The Golden Soak (17 page)

Her husband grunted, but made no comment, his eyes bleary. There was the sound of a car and she lifted her head, her thin dry hair a golden halo. The car stopped and she rose to her feet as the verandah door opened and a woman's voice called to her. ‘That's Muriel,' she said. ‘Mebbe he's phoned her.'

While she was out of the room I told Culpin about his visitor of two nights before, and when I repeated what the aborigine had said, he stopped eating and leaned forward, his bloodshot eyes staring. ‘What do you mean – bad something?'

‘Just that. I don't know what he meant. But he wanted to see you.'

‘Stupid bastard!' he muttered. ‘I was all over town looking for him.' He glanced over his shoulder. The door was open, the murmur of women's voices. ‘What did he want to see me about?' There was tension in his voice, his eyes searching my face.

I shrugged. ‘I told you what he said. Some white man had obviously been getting at him.'

‘Who? Did he say who?'

‘No. He just said to tell you. And he asked for a beer.'

‘Been drinking, had he?'

But I couldn't answer that. I didn't know whether he'd been drinking or not.

The verandah door slammed and Edith Culpin came back into the kitchen. ‘Muriel just had a call from Mr Kadek,' she said. ‘He wants you to ring him back right away.'

Culpin had twisted round in his chair, the sunlight full on his face. A globule of dried blood showed by his left ear and his skin had a bad colour. For a moment he seemed to have difficulty in switching his mind. ‘What's Ferdie want?' He was frowning, his voice slow and heavy.

‘She didn't say. Just to ring him, and it was urgent.'

He turned back to his breakfast, staring down at the remains of the bacon. Then he pushed his plate away, folded the newspaper and poured himself another cup of tea.

‘We ought to have the phone here,' his wife said.

‘You say that every time I get a call,' he snarled. Then added, ‘Mebbe we will, when this deal's gone through.' He drank his tea in quick gulps, then lumbered to his feet. ‘You coming?'

I nodded and went to get the rock samples, which were still in my suitcase. I stuffed four of them into my trouser pockets and went out to join him in the ute.

We stopped at the second house on the dirt street leading to the Kambalda road and he was gone about ten minutes. ‘Mickey Mouse have put on a special flight. That's MMA, the local airline. Ferdie wants us to meet them at the airport.' And he added, ‘Beer and sandwiches at Ora Banda and you're to get yourself clued up so's you can answer all the questions this feller Freeman's likely to ask.'

I reminded him that I hadn't even seen the mine yet, but he only glared at me. ‘What the hell's that matter? The mine's my pigeon. All Ferdie wants from you is geological know-how.' And he added, ‘They'll be here about noon. That gives you three hours.'

Clear of Boulder, we took the dirt road that parallels the Golden Mile, the sun blazing hot and the mineworkings looking as though an army had fought a desert campaign across the scarred wasteland. ‘I'll drop you in Macdonald Street. There's Western Mining on one side, the School of Mines on the other. And Smithie's usually at the Palace bar around eleven. I'll pick you up there at eleven forty-five. Right?'

TWO

It wasn't much more than a couple of miles out to the airport, but it seemed a lot longer with Culpin sitting morose and tense at the wheel, not saying a word. And I was thinking of my interview with Petersen, wondering whether to ask questions or keep my mouth shut.

When Culpin had dropped me in Macdonald Street, I hadn't gone into Western Mining or the School of Mines, but had made straight for Petersen Geophysics, which was in Maritana, close by the railway bridge. Petersen was in, and when I showed him the samples, he agreed with me that it looked like antimony. He was a big man with a long suntanned face and hair the colour of bleached straw. He put one of the samples under a microscope and nodded. ‘The gold looks goot, at least fife ounces.' His accent was strong, his manner non-committal. ‘The antimony –' he shrugged. ‘That is for the laboratory to say. You want I do you an analysis?'

I nodded and asked him how soon he could do it. ‘Ve are snowed under, if you can say that in this goddammed country.' Big teeth showed in a grin. ‘Also, this is a different kind of yob. Most of our lab tests are for nickel. We never before haf been asked for antimony tests.' However, he agreed in the end to do it as a rush job, I think because he was intrigued. And once that was settled I asked him about Blackridge.

‘Blackridge? You ask about Blackridge – why?' His slate grey eyes looked up at me over the top of the microscope. And when I told him I would be going out to look over the mine that afternoon, he said, ‘Blackridge is not like this.' He held up the samples. ‘This is reef quartz, no? But Blackridge is surface dust. Half the work of my laboratory is concerning itself with dust picked up on the surface. This is an old country geologically and because a handful of dust picked up on the surface can indicate the rock structure below ground, men are easily fooled. You know Chris Culpin?'

I nodded and he stared at me a moment. Then he seemed to make up his mind. ‘Okay. You ask Chris where that dust come from. I ask him – last night in the Pal. I say is that yob you give me on the level? Ja, I tell him, there is nickel there. But there is also some rumours. You know what he say to me?' The big teeth opened, a grin so wide that he looked like a horse about to laugh. ‘Pete, he say, you mind your own bloddy business or I'll ram those tombstones of yours so far down your throat they'll bite you in the arse.' The horse's mouth gaped wide, a gusty roar of laughter. ‘So I t'ink that is a yob I don't want any more of. Nickel – pah!' He had risen to his feet and he patted me on the back, still roaring with laughter, his fist like a pile driver. ‘I tell you because you are new here and I like your country. England is goot with green grass and trees like Sweden, eh? So be careful. This is better.' He was looking with interest again at the sample in his big hand. ‘I tell my feller you want the results tomorrow. Mebbe you get it, mebbe no. Ve do our best, eh?'

The plane was late, the parking lot already thick with cars as we drew in. Culpin switched off, then turned to me. ‘I dunno what Ferdie has in mind, but this deal's important, see.' He stared at me a moment, his hands gripping the wheel. Then he got out and I followed him into the wood-verandahed passenger terminal.

The special flight was northbound after Kalgoorlie and the building was crowded with men headed for the bush or back up to the iron ore company towns. They were in shorts or khaki longs, with wide-brimmed hats, some with packs. There were a few women and children, and others like ourselves meeting people off the plane, but the place still had a frontier atmosphere. The interior was dark after the blinding heat outside. Culpin started talking to a station manager bound for Wittenoom and I went back on to the verandah where it was cooler, the ghost of a breeze raising dust on the airfield.

Soon I could hear the drone of a plane coming in from behind the terminal. In a few minutes Kadek would be stepping out of it, expecting me to help him sell a dud mine. Oh yes, I'm not going to pretend it was sprung on me so that I didn't know what I was doing. I hadn't wasted the few hours I had had on my own that morning.

The plane when I saw it was low on the horizon. I lit a cigarette and leaned on the balustrade, watching it as it started the wide circuit of the airfield. One of the Cessnas parked on the apron in front roared into life. It had loaded a survey party and now it was off, scuttling for the runway end. My gaze switched back to the incoming plane, a glint of silver in the sun. I watched it turn on to the flight path for landing, and my mind was still undecided. I was thinking of what the English geologist I had seen at Western Mining had said. Carter had given me the better part of an hour, I think because he had heard of Trevis, Parkes & Pierce, and I had used the name of my old firm as an introduction. ‘It's unique,' he had said. ‘Most of Australia is unique, the flora, the fauna – and the geophysical nature of the country. It's flat and it's dry. Erosion occurs
in situ
, from wind and violent changes in the temperature. There's no surface movement of the soil, no draining away in river beds.' He had digressed for a moment, talking about the gold finds that had been made earlier in the century. They had been made over an area of about a million square miles, mainly in the mafic and ultra-mafic rocks of the greenstone belt. The same rocks that could produce nickel. These were Archaean rocks of the pre-Cambrian Shield which covered almost half Australia, outcropping in the Yilgarn Block, an area in the south-west that was about the size of Britain, and also in the smaller Pilbara Block, and continuing right through to the Centre, where the Shield was overlaid by sand and gravel. And then he was repeating what Petersen had said – ‘You can walk the Yilgarn and the Pilbara in the certain knowledge that what you find on the surface is a fair indication of the rock formation below ground.'

He talked about the stock market and the hangers-on in the Palace bar, but he saw it in perspective as an inevitable side-product of the boom, and the morals of it didn't worry him. The fact that the mass of Australians had gone gambling mad and would get their fingers burned didn't make any difference to what was happening on the ground, except that a lot of barren areas were being proved to be just that.

The plane was landing now, its wheels hitting the runway with a puff of smoke from the sun-hot tyres. Kadek belonged to the world of money that thrived on rumours, on leaked information and the dubious reports of scouts. Yet his world and Carter's were all part of the same turmoil of excitement that had begun with Kambalda and a man called Cowcill searching the rock specimens in his garage more than a decade ago when uranium was what everyone was looking for.

I stubbed out my cigarette as the high-winged Fokker Friendship turned at the runway end, a bright blaze of metal in the sun. I was thinking of Petersen again, the way he had looked at me when I had asked him about Blackridge. I wished I had never mentioned it to that ugly Swede. It only complicated the issue. And now the plane was here, the roar of its engines drowning all sound as it swung into its parking position. The noise died to a whisper, the props stopped turning, then the fuselage gaped as the gangway was thrust against it and the passengers began to emerge. Kadek was one of the first, his dark face shaded by a panama hat and wearing a light blue suit.

He saw me, nodded and came across, nursing a slim briefcase under his arm. ‘Glad to see you again. You got my telegram? Good. Chris told me you had arrived.' He gripped my hand, his eyes on mine, cold and calculating. And then he was introducing his companion, a quietly dressed man with a round friendly face. ‘This is Les Freeman. He's chairman and managing director of Lone Minerals, a small but very go-ahead Sydney-based company.' He glanced back at me, something in his eyes – a question mark, a challenge? ‘Les, I'd like you to meet Alec Falls of Trevis, Parkes & Pierce. He's out here for one of the big London mining houses. Blackridge is one of the prospects he's been asked to look over.'

I should have denied it straight away, but I was so stunned by the barefaced lie that I just stood there, saying nothing.

He was watching me closely, the thin line of his mouth just as I remembered it, like a steel trap. And he had remembered the name of the firm I had been working for when we had last met. ‘Have you been out to Blackridge yet?' I heard myself say No, and he nodded. I could see the wheels turning in his mind, the way he was going to handle it. And I just stood there, silent, wondering what sort of a man I was. Later, of course, I told myself that it was Freeman's fault for being so dumb. But that doesn't give you absolution, and Freeman was a nice enough bloke, even if he was an accountant.

‘Where's Chris?' Kadek peered inside the terminal, saw him and gave a sharp, imperative jerk of his head that brought Culpin out in a hurry. ‘Did you book us in at the Palace?'

Culpin nodded. ‘I was lucky, a cancellation. But it's just the one room. You'll have to share.'

Kadek glanced at Freeman, who nodded. ‘Good, then let's go.' As we moved out to the ute, he dropped back beside me, speaking quietly. ‘Les knows nothing about mining. But his company badly needs a prospect, something he can feed the market with.' He gripped my arm, squeezing it. ‘Don't push it too hard. And keep it scientific. Your observations a little beyond his grasp. But not too far. Understand?'

I nodded. I understood all right. ‘We'll talk about it later,' I said. ‘After I've seen the mine. And I'll want samples of my own analysed.'

He stopped then. ‘Why? What d'you mean?' He was looking at me, his features hard and tense. But then he smiled, a conscious effort. ‘Nothing for you to worry about,' he murmured, patting my arm. ‘The analysis is correct. And it was made by an independent firm.'

‘I know. I've seen Petersen.'

‘Then what's your worry?' His voice grated.

‘Surface dirt,' I said.

‘And you want to dig down – do your own checking, eh?' His face was still arranged in a smile, but I could feel his anger. ‘Well, let me tell you, I've done some checking myself. You start being awkward and I'll be on to the Commonwealth Immigration Department right away. I don't play for this sort of money with the gloves on.' And then abruptly he offered me $2,000 – to help me find my feet out here. He smiled. It was a straight bribe and we both knew it, our eyes locked, each assessing the other, calculating. ‘Nothing for you to worry about,' he repeated. ‘Petersen Geophysics has a good reputation.' He glanced ahead to where his partner and Freeman had stopped by the ute. ‘And if anybody takes the can, it's Chris.'