The Golden Soak (19 page)

‘You don't have to worry,' I told him. But I don't think he believed me. He was a mean bugger and nursing a grievance was like a drug; it deadened the pain of failure.

‘Now if you'd got a line on that fellow McIlroy.' He was eyeing me shiftily, an ingratiating smile on his coarse face. ‘You told me you were in Nullagine an' you saw that abo.'

‘Yes.'

‘And he told you nothing?'

‘Nothing that meant anything. The man you want is Phil Westrop and you won't get anything out of him.'

‘A prospector, eh?' He peered at me, then slammed the gear lever into second as we turned on to the loose grit track. He didn't say anything more, nursing his grievance in silence. That sense of grievance would have been difficult to stomach all evening if his son had not been home. He was sitting on the verandah steps and he looked up as we drove in, the face a little thinner than the face in the photograph, and peeling from the sun, the hair longer, but still the likeness to his mother clearly stamped.

‘You just got in?' his father asked.

‘'Bout an hour ago.'

That was their greeting, and neither in their faces nor in the tone of their voices was there any sign of affection. ‘You'll have to bed down on the sofa. Alec here's got your room.'

The boy nodded, staring at me very directly out of pale greenish eyes. ‘So I gathered.' He smiled and held out his hand. ‘I'm Kennie.' The smile stretched the scab of a sore at the corner of his mouth, his eyes crinkling, a depth of interest in them that was very personal.

‘Have you had your tucker yet?'

‘No. Mum said to wait for our guest.'

Culpin grunted and pushed open the flyscreen, calling to his wife. Then he turned back to his son. ‘See anything interest-up there? Any likely prospects?'

‘We were doing an aerial magnetic. You don't see prospects from a whirly bird, not when you're watching the instruments all the time.' His mouth twisted in an impish little grin. ‘Saw a lot of roos though. Reds mainly.'

‘Chrissakes! You bin having a dekko at the nickel country north of Leonora and all you can talk about …' Cuplin checked himself, eyeing his son suspiciously. ‘Well, when you weren't observing the wild life,' he said sarcastically, ‘mebbe you found time to have a drink with some of the Poseidon boys.'

‘Sure.' The boy nodded, standing there, not volunteering anything.

‘Well, what did they tell you?'

‘Nothing. They were drillers, that's all.'

The hostility between them was obvious, and it wasn't a generation gap – this was a conflict of personalities. Culpin hitched at his trousers. His back was towards me, the dark leathery skin of his neck a network of creases ingrained with red dust. The anger that had been building up in him all the way from the Palace would have broken out then if his wife hadn't appeared at the flyscreen door to say that supper was ready.

‘What happened today?' she asked. ‘Did that man Mr Kadek brought with him buy Blackridge?'

Culpin nodded. ‘They're sorting out the details now.'

‘Well, that's something,' she said tartly, and I glimpsed how tight things had become in this dilapidated house.

We went into the kitchen then and all through the meal Culpin hardly spoke a word. It was Kennie who did the talking, his mother listening, the two of them obviously very close. It had been his first aerial survey and he was very full of it. After the meal, when his father had gone back to the Palace, he came out and sat with me on the verandah in the fading light and for a while he talked about his survey, not as he'd talked about it over the meal, but as one geologist to another. They had been searching for nickel and copper over a lease area of nearly 300 square miles, and when I asked him whether they had found anything, he shrugged:

‘One area that's possibly anomalous, that's all. But we won't be pegging. Not yet. There's a strong rumour the government intends to clamp down on all new claims. If that happens the Company will have more time to complete the survey. They'll be starting geochemical work as soon as the magnetometer results we got on this trip have been analysed.'

He picked up a stick and began drawing an emu in the black grit. He wanted to get a job up in the North West next. He'd heard a lot about it from his father and now geologists were saying it would be the next area to attract the attention of prospectors. ‘You've just come down from there, haven't you?' And because he was the sort of boy he was, bubbling over with theory that he now desperately wanted to put into practice, I told him a little about the Garretys and how Golden Soak had been discovered.

‘That's the mine my father was making enquiries about.' He looked up from his drawing. ‘You trying to buy it? Is that why you were up there?' And when I asked him why he thought it was for sale, he said, ‘Just something I heard last night. We were at the Hotel in Leonora, celebrating the end of our survey, and this bloke I was talking to – he was from Marble Bar, some sort of property dealer, I think – he was talking about it. I don't remember all he said, I'd had a lot to drink by then, you see, but it's antimony, isn't it?'

I suppose I should have realized that people up in the Pilbara would know all about the mine, but it still came as a shock to hear him refer to the antimony content so casually. He knew about the price of antimony, too, even knew the reason for the sharp rise in the mineral's value: ‘The main source is China and they've cut off supplies to the West, stockpiling against the possibility of war with Russia.' And then he asked me again whether the people I was acting for were going to buy it.

‘I'm not acting for anybody,' I said. ‘And anyway it isn't for sale.'

He began tracing the outline of a kangaroo, his head bent in concentration. ‘You'll be going up there again.'

I didn't answer for a moment, thinking of Jarra Jarra and what it could mean to them. ‘That depends on the analysis.'

He looked up, a quick movement of the head that tossed his fair hair back. ‘You've got samples then?' His voice was eager, his eyes shining with genuine interest. In the end I took him into his room and showed him a piece of the Golden Soak reef quartz. He had a cheap students' microscope and he took it out on to the verandah, where the reflector could catch the last rays of the setting sun. His excitement when the specks of gold showed as minute chunks of metal embedded in the quartz crystals was infectious. But even under the microscope the grey smudges of the antimony still showed only as smudges. ‘If the analysis is good and you do go up there again, can I come with you?'

I laughed. ‘I can't afford an assistant.'

But he didn't want to be paid. He just wanted to learn. ‘It wouldn't cost you anything and I could organize things for you. There's a friend of mine got an old Land-Rover he'd let me hire, and if you're camping out …' He gave a self-conscious little laugh, knowing he had let his enthusiasm run away with him. ‘I've never done a practical survey under the direction of somebody with your sort of experience.'

‘We'll see how the analysis works out,' I said. And after that we talked of mining generally. He'd worked on an IP survey at St Ives – ‘That's the other side of the causeway that crosses the salt lake called Lefroy, south of Kambalda.' He had done a geomagnetic on a prospect near Mt Yindarlgooda to the east of Kalgoorlie, another in the Laverton area. He talked of microprobe analyses and how they indicated the cobalt content of pentlandite and the nickel content of pyrrhotite. This was laboratory stuff, all very technical, and soon we were deep in the nature and origins of sulphides and ultrabasics. There was a little breeze out there on the verandah and we stayed there talking until his mother called us in for coffee and home-made cakes.

I went to bed almost immediately afterwards, but the room seemed airless and I didn't get to sleep for a long time. I was woken about midnight by the slam of the flyscreen door, the murmur of voices. They rose and fell, half inaudible; then suddenly Culpin's voice loud and slurred with drink: ‘You say that again, boy …'

Silence and the hot breeze rattling at the pale square of the window. Then the hoarse voice started again, wheedling at first, then rising quickly in anger: ‘I work my guts out, risking my neck to give you things I never had, and you throw it in my face. You silly little fool, you don't know what life's about. Now, come on –' There was the sound of a scuffle, followed by a blow and the crash of something falling.

I was out of bed then, but though I moved fast, Edith Culpin was ahead of me, the parlour door open and her figure framed in the light of a torch. Beyond her, I could see the tumbled bedclothes on the couch and Culpin standing over his son, his big hands gripping his shoulders, shaking him. A small table lay on its side, a china vase in pieces on the floor. And Kennie, his lip cut and blood oozing, speaking in a whisper.

Edith Culpin screamed at her husband, and he turned and stared at her, his bull of a head thrust forward. ‘Go back to bed, woman.' His voice, still heavy and slurred, had a hard core of authority in it, and when she flew at him, he flung her back. She fell on to the couch, a breast flopping white above the pink nightdress, her hair dishevelled, sudden hate flaring in her eyes.

And then he saw me. ‘Thought to keep it to yourself, did you?' He was swaying, his face glistening with sweat, the small eyes greedy. He'd had a lot to drink. ‘Think I don't know the price of antimony?' He let go of Kennie and took a step towards me, his lips pursed in a little smile. ‘You come between me and my son, an' I'll break your neck for you.' His eyes were mean now, anger feeding on the alcohol in him. He was suddenly dangerous. I stood there in the doorway bracing myself to meet him.

Kennie was looking at me, the cut lip swelling and his eyes scared. ‘I'm s-sorry,' he mumbled.

I started to say something and then I turned away and went back to my room. I knew it was no good. He was afraid of his father and there was nothing I could do to stop him talking. No point now, anyway.

I heard Edith Culpin go back to bed, the sound of her crying audible through the partition. Shortly afterwards her husband's footsteps passed my door. No words between them, only the sound of his movements as he undressed and got into bed beside her. Then silence, the house gripped in stillness. Even the breeze outside seemed to have died.

The sun was up when I woke, shining hot on my face, and the kettle whistled in the kitchen, footsteps padding in the passage outside my door. Culpin was halfway through his breakfast when I went into the kitchen. Small and bloodshot, his eyes glanced at me quickly, then back to his bacon and eggs. He ate with concentration, and his wife at the stove didn't look at me, didn't speak. She was clammed up tight as though desperately trying to keep a hold on her emotions. There was no sign of Kennie.

The smell of coffee, and the bacon frying, were the only good things about the kitchen that morning and I ate in a silence that was tense with unspoken words. Edith Culpin was in her dressing gown, a shapeless cotton print, and sitting there, drinking her coffee, her large greenish eyes fixed on her husband, she suddenly banged her cup down. ‘Kennie's gone.' Her voice trembled.

He finished his coffee and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Time that boy grew up.' And then he looked at her. ‘If you hadn't dropped your second, you wouldn't have spoilt him the way you have.'

They stared at each other a moment, hostile and without understanding. Then Edith Culpin began to cry, the tears dripping from her tired eyes, soundless.

We left for the Palace almost immediately, Culpin driving in silence. After he had parked the ute, he didn't get out, but turned to me and said, ‘I bin thinking, about this Golden Soak. You gonna mention it to Ferdie?'

‘No point till I know what the analysis is.'

‘But if it's good and the mine comes up for sale –' There was a crafty, eager look in his bloodshot eyes. ‘I remember the old Comet. That was a de Bernalese mine, one of the few good ones he ever had. Up the track from Marble Bar, just beyond Chinaman's Pool. I was a youngster at the time. Went up there to make my fortune and ended up serving behind the bar at the Ironclad.' He was smiling to himself, the eagerness still there so that for a moment he looked a younger man. ‘That's how I know about de Bernales and his Commonwealth Finance.' He gripped my arm, suddenly urgent. ‘My cut of the Blackridge deal will be through in a week or two, and this Golden Soak mine's unsafe, Kennie says. I always wanted to go back to the Pilbara an' if we could get it cheap –' He left it at that, apparently content that he'd made his position clear. ‘You think about it, eh?' And he climbed out and went into the hotel.

Ten minutes later we were all four of us at the airfield. And the last thing Kadek said to me before he boarded the plane was, ‘You put half of that two thousand in Lone Minerals. But don't wait. Do it today.' He was relaxed, almost jaunty. ‘I'll tell you when to sell. And keep in touch.' He handed me a card. ‘There's my phone number. Ring me in Perth if there's anything urgent. Otherwise a weekly report by letter.'

We drove back by a different route, past a big caravan park, washing listless on the line and the heat already heavy. ‘I'll be in the Pal midday,' Culpin said as he dropped me off at Petersen Geophysics. ‘We can talk about it then over a beer.' The hide of the man was almost unbelievable.

Petersen was already in his office. ‘Is all right, your analysis.' He gave me a toothy grin and a heavy slap on the back. ‘Gold 5¾ ounces average. Is about what I t'ink. The antimony is not so good, more variable – 2.1 per cent, 3.4, and on the third sample 0.2 per cent. Okay?' He handed me the analyst's typed report, together with my samples, and I paid him his fee from the wad of notes Kadek had given me. ‘Now you go t'ink about what you do next, eh?' He seemed genuinely pleased that the results were good. ‘Also, I haf a letter for you – is delivered by Chris's son Kennie this morning.'