The Golden Soak (2 page)

Golden Soak. It was just a name, and yet somehow it had stayed in my mind – an idea, a prospect, something to go for if things didn't improve.

I remembered the freckles and the snub nose and the odd way she'd talked, like somebody out of an old-fashioned magazine. And her eyes, her slightly prominent grey-blue eyes, the bubbling vitality of her. She was just twenty-one, the absolute antithesis of my darling wife, and driving her to the station in the morning she had invited me to visit them at Jarra Jarra, suggesting laughingly that I might have a shot at opening up their mine again the way I'd opened up Balavedra.

I finished my drink. Thinking about Janet Garrety, I was almost glad Kadek hadn't answered my letter. Clever. That was the word that best described him. And interested only in money. I was sick of men like that – sick of mining, too. An outback cattle station was just what I needed. A chance to sort myself out. I'd write to her on the boat.

I got to my feet then, my mind suddenly made up. The Scotch had warmed me, relaxed my nerves. I went upstairs and changed into dry clothes, a sweater and an old pair of flannels, and then I had a look at the kitchen to see if Rosa had left me anything to eat. There was wind at the back of the house, rain lashing at the scullery window and seeping in under the back door as it always did with a storm off the sea. It would be a wet ride. But that didn't matter. That was physical. It was the mental beating that had shattered me, the feeling that an unkind fate had stripped me of all I'd worked for these past two years, and in that mood the idea that had leapt into my mind as I stumbled home through the rain after the crash seemed less wild, a logical progression, an escape into anonymity.

Cold chicken, tomatoes, cheese, a bottle of beer. I put it all on the kitchen table. A man on his own, in a state of shock, would hardly bother to take it through into the dining room. Even charred embers contain evidence for those who know what to look for. Everything had to support what I wanted them to think. Sitting there, alone, I had time to go over it all again in my mind. I ate slowly, unconscious of time, working it out step by step, logically and carefully.

It was almost nine by the time I had finished and the only doubt then left in my mind was the motor bike. I had used it to get to and from the mine before the Company had been able to provide me with a car. Since then it had been under an old tarpaulin in the pump house next to the garage. I had checked it over quite recently, knowing that the Company car, and probably our own as well, would have to go. It worried me that somebody might remember its existence, but that was a chance I would have to take.

The garage was in the old stables, separate from the house. I wheeled the bike inside and topped up the tank from a jerrican of petrol kept there for the lawnmower. It started first kick and I left it to warm up while I folded the tarpaulin and tucked it away behind some deck chairs.

Back in the kitchen, I cut myself some sandwiches, wrapped them in greaseproof paper and put them in a suitcase. Into this went the clothes I'd need and everything of value that I thought would not be noticed – a small diamond brooch that had belonged to my mother, my father's signet ring and an old gold hunter that had been left me by an uncle. I also took the cuff links from my evening dress shirt. And after that I started on the electrics.

I began on the flex of the bedside lamp, roughing it up with a nail file until the copper gleam of the wires stood bare. Then out to the fuse box on the landing to replace the 2-amp wire with a piece of ordinary wire. Finally back to the scullery, where the mains fuse was supplemented by one of those sensitive trip switches. A small piece of grit jammed it successfully. Candles I knew we had and I stuck one on to the plastic top of a jam jar, cut two grooves in it near the base and took it up to the bedroom. There I set it on the floor beside the bed, slipped the bare wires of the flex over it, slotting them into the grooves on either side, and jammed a heavy spring clip over the top.

Now it remained only to set the scene. From the study I brought up the half empty bottle of Scotch, with the soda syphon and a glass on a brass tray, and put it down beside the bed. I had also put a full bottle in my pocket and this I emptied on to the carpet and over the bedclothes. I pulled the whisky-sodden eiderdown on to the floor so that the corner of it overlaid the flex just clear of the candle. Then I took off my wristwatch and put it under my pillow. Finally, I switched on the bedside light and stood looking round the room, checking that everything was as it should be. My pyjamas, of course. It was always possible that a button might survive, and the glass on its side, on the floor, as though it had fallen from my nerveless hands.

I felt strung up then, my nerves taut – memories of the house and of our life together, and that big double bed mocking me. The room reeked of whisky, and the house, solid to the wind, silent, waiting for the end. I shivered, feeling chilled again, depressed by the thought of two centuries of occupation, all those others who had lived there. I bent down quickly, the box of matches in my hand, and lit the candle.

I stopped a moment to see it burning, a golden flame. So small and innocent a thing, hardly bigger than a child's night-light. I shook myself, knowing the moments precious. An hour at the most it gave me, no more. An hour to be gone from Cornwall into a new life. I turned and hurried down the stairs, leaving the bedroom door open behind me. I had helmet and oilskins ready, the suitcase strapped to the back of the bike. It took only a moment to get myself dressed for the road, and I was just going out by the back door when something, some instinct, made me pause.

I stood there for a moment, holding the door open with my hand, desperately searching my memory. And then suddenly it came to me. Christ! My passport. I had nearly forgotten my passport. It was in the slim black expensive briefcase my fellow directors had given me to mark the Company's first year of operation. With it was my birth certificate, all the papers I'd thought I might need.

I hurried through to the study, shocked to find my keys still in the right-hand drawer. They should have been in the pocket of the suit I had left discarded on a chair in the bedroom. But perhaps it was natural that they should be in the desk. I found the one I wanted, my fingers trembling as I unlocked the centre drawer. The briefcase was still there. I checked the contents, and then went out into the rain, round the house to the garage.

The last I saw of Drym was a dark ivy-clad shadow crouched behind the shaft of light pouring out from the uncurtained study window. Then I was round the sweep of the drive, my back towards it, riding out through the gates, up by side roads on to the moors, two years of my life expunged, an episode. Now I had nothing but what was with me and I sang as I rode, yelling an old marching song into the wind and the rain, feeling free – gloriously, magnificently free.

It was not a mood that lasted long. Beyond Camborne, headed for Truro, I was wet and cold. The hour would be just about up and I was wondering about the candle and those frayed wires and whether it would work. The mood of elation had drained away; ahead lay the cold hard slog through the night.

I refuelled at Exeter and again near Wimborne. The rain had ceased about an hour ago and I ate my sandwiches there, cold and wet and tired, waiting for the garage to open. Later I stopped in the New Forest to consider what I should do about the bike. I had no road licence for it and I didn't dare take it into Southampton. Still thinking about it, I lay down on a bank of heather and went to sleep, too tired to care. The sun was up and it was almost warm.

In the end I rode the bike into a dense thicket and dumped it there. I had removed the number plates and these I buried about half a mile away. Then I went back to the road and hitched a ride on a lorry I found parked in a lay-by.

It was almost dusk by the time I finally reached Southampton. I found my way to the docks, and after booking a cabin on the night ferry to Le Havre, I went into the Skyways Hotel, where I had a shave and then drank three whiskies straight off in the bar. I was very near the point of exhaustion, my mind going over and over the events of the last twenty-four hours. In that state you don't think logically. All I knew was that I was scared. Scared at the finality of what I had done. Scared of what it might lead to, of the future – of just about everything. I'd no relatives. No friends now. I was alone and bloody lonely, feeling sorry for myself, utterly depressed. And then a boy came in with the evening papers, and there it was – in the
Standard
.
MINE DIRECTOR DIES IN BLAZE
. And an interview with Rosa:
I had no idea Alec was in difficulties. He was always gay, always full of life. How was I to know the Company was bankrupt? If I'd known, if he'd confided in me, of course I wouldn't have gone off to visit my family like that. After all, he was my husband
. As if she didn't know! She knew damn well we were living on borrowed time.
Mrs Rosalind Falls
– there was a picture of her inset against the burned out remains of the house, another of the mine. But no picture of me, which was all I cared about at the moment.

I lit a cigarette, my hand trembling, my eyes searching the bar over the flame. But only one other person had bought a paper and he was reading the sports page. It was just another item of news, so why should he, or anybody else, care a damn? I finished my drink and went into the dining room, going over the story again quietly with my meal. There was a statement from Trevenick denying there had been any disagreement among the directors. ‘The high grade ore was mined out – that's all.' Another from the landlord of the pub at Sennen Cove: ‘I wouldn't say he was drunk, but he had been drinking heavily. He seemed upset about something.'

But my eyes kept going back to that picture, the gutted shell with the slates all gone and the room beams blackened by fire. The finality of it took a long time to sink in, the fact that I was dead, burnt to a cinder in the ruins of our house. Alive and eating roast duckling it was difficult to realize that officially I no longer existed. I felt slightly sickened at the enormity of what I had done.

At the ferry terminal the immigration official barely glanced at my passport. The relief at being on board, no questions asked.… I didn't wait to see the boat sail, but went straight to my cabin feeling utterly drained. I heard the engines start, the thump of the screws as we began to move. The dock lights swung across the deck beams above my head, then darkness and I knew England had slipped away, my own country, all my life gone – and Australia a 14,000 mile journey. But it wasn't of the future I was thinking as I lay sleepless in my bunk. I was thinking of Rosa, the lusty, passionate vitality of her, the small firm breasts and the golden skin. All gone now, the world we'd shared in embers.

Two

JARRA JARRA

I woke to a long-drawn howl, quite close. It was dark and very still, and I thought the truck had come to a stop. I moved stiffly, conscious of the hard surface under me, the yielding coarseness on which my head was pillowed. Then I remembered that the truck had gone. I pulled the gold hunter out of my pocket and flicked my lighter. The time was three-forty, no moon, but the stars brilliant in the night sky. The sound that had woken me was gone now, but far away I heard the echo of it, an answering call.

I was tired, exhausted by the long rattling journey north in the appalling heat. Vaguely I remembered where I was, how I had seen the bulk of Mt Whaleback black against the moon as I stood watching the tail lights of the truck disappear in a cloud of dust down the dirt road. The howl came again, long drawn out, throbbing in the darkness. Something crawled across my hand, a feather touch of small legs moving. I shook it off. An ant probably. And faint in the distance came the answering howl. The weirdness of the sound, the loneliness of it, and myself alone, lying on a stony gravel bed.

I remembered Emilio arguing with me, trying to persuade me to go on with him to Nullagine. ‘The Conglomerate – issa not very good, but you getta meal there, some beer. Is better than living bush, yes?' But the telegram I had sent her had said I'd be waiting at the turn-off by the old airfield, and in the end he had agreed to make the detour. He knew where it was, for he sometimes made deliveries to the motel at Mt Newman.

I stared up at the stars, wondering what the day would bring and whether she'd come, what I was going to tell her if she did. The dingoes were silent now, the night hot and still, not a breath of wind. I could see the Southern Cross, and lying there alone I was overwhelmed by the Strangeness of it all, even the night sky entirely different, no sign of the Bear.

I closed my eyes again, but sleep eluded me now, my fears taking over and chasing each-other through my heat-stunned brain. I hadn't worried on the voyage out; it had been like a dream, a sort of hiatus, myself in limbo and all sense of reality suspended. But now it was different. Now reality stared me in the face and there was no escape. What the hell did I tell the girl? That I didn't exist? That I was almost penniless? She'd want to know about Rosa, about Drym – she'd want to know what the hell I was doing in Australia. Come in the spring, she had said – not in summer. And here I was in summer and the luck she had envied clean run out.

I was thinking back now, tired and trying to convince myself it would be all right. It had seemed all right at the time, a way out. There'd even been a sort of inevitability about it. And at 14,000 miles' remove Jarra Jarra had appeared a sort of oasis, a place where I could find myself again, a springboard from the security of which I could make the plunge into a new life. But now that it was only 60 miles away the prospect of it was quite different. It wasn't only Janet who would be full of questions. There was her father, too. What would Ed Garrety think of a stranger arrived out of the blue, almost penniless and wanting a job? She had talked of drought and an iron ore company moving in on them, but with all that acreage and 3,000 head of cattle they were still rich enough to scare me.