A Far Country

by John Fletcher

  Jason could imagine it only too well: the darkness, the choking water, the futile screams echoing within the rocky chamber, the terrifying certainty that rescue would never come.

  Fear destroyed his pride. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said.

  Stefan laughed. ‘You’re scared.’

  It was true but even now Jason was not prepared to admit it. ‘You said yourself we can’t go any lower.’

  Stefan’s eyes reflected the candlelight, their expression unreadable. ‘I spend hours down here, sometimes.’

  ‘Doesn’t your father mind?’

  ‘He doesn’t know. He’s too busy.’

  ‘Don’t any of the miners tell him you come down here?’ Jason asked.

  Stefan laughed scornfully. ‘He doesn’t talk to them. Besides, they hate him as much as I do.’

  ‘Why do you hate him?’

  ‘He cheats. Me, everybody. He’ll cheat you, too, you give him half a chance.’

  He turned and led the way back through the workings until they reached the area where the miners were clearing the stone that had been brought down by the blasting. What had first seemed hell now welcomed them like home. Surrounded by the scurrying figures, the shadows that leapt and pranced across the candlelit walls, Jason’s fear evaporated. Stefan did not stop and Jason followed until they reached the main shaft down which they had entered the mine.

  They looked up. Far above, daylight blinked.

  ‘This is where they have the most accidents,’ Stefan said. ‘After a twelve-hour shift the men are tired. Sometimes someone falls.’

  ‘What happens then?’

  Stefan laughed. ‘It depends how far they fall.’

  He swung himself out over the drop and began to swarm up the ladder. A heartbeat and Jason followed him. As he climbed higher fear returned but above his head the rectangle of light grew steadily until at last, scarcely out of breath, he reached the surface.

  The sunlight struck him like a blow, the breeze smelt indescribably sweet, the sounds and movement of the living world were all around him. He had come back out of the dead earth.

  ‘Thank God,’ he said aloud, not caring if Stefan heard him. He flopped on his back on the warm grass at the side of the shaft.

  Yet something other than relief remained: the memory of the excitement he had felt at the idea that men with knowledge and imagination could claw riches out of the earth. It was a feeling he knew he would never forget.

  He had found what he wanted to do with his life.

  SIXTEEN

  ‘My province,’ Lang said. ‘No discussion!’

  The three men had met as always in the drawing room of Lang’s house.

  ‘We can guarantee nothing,’ Penrose said.

  Gavin stared them down. ‘Consider it from my point of view. You say there’s rich ground below the fifteen-fathom level but you can’t show it to me because of the water. I don’t know if you’re telling me the truth or not.’

  ‘Neither do we,’ Penrose said. ‘That’s the point.’

  ‘You have seen the reports,’ Lang pointed out stiffly. ‘You know as much about the mine as we do.’

  Gavin hesitated. Did he trust these men enough to let them have five thousand of his hard-earned pounds to play with? Did he trust their experience, their instinct, above all their integrity? Did he trust himself to trust them?

  Ultimately nothing else mattered.

  ‘Perhaps I can say this,’ Penrose said. ‘We aren’t in the cheating business. Mr Lang’s other interests are all in this part of the colony. I’ve got Wheal Sennen, a piece down the road. Neither of us is going anywhere. We can’t afford to cheat you, that’s the size of it. Lose your reputation in this game, you lose everything.’

  It was the truth. Gavin recognised it yet still hesitated.

  Lang stroked his mutton chop whiskers. ‘The first time we met I warned you that mining is a risky business. Risk to the miners’ lives; risk to the financiers’ capital. The rewards are high but the risks are high also. I am sorry if that is too strong for your stomach but there is nothing either of us can do to help you.’

  Lang’s words had the ring of truth, too, yet it was typical of the man that in his mouth even sound advice sounded like an insult.

  There was nothing more that any of them could say.

  Gavin stood. ‘I shall let you know my decision by morning.’

  For the twentieth time Gavin turned restlessly in the broken-backed bed.

  Five thousand pounds. Enough to add five thousand sheep to his flocks. Enough to buy four thousand extra acres plus grazing rights to eleven thousand more and still leave him with a thousand pounds for additional stock. Five thousand pounds.

  He turned again, arms and body fighting the thin blanket.

  The same five thousand pounds would buy a quarter share in Neu Preussen mine, with all the risks of a mining venture thrown in, all the frustrations of having to deal with the stiff-necked Walter Lang. Lang would continue to own fifty percent of the mine, Penrose the other quarter.

  He would be days’ travel away. It would be impossible to keep an eye on his investment, even if he had understood what he was looking at. It was idiocy even to think about it. Yet if things worked out it would provide him in the space of only a few years with a return far above anything he could hope to receive from his land holdings. It would spread the risk so that if anything went wrong at Whitby Downs he would still have a measure of financial security.

  Twist and twist again, brain seething.

  At his side Asta said, ‘I think you should invest the money.’

  His immediate reaction was irritation. ‘I am grateful for your advice. Perhaps you can also tell me how I keep an eye on things when I am so far away?’

  She turned in the bed to look at him. A gleam of light from the starry sky outside the window shone in her eyes. ‘Jason will represent you.’

  He stared at her, thunderstruck. ‘I daresay he knows even less about mining than I do.’

  ‘Lang could train him. That would be part of your agreement. At least he has been down the mine. Lang’s son took him.’

  ‘He told you so?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A mine is a place of work, not somewhere to go exploring. I shall speak to him in the morning.’

  Asta placed her hand on his in the darkness. ‘Please don’t.’

  ‘Why not?’ Gavin was exasperated by her growing habit of telling him what to do.

  ‘Because he told me in confidence.’

  ‘A confidence you broke.’

  ‘My dear, I have a loyalty to you, too.’ She paused. ‘It seems that Jason was fascinated by what he saw.’

  Gavin grunted. ‘Extraordinary what some people like.’

  ‘But don’t you see? If he likes mining …’

  He thought about Asta’s suggestion. A youth, little more than a child, whom he barely knew and had no reason to trust, raised first in the slums of Hobart, then by a tribe of aborigines …

  ‘Lang would run rings round him.’

  ‘I don’t think even Walter Lang would find it easy to run rings around Jason.’

  From outside the window came the sound of drays passing. The creaking wheels, the volleys of yelled oaths and crackle of stock whips rose slowly to a crescendo and as slowly diminished.

  ‘But what does he know?’

  ‘If he is interested he will soon learn.’

  Without conscious movement, they had drawn closer together in the bed. Gavin could smell Asta’s hair, feel the warmth of her body beneath the bed-clothes.

  The closeness, the hint of intimacy, made him uncomfortable. Recently they had drawn apart, no question about it. She had changed and that had affected their relationship. Perhaps he had changed too. Determination, will, did change people, not always for the better, but without them he would have no hope of achieving what he had set himself to achieve.

  He couldn’t bear lying there a moment longer. He got out of the bed and thrust his
legs into his breeches.

  ‘I need to walk,’ he said. ‘I need to think. Alone.’

  She neither spoke nor moved; he guessed she felt the same need as he to put space between them. He finished dressing and went out.

  Outside a misty rain was falling. Up on the hillside an engine clanked hoarsely. Gavin walked through the darkness. The rain beaded his face and beard, ran moist fingers inside the collar of his coat. Another dray passed, the drover hunched deep into his coat and ignoring Gavin’s greeting. He walked until the last buildings were behind him and he came out in open country. He climbed towards the summit of a grass-covered hill. It was a long way to the top yet as he walked he was conscious not so much of distance or time as of a sense of loneliness that increased with every step he took. Near the crest of the hill he stumbled over an outcrop of rock and remembered what Lang had told him, that eight years earlier Dutton had discovered the Kapunda reef by coming across such an outcrop bearing traces of green copper ore. From such findings millions were made …

  Cloud covered the sky, an unseasonably chilly breeze brought tears to his eyes. He looked out at the blackness of the surrounding countryside; no lights, no hint of people, nothing. He wondered where he was going in his life and why.

  From the first he had been concerned about Asta’s unhealthy obsession with Jason. She had called him her gift from the sea, a hundred times Gavin had wished he had never come into their lives, yet without a future, a generation to inherit Whitby Downs, he supposed their lives would have no meaning.

  Jason was the future: the only future they were likely to have. Perhaps, if he really did have an interest in mining, Kapunda might offer a useful niche for him: useful both for him and themselves. And perhaps, after Jason’s help in saving Asta’s and Alison’s lives, might he not owe him as much, if he wanted it as Asta seemed to think?

  As for Asta … If he loved her (surely he did?) why hadn’t he put his arms around her? Were they destined to drift ever further apart because neither of them was willing to make an effort to prevent it? It was a pretty damning indictment, if so.

  From the valley beneath him came the thin, mournful shriek of the mine whistle. Today he would have to give Lang and Penrose his answer. Without someone on the spot to represent him he would never dare invest so much money in a project he did not altogether understand. Asta, Jason, Whitby Downs, now the Neu Preussen mine … A dynasty in the making. But it would ultimately mean nothing, without the next generation to inherit it. We build not only for ourselves but the future, he thought. Without that, there is no point.

  Jason meant far more to Asta than he ever would to himself. Why then had she suggested Jason should come here to work, so far from Whitby Downs?

  He knew the answer even as his mind formulated the question; by persuading him to bring Jason into their affairs she was creating a family unit that in time would establish their line.

  Yet for the future to be significant the present had to mean something, too. All their plans would be pointless without that.

  He moved restlessly, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets against the cold. He identified what it was he had felt as he came up here, what he felt now. It was need. Need for a unity in his life. Need for Asta. Need for love. He thought perhaps, with luck, she needed it, too. He—they—needed to be made whole again.

  ‘Pray God,’ he said aloud to the misty darkness, the dagger-bladed wind. ‘Pray God.’

  *

  After Gavin had gone out Asta lay for a long time, eyes staring sightlessly at darkness.

  He had been right; they both needed to think what they were doing. By getting up and going out he had demonstrated what she had lacked: the courage to admit to herself that when it came to the important decisions in their lives they were better apart.

  By his actions, she thought, he has done what I could never have done for myself. He has acknowledged that, whatever we may have been to each other in the past, we are no longer one.

  She was grateful—or at least hoped that in time she would be grateful—for being forced to face that fact.

  When we get back to the run, she thought, there are many things I shall be able to do to make my life worthwhile. Even if Gavin will not let Jason take a hand in his affairs—and he won’t, I see that clearly now—I will still be able to do something for him, to help build the future, if he will let me. Otherwise why are we alive at all? Simply to be: she could not bear to think such a thing. To be and then to cease … She would never see that as a worthwhile objective.

  The first thing she would do would be to arrange for Jason to be educated. She would make him belong. God knew how, but she would manage it somehow. I shall be content.

  Lying there she told herself it would be easy, knew it was not. Nothing lessened the ache she felt, the sense that by getting up and going out in the middle of the night Gavin had drawn a line under everything that had happened in their shared lives until now.

  ‘And I let him go …’

  Distressed, she uttered the words aloud to the dark-blanketed room, yet did not know why the idea troubled her so much. If it was the right thing for him to have done, why should she feel such emptiness at what his action implied?

  It would be light soon. Gavin would make his decision. He would invest in the mine or not. They would return to Whitby Downs. Life, one day following another day following another day, would continue.

  Dear God, she thought, I cannot bear it.

  She heard the building creak, creak again. The door opened.

  ‘Who is it?’ Voice nervous despite herself.

  ‘I’m back.’

  He came to the bed, groped, took her warm hands in his cold ones. The room was too dark to see anything but in her mind’s eye she could see him: face grave, yellow hair swept back.

  ‘I have come back,’ he repeated.

  She knew he meant more than that he had just returned from a walk. ‘Have you?’ she asked. ‘Have you?’

  She felt a wave of emotion so intense she thought it might carry her away. To save herself she held out her arms to him, groping blindly; he, somehow seeing or sensing her movement in the darkness, put his arms around her, cold strong arms about her soft warmth, and she felt herself dissolve, melting into him. Tears ran down her face, moisture down the inside of her thighs, everything breathless and yielding. Her mouth sought his, her arms enfolded him, hands clutching ribbed muscle as hard as stone, he was naked in the bed with her, fire and stone united, he was looking down at her as he penetrated her, she biting her lip to prevent herself crying out, hips, thighs, body writhing sinuously beneath him.

  She said, breath tangled with the words, ‘I cannot believe you’re back.’

  He paused. ‘I cannot believe I went.’

  The searching, the probing, the mingled breath and cries, the future charted by the shared movements of their bodies.

  ‘Now and forever,’ she cried into his mouth as her first climax erupted.

  ‘Now and forever …’

  She came again, a third time, her voice a breathless echo, a sigh of fulfilment, the rounding of their refound unity.

  ‘We do not have time for such things!’ Lang slapped his hand impatiently on the surface of the mahogany table. ‘Time is money, as you know very well!’

  ‘That is my condition for investing in your mine,’ Gavin told him.

  ‘That you will nominate a representative to look after your interests in this town?’ Angrily Lang repeated Gavin’s proposition. ‘We can represent your interests as well as anyone, I suppose. Better, I should say.’

  ‘I want someone independent.’

  ‘This is a slap in the face to us. It tells the world you do not trust us.’

  ‘It is a matter of business.’ Gavin had had enough of Lang and his bullying bluster. ‘Take it or leave it,’ he said.

  ‘Perhaps we should leave it.’

  ‘Please yourself.’

  ‘And who would this … independent representative be?’
r />   ‘I shall tell you within a month.’

  ‘A month is too long.’

  But the flame of Lang’s anger had died to sullenness and Gavin knew he had won. He thought the time had come to raise the other matter he had in his mind. He had little time for the church but thought that Asta, though not religious herself, might welcome its presence in their area as a sign that civilisation was on the increase.

  ‘The other evening you mentioned a Lutheran pastor who wants to minister to the natives in our area.’

  ‘Reverend Laubsch? What about him?’

  ‘If he likes he can come with us when we go back.’

  ‘Why do you suggest it?’ The lode of suspicion never ran far beneath Walter Lang’s surface.

  ‘It makes more sense for him to accompany us than travel alone.’

  Lang pondered, looking for hidden motives but finding none.

  Grudgingly he said, ‘We could perhaps suggest it to him.’

  ‘It is pretty country,’ Asta said.

  Riding alongside the waggon Jason turned in his saddle to look at the view. She was right. In front of them the ground fell away in a series of gentle waves until it reached the floor of a broad valley three or four miles across. On the far side of the valley the setting sun cast ribbons of golden light down the eastern face of another line of hills that barred the western horizon. Ripple by ripple the hills rose in a series of purple steps against the sky. Shortly before the hills an undulating band of green showed where a river wound peacefully along the valley floor. Here and there stands of gum trees gleamed white as bones in the last rays of the sunlight.

  They had left Kapunda eight miles behind them and were planning to camp for the night on the banks of the river where there was a crossing and an inn. They had stayed there on the way south and Jason was looking forward to what was likely to be their last night in civilisation before they headed north on their long journey back to Whitby Downs.

  ‘Pretty enough,’ Jason agreed.

  Asta smiled coquettishly at him from beneath the brim of the bonnet she wore against the sun and dust.