Dust of the Land

by J. H. Fletcher

  There had been times when she had thought she was getting nowhere. Garth wanted her to wash her hands of the whole business and go back to ranching, but Bella would not have a bar of it. Excited by the challenge, she had discovered she was good at winning people over. She was enjoying herself too much to think of quitting.

  The Pilbara and Miranda Downs would always be important to her. For most of her adult life they had been her home and her salvation. There she had won her husband and given birth to her children, and she would always be grateful for that. There, too, she had started her first business venture, and the success of the meatworks had given her a hint of how much more she was capable of doing. Life was a challenge and she was convinced she had the talents to meet it. She already knew that the world of business was not Garth’s natural environment whereas for her it was oxygen in the blood. Striving to create a new industry gave her more satisfaction than anything she could have imagined.

  She had found fulfilment in a pile of dust.

  ‘There’s a fortune waiting for someone to pick up,’ she told her husband, ‘and I intend that someone to be us.’

  ‘Next thing, you’ll be in politics,’ Garth had grumbled.

  Bella had smiled. She was in politics already, even if Garth didn’t realise it.

  Nor had it been all she had to cope with. There were the children, who needed her and whom she would not abandon even for the biggest mine on earth. There was Miranda Downs and the meatworks that provided their only income. There were endless plans of what they would have to do when the law was changed.

  ‘If it ever is,’ Garth said.

  ‘When it is,’ Bella said firmly, ‘we shall need to be ready. We’ll need a railway to get the ore to the coast. And a loading terminal for when it gets there.’

  ‘You’re talking mega-millions,’ Garth objected.

  He was right. Once the land was theirs, they would still need to wow the banks, overseas investors…

  ‘We’ll be dead before we see a return,’ said Garth.

  He might be right, but giving up had never been Bella’s response to difficulties. None of it would be possible until the law changed but now – at last! – that phone call from a contact in the premier’s office had informed her it was about to happen.

  ‘The legislation to legalise prospecting becomes law tomorrow,’ the contact had said.

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  She had hoped for more notice.

  ‘Effective immediately.’

  ‘And you have the numbers?’

  When dealing with politicians she had learnt to dot the i’s and cross the t’s.

  ‘In both houses.’

  ‘So we can start pegging claims straight away?’

  ‘From tomorrow.’

  ‘Party time!’

  Bella danced naked around the bedroom.

  Where is your dignity? she asked herself, even as she laughed out loud. What happened to decorum? You’re forty-one, not eighteen. You have two children in high school, a half-share in a cattle station twice the size of Lichtenstein, a highly profitable meatworks and now – at last – a half share in the iron ore mine that is going to make us rich.

  Tonight they would party; tomorrow she and Garth would fly north and begin pegging the claims that Saul Rich had been helping them identify, surreptitiously because of the embargo, for the past seven years.

  ‘Come and dance with me,’ she cried to Garth, who was watching her from the king-size bed, but her husband shook his head and did not move. He was sixty years old – not such a great age – but his leg had never sorted itself out properly and his dancing days were done.

  ‘I’ll stick to watching,’ he said.

  ‘That’s no fun,’ she objected.

  ‘It is for me. I like to see you waggle.’

  The truth was she liked it, too, even if waggling was the main physical pleasure either of them had derived from their marriage for a year or two now; it was not only Garth’s dancing days that were in decline. Yet she had never been tempted to take a lover.

  She stopped dancing, her shoulders shiny with sweat, a trickle of moisture between her breasts. She sat beside her husband on the bed. ‘Did you wonder whether this day would ever come?’

  ‘Frequently.’

  ‘Me, too.’

  ‘You never showed it,’ he said.

  ‘Not even to myself.’

  ‘Have a shower before you catch cold,’ Garth said.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  She came back swathed in a towelling wrap and rubbing her hair dry.

  ‘Now the hard work starts,’ she said. ‘Banks, investment funds… They’ll all want a slice of the pie. That’s where you come in.’

  ‘How so?’ Garth wondered.

  ‘Mining is men’s business,’ she said. ‘The bankers think women are too frivolous to handle it.’

  ‘Frivolous? You?’ he said. ‘On the other hand I have just seen you doing your wild dervish dance.’

  ‘In the nude,’ she pointed out.

  ‘So maybe they are right.’

  ‘And that is why you will have to deal with them,’ Bella said.

  ‘Let’s get the damn things pegged first,’ Garth said.

  Next morning they left Perth and flew north. Below them, the featureless land stretched away into a green and brown infinity. Ahead lay the Carlisle River and a future filled with excitement, danger and the prospect of unimaginable wealth.

  That evening, with Garth lying in his sleeping bag, Bella slipped a coat around her shoulders and sat on the ground outside the tent to watch the sunset. The fire upon which she had grilled their meat was burning low. She got up and added more wood to the embers. She watched until the flames licked up, then went and sat down again.

  Losing power with every second, the sun slid down the western sky. To her left, the rounded outline of the Hamersley Range changed from russet and green to purple. It was still, not even a breath of wind to disturb the silence. Northwards, the land lost definition as the twilight came down. The first stars pricked out. She thought: I have been too busy. Not for years have I given myself time to look at the stars.

  The thought made her sad and she wondered how much else she had missed of the things that made life worth living. She had promised the children she would take them overseas. It hadn’t happened but this year she was determined it would. She had promised herself that she and Garth would explore at least part of the Outback together. They had done it only once – And look what happened when we did, she thought. Maybe next time we’ll find emeralds.

  The stars were brighter now, innumerable points of brilliant light throbbing amid the incomprehensible vastness of the universe.

  She thought: I have done what I could with my life. I have accepted the challenges when they occurred. Now I am confronted by the greatest challenge of all.

  It would not be easy; so much of what had to be done lay in unknown territory. Dealing with banks and overseas investors; the development and management of the mine; negotiating contracts with overseas buyers… To say nothing of handling competition that would no doubt do its damnedest to bring them down. What did they know about these things?

  They would need advisers, men who not only knew what they were doing but could be trusted. A big ask. Was she was up to it?

  I shall do the best I can, she thought. No one can do more.

  She sat unmoving until it was completely dark and she was alone with the stars and shifting coals of the dying fire. To be alone out here in the Outback was already an adventure beyond anything she could have imagined in her childhood. By contrast, the smoky sprawl of London, the view from the verandah of the Johnsons’ house in Charters Towers, even the snow-covered winter moors of Yorkshire, were no more than an effete and fading memory. Miranda Downs would always be home to her but this, the harshness of stone and emptiness, also had its place.

  It was too much to hope they would be alone for long.

  Halfway through the next morning they hea
rd the sound of an engine. Bella stood at Garth’s shoulder and watched the light aircraft heading deep into the Hamersley Range. Within half an hour there was a second, followed twenty minutes later by a third.

  ‘Here come the vultures,’ Garth said.

  ‘There’s a name written on the fuselage,’ Bella said. ‘Can you read it?’

  Even at sixty Garth had amazing eyesight. ‘BradMin,’ he said. ‘Bradford Minerals.’

  One of the biggest mining outfits in the world.

  ‘Lucky there’s enough for all of us,’ Bella said.

  All the same, with three aircraft already here, it was obvious BradMin would soon have more boots on the ground than the Tuckers could match.

  ‘All the more reason to keep moving,’ Bella said.

  The arrival of high-powered competition was incentive enough to get on with the back-breaking job of pegging and identifying claims that might otherwise be filched from under their noses.

  ‘Who’s the boss of BradMin?’ Bella asked, wiping the sweat from her eyes and easing her back after three hours’ non-stop work.

  ‘Pete Bathurst,’ Garth said. ‘An American.’

  ‘I remember him. Big man, big mouth. We need to catch up with him as soon as we can.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They’re pegging in the Hamersley so they’ll need a rail link to the coast, the same as us. Maybe we can come to an arrangement with them to share the line.’

  * * *

  They finished pegging their claims in what Bella thought might be record time, in the unlikely event there were records for such things, but when they tried to arrange a meeting with Pete Bathurst they ran into problems.

  ‘What is the nature of your enquiry?’

  By her dulcet tones the young woman on the other end of the phone would no doubt have been a dab hand at a carol concert but Bella was not in the mood for herald angels, however sweetly they sang.

  ‘To discuss matters of mutual interest.’

  ‘In connection with?’

  ‘The new Pilbara development.’

  ‘And what is the nature of your interest?’

  Enough!

  ‘Just tell him the Tuckers rang. He’ll know what it’s about.’

  ‘The Tuckers?’ As one might speak of a small and insignificant creature. ‘I see. And you are?’

  ‘I am Mrs Tucker. Speaking on behalf of my husband.’

  Garth was watching her. She flashed him a quick wink.

  ‘One moment…’

  ‘Thank you for landing me in it,’ Garth said.

  ‘My pleasure.’

  Almost immediately the fluty-voiced lady was back. ‘I am so sorry but Mr Bathurst is in a meeting.’

  ‘When will he be free?’

  ‘That I couldn’t say.’

  ‘Then I shall phone him tomorrow,’ said Bella, jaw outthrust.

  ‘He won’t be in. He’s flying to Houston first thing in the morning.’

  ‘And will be back when?’

  ‘Not for at least two weeks.’

  ‘He’s giving us the run-around,’ said Garth when she told him.

  ‘But why? It makes no sense when we can save him money on the railway.’

  ‘To show us who’s boss, I suppose.’

  ‘He’s not our boss. Never will be, either.’

  ‘Maybe not. But I don’t intend to hang around twiddling my thumbs while he plays silly buggers.’

  ‘What do you plan to do?’

  ‘Go home, of course. I’ve got a cattle station to run.’ He gave her a sideways glance. ‘You could come with me, if you like.’

  Bella thought about that. Miranda Downs in mid-winter. It was the best time of year in the far north. The humidity would be down, the countryside after the rains green and lush… She could meet up with her friends, Maisie and the rest. There would be no crotalaria. They could do a muster. Thinking about it she could smell the clean, sharp smell of the bush. For a moment she wavered but only for a moment. Desire was now complete, as far as the building was concerned, but the grounds still had to be laid out and she was determined to be on hand to make sure they were done exactly in accordance with her vision. She had put it on hold while they had been staking their claims but now it was full steam ahead once again. It was out of the question for her to be away from it.

  ‘I’d better stay here. But you go.’

  Garth didn’t need urging. Two days later he was heading north.

  It didn’t take long for Bella to regret letting him go. She knew he would have stayed had she asked but knew, too, that his heart was in Miranda Downs and always would be.

  It was a worrying thought to take to her lonely bed each night. How would that commitment tie in with the development of the ore deposits along the Carlisle? Since her own focus had changed from Miranda Downs to the development of their mining interests with all that had entailed – the endless wowing of politicians and anyone else who might be of value, the building of their status-symbol house – she had sensed a divergence in their marriage where previously there had been none. She told herself she was imagining it, knew she was not. She told herself it was an inevitable consequence of having been married for twenty years, did not believe that either. She wanted passion, she wanted love, she wanted the comfort and tenderness of being together. Something would have to be done, and soon. As soon as they had had their meeting with Pete Bathurst, as soon as they had reached some satisfactory accommodation regarding the rail link to the coast – an accommodation that would benefit them both – she would take steps to rectify the situation. Her marriage would be restored to what it had been and should still be; she was determined of that. And she would do it, what was more, without sacrificing either Miranda Downs or the mine.

  It was a month before Bella and Garth finally got across the table from Pete Bathurst: Bathurst had been out of the country for three weeks and it was another week before Garth came back from the north.

  ‘Looks like we got that whole goddamn area tied up between us,’ Pete Bathurst said. He was indeed a big man, as Bella had said, more cliff than human, with teeth like gravestones in the rugged face, and she did not trust him at all. ‘I’m glad you dropped by, folks. I got something I’d like to talk over with you all, if you’re agreeable.’

  ‘Tell us what’s on your mind,’ Garth said.

  ‘I’ve been looking at the geological reports on the whole area and I can see trouble ahead for your claims,’ Pete Bathurst said.

  ‘Why is that?’ Bella said.

  ‘There’s no shortage of ore,’ he told her. ‘But it looks like the deposits are horizontal.’

  ‘Is that bad?’ Garth asked.

  ‘It’ll involve massive extra costs.’

  ‘How massive?’ Bella asked.

  ‘Hard to put a thumb on a figure. One hell of a lot, that I can guarantee.’ He smiled at Bella, this man who with every word showed what he thought of a woman involving herself in a mining venture. ‘It’s not like going out to buy a dress, you know.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Bella gave him her most charming smile. ‘And there I was thinking what a good dress-shop manager you’d make.’

  Pete switched his smile to Garth. ‘Hey, quite a little tiger you got there, right?’

  ‘You’d better believe it,’ Bella said. ‘Explain what you’re talking about.’

  Pete scrubbed his red hair with a massive paw. ‘Most mines work on vertical deposits, but from the geological scans it looks like the ones along the Carlisle are horizontal. That means special equipment. You’re talking millions here. On top of that you’ve got the cost of the heavy haul railway and the port facilities to ship the ore out. Frankly, you’d be better to involve us. Soon as the leases are granted I can just about guarantee BradMin would be interested –’

  ‘Why would they be interested?’ Bella asked.

  ‘Because it’s their trade.’

  ‘And because they can see a profit. Right?’

  Pete hesitated. ‘I guess.
’

  ‘So why should we give it away?’

  ‘Like I said, BradMin has the expertise and you folks don’t –’

  ‘Expertise can be hired,’ Bella said.

  ‘He’s talking a lot of sense,’ said Garth.

  ‘He’s talking a lot of crap,’ said Bella.

  She used the word deliberately. It made Garth uneasy – a duchess wasn’t supposed to talk like that – but Bella had always been a plain-speaking woman and had discovered, with her husband at least, that it helped her get her own way.

  Not this time.

  ‘They’ve got the capital and the expertise. They know what they’re doing and we don’t. They take responsibility for the operation and pay us a royalty. He’s offering us a good deal,’ Garth said.

  ‘He pays us a royalty and BradMin keeps the profits, which could be in the hundreds of millions? That’s a good deal?’

  ‘We get twenty million a year, Bella. With nothing to do but spend it.’

  Bella knew that the Garth she had married, the man who had rustled O’Malley’s cattle from under his nose and laughed while he was doing it, would never have agreed to such an arrangement. But she reminded herself that Garth was sixty years old – not a young sixty, either – and the burden of such a challenge weighed heavily upon him. She didn’t like the royalty option at all, would have preferred the excitement and challenge of going it alone with the possibility of a big pay-out at the end of it, but Garth wanted no more dramas in his life and she had to admit that the idea of twenty million a year for doing nothing had its attractions. Perhaps she should let him have his own way for once.

  ‘He wants a longevity clause in the agreement,’ Garth said.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘He will want to renegotiate the deal in the event of my death. Or yours,’ he added.

  What difference could it make to the operation if either of them died? But such an arrangement would offer Bella a let-out. Heaven forbid that Garth should die but, if he did, she might end up running her own show, after all.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘If that’s what he wants. But I want something, too. I want it in the contract that we must have access to the railway when it’s built.’