Tourmaline

by Randolph Stow

  ‘Don’t think there’s much chance. But I can’t make her out, and that’s a fact. She could do anything.’

  ‘You’re not wrong,’ Kestrel said. ‘Well, sit down, for Christ’s sake, you’re making me tired.’

  So Byrne sat himself on the edge of the bed; light filling the craters and hollows of his face, making him look harmless again.

  ‘I treated you rough,’ Kestrel brought himself to admit.

  ‘Forget it,’ Byrne said.

  ‘I’ve got a temper. You know that.’

  ‘Sure, I know it. Better than anyone else does, I’d say.’

  Kestrel made no answer to that. And he lay for some minutes in silence, not looking at Byrne but staring at the ceiling, while the room filled with peculiar tensions. Although his mask was blank, something was boiling in him. He tried to control it, closing his eyes.

  But Byrne, sitting there, miserably, studying his own hands resting on his thighs, knew about it. And he said, without looking up: ‘Why do you hate me, Kes? What did I do, and when did I do it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Kestrel said.

  Byrne gave a broken laugh. ‘What you mean is, I’m the sort of bloke people just naturally can’t stick. There doesn’t have to be any other reason. Is that it?’

  He turned his head to look at the face on the pillow. He was resigned. Abject is the word that cannot be avoided when speaking of poor Byrnie.

  And Kestrel, shifting his shoulders impatiently, burst out: ‘Why’ve you got to be so flicking humble?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Christ, there you go again.’

  ‘It’s a nervous habit,’ Byrne said.

  ‘Can’t you fight me back, sometimes?’

  ‘Too late to start now.’

  ‘Listen,’ Kestrel said, urgently. ‘Listen. I can’t help myself. If you go crawling around me, I can’t help it, I’ve got to kick you. And listen, I’m getting scared. I’m dangerous. Someday I’m going to do you an injury. You’d better stay away. I warn you.’

  He was breathing hard. And Byrne’s face was turned away, watching his hands, his mouth stretched tight by some emotion or other.

  ‘Are you listening to me?’

  ‘Yair,’ said Byrne.

  ‘You got nothing to say?’

  ‘I want to die,’ Byrne said, with a laugh that came like blood from a wound. His eyes were blind.

  ‘Keep away from me,’ Kestrel said.

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘It isn’t my fault. I didn’t make myself.’

  ‘You made me,’ Byrne said, softly.

  But Kestrel had no reply for that. So he lay there, Byrne sat there, in separate silences, and the lamp burned on, and in the dimness the great bulks of wardrobes and dressing-table and chest-of-drawers against the walls stubbornly endured. There are these moments, when the duration of objects appears positive, when it comes to seem an act of indomitable will.

  At last Kestrel asked: ‘Where is she?’

  ‘In the store,’ Byrne said.

  ‘I mean, where’s she sleeping?’

  ‘In that back room, where Mike was.’

  ‘I’ll go and talk to her. It might be the last time.’

  ‘You ought to lie down, with that head.’

  ‘I’m all right,’ Kestrel said. ‘You go home and sleep that liquor off.’

  And the lamp burned on; the furniture endured.

  ‘Well, so long,’ said Byrne, in a trance; and got up and went out, through the lightless bar.

  The window of Deborah’s room was open, and the moon shone through it, making black valleys and snow-capped ranges of the white coverlet under which she lay; striping the white-washed corrugated iron of the walls, glittering in the cracked glaze of the rose-adorned basin and ewer. The old curtains hung still. Then Kestrel, putting one leg over the sill, disturbed them.

  She was awake, and sat up. Her face, in the moonlight, was quite serene.

  ‘Go home,’ she said.

  He hissed at her. ‘Keep quiet, girl.’

  ‘I don’t care who hears,’ she said; but she did keep her voice down, and in fact didn’t speak at all while he was making his way across the room and sitting himself down on the bed. The moon shone all the while in her deep eyes. Two moons. He looked at them, glowing there in her calm face.

  ‘They’ve been coming one after another,’ he said, ‘and telling me you’ve gone for good.’

  She said nothing.

  ‘What do you say?’

  ‘It’s true,’ she said, indifferently.

  ‘You don’t like me now?’

  ‘I never did like you,’ she said. ‘I loved you for a while, but that was different.’

  ‘If you’d tell me what way you want me to be, I might manage it. I could change, maybe.’

  She sighed, to show her patience. ‘It’s just you I don’t like. You’re so—mean.’

  ‘What way? Because I hit Byrnie?’

  ‘Oh, what’s the good of talking?’ she protested. ‘Yes, it’s that, partly. But mostly not anything you do. Just that you don’t do anything.’

  ‘I get it,’ he said. ‘I should go divining.’

  ‘Or something. Anything.’

  ‘Well, I might,’ he said, darkly watching her.

  ‘It won’t make any difference to me. I know you now.’

  That made him angry. ‘You,’ he said, ‘know me. Don’t kid yourself.’

  And she laughed, without a sound, showing her white teeth to the moon.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, reaching out and holding her by the shoulders. ‘Listen,’ he said; and then would not go on, but bent his black head and hid his face against her neck.

  She said, without moving: ‘Go home.’

  ‘I love you,’ he said, into her skin. ‘Love you, Deb, love you.’

  She pushed him away with a sudden thrust, and got out of the bed, and stood for a moment in the middle of the floor, in the flooding moonlight, as if she were thinking. She was naked, all gleam and shadow, rusty steel and impenetrable darkness, cool as quartz.

  ‘What are you trying to do to me?’ he whispered, half-sprawled on the bed.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, reaching behind the door for a dressing-gown, of yellowish colour, which she put on. ‘I can’t sleep while you’re here, that’s all.’ And suddenly she was gone, pulling the door behind her, and he heard the rusty key grind in the lock.

  ‘Goodbye, Kes,’ she said from the other side. Then there was a faint whisper of her bare feet going away, and he was abandoned.

  And the moonlight streamed on, breaking the sill of the open window like a dam. That was the way home, the only way he could go. He was alone again.

  His head banged like an engine. He groaned aloud, burying his face in the pillow, which smelled of her, sweetly.

  TEN

  The news of Deborah’s desertion was soon known (news always was) to Charlie Yandana; and it was he, lounging on the bench by my door in the early morning, who passed it on to me. He looked rather pleased, I noticed.

  I remarked: ‘You don’t seem to like Kes.’

  ‘You know anyone that like Kes?’ he asked, with his reserved white grin.

  ‘Only Byrnie.’

  ‘Aw, Byrnie,’ Charlie said. ‘He kidding himself.’

  I had to admit that this was probably true. But all my thought, at that time, was of Kestrel. What was he doing? What would he do? Charlie could not tell; and I was seized, while I thought of it, by an obscure unease, a dread, almost, as of something about to happen that might touch all of us. These fears are not rare with me, but I am nevertheless disturbed on that account. And so I couldn’t rest until I had seen for myself how and where and in what mood Kestrel was.

  I went down the deserted road to the deserted hotel. The front door of the bar was closed, and not only closed but bolted, an unheard-of thing. My heavy knocking brought no response, although Kestrel’s dog was wakened by it, and came round from the shade on the far side of the building
to enquire into my business.

  ‘Where could he go?’ I remarked to the dog. And to find out I made my way to the back, and passed through the narrow alley beside the garage, into the blind-eyed and staring courtyard.

  He was sitting in the kitchen. I could see him there, at the table, through the open door. The dog saw him too, and bounded ahead of me and pressed against his leg, ingratiatingly.

  He looked up at me as I loomed in the doorframe. Those pale grey eyes of his were almost white; uncanny. He disturbed me, looking at me so neutrally, so incurious, as if I had been inanimate.

  ‘I’ve heard the news,’ I said.

  He said nothing; just went on looking at me in that cool and (I suddenly realized) slightly ironic way. I came forward and sat myself down at the table.

  ‘Well,’ I said, at length, ‘I don’t suppose you were surprised.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It was coming.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘Why should you care?’

  He was looking down, bored by me, at the paper in front of him, on which he was engaged in arithmetic of some kind, perhaps bookkeeping. I put my hard cracked hand over his, lying beside the paper.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  He looked up, surprised. Even softened, I fancy, for a moment. Because he said, without mockery: ‘That’s nice of you.’

  ‘But I think Deborah was right.’

  ‘You can think that, if you like.’

  ‘You’ll be lonely.’

  ‘I’m not the sort of bloke,’ he said, ‘who gets lonely.’

  ‘D’you think she’ll never come back?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say never,’ he said, meeting my gaze with sudden silver-eyed candour, ‘but something’s going to change before she does.’

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘What has she said to you?’

  ‘You want to know?’ he asked, with his chin on his hand, regarding me. And when I nodded he began to tell me, at length and in detail, and I found myself plunged without warning into their life together, back to the time before the diviner appeared; into all the ebb and flow of their resentments and their exhilaration, into all that concerned them, up till the last parting on the previous night. And as I listened to him I began to have a good deal of pity for him, because he was the man he was, trapped in his selfhood as the flies in the bar were trapped in their small cages; but also I began to fear him, I began to hate him, and I could not explain to myself why, and I began to feel a measure of guilt on this account, since he was being so candid with me, and confiding in me, as if he trusted my judgement. I was afraid of him, and I could not meet his eyes, which were so unusually honest.

  When he had finished, I brought myself to say that Deborah’s revulsion of feeling might soon pass. But I couldn’t believe it; certainly I couldn’t hope it.

  He looked at me with a spark of something like contempt, and picked up his pencil, and began to tap with it on the paper, making little dots.

  ‘What will you do?’ I asked, when this small sound in the silence became too trying.

  ‘I’m going to give a party,’ he said, with a faint bent smile.

  ‘A party,’ I said. ‘In Tourmaline. Good Lord.’

  ‘It’s the right night for it, with the truck coming tomorrow.’

  ‘And who will you ask?’

  ‘Everyone. Including the camp.’

  ‘This is some wild scheme you’re hatching,’ I said.

  And he said: ‘Maybe.’

  A small flake of paint floated down from the ceiling, on to the table, between us. He broke it up, idly, with his pencil point.

  ‘I’m scared of you,’ I said, surprising myself as I said it. But it was true. There was a tightness in me, an internal trembling, that might soon communicate itself to my hands. And he would only smile, gouging the tabletop with his pencil. ‘I don’t understand you,’ I said. He went on stabbing the soft pine surface. ‘Stop it,’ I said, taking the pencil from him, and standing, my hands on the table, bending over him, while he looked up at me with his thin and pale-eyed grin. ‘There’s something wrong. There’s something wrong.’

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘But what can you do?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Why don’t you lock me up,’ he said, softly. ‘You’re the Law.’

  ‘Ah, for how long?’

  He shrugged. And a few more scraps of paint descended, lying like snowflakes on his hair and on mine, while I stared at him, thinking: Something wrong. There’s something wrong.

  He began when the dark began. Every lamp and lantern the hotel had ever possessed was filled, and wicks were made, where necessary, out of old rags. Every door was open, every window glowed. All the bare bedrooms were lit up, with their horrors of carpeting dust, of flaking paint, of rust-red sagging bedsprings. God knows what he meant by it. But it was painful to me to come again, after so many years, into the room that had once been a kind of private lounge, and to see the dreadful armchairs puff clouds of dust as bodies flopped upon them, and the nests of dead insects in vases and smokers’ stands, and the curtains gently disintegrating at the brush of a passing shoulder. Let me confess it, I am half in love with ruin. But it is hard, it is too hard to bear, without due warning.

  Outside, by the war memorial, a bonfire was burning. Charlie Yandana and his brother Gentle Jesus had built it, and people came continually from the camp with roots and branches to feed it, and stood to watch, black and spidery against the blaze. The white store was sunrise-red in that light, and so was Tom, observing from his doorway. But Deborah and Mary were inside, in the green sitting-room, with the door locked.

  ‘What this for?’ Charlie Yandana asked, prowling barefoot in the empty dining room.

  ‘It’s a party,’ Byrne said, with a bottle in his hand. ‘Yippee. It’s a party.’

  He lifted the bottle to his mouth, and swigged, and coughed.

  ‘Give me some of that,’ Charlie said.

  ‘Get some for yourself,’ Byrne said. ‘In the kitchen. Or the bar. Take a bottle. Take a few.’

  ‘Give me that,’ said Charlie. And he took it.

  ‘You looking for a fight?’

  ‘Yair,’ said Charlie, ‘I’m looking for a fight. There gunna be some fighting tonight, by Jesus.’

  ‘You watch yourself.’

  ‘You not gunna hurt nobody,’ said Charlie, ‘poor old Byrnie.’

  He wandered away with the bottle, towards the bonfire. And Byrne went out to the kitchen for another.

  In the lounge Kestrel lolled in a dust-impregnated chair.

  ‘What’s this for?’ I asked him.

  ‘That’s what I’m wondering,’ said Rock, with a bottle in his hand.

  ‘Not for anything,’ said Kestrel. ‘Just a small party for my friends.’

  ‘Why aren’t you drinking?’

  ‘I don’t any more,’ he said. ‘My young cousin out there’s a pretty solemn warning.’

  ‘That’s no reason,’ I said.

  ‘It runs in the family,’ he assured me, ‘like wooden legs. I’ve got to be careful.’

  I was not deceived. ‘You’re trying to wreck Tourmaline. To start fights going.’

  ‘There could be cheaper ways of doing it,’ he said.

  ‘Then why? What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m saying goodbye to the licensed victualling trade,’ he said. ‘This is it, mates. There’ll be no more grog in Tourmaline.’

  Outside, by the fire, an argument had started already. A woman from the camp was shouting at another, the wife of Pete Macaroni or Bill the Dill. And then Byrne’s guitar began, and his voice with it, singing:

  ‘New Holland is a barren place,

  in it there grows no grain,

  nor any habitation

  wherein for to remain…’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Rock said. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Kestrel. ‘Nothing at all.’

/>   ‘And how will you live?’

  ‘I’m a rich man. I’m the gaping mouth you all feed with gold.’

  ‘Is this what Deborah wants?’ I asked him, squarely.

  ‘I don’t know what she wants,’ he said. ‘And for the time being I don’t care.’

  ‘But the sugar canes are plenty

  and the wine drops from the tree…’

  ‘That I can’t believe,’ I said. And he twisted his mouth at me, sardonically.

  ‘The lowlands of New Holland

  have torn my love from me.’

  ‘I get the feeling,’ Rock said, ‘that I don’t know what’s happening. And what are they doing out there?’

  The windows shone red with the firelight outside, and shadows moved across them occasionally.

  ‘Celebrating,’ Kestrel said, ‘while they can. Why don’t you? She’ll be a dry town tomorrow.’

  Then Charlie Yandana began one of his dirges, drowning out Byrne.

  ‘I’ll go,’ I said, ‘and see—what’s happening.’ Because his presence, Kestrel’s, was stifling me. I went out into the hall, where the big front door, so seldom opened, was standing wide, and the blaze by the obelisk luridly lit what little there was to light: a leather sofa, a spidery table holding a jardiniere, two coloured photographs of race-horses, slightly damaged by insects. There was a crowd around the fire. Even old Gloria was there, sitting quietly on the ground. Charlie went wailing on, squatted beside the war memorial. And Byrne, on a step of it, above him, had ceased to compete with him, vocally, and was trying to accompany him on the guitar. Everyone, as far as I could see, had a bottle, and some seemed half drunk already, more because they wished to be than because they had, at that early stage, consumed much liquor.

  Tom was standing in his doorway, red with firelight. I went to him.

  He looked rather solemn.

  ‘You don’t feel like joining in?’ I asked him.

  ‘What’s he up to?’ he wondered, abstracted.

  ‘He says it’s the last liquor we’ll ever see in Tourmaline.’

  ‘If I believed him,’ Tom said, ‘I might be in it.’

  ‘But you don’t trust him?’

  ‘He couldn’t lie straight in bed,’ said Tom.

  ‘He’s changed,’ I said. ‘Changing. Something’s going to happen.’