The Touch

by Colleen McCullough

  They would never find him, of course. He hadn’t been on his way back to the gallery when his world ended, he was right there at the rock face with naked wires in his hands. You’re entombed forever, Alexander Kinross. The king in his golden mausoleum.

  “Jim,” he said to Summers, still howling, “Jim, listen to me! I can’t stay here, there are women to be told. The men can dig in a hundred feet if they want, but no farther. If he’s not in this hundred feet, he’s dead. He’s dead anyway, we all know that. But they can try for a while, they’ll feel better if they do. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  And Summers, who had responded to authority all his life, wiped his face, blew his nose, stared at Lee out of drowned eyes. “Yes, Dr. Costevan, I’ll see to it.”

  “Good chap,” said Lee, patting him on the shoulder.

  DOWN THE mountain, or up the mountain? Down, he decided. His mother would hear the rumors first, so it was she who would have to be told first.

  What did Alexander say yesterday, toward the end of our talk? Something about he’d have to work out how to keep me yet free Elizabeth. Yes, something like that. But who would have guessed what his solution would be? Who else was ruthless enough, determined enough to go straight to the marrow of it? The women will never know that it wasn’t an accident, so no guilt for Elizabeth, no hatred for Ruby. If my mother knew that he’d committed suicide as the best way out of an impossible situation, she’d blame and hate Elizabeth forever after. And that would mean a new, different fracture. This way, what passed between Alexander and me is our secret. He died in a mine accident. They happen all the time. Oh, it will be talked about! How did the charges detonate when the current wasn’t flowing? Why was the blast so enormous? Why wouldn’t Alexander let anyone else into number one tunnel? But no one will know for certain except me—and Alexander.

  When Ruby, waiting anxiously on the verandah, saw Lee coming from the cable car, she had to hang on to an awning post to stay upright. As he grew closer she saw his face—set, hard, stern. Whether because of it or through some more mysterious agency, she suddenly knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Alexander was dead. One hand came out, the other clung to the awning post as if to a crutch. Lee took the hand, chafed it.

  “There’s been an accident in number one tunnel. Alexander is dead, has to be dead.”

  The big green eyes held the same look a cat’s did when its kittens had been taken away to be drowned: sorrow, bewilderment, inchoate pain. Soon, thought Lee, she will begin to search for him inside the corners of her poor crushed mind, sure that there has been some mistake.

  “His big blast?” she asked.

  “Yes. It miss-fired, so he went to fix the break.”

  She swayed; he put an arm around her and led her inside, to a chair and a brandy.

  “That’s not like him, to miscalculate anything to do with explosives or blasting. He’s been doing it for thirty-five years,” she said, a little color returning to her skin.

  “Maybe that was the trouble, Mum. He grew careless.”

  “That’s not in his nature, and you know it.”

  “I’m just trying to explain it, including to myself.”

  “A widow at last!” she said in tones of wonder. “At least I feel like a widow. Trust Alexander to leave two of them.”

  “Will you be all right now, Mum? I have to tell Elizabeth.”

  “She won’t mourn him. Now she can have you.”

  “That isn’t fair to anyone, Mum.”

  “Oh, go, go!” she said tiredly. “It’s the shock talking. Tell Elizabeth I’ll be up later in the day. She’ll be all right until then, with Constance staying there. All widows now.”

  The adit skips were working overtime as half the town tried to remove the densely packed rocks from number one tunnel; Lee went up in the cable car to find Elizabeth and Constance sitting drinking tea in the conservatory. The two faces lifted to his were untroubled until the women absorbed Lee’s appearance—caked in dust, running sweat, expression the same one Sung assumed when some major transgression had occurred among his people.

  “What’s happened?” Elizabeth asked. “We heard a faint boom.”

  “A terrible accident. Alexander is dead.”

  Constance’s teacup crashed to the floor; Elizabeth put hers down carefully and adjusted its handle to complement the pattern of flowers on the saucer. Her white skin had gone even whiter, but a long moment passed before she looked up at Lee. Her eyes were a terrifying mixture of grief and joy as the two emotions warred within her. And when they are worked through, thought Lee, she is going to feel nothing but relief. Alexander’s wife will not mourn him. It is my mother will do that. In which he did his beloved an injustice; twenty-three years of any kind of union, no matter how bitter, must lead to deprivation, and thence to mourning.

  “Ruby,” she said, her mouth quivering. “Does Ruby know?”

  “Yes. I told her first because the town was talking. The explosion down there sounded what it was—terrible.”

  “I’m so glad you told her first. Thank you,” Elizabeth said gently. “He mattered far more to her. Oh, poor thing!”

  Constance was weeping, wringing her hands.

  “Don’t cry,” said Elizabeth in that same soft voice. “It’s better this way, to die in his prime without any expectation that death was coming. I’m glad for him.”

  “Mum says she’ll be up later. Will you get hold of Nell?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Have they found his body?” Constance asked.

  Lee’s unsettling eyes looked straight at her. “No. They will never find his body, Constance. It’s hundreds of feet down a tunnel that’s not there anymore. He’s a part of the Apocalypse forever.” He moved to the door. “I must go, I’m needed.”

  Elizabeth accompanied him across the lawn, burgeoning after the rain. “He didn’t know about us, did he, Lee?” she asked.

  “No, he didn’t,” Lee said, suddenly realizing that this was one lie he would have to live with all of his days. “All of his energies were concentrated on his blast. Accidents happen, even to men who are blessed. A mine is a dangerous place.” He passed his hand across his eyes. “I just never thought of this lying in wait for Alexander. He was the king.”

  “In the end the burden must fall on the king,” Elizabeth said cryptically. “It’s the price he must pay for ruling.”

  “Is there still a place in your heart and life for me?”

  “Oh, yes, always. But it will have to wait a little.”

  “I can wait. Just as long as you know that I’m here for you whenever you need me. I love you, Elizabeth. Alexander’s death has no power to change that.”

  “And I love you. I think it would please Alexander to know that I’ve found someone to love.” She lifted herself on tiptoe to kiss Lee’s cheek. “You’re in charge now. Come whenever you can.”

  DOES NOTHING ever change? asked Ruby of herself when she met Elizabeth at the house that afternoon. Here she was, Alexander’s official widow, as composed, cool and withdrawn as ever. Even her eyes were tranquil, though not happy. She goes away, no one knows where. Alexander always said that of her.

  Dolly had been told, and lay sobbing on her bed with Peony clucking and soothing; and Elizabeth had telephoned Nell, interrupting her ward rounds at the Prince Alfred Hospital to tell her that her father was dead. She was on her way, said Elizabeth to Ruby in that calm, detached, gentle voice.

  Lee came back in time for dinner, bathed and changed into clean work clothes.

  “We’ve agreed to suspend the search,” he said, sitting down like an old man and accepting a Kentucky bourbon from his mother. “All the engineers have agreed that to try to excavate the tunnel one more foot might lead to another, more massive cave-in. There was no sign of Alexander’s body. It’s inside the mountain.”

  What seemed to chew at Elizabeth was the absence of a body, as she betrayed when she asked, “What do we do, Lee? He can’t be officially buried, can he?
”

  “No.”

  “But he has to have a grave!”

  “He can,” Lee said patiently. “There doesn’t have to be a body in it, Elizabeth. He can have a grave anywhere you like.”

  “Next to Anna. He loved the top of the mountain.”

  Ruby sat silent, still too far into shock to weep. By unspoken consent all three women seemed to have decided to go into black—severe grosgrain dresses high to the neck and starkly unadorned. Did they, Lee wondered, always have something like that tucked away just in case? Though no one had worn mourning for Anna. It had been too merciful an end to don black.

  “A statue,” said Ruby suddenly. “A bronze statue in Kinross Square of Alexander in his fringed buckskins, riding his mare.”

  “Yes,” said Constance eagerly. “By someone very good.”

  Three pairs of eyes swung to Lee; they want me to organize it, he thought. I have taken Alexander’s place, but do I want to? The answer is, no. But I seem to have no choice. Alexander’s death has pinned me more firmly to Kinross than Caesar was to his concept of Rome.

  He slept that night in the house, though not in Alexander’s bed. In the little guest suite that had served as a temporary prison for Anna. And in the middle of the night he woke from a nightmarish sleep to find Elizabeth beside him. A part of him recoiled in horror, yet his chief reaction was gratitude. She was wearing a nightgown, so she hadn’t come seeking sexual solace. He rolled on to his side to embrace her, and she clung to him with soft kisses.

  “How did you know I needed you?” he asked into her hair.

  “Because you loved him.”

  “Did you ever, in the most secret part of you?”

  “No, never.”

  “How have you borne it?”

  “By walling myself off from it and him.”

  “You won’t need to do that with me.”

  “I know. But it will be hard at first, dearest Lee.”

  “It can’t not be. You have to take down the walls a brick at a time. Not by yourself. I’ll be there to help you.”

  “It seems too unreal to be true. I thought Alexander would live forever. He seemed that sort of man.”

  “He did to me too.”

  “When can we let people know about us?”

  “Not for months, Elizabeth, unless you can survive a scandal.”

  “I can survive anything if you’re with me, but you’d be much happier if there was no scandal. You loved him.”

  “Yes, I loved him.”

  AS THE CORONER sat in Bathurst, the enquiry—it could hardly be called an ordinary inquest—was held in Bathurst. The room was full of journalists, for the presumed death of Sir Alexander Kinross was international news.

  Summers gave evidence that Sir Alexander had asked for an unopened case of 60 percent dynamite, two hundred sticks of it, and was able to produce the note thus instructing him. Then confessed that he was a real duffer about explosives, was lucky to know one end of a stick of dynamite from the other, if indeed there was a difference between the two ends. He could swear that Sir Alexander had most definitely turned the current off at the terminal, for he had seen the ammeter needle fall to zero. No one had turned it on again after Sir Alexander went back up the tunnel, he was prepared to swear to that too.

  Prentice gave evidence that he had taken the spool of wire from Sir Alexander and cut it, but that Sir Alexander had seemed annoyed, had snatched the wire, stripped it, and connected it himself. He explained that he had sounded the blast siren and that all the miners on duty had emerged from their tunnels to wait in the gallery. With his own eyes he had seen Sir Alexander flip the switch on, seen the ammeter register a flowing current. And he testified very positively that he had watched Sir Alexander switch the current off again before entering the number one tunnel to fix the break in the wire, which was what all of them assumed had happened.

  Lee gave evidence that confirmed the evidence of Summers and Prentice as to who had attached the blast wire to the terminal and who had triggered the switch, first on, then off—Sir Alexander. He produced the terminal in court and explained how it worked, explained too that it had been thoroughly tested in the laboratory and found to be working properly—it was not a complicated piece of equipment. If the Coroner needed more evidence on this point, the engineers who had tested it were in court.

  Quizzed as to how, then, the blast could have happened, Lee could only shake his head and say he didn’t know. Applied to, Prentice also shook his head and said he didn’t know. Dynamite was an inert substance until detonation, and even if one detonator had gone off, not all the charges would have exploded because not all were wired in series. The usual technique was to fire the first charges, inspect the results, and then decide whether to continue to blast. No, it was never the intention of a powder monkey to bring down a whole rock face; the bulk of it was done with pneumatic percussion hammers after the blast had produced apertures and split the rock along its fault lines.

  Recalled, Lee admitted that Sir Alexander had been excited over this particular blast, which he had called “experimental.” Recalled, Prentice confirmed this.

  “Have you any theory at all, Dr. Costevan?” the Coroner asked at the end of the evidence.

  “One, your honor. That there was a large fault just behind the rock face that Sir Alexander didn’t know about, and that the blast triggered a major collapse of the granite around the fault. I can’t see how else it could have happened. Though it doesn’t mean much to a layman, when I went up on the mountain a few days ago, I found a depression right over the spot where the end of number one tunnel used to be. To a geologist, that indicates a fault that has collapsed, considering that there was no depression there before the accident.”

  “Could that cause a huge explosion, Dr. Costevan?”

  “It depends, your honor. I don’t think any of us who were in the gallery that morning could tell you whether the noise we heard was an explosion, or the tunnel coming down. Both cause intense sound waves on the ear drums,” said Lee, deliberately scientific.

  The Coroner brought in a verdict of death by misadventure; Sir Alexander Kinross was now officially dead.

  Ruby and Elizabeth hadn’t attended, but Nell did, even though it had meant yet another trip from Sydney that would be extended because of her father’s memorial service and the reading of his last will and testament. She walked out with Lee, her face grim.

  “I think all of that was claptrap,” she said as Lee ushered her into the train from Bathurst to Lithgow.

  “In what way, Nell?” he asked, sounding mildly enquiring.

  “My father didn’t make mistakes.”

  “I agree, he didn’t.”

  “So?” she asked, looking dangerous.

  “So it’s a mystery, Nell. I don’t have any answers.”

  “There’s one somewhere.”

  “I hope you can find it. I’d rest easier if you did.”

  “My mother doesn’t give a damn.”

  “Oh, I think she does. She finds it hard to show what she feels, you should know that better than I.”

  “No one better,” said Nell bitterly. “Ruby mourns more.”

  “She has more reason to mourn,” he said bluntly.

  “We’re an odd couple, Lee, you and I.”

  “Embroiled in the peculiar relationships of our parents.”

  “Well put. You’re perceptive, for an engineer.”

  “Thanks.”

  She leaned her cheek against the compartment window and fixed her eyes, a dimmer blue than usual, on Lee’s face. He was subtly changed—surer, older, far more determined. Is it that he expects to be my father’s major heir? But Dad told me that I was. I don’t want to be—I don’t! But no, it isn’t that working in Lee. There is another reason for the change. He’s never attracted me, yet all of a sudden I can see his attraction. Great integrity, and honor, and sensitivity. My mother and his mother both look to him as to their only salvation in this awful time. Oh, isn’t that
typical? Lee’s a man. Neither of them gives a hoot whether I’m there or not.

  In Lithgow they changed to the Kinross train, having lapsed into a silence each was unwilling to break.

  Then he said, “Between Anna’s death and this, Nell, you must have missed quite a lot of classes. Will you be all right?”

  “I think so. The exams at the end of the year are on materia medica, clinical medicine, surgery, a bit more physiology and anatomy. I’ll pass because I already know my stuff, and there’s no hard-and-fast rule about attendance, particularly if one is absent with good reason.” Her long face was growing enthused. “I’ll be all right next year too. It’s my final year, 1900, that will be the hardest. There’s so much of it devoted to things I don’t regard as medicine—medical jurisprudence, for instance. I’m doing a doctoral thesis as well, so I hope to graduate as a genuine Doctor of Medicine, not a mere Bachelor of Medicine.”

  “What’s your thesis on?”

  “Epilepsy.”

  Anna, he thought. “Are you planning to marry?” he asked with a charming smile that robbed the question of offense.

  “No.”

  “A pity. You’re all of Alexander’s blood left.”

  “I don’t believe in that sort of thing, Lee. It’s antiquated and unimportant. And there’s Dolly.”

  “Sorry,” he said, not sounding it.

  “Unless you want to marry me,” she said, eyes challenging.

  “Not in a million years.”

  “Why?” she demanded, affronted.

  “You’re too scratchy and aggressive, and I’m not the right man to round your corners off. My taste runs to gentle women.”

  “Got one picked out, have you?”

  “No. One doesn’t pick a woman out. She does the picking.”

  Warming to him, she leaned forward. “Yes, I think that’s true,” she said.

  “Whatever happened to the anonymous fellow you fancied?”

  “Oh, that was so many years ago that I was a mere sixteen. He nearly had a stroke when he found out how young I was. So it fizzled out before it really started to burn.”