Dust of the Land

by J. H. Fletcher

  ‘Why would we want that? If we’re going to be on a royalties-only basis?’

  ‘I’ve always believed in belts and braces: it seems only sensible, in case we ever want to renegotiate.’

  ‘I can’t imagine we ever shall,’ Garth said.

  ‘Nevertheless. And I still intend to keep an eye on what’s going on. In case the time comes when I want to manage things for myself.’

  ‘Planning to bury me already?’ Garth asked.

  ‘I hope you live forever. But just in case you don’t –’

  ‘You want to be prepared.’

  ‘Got it in one.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Bella knew two things.

  She had promised her children they would go away together, as a family. Have a real holiday somewhere new. Now there was an added urgency because a holiday of the type she had in mind would help stall the drifting-apart that she had felt between her husband and herself. To achieve that she knew they would have to go somewhere special, where they had never been before.

  The second thing she knew was that, if they didn’t make it this year, it really was likely to end up as never, because next year the mining leases would be issued and after that there would be no chance of her getting away for the foreseeable future.

  Bella was not prepared to settle for never, because she had given her word. To the family, what was more, and that was the defining factor. The mine was hugely important but at best would never be more than second in line because for Bella, brought up with all the benefits of wealth and position but no real family to share it with, her tiny group of loved ones was the one card in the pack that out-trumped them all. She had said they would go away somewhere exciting, and that was exactly what they would do. Together.

  Garth – of course – was a stumbling block. He explained that he would have given his eye teeth to go with them but to his eternal regret was simply too busy to manage it. When that tactic failed he said he was too old, too tired, he would be a drag on the party, he would spoil their fun. It was them he was thinking of, he insisted. He could think of nothing he would rather do, but in the circumstances felt it only right to make the sacrifice.

  Bella asked him to please forget his nonsense. ‘You are coming with us,’ she said. ‘And that’s the end of it.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ asked Peace, always one to get to the point of any discussion.

  ‘To Africa,’ Bella said.

  She had read about it in a book, she said. Spoken to agents about it. Consulted a man at the South African consulate. They would fly to Johannesburg, then travel to the huge game reserve called the Kruger Park. They would spend a few days there before moving to a hutted camp high in the mountains.

  ‘They say it is very beautiful. And there are caves with bushmen paintings.’

  ‘Will there be animals?’ asked Richard. ‘Lions and things?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And elephants and giraffe and zebra and –’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is that all we’re going to do?’ Peace said. ‘Spend time in the bush?’

  To sixteen-year-old Peace the sophistication of city life rated higher than any game lodge you could name. As for the bush, what was so special? She had been born in the bush, for heaven’s sake.

  Bella could do nothing about it; Peace was in the middle of the adolescent rebellion against her mother that was natural for any teenager, especially one of Peace’s temperament.

  ‘We shall be spending three days in Cape Town and two in Durban before we fly out,’ she said.

  That would have to do her.

  They were away a month. Bella brought back photographs for the family album: images of Garth and the children standing in front of a hippo pool; Garth inspecting an inquisitive giraffe; the silent vastness of elephants, grey and monumental; and, most precious of all, the mask of a black-maned lion, shot from inside the viewing vehicle, staring yellow-eyed into the lens from a circle of thorns. After dark that same day, under a swollen moon that painted the bush with conflicting patterns of silver and black, they heard for the first time a lion’s spine-tingling roar.

  They crouched in a bird hide overlooking a waterhole and watched a leopard come down to drink. It was sinuous, beautiful, full of menace. It drank its fill and departed, swarming up a tree with the speed and grace of a stream flowing uphill. It was gone; it might never have existed. Around them the brooding darkness of the bush was still. Yet they had seen it and the image would remain: of a confrontation from a time before memory, the primeval past come suddenly to life in front of them.

  Bella’s nerves crawled beneath her skin, yet she was delighted. Somewhere exciting, she had promised them. What could be more exciting than that?

  They went into the Dragon Mountains or, in the Afrikaans language, the Drakensberg. The Injasuti camp was high up, with a stream running through it. The water flowed fast over rocks that shone white in the sunlight and at night Bella lay awake, listening to the stream, and it was a clean, cold sound.

  There was a footbridge over the stream and a path that wound along a gorge. There was no one else at all. They followed the path, listening to the savage barking of baboons from the cliffs above them. They came to a rock shelter vibrant with bushman paintings and it was like stepping through a doorway into the past. Beyond the shelter the path climbed steeply between tormented turrets of stone. They surprised a pair of tiny klipspringer antelope, which fled from them across almost vertical cliffs; they came out on grassy uplands where in the distance they saw a browsing group of eland, mightiest of the antelope. From a cliff a black eagle surveyed them; a lammergeyer circled; it was the Garden of Eden come to life around them.

  Peace didn’t have much to say for herself but fourteen-year-old Richard spent every night before bed writing up a diary of the things he had seen during the day.

  ‘Did you know that if you see a hamerkop bird it’s supposed to mean someone close to you has died?’ he told Bella.

  Trust Richard to come up with something like that.

  ‘Did you know it’s also called the lightning bird?’

  ‘No, dear, I did not know that.’

  Ignorant of the legends of the hamerkop she might be, but for Bella their time in Africa was both a wonder and delight: wonder that such places still existed in the world, delight that they had been able, as a family, to share it together.

  Best of all was the opportunity to be as one, after so long a time, with Garth, her husband and her love. It had not happened immediately. For the first three days of their time in Africa they had been friendly, they had laughed and joked and made love, but it had been like a meeting of old friends with none of the magic or passion of the past. The exultation they had shared so recently, with Bella dancing naked in the bedroom, was no more than a wistful memory of good times that had passed them by.

  I shall not accept it, Bella thought, because that is the essence and meaning of our lives. Yet passion was its own master. It was not something you could produce to order. It was there or it was not.

  She thought, if the purpose of the trip has been to restore the magic in our relationship, it has failed.

  That was the night of the lion, when magic had touched all their lives (even Peace had been impressed) yet had still failed to reignite the shared ecstasy of the past.

  Perhaps I imagined it, thought Bella, knowing she had not.

  Then came the day of the bushmen, the klipspringer, eland and lammergeyer.

  Standing in the entrance of the rock shelter she studied the wall paintings of the prancing, stick-like figures, spears raised in endless flight across the silent distances of the past, the male figures in permanent erection, the women with breasts ballooning beneath their armpits, and felt herself roused. A visceral thrust of energy, deep in her core, stimulated not by the priapic images of a vanished race but by the sheer energy of the painting, the flying images of a past returned to live again in the present, so that time ceased and all were uni
ted in an endless Now.

  Desire scorched her like a flame. Glancing sideways at Garth she saw him look at her and knew that the impact of the long-dead artist had stirred him also.

  Richard was studying the details of the painting with big eyes. ‘Cor!’ he said.

  While Peace, nose raised dismissively, pretended to do no such thing but did so anyway, on the sly.

  Bella felt her own heat and Garth’s. If it hadn’t been for the children they would have lain down right there. They would have coupled before the stick-like figures racing eternally, before the images of eland and impala, with the mountain air cool on their hot bodies and the chatter of the mountain stream in their ears.

  A baboon barked on the ridges above the cave; later they saw the living forms of the creatures depicted in the painting, and the magic of the day did not betray them but remained until their return to the hut. Then came their meal and Richard’s endless prattle about the hamerkop, with Garth looking sideways at her and a tremble of excitement seething in Bella’s belly, and she wondered how much the children sensed of the things that went on between their parents.

  Richard probably not much, she thought, but Peace… She suspected that Peace was alert to the vibes and knew exactly what went on.

  And so what? She thought it was a great pity that sex and shame had become so entangled by past prejudice. There was no shame in it; it was at the core of their relationship, respect and admiration and sharing and tenderness all engendered by the simple reality of the sexual union that was not simple at all but immensely complex and indescribably wonderful.

  Wonderful was right. She couldn’t wait to get Garth into the bedroom, couldn’t wait to get her clothes off, couldn’t wait…

  And oh God, oh dear God, oh dear and wonderful God…

  The best ever, amid the fleeing figures of the bushmen, the diamond-tailed lammergeyer, the massive stillness of the browsing eland. And Bella, returning from a distant place, ecstasy still in mouth and limbs, grateful nerve ends at peace at last.

  ‘Thank God I have found you again,’ she said.

  ‘Had you lost me?’

  ‘Not lost, exactly, but I felt we were drifting apart. I wouldn’t want that.’

  ‘Would you rather I stayed in Perth with you?’

  ‘I wouldn’t want that either, Garth. Miranda Downs is your life. I’ve always known that.’

  Through the open window she heard the stream rushing in the darkness.

  ‘I thought it was yours, too,’ he said.

  ‘In a way it still is. It is very precious to me. It’s my home.’

  ‘But the other is a challenge.’

  ‘I think I can make it work, Garth. I really think I can.’

  ‘But if BradMin runs it, as we agreed…’

  ‘I can’t see that lasting for long. I don’t trust that man. He’ll do us down if he can.’

  ‘And you don’t intend to let him.’

  ‘I do not.’

  Silence settled between them. The voice of the stream beyond the window was loud in the stillness of the room.

  ‘Do you think it’s natural?’ she asked. ‘To feel the way we do? To behave the way we do – like this, I mean? After so many years?’

  ‘Does it feel unnatural to you?’ Garth said.

  ‘No. It feels right.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘The thought that we might have lost it made my heart sore,’ she said.

  His hand moved. ‘It does not feel sore,’ he said.

  ‘I said my heart. That is not my heart.’

  ‘My mistake.’

  His fingers moved a little, but only to caress. To take hold. ‘Is that better?’

  ‘That is much better,’ she said.

  While the beating of her heart stifled the chatter of the rushing stream.

  ‘Being apart does not mean separation,’ he said later.

  ‘Then let us make sure it does not,’ she said.

  Later still, with Garth sleeping at her side, Bella contemplated how her plan had succeeded after all.

  Africa has given me this, she thought. The true worth and essence of my life restored in the land of the lion, the fleeing figures of the naked, stick-like hunters.

  Peace got her three days in Cape Town, with its majestic mountain and streets lined with oak trees and buildings dating back three hundred years to the earliest days of Dutch settlement, and two days in Durban, sandy beaches and surf rolling out of the eastern sea, yet to Bella the high point of their visit to Africa remained the time in the mountain hut with the stream rushing beyond the window, when her faith in her marriage had been restored. Strengthened and refreshed, she knew that with Garth beside her she was equal to any challenge the future might bring. The leases would be issued; battle – with the elements, the riches of the Pilbara, the unremitting rivalry of Pete Bathurst – would be rejoined. Refreshed by all that had happened, she could not wait.

  Battle flags flying, Bella Tucker returned to the fray.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  At the end of the winter Garth came down from the Pilbara to stay with them for a spell.

  One morning in the second week of September, a day when the promise of spring seemed finally to be coming to fruition, he walked out of the house and discovered a small boy washing his car.

  He found Bella in the room she had turned into her office. ‘There is a boy cleaning my car.’

  ‘That’ll be Andrew,’ Bella said.

  ‘Who is Andrew? And why is he cleaning my car?’

  ‘He works for Richard.’

  Garth stared. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘We pay Richard to wash our cars every week. Two shillings a pop, right?’

  Once it had been only a shilling but the year before Richard had negotiated a pay rise.

  ‘And so?’

  ‘He sub-contracts the work to two boys he knows at school. Pays them half, keeps the rest for himself.’

  Garth was willing to be outraged. ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  Bella smiled at him. ‘Why is it ridiculous?’

  ‘We don’t pay him two bob a car for him to sit on his backside!’

  ‘We pay him two bob a car to have two clean cars. And that’s what we get.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘They call it delegation.’

  Garth was unwilling to go along with that. ‘I’ll have a word with him.’

  ‘Don’t,’ Bella said. ‘He’s doing exactly what we all do. Take the mine. Will we operate the machinery ourselves? Of course not. Will we load the rail wagons? Of course not. We’ll employ other people to do that for us. That’s what Richard is doing. It’s not the only thing, either.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Paper rounds,’ Bella said.

  ‘Lots of boys have paper rounds.’

  ‘Yes, but Richard has three.’

  Garth stared. ‘How does he manage that?’

  ‘The same way. He’s cornered the market around here, so he subcontracts them to other boys, pays them half, keeps the rest for himself.’

  ‘At that rate he’ll be rich before we are,’ Garth said.

  ‘Good on him if he is,’ Bella said.

  To Garth it was a new slant on his son, who he knew to be studious and reserved. Because of his mild ways they all tended to bully him a little; no harm in that, as long as it stayed in the family, although he had sometimes wondered how Richard would make out when he had to deal with the outside world. Now it seemed he need not worry; the boy had the makings of a tycoon.

  It was a stinking hot day at the end of January 1963, the humidity way up, and at last, eighteen months after the leases had been granted, a new road had been cut joining the new mines with the coast. It was a roundabout route from Miranda Downs but, having cleared it with Pete Bathurst, Bella drove out there six weeks after the development started.

  ‘This is where we’ll be cutting the first terraces,’ Rory McNab said.

  ‘You’re making good progre
ss,’ Bella said.

  ‘Six months and we’ll be ready to roll.’

  Bella stood with him on an elevated section of what would eventually become the Bradford Gulliver Mine. Explosives had torn holes in the carapace of hard rock covering the ore deposits and giant earthmovers were beginning the mammoth task of opening up the soil. The air was thick with dust and the roar of machinery.

  Pete Bathurst had been entertained by the notion that such a toothsome lady, as he described her, should wish to trouble her pretty little head with how a mine actually worked. ‘It’s filthy work,’ he had said. ‘Noisy work. Man’s work.’ His grin could have devoured her, had she permitted. ‘I would have said there were better ways for a beautiful woman to keep herself amused.’

  Oh, he was a detestable man.

  ‘I like to see men grovelling in the dirt,’ she said. ‘It seems so appropriate.’

  Which might have offended him, but Pete’s skin would have shamed a hippopotamus.

  Rory McNab was about thirty-five, with blond hair and steady eyes. He had a good body, too, which Bella appreciated. Altogether he was quite a change from Pete Bathurst and she took to him at once.

  ‘They call me the mine development manager but it doesn’t mean much,’ he said. ‘Not with the boss breathing down my neck all the time.’

  ‘When are you starting on the railway?’ Bella asked.

  ‘Already started. The first bridges are in, and some of the culverts. They’ll be shipping in track directly.’

  ‘What about Carlisle? When do you begin work there?’

  ‘I’ve no orders about Carlisle,’ Mac said.

  The works canteen was up and running. They sat at a table and drank coffee out of thick mugs.

  ‘I knew a McNab in Charters Towers,’ Bella said. ‘He lent me two pounds when I desperately needed it. I paid him back but I owe him a lot more than that.’

  ‘Runs a haulage outfit? He’s my cousin. Good bloke, Paul.’

  ‘He’s a lovely man,’ Bella said. ‘How long have you been with BradMin?’