‘What will?’
‘The wind gusts. Cyclones spawn them. A Chinese sailor told me they have the same thing off the South China coast. He said there they call them tai-feng. It means strong winds, but apparently they think of them as devil winds.’
‘Good name for them,’ Bella said.
They listened to the rising voice of the gale.
‘There is still time for you to evacuate before they arrive,’ Bella said. ‘If you’ve got a vehicle.’ She would not hold him here against his will.
But Steve shook his head. ‘My four-wheel drive is in a shed behind the building but it’s too risky. There’s no cover between here and Port Hedland and only the one road. Get caught in the open and we’d have no chance.’
‘So we have to sweat it out?’
It made Bella feel better, knowing there was no choice; not that she’d planned to leave, anyway.
‘You got it,’ Steve said.
Slowly night-time swallowed the land. Across the sea, darkness merged with the approaching storm and became one. Bella had been out for a final look before it grew too dark to see anything. Now she came back in for the last time and shut and locked the door behind her.
‘What’s it like out there?’ Steve said.
‘The wind is a lot stronger.’
‘From what direction?’
‘Still from the west,’ Bella said.
An hour later the first devil wind came screaming out of the darkness. Later they learned that when it fell on the tug, it ripped the three heavy anchors out of the sea bed as though they were made of paper. Lifted on the crest of a giant wave, the tug was flung against the jetty. The steel piles, each as thick as a man’s body, bent like plasticine. Bows jammed in the wreckage, the tug became a battering ram, every wave driving it deeper into the jetty’s wounded flank. Hull ripped by the broken girders, the vessel began to drown.
A second devil wind struck. It flung another wave, twelve feet high, against the almost-completed wharf, wrecking it in seconds and washing away the foundations, leaving what remained dangling in mid-air. Seconds and one wave later, the buckled wharf disappeared in a maelstrom of boiling surf. The trees along the rail tracks snapped like matchsticks. The winds screamed their triumph as they tore loose the rail turntable and flung five hundred tons of metal plate whirling through the air. It missed the roof of the caravan by a foot and ripped off the radio aerial before crashing into the shed at the rear, demolishing both the shed and the vehicle it contained.
Inside the caravan Bella and Steve cowered in a corner of the smallest bedroom. Speech and even thought were impossible. The violence of the wind stunned every sense. Even memory was gone, leaving nothing but a bottomless pit of terror. Into which they fell, endlessly.
The storm continued to rage. The caravan quaked on its foundations; any minute the roof might lift, or one or more of the window shutters break loose. The windows would burst inwards, showering them with stiletto blades of broken glass. If they survived that, the wind would blow the structure apart in seconds and the storm would finish the job.
Facing what now seemed certain death, Bella grew calm. Courage returned. Steve’s body was trembling uncontrollably, his eyes screwed tight, but for her fear had no place. They would live or not, and there was nothing they could do. Fear had no place.
At that moment the lights went out. Steve moaned. ‘The generator must have been knocked out.’
‘Do you have a torch?’
Steve did not answer; perhaps he had not heard her above the bellow of the wind. The darkness made the storm seem ten times more violent than before. Clearly audible above the wind came a deep-throated rumble, like the charge of a thousand locomotives. Bella thought it must be a tidal wave, but it was not. The roar passed above the roof and faded into the distance, heading inland.
Silence returned. The absence of sound was almost as terrifying as the storm itself.
Bella had lost all sense of time. She knew it must still be night, yet now a silver glow showed around the door and in the cracks between the shutters. It grew steadily stronger.
Steve opened his eyes, staring in bewilderment.
‘What the…?’
Bella stood. She moved awkwardly, knees stiff. She was fifty-six years old and felt eighty. She took a deep breath. Get your act together, for God’s sake. She walked purposefully to the door and pulled back the bolts. She opened the door – no wind resistance now – and looked out.
The air was still: not simply free of movement but as though it had congealed. She stared incredulously at the scene before her.
The moon was shining, the sky cloudless. In the silver light she saw the wreckage of the jetty, the remains of the tug, half-submerged, funnel and most of the superstructure gone, jammed in the twisted girders. A major part of the beach had disappeared. It was hard to see what had happened to the railway, but it looked as though most of that had gone, too. The trees had broken off short; the stumps glowed white in the moonlight. Despite the damage, the overwhelming impression was of silence, while off-shore the sea had gone mad, waves rising in peaks of foam that broke again and again over the remains of the jetty. Far out, forming a circle that shone with an unearthly glow in the moonlight, pillars of cloud rose tens of thousands of feet into the air.
She wanted to believe the storm was gone, yet knew it was not. Here, at what remained of Port Anthony, they were at the bottom of a vast tunnel of silence and indescribable menace. They were in the eye of the storm, the clouds not stationary but edging closer with every second.
Bella went back inside the van and closed and locked the door. Steve was staring at her.
‘We are in the eye,’ she said.
‘When the wind comes back it’ll blow from the opposite direction,’ Steve said.
‘As strongly?’
‘Maybe even stronger.’
‘In that case we’d best make sure the windows at the back of the van are secure,’ Bella said. ‘And let’s get on with it. We don’t have much time.’
Steve had found a torch and they checked as thoroughly as they could. One of the shutters had worked loose and needed to be jammed tight.
‘You have a hammer?’
Bella watched as Steve drove strong pieces of wood beneath the shutter to hold it in place, then closed the window and threw the bolts. Hopefully it would hold.
He was just in time; before he secured the shutter Bella had a moment to see, clearly visible in the moonlight, a whirling dust cloud moving inexorably towards them across the land. Bushes, ripped out of the earth, spun upwards and disappeared. First came a band of rain; Bella heard it drumming on the ground above the eerie hooting of the wind. It crashed on the roof in an explosion of sound and all visibility was gone. A second later and yet another devil wind fell upon them, the caravan shaking and groaning but still, miraculously, holding firm.
Bella mustered every ounce of her resolve. Endurance was the only weapon she had left. She lifted her chin. Inside her head she shouted her defiance at the storm.
I shall survive!
As once again the devil winds fell screaming upon them.
The sun rose, shedding a watery yellow light upon a shattered landscape.
Bella opened the van door – at least it would still open. Unable to comprehend that she was still alive, she stared out at devastation.
For all practical purposes, Port Anthony was gone. The jetty was in ruins. Where the wharf had been was now a gaping void, the rail tracks twisted and buckled, the remains of the turntable hurled two hundred yards from its mounting by the unimaginable force of the wind. The heavy dozers, parked in the hollow a quarter of a mile from the jetty, had been reduced to junk. Only the caravan, secured by massive bolts to its concrete base, had survived.
Steve stood behind her, staring over her shoulder at the destruction.
‘What now?’ he said in a shaken voice.
Bella closed her eyes, drew a deep breath and once again, as so often in her life, summo
ned the resources of her will. She turned to him, taking both his hands in hers.
‘We start again,’ she said.
* * *
She spent the next three days assessing the damage. It was both extensive and severe. The storm that had devastated Port Anthony spared Port Hedland. A few roofs were missing, buildings near the water’s edge had been flooded, but the port and loading terminal were largely untouched, Bella’s aircraft unscathed in its hangar. Inland, the Carlisle and Bradford Gulliver mines had been less fortunate, with massive damage to plant and installations. Repairs would take a vast amount of time and capital. To make matters worse, until they had been completed, cash flow would be nil.
For all her determination and cheerful words, Bella knew she was in the fight of her life. It was all very well to say start again. But what with?
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
It was no good. Whichever way Bella looked at them, the books would not balance.
‘It’s the cyclone. The rebuilding costs have almost wiped us out,’ Martin said.
It was true, and costs were three times what they had been originally. The contractors blamed it on the disruption caused by the cyclone. Perhaps they were right, but that didn’t help when the insurance companies were refusing to pay more than a fraction of the replacement costs. And it had not been only the port; the rail link and crushing plant had been destroyed by the floods that had followed the cyclone, and for these the insurers, relying on a cloudy definition of what flooding the policy covered, had refused to pay anything at all. The Japanese, struggling with a downturn in their economy, had deferred further orders of ore. Cash inflow was more or less non-existent.
‘While it goes out like water down the sink,’ Bella said. ‘It is kind of you to blame the cyclone, but the fact is I made a wrong call, going ahead with the redevelopment before the market had recovered.’
‘You hoped to beat BradMin to the punch,’ said Martin.
‘In the meantime we are the ones on the canvas,’ she said. Interest payments alone looked likely to wipe them out. ‘Perhaps we should consider selling some of our other assets?’
‘We can’t do that,’ Martin said.
‘The Wyndham meatworks. I’d be sorry to see it go, it was my first business venture, but we can’t afford to be sentimental. Surely that would help?’
‘Sentimentality has nothing to do with it,’ he said. ‘When I said we can’t sell, I meant it literally. The meatworks are pledged to the bank, like everything else you own. In a sense they’re no longer yours, as long as the loans are outstanding. No, my dear,’ – it was the first time he had ever called her that – ‘it will have to be an increase in revenue or nothing.’
‘Then I’d better get over to Japan as soon as I can, see what I can do.’
Perhaps she could talk her friend Mr Nakasumi into giving them a new order. Even a few million tons might give the banks renewed confidence.
‘We need to do something,’ Martin Dexter said. ‘Halliburton is a worried man.’
With the bank’s directors on his back, it was small wonder.
BradMin, too, was suffering, with talk of several thousand layoffs world wide, but BradMin had been in the game for years and had reserves that Bella could only dream about.
‘We are in trouble,’ Owen Freeth said. ‘Mainly through your own stubbornness.’
Sometimes he talked to Bella like a stern parent. It exasperated her, particularly since in her heart she feared he might be right, so she went to Japan to see what could be done. She was away ten days, came back with a long face.
‘They’re suffering, too,’ she told Martin at the airport. ‘I used all the magic I have on them but could only get a few dribs and drabs.’
Three million tons was better than a kick in the face but would not get them far. As the bank’s general manager, face like a wet week, pointed out.
‘I don’t know what the board will say,’ Halliburton told her.
‘Asia needs infrastructure,’ Bella said. ‘If we can only hang in there, the market is bound to recover.’
‘Eventually, no doubt,’ Halliburton said. ‘The question is when. And in the meantime, Bella, you really have to do something.’
Like what?
‘I suppose I could sell Desire, if I really had to…’
But she could not, because Desire, like the meatworks and everything else, was also pledged to the bank.
Somehow they hung on, thanks in part to the banks, in part to unexpected orders from Australian steel companies. An order arrived out of the blue from India’s Tata Steel. Enough, at the year’s end, to turn a small profit. But with interest payments eating up income, as Bella put it, like a fox devouring carrion, it was never enough and on the market the price of Tuckers stock remained resolutely in the doldrums.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
In the third week of October 1976 Bella received a letter from Germany.
I am writing to you privately, Helmut Muller wrote, because I am concerned at the situation regarding Tucker Mining. I remain confident in you both as business woman and human being and would regret it very much if you were forced to liquidate the company. I therefore would like to offer you a personal and interest-free loan of two million Australian dollars in the hope that this may help the company survive. I only wish it could be more.
‘It is a princely offer,’ Martin Dexter said.
‘A pity I can’t accept it,’ Bella said. ‘It’s not enough to dig us out of the hole and I refuse to let him waste his money.’
‘Are you sure we can afford such noble gestures?’
‘Afford it or not, that’s the way it’s going to be,’ Bella said.
Martin said no more but his expression spoke for him. It said that when Bella spoke in that tone, further discussion was futile.
Damn right, Bella thought. Although she too said nothing.
Later she saddled up and rode as far as the land would permit. It seemed crazy to be on the edge of ruin – Owen Freeth would have said over the edge – yet still have such a house and estate. No doubt Martin was right to say it was the bank’s property and not hers, yet she still had the use of it. Might as well take advantage of it while she could.
At the limit of the land she turned back and headed towards the rise from which she could look across the surrounding countryside. At the summit she reined in, looking down at the big house, white as icing sugar in the sunlight, and beyond it to the grey haze of the land that extended as far as she could see. Two hundred and fifty acres were hers, at least for the moment, but there seemed no chance of their remaining so much longer. Helmut Muller’s offer had introduced a new element that she both welcomed and resented. She could not allow a friend – for this was the gesture of a true friend – to lose money on a venture that was certain to fail. The ore was there, but with no market the company could not go on. No, she thought, let it go. At least that way I shall be spared yet another obligation I cannot meet.
It was the right decision yet she rode back to the house with a sense of doom in her heart. Helmut’s offer had been made with the best of intentions, but she wished he had never made it.
Somehow they clung on into the New Year, living from hand to mouth and fending off the banks with optimistic assurances in which she no longer believed, until Bella awoke to a summer day in early February, radiant with the promise of heat, and knew that things could go on no longer.
She told Martin of her decision.
‘You will tell the Stock Exchange?’ he said.
‘We’ve no choice.’
‘There’ll be no going back if you do.’
‘I’ll be committing a criminal offence if I don’t. Isn’t there something in the law about trading when insolvent?’
‘We are not insolvent.’
‘But I see no possibility of any other outcome. Do you?’
He said nothing, his silence as eloquent as words.
She sighed and looked around the office of which she had been so pro
ud. The decision had drained her; she felt she could barely stand but forced herself to walk to the window and look out at the estate that, once she had phoned the Exchange, would not even nominally be hers.
‘How long will it take?’
‘After you tell the Stock Exchange? Not long. The banks will soon hear, of course –’
‘I do not intend the banks to hear from anyone but me.’
‘That’ll be a fun conversation,’ Martin said.
‘It is important that we do things the right way.’
‘Even in these circumstances?’
‘Especially in these circumstances.’
‘There is one possibility you have not considered.’
His voice reflected the hesitation he felt in saying it. She stared at him.
‘What is that?’
‘Doing a deal with BradMin.’
‘I’d sooner go broke,’ she said. She wanted nothing to do with BradMin.
‘Think of yourself for a change,’ Martin urged her.
Temptation was a razor, cutting deep. Yes, a deal was possible. BradMin would get the mineral rights, the banks would be paid out and Bella would keep most, maybe all, her assets. Miranda Downs would be saved, for herself and the children. They would no longer be mega-rich, perhaps, but they would still make a more than adequate living from the cattle station and meatworks, as they always had until that fatal trip down the Carlisle. They would be safe.
But at what price?
‘What about the unsecured creditors? The shareholders? The ordinary people who put their savings into Tuckers because they trusted us? What about them?’
Martin shrugged. ‘That’s the risk investors take. Some you win, some you lose.’
Indeed they did. But if she rigged things so that she came out all right while others lost everything… She was responsible for the company and its investors. Not legally, but morally. To preserve her own assets while those who had trusted her lost theirs would be wrong.
‘I’ll not do it,’ she said.
She watched a BMW coupe drive in and park at the side of the house. The driver got out and hurried towards the main entrance.
Dust of the Land Page 42