Hammond Innes - Golden Soak

Talking to Prophecy was like panning for gold in the muddy waters of a creek in spate. Her real name was Felicity Clark. She had been born in Leytonstone, north-east London, and had come out to Australia with her husband in 1946. He had been badly shot up in the battle for the Falaise Gap and doctors advised him to move to a drier climate. ‘So we picked on the Bar and Christ that was dry enough. The air was so thin Nobby couldn’t hardly breathe in the dry with half his lung shot away.’ He had died five years ago leaving her with a Land-Rover and a caravan and not much else. ‘A fella don’t make his fortune working on the roads, an’ all the dust — it’s a wonder he lasted as long as he did.’

From Marble Bar they had moved to Nullagine and when he wasn’t driving his grader he had spent his time fossicking around old prospects. ‘Always reckoned he’d strike it lucky one day. Might’ve done, too, if he’d lived. Knew a lot Nobby did, and when he kicked the bucket I just sort of carried on, living bush and pegging the odd claim.’ She had a small pension and when Wolli had gone into trouble, stealing tools from a mining outfit up near Bonnie Creek, she had taken his sister Martha to live with her in the caravan. ‘Reck’n it was the best thing I ever done. She knew things about this country I’d never’ve nutted out for myself — ‘bout plants an’ animals an’ how to live bush. Never knew a girl with such sharp eyes, and then by Jesus if she doesn’t spot the glitter on a claim of mine. I’d never’ve seen it meself, not in a million years. But she spotted it. That’s when I began calling her Little Brighteyes. Wouldn’t take any money, not a penny, but she’s got a bangle I bet no other gin’s got from Darwin right down to Esperance.’

All this was mixed up with a spate of gossip about local people and their affairs. She forgot about the cards. She even forgot about her drink. I was somebody new to whom she could tell her story all over again. And I was fresh out from England. I think that was important to her. She wasn’t home-sick. She had been out here too long. But there was an under-current of nostalgia. And I sat there and let her words wash over me remembering what I thought was relevant as I drank another beer and had some food. Then, when I had finished my steak and chips, she said, ‘Okay, we’ll go and see if Little Brighteyes is home. She’s shacked up with a man from Grafton Downs, so weekdays she don’t know what to do with herself.’ And she added, ‘Martha can tell you a thing or two about Golden Soak. But she won’t go near the place, not her — not even for Wolli.’

‘How did you know I was interested in Golden Soak?’ I asked her.

She had got to her feet and she stood looking down at me, a big, tough woman, her eyes bright as beads. ‘Emilio was delivering stuff here couple days back. Wasn’t it you that wired Ed Garrety’s girl to meet you?’ She was smiling, the creases in her dark face deepening. ‘There ain’t much to talk about here in Nullagine, an’ yuh being a mining man — bush telegraph you might say. Well, yuh gonna sit on your arse there all day?’ And she turned and strode out into the sunlight, moving with a gipsy swing to her skirt and light on her feet despite her bulk.

Looking back on it, I am reminded of Big Bill Garrety’s postscript to the discovery of Golden Soak — the beginning of all my troubles. That day was the beginning of my troubles, and it was the gipsy woman Prophecy who was the cause of it. Whether she had the gift of second sight or not I don’t know, but she was like a witch, and within twenty-four hours, riding the broomstick of her curiosity, I had become so caught up in the past of Jarra Jarra that nothing else has seemed to matter very much since then.

‘Your name’s Alec Falls, right?’

I nodded, the sun beating down on my bare head, the dry air breathless.

‘Then we’ll go to the post office first.’ She turned to the left, towards the petrol pump which was backed by a general store. ‘There’s a telegram for you. Don’t reckon it’ll have gone out yet.’

The telegram was from Kadek and had been despatched from Kalgoorlie: NEED YOUR ADVICE MINING DEAL. FEE AND EXPENSES BUT ESSENTIAL YOU ARRIVE HERE MONDAY MORNING. CONTACT CHRIS CULPIN PALACE BAR. I stood there for a moment, considering it. ‘Well?’ Prophecy asked. ‘You heading straight for Kalgoorlie or you wanta see Wolli’s sister first?’

It was now Thursday. ‘I’ll hitch a ride in the morning,’ I said. ‘But it’s Wolli I want to see.’

She nodded and crossed the road to a track that led up behind the wash-house. We found the black woman stretched out on a bed on the verandah of a dilapidated corrugated iron house halfway up the hill. She was small and bony, jet black, with strong hands and very thin wrists and breasts mat sagged under the bright cotton shift that was all she seemed to be wearing. In repose her face was ugly, the nose broad over a wide, big-lipped mouth, the brow so low that she looked as though she had been dropped on her head as a child. She got up from her chair on the verandah, a broad smile of welcome, and with the smile her whole face seemed to light up, the quickness of her movements suggesting extraordinary vitality, her whole body instantly and intensely alive. And those big dark eyes of hers bright with pleasure.

She gave us beer, cold from the icebox, and Prophecy talked to her in her own tongue, which was deep from the throat. Abruptly the happiness vanished from her face and her eyes became wary as she stole furtive glances in my direction. The conversation between the two of them went on for a long time. In the end Prophecy turned to me and said, ‘You know she was born there and worked on the station. Wolli left, of course, but she stayed on.’ She paused — as though that had some special significance. ‘Ed’s wife had gone by then, see.’

‘Gone?’

‘Nobody told you?’ Her quick brown eyes gleamed. ‘No, ‘course not. Ed wouldn’t want to be reminded of that. He married just after the war began — had to, they say — and then, when he came home on embarkation leave, there was this feller from the Ivanhoe station. He took a stock whip to him and rode him off the place. Should have larruped her instead, if you ask me.’

‘When was Janet born then?’

‘After the war. After Ed came back. Big Bill Garrety was still alive, see, and she was scared of him by all accounts. But then this fella Harrison turns up again — caught a packet in Normandy about the same time Nobby got his — and now they’re living down in Perth and Ed’s never been quite the same since.’

So Janet had hardly known her mother and, since Henry’s death, she and her father had been on their own. I looked at the black woman, seeing the nervous flicker of her eyes. It wasn’t easy to guess her age, but I thought she was still only in her middle thirties. ‘What’s her brother do for a living?’ I asked.

‘Nuthin’. I told you, Wolli’s a bum.’

‘What does he do for money then?’

‘That’s a question, that is.’ She looked at the black woman. Yuh gonner tell Mr Falls what Wolli does for money?’

The eyes rolled in the black face. ‘No get’im money now. All finished.’

Prophecy looked at me over her beer. ‘Ed pensioned him off. But they’re so broke down at Jarra Jarra now that the source has dried up.’ She was smiling, enjoying the sight of me working it out. It all added up and I was thinking of the terrible loneliness of a man in the outback with his wife gone, the problem he’d had to face with a young daughter growing up. It never occurred to me that the gipsy woman had got hold of the wrong end of the stick, which was a pity, because if I’d asked the right questions there on that verandah, I might have come at the truth. But probably not. Blackmail isn’t something you admit to a stranger and the woman knew enough about white man’s laws to keep her mouth shut. Instead I let it go at that, asking her about her father and whether it was true he’d been with McIlroy on that expedition into the interior.