself out there, with a groan and a curse or two, to recover. And presently Bill the Dill and Pete Macaroni, coming in search of a drink, thought to look for him in the bedroom, and so became the first to hear the news of his misfortune.

  It was a shock to Bill. ‘She never crowned you?’ he said, marvelling. ‘Bloody hell.’

  But Pete thought it was funny.

  ‘You can laugh,’ said Kestrel, with his eyes closed, scowling.

  ‘Wait till I tell Horse,’ Pete said. ‘He’ll split himself.’

  ‘Why would she do that?’ Bill wanted to know. ‘Was you belting her or something?’

  ‘I never laid a flicking finger on her. She came up behind and dropped me with a bottle.’

  ‘They get like that,’ said Pete, who was married to Darleen Bogada. ‘It’s in the blood.’

  ‘I’d like to see Shirl try it on,’ said Bill; meaning Shirley Yandana, his wife.

  ‘Give me a woman with spirit,’ said Kestrel; still in some pain.

  ‘You try Darleen’s sister next time,’ Bill advised. ‘She took a chunk out of Charlie’s ear once.’

  ‘Ah, nick off,’ said Kestrel. ‘I’m a married man. Where is she?’

  ‘Deb?’

  ‘Is she in the bar?’

  ‘No, no one there.’

  ‘Hell,’ said Kestrel, putting his hands to his painful eyes, ‘she’s gone to Mary.’

  ‘I’ll go and get her,’ Pete offered.

  ‘She wouldn’t come. Tomorrow, maybe.’

  ‘Well, what are you going to do about your head?’

  ‘Sleep it off,’ Kestrel said. ‘Pub’s shut. Sorry.’

  There was a sound of voices in the bar, and tramping feet advancing. Presently Horse Carson and Dicko appeared.

  ‘Go home,’ Kestrel groaned. ‘I’m wounded.’

  ‘Deb laid him out with a bottle,’ Bill explained, sympathetically.

  ‘Shouldn’t have done that,’ Horse said. ‘Wasting the stuff.’

  ‘It was empty,’ said Kestrel.

  They stood by the bedside, the four of them, grinning and commiserating.

  ‘Has she gone for good, Kes?’ Dicko asked.

  ‘God,’ he said, ‘I hope not. No, she wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘All the same,’ said Pete, ‘looks like she ain’t too pleased with you.’

  ‘I’ll bring her over,’ Horse said. ‘Saw her going into the store half an hour back.’

  ‘Better wear your tin hat,’ said Dicko.

  ‘Bloody vultures,’ Kestrel said. ‘You’d be laughing if you got hit, I’ll bet.’

  ‘D’you want me to go over there?’

  ‘You can try,’ Kestrel said, with no great hope. So Horse went away, with a great smirk on his face, like a dry creekbed in the desert.

  When he appeared at the back door of the store Mary and Deborah were together in the kitchen. Mary was ironing, using a rusty flat-iron of Tom’s mother’s. Its mate was heating on the stove. Deborah was sitting on a kitchen chair, silent, restored to her habitual stillness, and rather knocked over, perhaps, by the draining heat of the room. She looked up at Horse without any expression, but she knew why he had come.

  ‘You made a mess of Kes,’ he said.

  ‘He asked for it.’

  ‘You might have killed him.’

  Her fathomless eyes agreed. ‘Might have.’

  ‘Might have what?’ Mary asked, putting down the iron on a metal plate.

  ‘Killed him,’ said Deborah. ‘I hit him.’

  ‘With a bottle,’ said Horse. ‘And laid him out.’

  Mary looked at Deborah as if they’d not been introduced. Then: ‘I’m surprised at you,
’ she said, gravely.

  ‘He was hitting Byrnie,’ Deborah said, ‘and then he kicked him. I might have kicked him after that, but he wasn’t awake to appreciate it.’

  And Mary stood marvelling, with her soft greying hair escaping from the loose bun and trailing on her damp forehead.

  Horse said to Deborah: ‘Will you come and look after him?’

  ‘No,’ she said; quietly, but with complete finality.

  ‘Really,’ Mary said, ‘I think you ought to. You can’t knock people down with bottles and just leave them there.’

  ‘He can stay there and the ants can eat him alive,’ said Deborah, ‘for all I care.’

  ‘Fair go,’ said Horse, a bit shocked.

  ‘I used to hate him sometimes,’ she said, ‘but now he just makes me sick. Tell him that.’

  ‘You mean,’ said Horse, ‘you’re not going back?’

  ‘Not ever. If he hasn’t guessed that yet, I must have really done something to his head.’

  Mary’s plump and bare forearms were behind her, untying apron strings. ‘You’re not to be vindictive,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t have thought it was in you.’

  ‘Do you want me to go back, then?’

  ‘You know I don’t. But still——’

  ‘Don’t cry for him. He’s not a man. He’s partly a baby, and the rest of him’s a wild animal.’

  ‘But we’ll have to do something about him.’

  ‘That’s what I say,’ said Horse.

  ‘What can we do?’ Deborah asked. ‘Give Horse a few pills for his headache and let’s forget about him.’

  ‘If you won’t go,’ said Mary, ‘I’ll have to.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Deborah, wryly smiling. ‘He’ll love that.’

  ‘You don’t leave me much choice,’ said Mary, taking off her apron and hanging it behind the door. She opened a cupboard which was, among other things, her medicine closet, and looked to see what there was to offer. Not much, apparently, beyond a few aspirin that the diviner had left her.

  ‘Well, Horse,’ she said, pocketing these, ‘lead on. Will you finish the ironing, Deborah?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘And get tea for Tom and Byrnie if I’m not back?’

  ‘Byrnie won’t wake up for hours.’

  ‘Then you’d better wake him. He probably hasn’t eaten all day.’

  ‘I wish I could feel kind to everybody,’ said Deborah, in a low voice.

  ‘Well, I suppose Kes has been pretty nasty.’

  ‘He’s a snake,’ said Deborah. ‘I don’t know why someone like Horse doesn’t jump on him.’

  ‘I got nothing against him,’ Horse said. ‘Leave me out of this.’

  ‘Oh sure,’ she said, bitterly, ‘you get your grog from him. What can anyone do?’ And she got up, brooding, and put the cooling iron back on the stove.

  ‘Be good,’ said Mary. And she went away, following Horse across the road, while the tall and savage girl reached for her apron.

  Dicko had gone by the time Mary arrived, but there was a sort of picnic going on in the bedroom, with Bill stretched out on the bed beside Kestrel and Pete sprawled across the foot of it, glasses in their hands, talking in a cheery manner to the invalid; who lay glooming with closed eyes, unresponsive. They were a bit taken aback to see Mary; especially Kestrel.

  ‘How do you feel?’ she asked, coming round to his side of the bed.

  ‘I feel bloody,’ he said. ‘Where did that girl learn to belt her husband?’

  She put her hand on his dark brow.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I haven’t got a temperature, I can tell you before you start. I’ve just got a dirty great emu egg on the back of my skull.’

  ‘Don’t be impatient,’ said Mary.

  ‘Where is the bitch?’

  ‘She’s not coming back to you,’ Mary said. ‘And if you use that language to me, I’ll slap you. I’m old enough to be your mother.’

  ‘The skies are falling,’ he groaned. ‘You let one woman hit you and they all start. She doesn’t mean it.’

  ‘She certainly does.’

  ‘You’d be sure to say that.’

  ‘I think she’s dinkum,’ Horse said. ‘If she isn’t, she’s giving a bloody good imitation of a dame that hates your guts.’

  ‘I can’t think of a woman,’ said Mary, offhand, ‘who doesn’t. What can I do for you?’

  ‘You can’t do anything.’

  ‘Will I make you a cup of tea?’

  ‘That would be lovely,’ said Kestrel, crushingly.

  ‘I don’t know why I came,’ Mary said.

  ‘Why don’t you shut up, Kes,’ Horse suggested, ‘and give your head a rest. And Mary’s.’

  ‘Why don’t you go home?’

  Mary said: ‘Now, that is an idea. Pete, Bill, get off his bed and make tracks.’

  ‘Bossiest woman in Tourmaline,’ Bill complained. But he did get up, lazy and tousled, and lounged in the doorway emptying his glass. People tended to be obedient when Mary took charge.

  Pete, for the sake of his self-esteem as man and husband, made an effort at passive resistance; but Horse, with his passion for throwing people about, seized the opportunity and hauled him off by one leg. So Kestrel was left in sole possession of the huge bed, and lay there in gloomy state, his eyes closed and screwed up with pain and his shirtless torso heaving. ‘Why doesn’t everyone go?’ he asked. ‘I’m not sick, I’m just ropeable. Stay away from me.’

  ‘We’ll have a nice cup of tea,’ Mary said, to irritate him, ‘just the two of us. Go on, you men, shoo.’ And she drove them before her, like sheep, until she had seen the bar door swing after them and knew that the business of spreading the news through Tourmaline was under way. Then she went back to the bedroom.

  Under the flaking ceiling, like a map of Mars, Kestrel lay staring. The big dim room was bare, had a camped-in look. He still kept his boots on. With the steely quality of his fine dark face and bent mouth went a certain forlornness.

  ‘I don’t need anything, Mary,’ he said, as she came back.

  ‘You need to eat and drink,’ she supposed, ‘like anyone else.’

  ‘Hurts me to accept a favour.’

  ‘Don’t think I’m not enjoying my Christian revenge.’

  He grinned, turning his head on the pillow, towards plump Mary with her brown ironical eyes. ‘Well, I could call you my mother-in-law, sort of. One of the family.’

  ‘Not any more,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, Kes. For you, that is.’

  ‘She’s set on not coming back?’

  ‘You couldn’t drag her.’

  ‘She’ll go to the witch-doctor,’ he said; not with resentment or as an accusation, but almost idly, as if recalling dull history.

  ‘To——? Oh, to Michael. No. Why on earth do you say that?’

  ‘You’ll see,’ he said.

  She felt some pity for him. And she said sitting on the edge of the bed: ‘Kes, I’ve never been your enemy. I’ve been fond of you sometimes. You were a likely boy, in lots of ways.’

  ‘I haven’t changed. What you don’t like in me now was there then.’

  ‘I know it was. And I didn’t exactly admire you, even in those days. I’ll tell you why, if you like.’

  ‘I know myself,’ he said. ‘Better than you can.’

  ‘You’re greedy,’ she said. ‘And selfish. And cruel. You’re cold, and you use people—as far as anyone can in Tourmaline.’

  ‘You’ll have me falling in love with myself,’ he said.

  ‘Do you have to be like that?’

  ‘I do,’ he said, not very happily. And he went on, with astonishing candour: ‘I might be the sanest bloke in Tourmaline, I wouldn’t be surprised, but I have my days of wanting to run amok. I can’t breathe here. I want to bash the walls down and get some air. What the hell is there for a man like me to do? Is this all the life there is? I just can’t face another thirty-five years of suffocating. I can tell you now, even Deb was a kind of suffocating
to me. She wanted to put a fence round me. Some days I just about couldn’t stand it; but hell, if you’re going to suffocate you might as well do it in good company. Does any of that make sense?’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘It didn’t to Deb, either. But that’s the story of my life.’

  He was covering his eyes with the back of his hand; an irritable, but also a childlike gesture.

  ‘That tea,’ Mary said, rising. ‘And those aspirin for your head. I shouldn’t have started you talking.’

  ‘Should be honoured. Not an easy thing to do.’

  ‘And some food. I’ll get to work.’

  ‘So I’ll be alone tonight,’ he said. ‘Like old times.’

  ‘Will you be all right?’

  ‘Don’t be silly—what do you think?’

  ‘Byrnie could come, probably. He should be in a fit state by now.’

  ‘He’ll be lucky,’ Kestrel said. ‘But send him, anyway. I want to see him.’

  ‘“Send him”,’ she mimicked. ‘You think he’s your dog.’

  ‘I reckon he’s happy to be like that,’ Kestrel said. And he lay glooming, brooding, with his eyes turned to the maps of undiscovered planets that covered the ceiling, and the quick thoughts moving under the mask; a disturbance.

  And Byrne did come, later; not by any means in a healthy condition, or quite sober, but well-disposed, as always. There was a lamp beside the bed, throwing light upwards at him and making great mountains and pits of the topography of his face. His black eyes shone from circles of darkness. He was both sympathetic and placating, ready to shoulder all responsibility for Kestrel’s mishap. If Deborah had been there, she would have been irritated beyond bearing.

  Kestrel looked at him expressionlessly, or almost. But Byrne, who was sensitive to such things and had a good deal of experience, could see that he was being regarded as a mean sort of object whose existence was somehow regrettable; and what could one expect the poor fool to do but apologize?

  So he said: ‘I’m sorry about that, Kes.’

  ‘Ah, drop it,’ said Kestrel.

  And Byrne stood humbly waiting, over the lamp.

  After a time: ‘Have you seen her?’ Kestrel asked.

  ‘Yair, we’ve been talking.’

  ‘And she won’t come back?’

  ‘I don’t know. Give her a while and she might.’

  ‘You really think that?’