A Man Over Forty (31 page)

‘They're very seaworthy.'

‘When properly handled.'

The boat they were watching turned into the wind, stopped, and dropped anchor. There were two seamen in the bows, and from below came a tall, trousered woman and a short, broadly built man, both in white, who stood talking on the after-deck with the blue-jerseyed skipper.

‘A boat,' said Balintore, ‘gives you nobility, and you can't say that of a house.'

‘Which, however, has a stability that often seems desirable in a boat.'

They had another glass of ouzo, and agreed that it was now too late to walk to the quarries; but decided to go there on the following day, and start soon after breakfast.

In the morning they borrowed a knapsack, and burdened with a loaf of bread, a large piece of cheese, and a bottle of retsina, set off on an uphill walk that gave them wide views of
a reddish, almost treeless landscape, criss-crossed by low dry-stone walls – a bare but curiously friendly land, beatified by light and bordered by the sea – and after going farther than they had expected, came to a scarred, an excavated, hillside, where a rough road ended at a level space carpeted with a white and brilliant gravel.

At the end of the road stood an elderly American motor-car, and thirty yards farther on, conferring with the driver, were a tall, trousered woman and a short, broad-shouldered man whose voice could be clearly heard.

‘I don't give a damn what it costs,' he was saying. ‘I'm going to get a ship-load of this stuff out to Australia, and we're going to have the finest approach-road – with a big circle in front of the front door – the best and most expensive carriagedrive in Queensland. A carriage-drive of pure white marble chips. Ay, that'll set them talking!'

He spoke loudly, with a strong Scotch intonation, and Balintore and Palladis, a little embarrassed, stopped and felt disinclined to go on, lest they intrude on a scene of domestic privacy; for the tall, trousered woman, though her voice was too quiet to be heard, was manifestly objecting to her husband's extravagant proposal.

The broad-shouldered man stooped and gathered a double handful of the shining gravel. ‘Look at it!' he said. ‘Isn't that just beautiful? Beautiful! And I'll need about three thousand tons.'

He tossed the marble chips into the air, brushed his hands, and saw Balintore and Palladis. He hesitated a moment before saying, ‘You're English, by the look of you?'

‘No more English – no more English than you,' said Balintore in a voice that quavered, but recovered its strength.

The broad-shouldered man came towards them, staring suspiciously at Balintore, and then exclaimed, with deep emotion, ‘It canna be? After a' these years – oh, it canna be!'

‘Peter Ricci,' said Balintore.

‘Ned Balintore!'

He took Balintore's hands in his – his hands were large and muscular – and shook them violently, while down his weather-tanned
cheeks tears streamed from his eyes unchecked, and strong teeth showed in a mouth that opened widely, as if for speech, but could find no sound nearer to speech than uncontrollable, delighted laughter.

Then, with an effort at self-control – wiping with his coat-sleeve his weeping eyes – he took Balintore by the elbow and pulled him towards the tall woman who stood selfconsciously aloof, perhaps bewildered, perhaps coldly disapproving – and loudly declared, ‘Here's my oldest friend in the world! The friend o' my schooldays in Auld Reekie! In Edinburgh, the bonniest toon in all the world – and I meet him after near thirty years on a bloody, barren Greek island, and him a famous man! You've heard of Ned Balintore?'

She offered a seemingly reluctant hand. ‘The wife,' said Ricci, and Balintore, as if apologizing for his unexpected appearance, said, ‘It's true, you know. We were – we are – old friends.'

He was manifestly nervous: breathing too quickly, with a light and shallow rhythm, but also pleased, and obviously pleased, by an encounter, so wildly improbable, with the closest friend of his boyhood. He put his arm, a little shyly, round Ricci's broad shoulders and said, ‘Peter! Oh, God, there's no end to surprise!'

Peter Ricci, unashamed of emotion, said with a louder warmth, ‘This is a great and memorable day! I havena been so happy since – ah weel, there'll be time enough to tell you about that. But who's your friend?'

Palladis was introduced, and got a crippling handshake from Ricci, a cooler welcome from his wife – ‘Call her Myrtle,' said Ricci – and for the next ten minutes there was a confused and often interrupted explication of two simple occurrences. The Riccis had to be told how Balintore and Palladis had come to Paros, and they were informed that Ricci, in ‘a chartered yacht, had run in for shelter when the weather worsened. After considerable repetition, and some unnecessary detail, these facts were established, and there fell upon them the sort of silence that often occurs when old friends meet, and having spent the exuberance of first inquiry, are temporarily at a loss for new topics of conversation.

The uneasy pause was broken by Palladis, who asked, ‘How much would it cost to take three thousand tons of marble chips to Australia?'

‘I'm going to make serious inquiry about that,' said Ricci.' ‘There's a lot of idle shipping in Piraeus – ships laid up and doing nothing to earn their keep – and I might make a good bargain.'

‘But to charter even an old tramp—'

‘Ay, it would cost money, I'm no denying that. But I'm building a new house, and this stuff would give me the bonniest carriage-drive in the Antipodes. And when you've set your heart on something, you canna let money come between you.'

‘Only a rich man can talk like that,' said Balintore.

‘I've done well for myself, I canna complain.'

‘Where is your new house?' asked Palladis.

‘Have you heard of a place called Townsville?'

‘No, I'm afraid I haven't.'

‘Ah, we're just wasting our time here. I've got so much to tell you, Ned! Biography to begin with, and geography too, it seems. We'll go back to the harbour, and you'll come aboard my boat, where we can sit in comfort and talk in peace, and have a dram forbye.'

They returned to the car he had hired, and Ricci said, ‘I'm broader in the beam than either of you, I'll sit in front with the driver. You'll have plenty of room in the back, for Myrtle's all length and no girth.'

Palladis, who sat in the middle, tried to make conversation with her, but found it difficult. She was quite young, a pale blonde with an oval face and big blue eyes: a girl of striking and memorable appearance, but curiously subdued. When she spoke her words conveyed nothing but gentle agreement with what Palladis had said, and her soft voice held only the whisper of an Australian accent. When Palladis asked her about the house for which Ricci envisaged a marble carriage-drive, she took from her handbag several photographs of a large though unfinished bungalow, designed apparently after a Spanish style of architecture, and said proudly, ‘It was Peter who planned it all. He's very, very clever.'

At the harbour a fisherman rowed them out to the anchored caique, where they sat comfortably under an awning that covered the after-deck. The crew were ashore, and Myrtle asked what they would like to drink.

‘I canna drink Greek beer,' said Ricci, ‘and there's none aboard. You'd better bring whisky: you canna go far wrong with whisky.'

She went below, and he said to Palladis, ‘You didn't get much change out of her, did you? No, I didna think you would. And twelve months ago there was no livelier, more talkative girl in Queensland. The life and soul of Lennon's Hotel – Lennon's in Brisbane: you'll have heard of it? A fine hotel – and then she met that damned American. A smooth-talking Californian engineer with half a dozen college degrees—'

He stopped abruptly as Myrtle came on deck with whisky and soda water, glasses and a bowl of ice. She carried the heavy tray easily, and set it on a small table. She appeared to have gained in confidence since coming aboard, and poured their drinks with quick dexterity.

‘I'm going to leave you here,' she said softly, ‘while I get a lunch ready – if you can make do with a cold lunch?'

Balintore and Palladis protested against her going to so much trouble, but Ricci assured them that Myrtle enjoyed all housekeeping tasks, and said to her, as she was about to go below again, ‘While you're on the move, hen, you might bring up the big atlas, will you?'

Obediently she returned with a large volume, and Ricci opened it to show a map of Queensland. With a blunt forefinger he traced the coast north from Brisbane till he came to Townsville, and said, ‘It's there I'm building my new house, and there' – his finger moved some five or six hundred miles inland – ‘there's where the money came from! You see a place called Cloncurry? Well, about a hundred miles north and west of there, the old geiger counter started clicking, and I went to sleep in the firm conviction that I'd wake up a millionaire.'

‘Are you a millionaire?' asked Balintore.

‘As near as makes no difference,' said Ricci complacently.

‘Uranium?' asked Palladis.

‘It's desolate country,' said Ricci, ‘and dangerous country to get lost in. All red rock and spinifex. But a few years ago they found uranium down there, just east of Mount Isa, and I remembered a place very like the valley where now there's a big mine called Mary Kathleen. I was working at Mount Isa myself, and every now and then I'd take a dander up north, looking for that place I remembered from the days when I was riding-up cat de—'

‘You've been a cattleman as well as a miner?'

‘I've done all manner of things, from shooting kangaroos to pearling off Thursday Island and washing dishes in Sydney. Ay, Sydney. And it's you that took me there, Ned. If it hadna been for you I might never have seen Australia – and never heard a geiger counter clicking over a million pounds.'

‘What happened then? What did you have to do to turn uranium under red rock into money in the bank?'

‘Well may you ask!' said Ricci. ‘Finding it was only the beginning, the real work came later on. I staked my claim, of course, and registered my claim, and then I had to raise money to prove what the claim was worth. And that brought in all the sharks and the wide boys, the lawyers and the city slickers, and at times I thought I was going out of my mind! There, you see, was a million pounds under the red rock – as you yourself said. Ay, and better than a million, for ‘I'll be drawing royalties till the day of my death – but before I could lay hands on it I had to do battle with the lawyers and the wide boys, and it was then I met Myrtle, and she saved my sanity.

‘I was staying at Lennon's Hotel in Brisbane, arguing with three different groups that all wanted to buy Auld Reekie – that's what I called it: the claim I'd staked – and Myrtle was a barmaid there, the life and soul of the place, though you wouldn't think so now. And she married me before the worth of the claim had been proved. It wasna for money she married. For all she knew, and for all I knew, the claim might not have been worth a docken.

‘But from the day we married all went well. As things turned out, I'd put myself into good hands, and a month later I knew beyond all doubt that the first million wouldna be long in reaching my pocket. But then we met that damned American,
him that called himself an expert, and had college degrees to prove it. He was looking for a job, and he thought the best way of getting it would be to make himself pleasant and useful to Myrtle. But he went the wrong way about it. He told her one day – with the best of motives, I've no doubt – he told her, in these very words, “You're a swell looker, honey, but if you're going to travel in Europe, and live in millionaire circles, you'll sure have to catch up on your culture.”

‘And Myrtle took that to heart! You see, she wasn't a girl that had ever read books – she didn't need to! – but suddenly it came into her mind that she wasna fitted to play her proper part in the new world that great wealth was opening before her. Well, I did what I could to reassure her, but damn the difference it made. She lost all her confidence. She said she couldn't even speak like a millionaire's wife, so off she went to a teacher of elocution to get rid of her accent. And what good did that do? She's got no accent now, none at all – and she's got nothing to say! But before she met that damned American – when she spoke with an Australian accent as rough as the Tasman Sea – she never stopped talking, and every man within hearing would be doting on every word she said.'

Ricci looked glumly at the sparkling sea, and was about to pour himself another drink when Myrtle came on deck to say, ‘Your lunch is ready, so don't drink any more whisky.'

‘We've had a great deal to talk about,' said Ricci.

‘Well, come downstairs, you can go on talking there.'

They followed her into an elaborately furnished saloon – ‘Too fancy for my taste, but comfortable,' said Ricci – and sat down to a substantial meal of smoked salmon, veal-and-ham pie, a Stilton cheese.

‘The bread and butter are Greek, and there's retsina if you want it, but the rest comes out of a good cold store I put in before we left Piraeus,' said Ricci. ‘I've earned my comfort, and I enjoy my comfort.'

He leaned across the table and said to Myrtle, with a renewal of emotion, ‘He's my oldest friend – him that's sitting beside you – and if it hadna been for him I might never have gone to Australia, I might never have met you, hen! We went to the school together – and bad, bad boys we were! – and
together we ran away from school and went to sea in a great sailing-ship the like of which no longer's to be seen. We made voyage after voyage – how many voyages, Ned?'

‘Five or six. I made one more than you.'

‘That's a true story, is it?' asked Palladis.