The Touch (12 page)

The entire area was littered with soak-wells of what some called naphtha, others bitumen, and chemists petroleum. Many of these wells burned brilliantly, great gouts of flame leaping skyward—not the petroleum itself, he was able to ascertain, but the gases it gave off. On his return from Egypt he had ridden down the Arabian coast of the Red Sea intending to visit Mecca, when a seasoned English traveler advised him against it; infidels were not welcome there. But here in Baku was a different religious sect’s equivalent of Mecca, or Rome, or Jerusalem: adherents of Mazda, the fire god, came from all over Persia to worship the burning gases, lending an already exotic little place additional nuances of sound, color, ritual.

Unfortunately Alexander couldn’t speak Russian, French, Farsi or any of the languages understood in Baku, nor could he find one other English-speaker who did. All he could do was make what assumptions he could about the fact that somehow these unsophisticated people, deprived of wood or coal, had learned to use the petroleum as fuel to heat their boilers. Going on the evidence of the burning wells, Alexander thought that what burned to turn water into superheated steam were the gases emitted by the petroleum, not the substance itself. That meant that once the gases in the boiler chamber above the tray of petroleum started to burn, the petroleum must keep on giving off gas. What was more, he noted, fascinated, this oil—for so it looked—produced far less smoke than either coal or wood.

FROM BAKU he went south into Persia, through more mountains quite as rugged as the Rockies. Where they became a range known as the Elburz—lower, less craggy—he saw, amazed, evidence of this petroleum again. The ruins around Persepolis were highly satisfying, but a personal need drove him north again to Tehran; his buckskins had reached the end of their useful life, and in Tehran, a big city, he would find someone able to make him new clothes out of chamois. This exquisitely fine, soft leather was so comfortable to wear that he paid the delighted tailor to make more and send them to Mr. Walter Maudling at the Bank of England to keep until he collected them. This was typical Alexander; he trusted the tailor and saw nothing inappropriate in having his banker act as his depot. So accustomed was he by now to communicating in a mixture of sign language and drawn pictures that, he thought whimsically, were he to be marooned in a colony of bears, he would be able to make the bears understand him. Probably because he was alone, looked ordinary if utterly foreign, he was never threatened by the people he encountered on his travels; as had been his way since he was fifteen, he tried to earn what he ate by performing some kind of helpful manual work. People respected that, and respected him.

Other items than chamois suits were shipped to Mr. Maudling from time to time: two icons that he bought in Baku, a perfect marble statue from Persepolis, a huge silk rug from Van, and, in an Alexandrian bazaar, a painting that the vendor said originally came from an officer in Napoleon’s army, loot from Italy. It cost Alexander five pounds, but his instinct said it was worth far more, for it was old, had a little the look of his icons.

He was thoroughly enjoying himself, the more so because he had never enjoyed his childhood, or those years in Glasgow. After all, he was still in his middle twenties; he had time on his side, and his common sense said that every new thing he experienced contributed to his education—that, between all of this travel, his Latin and his Greek, one day men would defer to him for other reasons than mere wealth.

HOWEVER, ALL things must end. For five years he wandered around the Islamic world, central Asia, India and China, then took ship for London out of Bombay. A quick and easy voyage now that the Suez Canal was open.

As he sent word to Mr. Walter Maudling that he was coming to the Bank of England at two in the afternoon, that gentleman had time to prepare a homily upon the etiquette of dumping all his acquisitions at Threadneedle Street. It also gave him time to have one of those acquisitions removed from the attic in his own house and couriered to his office, where it sat, a big and bulky package sewn up in canvas, by the side of his desk.

The skin-clad Alexander strode in and slapped a draft for fifty thousand pounds in front of his banker, then sat in the visitor’s chair, eyes laughing.

“No bullion?” asked Mr. Maudling.

“Not where I’ve been.”

Mr. Maudling took in the weather-beaten face, the neat black goatee, the hair curling over Alexander’s shoulders. “You look astonishingly well, sir, considering the places you have been.”

“Never had a day’s sickness. I see that my chamois suits have arrived. Did my other things reach you?”

“Your ‘things,’ Mr. Kinross, have caused this bank no small inconvenience. It is not a poste restante! However, I took the liberty of calling in a valuator to see whether I should put your ‘things’ in some external storage facility, or send them to our vaults. The statue is second century B.C. Greek, the icons Byzantine, the rug has six hundred double knots of silk per square inch, the painting is a Giotto, the vases are mint-condition Ming, and the table screens—also in mint condition—are some dynasty of fifteen hundred years ago. Therefore they went into our vaults. The parcel you see here I stored in my own attic, having ascertained that it is new, if peculiar, clothing,” said Mr. Maudling, trying to look severe. He picked up the draft and flicked it. “What does this represent, sir?”

“Diamonds. I sold them to a Dutchman this morning. He’s made a nice profit on the deal, but I’m happy with the price. I had the pleasure of finding them,” Alexander said, smiling.

“Diamonds. Don’t you have to mine for them?”

“You can, but that’s very recent. I found mine where most have been found since Adam was a boy—in the gravelly beds of sparkling little rivers that flow down from the Hindu Kush, the Pamirs, the Himalayas. Tibet had very good pickings. Rough diamonds look just like pebbles or gravel, especially when they are crusted with a layer of some iron-rich mineral. If they sat there glittering, all of them would already have been found, but some of the places I went were pretty remote.”

“Mr. Kinross,” said Walter Maudling slowly, “you are a phenomenon. You have the Midas touch.”

“I used to think that myself, but I’ve changed my mind. A man finds the treasures of the world because he looks at what he sees,” said Alexander Kinross. “That’s the secret. Look at what you see. Most men don’t. Opportunity doesn’t knock once—it beats a perpetual tattoo.”

“And does opportunity now drum out the financial realms of London?”

“Good lord, no!” said Alexander, shocked. “I’m off to New South Wales. This time for gold. I’ll need a letter of credit to some Sydney bank—try to find me a decent one! Though my gold will come here.”

“Banks,” said Mr. Maudling with dignity, “are mostly above reproach, sir.”

“Rubbish!” said Alexander scornfully. “Sydney banks will be no different from those in Glasgow or San Francisco—susceptible to theft from the top.” He rose to his feet and effortlessly hoisted the parcel into his arms. “Will you keep my treasures until I decide what to do with them?”

“For a modest fee.”

“That, I expected. Now I’m off to the Times.”

“If you tell me whereabouts you’re staying, Mr. Kinross, I will have your clothing sent.”

“No, I’ve a hackney waiting outside.”

Curiosity piqued, Mr. Maudling couldn’t resist asking. “The Times? Are you planning to write an article on your travels?”

“I should think not! No, I want to place an advertisement. If I have to spend two months on a ship to New South Wales, I refuse to be idle. So I’m going to find a man who can teach me French and Italian.”

THOUGH JAMES Summers spoke English with a broad and vulgar (according to the People Who Mattered) Midlands accent, his French and Italian were a pleasure to hear, said his references. His father, he explained, had run an English ale house in Paris for more than the first ten years of Jim’s life; he then transferred to a similar establishment in Venice. That Alexander chose him out of the many who applied was due to the man’s curious dichotomy. His French mother had been from a good family and insisted that her son read all the French classics; then, when she died and his father married an equally cultivated Italian woman, her childless state caused her to focus all her attentions on her stepson. Yet James Summers had absolutely no scholarly leanings!

“Why did you apply for this job?” Alexander asked.

“It’s a way to get to New South Wales,” said Summers simply.

“Why do you want to go there?”

“Well, with my accent I’m not going to get a post at Eton, Harrow or Winchester, am I? My English is pure Smethwick because that’s where my dad came from.” He shrugged. “Besides, Mr. Kinross, sir, I’m not cut out for life in a classroom, and I’d never get employment in a private house teaching the daughters, now would I? Truth is, I like hard work—work with my hands, I mean. At the same time, I’d like some responsibility. And New South Wales might be the answer. I hear tell that how a man speaks doesn’t tell against him, for one thing.”

Alexander leaned back in his chair and studied Jim Summers intently. Something in the man appealed to him strongly—a kind of natural independence mixed with a degree of humility that said he needed to rely on someone he regarded as his superior in ability and intelligence. His father, Alexander suspected, must have been a hard man, but a fair one, and just possibly that true rarity—a purveyor of liquor who didn’t indulge in it himself. So his son equated his education with the softness of women, yet yearned to be like his father. A servant who was not subservient.

“The job is yours, Mr. Summers,” said Alexander, “though it may be that I won’t discharge you after we reach Sydney. If, that is, you find that you like working for me. Once I have mastered French and Italian, I’m going to need a Man Friday, and I don’t mean that in a derogatory sense.”

The plain but attractive face lit up; Summers beamed. “Oh, thank you, Mr. Kinross, sir! Thank you!”

THEY ARRIVED in Sydney on April 13 of 1872, which happened to be Alexander’s twenty-ninth birthday. In the end the voyage had consumed over a year because Alexander’s progress in French and Italian was slower than he had expected, and also, more importantly, because he had never seen Japan, or Alaska, or the Kamchatka Peninsula, or northwestern Canada, or the Philippines.

In Jim Summers he had found a perfect foil for his own restless energy; the man relished everything they did, every place they went, yet was content to do whatever Mr. Kinross wanted to do. He addressed Alexander as “Mr. Kinross” and preferred that Alexander call him “Summers” than the implied ease and camaraderie of “Jim.”

“At least,” Alexander said to Summers at the end of their first day in Sydney, “San Francisco stands on a peninsula jutting into an enormous bay, so its sewage drifts out of nose range. Whereas Sydney hugs its harbor, so its sewage stays inside a much smaller body of water. I can’t stand the stench here—it’s as bad as Bombay, Calcutta or Wampoa. And to prevent your escaping the fug by moving inland from the harbor, the fools have erected a vile sewer vent chimney at the far end of the main park! Ugh!”

Privately Summers thought that Mr. Kinross was a mite too hard on Sydney, which he deemed very beautiful. But then, he had noticed, Mr. Kinross’s smelling apparatus was extremely keen. So sensitive was it, said Mr. Kinross one day in the Yukon, that he could sniff gold, and there was a lot of gold in the Yukon.

“But as I’ve no wish to spend more bitter winters in cold latitudes, Summers, we’ll not stay here,” he had announced.

LITTLE WONDER then that as soon as he had presented his letter of credit to the bank Mr. Maudling had recommended, Alexander took the train and then the coach west to Bathurst, a town literally surrounded at all points of the compass by goldfields. Despite which, Bathurst itself was not a mining community—that, in Alexander’s estimation, made Bathurst orderly, neat, benign.

Instead of seeking accommodation at a hotel or boarding house, he rented a cottage set in several acres of land on the outskirts and installed Summers in it.

“Find a woman to keep the place clean and do the cooking,” Alexander instructed, handing Summers a list. “Pay her a little more than the going rate and she’ll be anxious to keep the job. While I scout the goldfields I want you to shop around for the things on this list. Here’s a letter of authority that will let you draw on my bank. If you can’t keep accounts, you’re going to have to learn. Find a bookkeeper and pay him to teach you.” He swung into the American western saddle he had brought with him, his necessities in saddlebags; the nice bay mare he rode he had found locally, but there was no doubt that for long days of riding through rough country, an American western saddle was more comfortable than an English one. “I don’t know when I’ll be back, so expect me at any time.”

And off he trotted in his skins and wide-brimmed hat.

His week in Bathurst had been filled with activity, chiefly the seeking of information from town and shire officials, three members of the local landed gentry, shopkeepers and inhabitants of various hotel bars. The alluvial gold had mostly run out, he learned, but reef gold was being worked in Hill End and Gulgong, generating a second gold rush.

In the early days of the first placer strikes, the New South Wales Government—and the Government in Victoria, where even bigger finds were made—had been so greedy to milk revenue from this bonanza that it had levied the astronomical sum of thirty shillings for a prospector’s license that lasted only one month. In Victoria the outrage among prospectors combined with the ruthless methods of the Government’s collecting agents had culminated in a near revolution. With the result that the license fee had been reduced to twenty shillings and lasted for a year. Still, Alexander didn’t need a license yet—why tip his hand?

The road to Hill End, no better than a track, was thronged with traffic; huge flat-bedded drays pulled by ten to twenty bullocks; what looked for all the world like an American stagecoach with the words Cobb & Co on its side; horse-drawn wagons, carts and sulkies; men on horseback or on foot, and many women and children. The attire of the men went all the way from smart city suits and bowler hats to ragged dungarees, flannel shirts and wide-brimmed hats, whereas the women were more uniform in drab gingham or calico dresses, shady straw hats or poke-fronted bonnets, feet in men’s boots. The children were of all ages from babies through to youths and nubile girls, mostly clad in little better than scrupulously mended rags. Boys of eight and nine smoked pipes or chewed tobacco like veterans.