Dust of the Land

by J. H. Fletcher

  ‘There are times when I agree with you,’ he said.

  He thought with any luck there might be a passionate night ahead. Peace was a firecracker in bed, whereas he was patience personified. It was a good mix.

  Richard and Su-Ying were sitting at ease, enjoying the warmth of the heater and having a nightcap on the enclosed verandah of their bungalow overlooking the river.

  ‘Peace was in a foul mood today,’ Richard said.

  ‘She wants to take charge of the company,’ Su-Ying said. ‘And she hates to wait.’

  He sipped his whisky, the ice clinking in the glass, and watched the stream of car lights pouring down the road beyond the river.

  ‘I don’t think it’s that. She knows Mother’s going nowhere at the moment. But she would like to believe she’ll get it all in the end.’

  ‘Would you object if she did?’ Su-Ying asked.

  Richard finished his drink and debated whether to have another one.

  ‘I don’t think I would,’ he said.

  Su-Ying frowned. She had always wanted him to be number one when Bella decided to stand down, but Richard had never been a pushy man. ‘Don’t you want to be the top man?’

  ‘I was thinking of something quite different,’ he said.

  He decided one more drink would do no harm. He tipped the bottle, added ice.

  ‘What is that?’ Su-Ying asked.

  ‘China.’

  He raised his glass to the light, admiring the amber glow of the liquor. He sipped slowly and put the glass on the table.

  ‘You were thinking of China?’ Su-Ying stared.

  ‘I’ve always fancied the idea of building up our own business from the beginning.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I speak Chinese. You are Chinese. It occurred to me there might be money to be made in China. Not at the moment, but maybe in a few years.’

  ‘We would live in China?’

  He smiled at her; did she really think he had not known about her longing to return to her homeland?

  ‘I doubt we’d make much money out of a China business if we weren’t there to run it,’ he said.

  ‘What sort of business?’

  ‘Consumer goods for export. Your father’s an important man. He might want to get involved himself. Through a proxy, maybe.’

  ‘You have Chinese thoughts,’ Su-Ying said approvingly.

  ‘So you’re always telling me. With low labour costs, I don’t see how we could go wrong.’

  ‘What about the boys’ education? Adam is due to go to university in three years’ time. And James will be going to high school two years after that.’

  ‘That would certainly be a factor. It won’t happen for several years, in any case. It may not happen at all. But that’s the way my mind’s working at the moment.’ He laughed. ‘With your family connections, we’d be multi-millionaires in no time. But not a word to anybody else, okay?’

  ‘Of course.’ Su-Ying looked at him with love in her eyes. ‘Let’s go to bed,’ she said.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  Bella remembered telling herself how disaster always appeared when you least expected it. How right she had been. They’d had seven years’ grace and now everything was on the edge of falling apart yet again.

  Ten days earlier Peace had been barracking for Angus Duthie to be given a seat on the board; now it was possible there might not be a board for him to sit on. Despair consumed her; she was looking into the jaws of failure and hating it.

  It was the nearest she had ever come to self-pity. Such an ugly emotion; resolutely she turned her back on it. She sat at the bedside table in her hotel room and busied herself with plans that, without funding, would prove of no more substance than a dawn mist, dissolving at the first touch of the sun.

  She was summoned to the ministry. She took Richard and Su-Ying with her. They might as well face the firing squad together. They sat in a plain reception room adjacent to Comrade Fang’s office and waited. Spartan furniture, a linoleum-covered floor. No T’ang reproductions on these walls. No view across Tiananmen Square to the complacently smiling portrait of the Great Helmsman. No windows at all.

  After an hour’s wait an official entered the room: a stern-faced young woman who read a prepared text from a paper in her hand.

  They would be advised of the official response in due course but in the meantime there was no need to delay them further. An embassy plane would be flying to Canberra in two days’ time. Arrangements would be made for them to travel on it.

  It was over. They had done everything they could and failed. Pete Bathurst, aided by the unknown traitor, had won.

  The next two days dragged their leaden feet across Bella’s life. Despair was a new emotion but she could think of no way to escape the trap.

  They were told the car was waiting. They went down, as to a funeral. They got in. The driver turned right at the main road, not left, which would have taken them to the airport. Su-Ying spoke sharply to him. Where were they going?

  He did not reply.

  After five minutes she turned to Bella. ‘At first I thought maybe there had been an accident, or roadworks. But that is not the reason. He is taking us into town.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘It has to be to the ministry. Where else?’

  ‘Comrade Fang must have decided to hand us the formal rejection himself. That is what it is,’ Bella said.

  She was determined to deny the flicker of hope that had stirred in her heart. What if…? She would not allow herself to think it. To have her hopes raised, only to be dashed again… She did not think she could bear that.

  She sat staring out of the car window, seeing not the lines of low buildings with the Chinese script in red or gold flourishes above each door, not the modern buildings rising, like China itself, from the lethargy of the past, but the stages of the sixty-five-year life that had brought her here. All had been for nothing. Unless…

  Again hope seethed; again, sternly, she forced it down.

  I will be sorry to lose the Monet, she thought. Yet what difference could that make? What mattered was the memory of Garth’s life, in celebration of which, in gratitude and loneliness, she had bought it in the first place. A good buy it was, too, she thought with a flicker of her old spirit, worth a lot more now than she had paid for it. Not that it made any difference; like the Hester Bateman candlesticks, Soong vase and everything else, it was about to be swallowed up by debts that could be counted in their millions. All would be gone.

  Su-Ying had been right. The car drew up before the entrance to the ministry. A uniformed man opened the door. Smiling. Deferential. Bella looked at him, senses alert. They were led inside. Not, this time, to the comfortless waiting room but to Comrade Fang’s office. With smiles and gestures they were invited to sit. Across the square, the afternoon sunlight gilded the Chairman’s smile.

  They waited, not daring to speak or look at each other.

  Five minutes later Comrade Fang came into the room. He had two aides but no interpreter. He went and sat behind his desk; then he studied his three visitors in turn before addressing his remarks exclusively to Bella.

  ‘Our information is that BradMin has no plans to give Tucker access to their rail line.’ His English was as close to perfect as made no difference. ‘Never! Yes or no?’

  ‘Never say never,’ Bella said.

  Comrade Fang sat back in his chair. He smiled amicably, all antagonism banished from the discussion. ‘We shall have coffee,’ he said.

  Bella’s breath eased out softly. This amiability, so unexpected after the hostility of their previous meeting: what did it mean? Nothing had changed. Without a rail link, the ore from Carlisle could not be delivered. Bella knew it; the Chinese knew it; Pete Bathurst knew it. She was over a barrel and without help Tucker Mining and all her dreams were finished. Now it seemed a deal might be in the offing, after all. At what price? But did price matter? If she wanted to survive she would have to agree to whatever terms th
ey demanded.

  ‘Coffee would be most welcome,’ she said.

  When the refreshments arrived they proved to be a great deal more than coffee.

  ‘Dim sum,’ Comrade Fang announced proudly.

  Dim sum consisted of a variety of savoury dumplings, served hot. They were exquisitely prepared and presented in paper-thin dough wrappings. Prawns, so delicate as to be almost transparent; scallops; abalone in sticky rice; pork ribs in plum sauce…

  Comrade Fang pointed them out one by one, explaining their contents with such pride that he might have prepared them himself.

  ‘Please,’ he said.

  Chopsticks and individual plates had been provided. Once again Bella had reason to be grateful to her daughter-in-law, who had schooled her in the use of chopsticks. She leant forwards and selected a prawn dumpling, which she chewed with relish.

  ‘The food is excellent,’ she said.

  ‘Very ordinary,’ Fang said.

  They ate contentedly for a while.

  ‘Mrs Tucker enjoyed her visit to the Summer Palace?’ Fang enquired.

  ‘Very much.’

  ‘The original was most beautiful,’ he told her. ‘People say it was one of the wonders of the world. So sad it was destroyed.’

  Comrade Fang was reminding her how it had been vandalised by the British, almost a century before.

  ‘So much destruction,’ Bella said, shaking her head. ‘So many buildings lost, all over Asia. So many temples that can never be replaced.’

  Because the Chinese, too, had destroyed many sacred sites during their subjugation of Tibet in the 1940s and 1950s. And in China, too, during the Cultural Revolution.

  Fang turned suddenly to Su-Ying and spoke to her in Chinese. She answered him in the same tongue, then turned to Bella.

  ‘He asks me to convey his best wishes to my father, who he said has been a much-respected member of the Party for many years. I told him I was grateful for his kind words and I would be honoured to do so.’ Again she spoke in Chinese, smiling at Comrade Fang as she did so. Once more she translated. ‘I explain to Comrade Fang that the Lees and Tuckers are now related. All of us are grateful to him for the honour he pays Father, which we share.’

  Bella looked thoughtfully at the two Chinese; there were undercurrents here she did not understand; no doubt Su-Ying would tell her later what it was all about.

  The empty plates were removed. Back to business, Bella thought.

  ‘If BradMin’s rail link is unavailable, how does Tucker propose to ship its ore to the coast?’

  ‘As I said, negotiations are under way –’

  Fang shook his head slowly. ‘BradMin has no plans to grant access. Why should they, after all? Tucker Mining is their competitor.’

  ‘If they won’t agree, the only way is for another railway to be built.’

  ‘That would be a very costly process.’

  ‘Indeed it would.’ Bella turned to Richard. ‘Explain the financial implications to Comrade Fang.’

  Richard spoke at length. When he had finished Fang’s hooded eyes were almost round. ‘So many millions…’

  ‘A railway capable of carrying heavy-axle wagons loaded with ore cannot be constructed for less,’ Richard said.

  ‘But a link to the existing railway…’

  ‘Would be much less. Of course. That was what we had originally planned. But if, as you say, BradMin will not permit access –’

  ‘I said BradMin has no plans to grant access. Plans can be changed.’

  Aha, Bella thought. For the first time she did not reject the hope that now flooded her. ‘Why should they change?’ she said. ‘As you pointed out, Tuckers are their competitors.’

  Fang did not answer the question. ‘Why does Tucker not build its own railway? Then BradMin’s objections become irrelevant.’

  ‘Money,’ Richard said.

  ‘Will the banks not help?’

  Richard shrugged, smiling.

  ‘But, if money can be found…’

  ‘The railway can be built,’ Richard said.

  ‘And China gets its ore,’ Bella said.

  ‘The question is,’ Fang said softly, ‘what would Tuckers be willing to pay for such assistance?’

  They had come to it at last.

  ‘We shall be interested to hear Comrade Fang’s thoughts on that subject,’ Bella said.

  Fang walked across the room and studied one of the T’ang reproductions. With his back still turned to them, he said:

  ‘Fifty-one per cent.’

  Bella’s heart thudded against her ribs.

  ‘Please explain.’

  Fang returned briskly to his desk and sat down.

  ‘China is willing to build a rail link connecting the Carlisle Mine to the coast. We shall provide money, engineers and labour. A loan, you understand. The value is to be agreed later and set off against payment for future ore deliveries. You agree?’

  ‘In principle,’ Bella said.

  Wait, she warned herself. Hear the conditions first. There were bound to be conditions. But please, she prayed, please let them be something I can accept.

  Her nerves at full stretch, she focused on what Fang was now saying.

  ‘China does not need Tucker,’ Fang said. ‘China can buy all its ore from BradMin. But Tucker needs China.’ He smiled. Like a shark, Bella thought. ‘Not so?’

  ‘It is not in China’s interests to give BradMin a monopoly.’

  Fang mimed astonishment. ‘No monopoly. There are other suppliers, even without Tucker. Brazil –’

  ‘Too far. Freight costs –’

  ‘Which bigger bulk carriers will reduce. So no monopoly. Hah?’

  Bella said nothing.

  ‘To help Tucker, there has to be a reason. Invest in something China owns, very good. If not, very foolish.’

  Bella’s mouth was dry. ‘Meaning?’

  ‘You give fifty-one per cent Tucker shares, China provides rail link. Plenty of profit for everyone. Everyone happy. Good deal, hah?’

  Take it, Bella told herself. Forty-nine per cent of something is a lot better than a hundred per cent of nothing. Take it, girl, and you’ll be off the hook.

  And you’ll have lost control of your company. Lost your dream.

  She sensed Richard and Su-Ying watching her, awaiting her decision.

  What choice did she have? At the beginning of the meeting she had told herself she would have to accept whatever terms they offered. She opened her mouth to agree. She said:

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good deal for everyone,’ Fang said. ‘For you, very good. You keep forty-nine per cent, plenty of profit for everyone, banks happy, everyone happy, no further worries for you –’

  ‘No,’ she said fiercely. ‘No! A thousand times no!’

  She was prepared to stand up, walk away, accept the consequences, to hell with the banks…

  To her astonishment, Fang chuckled. ‘Australian government not permit foreigner company to own over fifty per cent, anyway,’ he said.

  He opened the folder that until that moment had remained untouched on his desk. He took out a paper that Bella recognised as the memorandum of agreement she had negotiated during her first visit to China.

  ‘Initial supply,’ Fang read aloud, ‘twenty-five million tons of iron ore per annum, mineral content guaranteed at not less than sixty per cent, delivered on shore at Baoshan Steel in Shanghai, at spot price ruling at date of delivery.’ He looked at Bella across the desk. ‘If China is to invest in a rail link on Tuckers’s behalf, these terms will need to be renegotiated.’

  ‘I understand,’ Bella said.

  ‘Spot price less ten per cent, five years,’ Fang said.

  ‘Less five per cent, seven years,’ Bella said.

  ‘Seven per cent five years, six per cent five more years.’

  ‘Five per cent five years, four per cent another five.’

  ‘Ayoh!’ Fang said. ‘Why so unreasonable? Rail link save Tucker, otherwise bankrupt. Hah?�
�

  Bella shook her head, waiting.

  Fang said: ‘Five five, four another five, three another five. Yes?’

  ‘Five five, four five, three three,’ Bella said.

  Fang turned to his aides. ‘Leave us.’

  They left the room; he looked at Richard and Su-Ying. ‘Give us a few minutes,’ Bella said to them.

  They also left. The door closed behind them.

  ‘You buy land, yes?’ Fang said. ‘Hundred acres Perth, hundred acres Sydney, hundred acres Brisbane. Good land, property development land. You can?’

  ‘In whose name? Yours?’

  ‘Give details later. Can do this?’

  ‘I can. But who pays?’

  ‘You will be paid,’ Fang said. ‘You can do this for me?’

  Perhaps it was against Chinese law to buy land overseas. Well, Bella thought, that was none of her business. ‘Let me have details of what you want and the name you want on the deeds, I shall arrange it for you,’ she said.

  ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘I shall let you have that information before you leave.’

  ‘And the contract for the ore?’

  ‘That, too.’

  ‘I shall need my lawyer to check it,’ Bella said. ‘Important that everything is legal, don’t you agree?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And construction of the railway?’

  ‘Will begin as soon as the contract is signed.’

  My God, she thought, I’ve done it. I’ve really done it. She could have thrown her arms in the air, screamed aloud, danced naked on Comrade Fang’s desk.

  She did none of these things. She nodded. ‘A pleasure to do business with you.’

  Su-Ying sat with her husband in the dreary little room they had used before.

  I believe we have done it, she thought. Ever since Fang mentioned my father, I was confident all would be well. I swore I would not speak to him about the rail link and of course I did. He said BradMin was strong, Tuckers weak, that it was foolish to side with the weak against the strong. I told him the truth, that I did it for China. For my husband, too, but first of all for China. Which was the reason he sent me to Australia in the first place.

  Yes, I am convinced we have won. But when Mother-in-law tells me I shall pretend astonishment. I shall congratulate her on her cleverness. Bella will never know the truth, because it is better she should believe that she arranged everything herself. As for Fang… Of course he would want a sweetener. That is normal and will cost us nothing. I am sure Mother-in-law will agree and not pretend to be too righteous. Because she is wise, too, and understands the way of the world. Perhaps in an earlier life she was Chinese also?