Black Diamonds (7 page)

 

FRANCINE

It's Wednesday morning and unsurprisingly I haven't made an appearance at Mass. Instead I'm sitting on the back step looking up into the fat white clouds brushing the tops of the gums. I am unrepentant, and wallowing in my dreadful secret. I as much as hurled myself at him. After almost making it through the whole ordeal with faultless decorum, and without paying him any particular attention. What must he and his mother think of me, being so forward, inviting myself back like the lady of the manor? Now I know what I am like. Desperate. When I'm not imagining a bleak future free of him, then I'm revelling in a future comprised entirely of him, which is fairly much all the time. It's a terrific time-waster. It is torture. It is not reasonable. We've barely said two words to each other and that's no exaggeration. All I am certain of is that the rope will drag me down Dell Street come Friday, and somehow that will clarify this mess. Perhaps he will make sure they are out for the day. If that's the case, then that's my clarification; if not …?

Big stupid sigh at the trees. Mr Saunders's quote has come and gone. I was not interested in his vision of well-designed, overpriced, so-uncommon-everyone-has-one-now, possibly Satanic loveliness after all. I shall have these messy melancholy gums, and I will get myself two apple trees to place amongst them to remind me of … the lowest thoughts I've ever had.

But then, even as I'm miserable, ludicrous floods of hope sweep through me and I can see Him sitting in the trap with me as we go out to find these mythic trees, and we're laughing just as we did that one perfect moment. Except he's not inarticulate now; I can't hear what he's saying but whatever it is it pleases me. Then reality merges with fantasy and I think, could we go in the trap? It might be too hard for him to climb in with his leg that way. Then fantasy swamps again and I take the Austin instead. Could I learn to drive that horrible, spluttering thing in the next two days? Can't be that hard, if Father can do it, soused too. To mock me, the vehicle itself splutters home this very moment and delivers Father.

It's only just after ten and I wonder why he's back so soon. To speak to me, apparently, and he suggests a sprawl. In the morning? And he's pouring a malt. Look out, here comes something. Oh dear. The last time he behaved like this was the day he told me we were off to Lithgow, for a wonderful spell in the country. He's busted further, I know it. My stomach turns with apprehension and I wish he'd just spit it out.

He's holding the malt, still hasn't taken a sip, when he says: ‘There's no easy way to say this, so I'll get straight to the point.'

Yes please.

‘Francy.' I'm sitting down and his tone says I should stay that way.

He stands before me, looks down into the tumbler, swirls the amber spirit about, and there's a sadness in the set of his shoulders that confirms he's beaten, that makes me want to jump up and say,
Oh it doesn't matter, it's only money, boom'll come round again, let's sell the furniture, it's out of date anyway. You don't have to tell me.

But he does: ‘Verdict's in.'

He looks at me again, but his eyes glitter diamond-hard, and the first thought I have is: it's the mine, isn't it. Mr Drummond was wrong and there's been a court hearing or some such thing and they've closed you down or fined you out of business because of the accident. Hardly fair, after your personal largesse.

No. It's not that.

He sits down next to me, tumbler clunks onto the side table, and he takes my hand.

‘Francy.' Then: ‘My liver is failing me. Predictable as it is incurable and reprehensible, but there it is.'

Whack, as if this liver of his sits there on the floor at my feet: ‘I'll be dead within weeks — a few months at best.'

Oh. Oh. It's all I can think. Oh.

‘I don't believe you,' I tell him, after I've tried to run out of the parlour and he's pulled me in again and sat me back down.

‘You'll have to. That Doctor Nichols did some more tests to confirm the inevitable. Not promising at all. Thought I'd have longer, but …'

Thought you'd have longer?
‘How long have you known?'

‘I suppose I've known for a long time, a year or so, but put it off. I didn't really start feeling it until we moved. Kept drinking to put it off some more,' he laughs.

It's not funny, and funnily enough I no longer seem to have a sense of humour. But two and twos are assembling fast in my brain now.

‘So that's what all this has been about.' I don't need to say more: this was his epiphany. My world, no, my universe is tilting around wildly.

‘Yes, but it was about time anyway, Francy. I was never going to live forever, was I? So you're going to have to know what to do with the business you're left with, decide whether to take an interest yourself.'

I do not wish to discuss this, I would like to sit here in a state of shock for eternity, but he ploughs on.

‘The Wattle is doing well and set to do better. You'll have half that mine and all its assets, held on your behalf by Stanley and Bragg in Sydney. In my will I say that you can instruct them yourself to handle all matters of the investment however you wish, so long as it remains in trust until you are twenty-one. Then you can cash in the lot and kick up your heels.' He tries for a laugh again but I stare into it. This is too much, and I am not taking it in properly; can't he see that? But he goes on: ‘What if I died in my bed tonight and you didn't have a clue in the morning what you should do? I can't leave you like that. You must know.'

Another two and two: ‘That's what you were doing making me deal with the Ackermans, was it? Practising for business? A safe little experience to cut my teeth on?' This easy manipulation of me is confounding, but it's so clear now.

‘Yes, of course. But I meant what I said: I want you to be wealthy and I want you to know what it means: where it comes from, where it goes, who it touches and how. You have a fine mind …'

A fine mind! I have no mind at all at present.

‘… and it needs to be used for more than dabbling with paints and trotting about and whatever else it is you amuse yourself with these days. You can refuse if you like, I won't hold you to it — can't when I'm gone anyway — but I will have unfinished business that I would like you to take on yourself.'

‘What?' You're going to tell me anyway.

‘I have made arrangements for another trust, a compensation fund, I need you to administer it — you'll own it, separately from the mine, though it is funded directly from the profits, your profits — a small percentage each quarter. You'll have to learn how it works, who gets what and when. I'm also building some facilities at the mine itself, which you'll need to keep an eye on if they are not completed before I go. If you don't pay an interest in them nothing will happen — it's nothing to do with John Drummond. He disapproves as it is, and will be glad to see the back of me, but I want you to be able to stand on it and not be daunted by it all. I want this, Francy — last wishes and all that.'

‘But why?' Amid the fog, I really do understand why; what I am really saying is:
Why me? Why are you leaving me?

Father says: ‘I've already told you that.' His voice is softer now, the urgency diminished. ‘I've been very blessed and it's time to atone. Always had an eye out for an opportunity and taken every one, from taking bets on the ponies when I first came here, to playing the stock exchange. Do you know what winning at gambling is? It's fancy thieving, all of it. And when I lost your mother I no longer played the game, it played me. I even neglected you, in wanting to indulge you with the benefits of winning, only wanting to see you smile your clever smile at me when I was high on a roll. But every punter gets well cronked sometime: we lost the house in Rose Bay to an aeronautical company I believed would go through the roof; it didn't so much crash as plummet into the centre of the earth. Francy, coal has always been my best bet, and with this ridiculous loss and then knowing that I was on the way out, I … When I saw them bring that lad out of the mine, and heard that the three others were dead, I knew it was time and I knew what I wanted to do; it's men like them I've lived off most. I don't want to save my soul, don't think that could be rescued; I just want to even the score a little.'

I want to collapse into a piteous heap, but Father will not allow it. ‘I know it's all a rush, my darling girl, but that's the extent of it: no more nasty surprises.'

I stare at him, still disbelieving, and he winks. ‘Not unless the Dublin constabulary catch up with me at last, but I'm sure that after thirty-five years they've given up the search.'

Well, go on, tell me about it, my eyes say to him; but he shakes his head. ‘I threw a brick through the window of a grocer's shop, because the mongrel in there wouldn't give my mother any more credit, to feed us, while my father was at sea. And that's all you need to know about Dublin.'

Meaning that's all he's going tell me. But he hasn't finished handing out his last wishes. ‘Again, I can't hold you to it, but I want you to stay in Lithgow, till you know what you're about. I don't want you going back to Sydney where the sharks are thickest and some smooth Johnny will have you handing over your money or your spirit as soon as you're not looking. Get yourself connected here, among decent people, like Mrs Ackerman. I was perhaps a little underhanded in the way I got you involved, yes, but not wicked on that count.' He lights his pipe and finally he is quiet. No heartbreak in his eyes; glittery sparkles all round.

‘Not wicked?' I squawk through slow, burning tears. Somewhere I know that everything he has said is logical and not a little tender for the depth of his care as well as his faith in my abilities to take up his wishes, but I say, bursting: ‘Was it part of your plan to make me fall … make me … make me mangle my heart on a definite lose? Because that's what you've done.'

His turn to be astonished, but then he looks utterly pleased. ‘Who is it?' he asks, fairly excited.

‘Who do you think? You are the controller of my universe, you should know.'

‘Ah …'And then there was light; I don't know anyone else in this town, and it certainly isn't Mr Saunders. ‘Why is it a lose?' he says.

That infuriates. I squirm away to the edge of the sofa.

‘Isn't he keen?' he asks gently.

‘How should I know?' I glare. ‘We're not about to start courting, are we?'

‘Why not?' he says, and I could slap him, regardless that he's ill and dying, for making me talk about it any more. Well, I won't answer; he's supposed to be remorseful and sympathetic. Naturally, he's not. ‘Your mother married me when I was working at the Glebe abattoirs, and I was a shady player back then, skinning more punters on race days than carcasses.'

My universe tilts again.

‘You said you didn't want me to know poverty, and now you think I should romance it?' I say; my last grasp on my former reality.

‘He's not poor! Nowhere near it — his mother owns her own home, doesn't she. And you're not poor, are you. An independently wealthy lass like yourself can do as she pleases, eh? And look at Joe Cook.'

‘What's the prime minister got to do with it?' For heaven's sake.

‘He was a Lithgow coal worker once.'

And my father is a leprechaun, I'm sure of it now. I bawl and bawl, and he holds me there on the sofa in this house that is still strange to me. Nothing of much note has happened to me for eighteen years, and now …? Oh Father.

 

DANIEL

Mum's gone for more flour; we went through that lot quickly. I told her what Francine Connolly said when she came back down the hall last week and we laughed again. But that was all. Now Mum's had to go out. She knows Francine Connolly is not coming to visit her, and so do I. But I'm not laughing now. I'm sweating and it is freezing out here this morning like you wouldn't believe. The clouds banking up in the south-west look like they're carrying snow, and it's only the end of May. But I'm not going inside; I want to see her come round the back again, in the light. If she comes. If the clouds hold off so that I can see her in that light. I can hear Dad scratching his head; he wouldn't know what to make of that. We never talked like that, about women. But then I wouldn't know what he thought about these things, would I? I never bloody asked him.

Maybe she's had second thoughts. Maybe she really is dippy and I should stay well clear of her. It doesn't make sense that she should take an interest and it's not going to lead to anything, so … maybe she's just curious. About the other half. And that's all right. While she's here I can be curious about her too. And I'm in a sweat again at that thought. But my toes are about to fall off my foot; they're blue. I'm going to have to get a blanket. I reach behind me to grab the crutches — which Mrs Moran has now allowed, after I swore on the Bible not to put any weight on my leg; and I swear I haven't — and it's then I hear the trap. The crutches slip out of my hand and crash over the back step. I'm not going to lurch around now anyway, so I sit here and wait. Then pick up my carving. She's not going to catch me doing nothing either.

But there's a heavy scrape and clatter on the step out the front. What's she got with her? And quick out of the trap too. I hear the door knocker crash down: one two three. It's not her. ‘Round the back,' I say.

‘Hello there, layabout.' It's Evan, and he's got my gear with him. I'd just about forgotten I owned it. ‘Kept forgetting to bring these round,' he says. Pick, shovel, drill. He didn't forget; he's been keeping away, giving me time. He leans them against the wall near me. He's put a new handle on the shovel.

‘Thanks. What are you doing out of the hole?' I ask him.

‘Bad air, we're all up,' he says. ‘Have to cavil out tomorrow anyway. So how long before we see you back, eh?'

Never. I can't tell him that, so I say: ‘Don't know. A month maybe.'

Then I realise he doesn't have a trap, he rides a bike if he's not walking, like me, but I know that I definitely heard one; the pony's just snorted out the front. Must be her. But Evan must have seen her. Maybe I'm imagining things again. A bloke should not spend so much time alone with too little to do.

But I ask him anyway: ‘You see a trap out the front?'

‘Pulled up as I turned in here. Outside next-door's, I think. You expecting someone?'

Yes. ‘No. Just thought I heard someone pull up.'

‘Well, you're cavilled on with me, when you come back,' he says, like he knows what my mind's like; bit too quiet. If only.

He's rigged the cavil. The boys pick our tokens from a bucket outside the manager's office. I did it too, in my last year at school, waiting to go in with Dad. Evan's slipped one of them an extra penny to swear off their pledged-to honesty to put me on with him for the quarter. You wouldn't say no to Evan Lewis, not our fearless leader who knocks his head against all the others at union get-togethers condemning tyranny and corruption.

‘Where?' I say, before I've thought it.

‘One.'

Easiest section; like splitting chalk. So he might have slipped more than a penny then.

He knows I don't want to talk about it, but he's got to have another go: ‘You want to take over with the records, or hand them on to someone else?'

Dad's records, of our meetings, and of this and that. They're in boxes under his bed. Mum's bed. They're full of the facts of our matters, Dad would say, and nobody else but us is going to bother with them. They're full of who said and did or copped what and when … They could have sunk into the floor for all I've been concerned about them. I don't have the bottle for this right now, so I don't say anything.

‘Tell me when you're ready,' he says. When I'm approachable, he means. He's only trying to tell me, in his way, that it's all there for me, that nothing's changed, despite what has. Someone else will keep records; doesn't matter who. And he leaves it there. ‘You've had enough of this then, eh?' he says, pointing at my leg.

No. Not at the moment. I couldn't be more grateful. I say: ‘It's God's own torment.'

And he rolls his shoulders around the blasphemy, can't help himself. He's a devout Methodist of course. But I had to say it to get my humour back.

He says: ‘No, it's only man's lot, sad truth.' And he reminds me of that shoulder of his that pops out all the time now, never been right since he was a boy, in the Rhondda, in Wales, when a skip rolled back and caught him. I've seen it pop. He's laughing about it; it's not funny. But I laugh back and I tell him all about it like it's a barrel being arse-bound watching Mum doing what she's done every day for the last thousand years. Which makes him talk about Mae, his wife, who passed away years ago, and Enid, his daughter, his only child, who's had only daughters, three of them,
sweet wonders
every one, and he proclaims the laws that protect them from working as we do because it's only the ugly that should be allowed, as if he had something to do with it.

And maybe he has, he's that large, not in height but in the power of him. He's pretty ugly too.

I've given him what he came for, almost, and I want him to leave me be.

But he's got to have one last go, doesn't he.

‘We're having a game on Sunday. Someone's got to rag us. Come along if you can.' Evan's only point of difference with Methodist doctrine: compulsory once-a-fortnight rugby on Sundays for the youngsters. Rugby
union
, mind, not
league:
there is only one sport God approves of. And God is Welsh apparently.

I want to put my shoulder into someone, that's for sure, but I'm not going to watch, and not there, at the paddock. A game would fix me up right now, just having a run would, and he's a bastard for reminding me. No, he's not. But he sees and he'll ‘be off then', quietly. That cuts, and I tell him maybe I'll come and he waves off down the side of the house like he knows. Like I have better things to do. And it's been three weeks since I've seen anyone; except for Robby, who popped his head in for ten seconds a few days ago on his way home — just long enough to make sure that I was still actually alive and being a bit more separate than usual.

And I'm sitting here enjoying our miraculous wealth, which Evan hasn't mentioned, like he hasn't mentioned the enquiry either, because none of that means anything. Because Evan's lost Dad too. While I'm thinking about that I hear, ‘Oh dear,' from down the other side of the house.

And there she is, Francine Connolly, holding her cheek. She says,' I scratched myself on a thorn,' standing there as if you always squeeze between a wall and a rosebush to get to where you're going. She's got that grey skirt on,
that
skirt, which is not really grey, but sort of … don't know what colour it is … it's got another little skirt thing round the top of it, and she's wearing a shirt, white one, girl's one that sort of crosses over itself at the front. Awch.

There's nothing else to say but, ‘What were you doing coming round there?' Don't know yet if I'm amazed that she came or that she's now telling me: ‘I saw Mr Lewis coming and I didn't want him to see me, so I came round this side and a left cane got me. See?' She lifts her hand from her cheek for a second and there's a purple welting streak right across it.

‘I should see an optician, get some spectacles,' she says. ‘Can't believe I did that.'

For sure.

Except she starts to cry, pretending she's not. She's ten yards away from me and there's not much I can do.

I say: ‘It's not so bad, is it?' It really is just a scratch.

And she says, ‘It's a bit worse than this,' showing the welt again. ‘I presume your mother is not in, but I should like a cup of tea, if that's all right with you.'

‘That's all right, go inside, I'll make —'

She cuts me off: ‘You can't do that. I think I could manage to make it.'

‘No. I'll make it.' She's heading towards the back steps and she's not looking where she's going; she's squinting over my shoulder at the gear leaning on the wall; I slide the crutches out of the way before she gets there. If I let her make the tea, she'll break something this time.

And of course she stands there looking at me as I lurch into the room and around the stove, until I say: ‘Tell me what's worse then.'

Then she stares at the table and says: ‘I've formed an unfortunate attachment to you.'

Just like that. That stops me for a second, and I think what the hell: ‘I might have unfortunately done the same.'

She laughs, and that's what I was after, except she's still tearing up and holding it in; she's still holding the side of her face as if that'll help.

‘Come on, it's all right,' I say, and obviously it's not. ‘So your father's generosity won't go that far with me?' I guess.

‘Oh no, it's not that.' She shakes her head, staring into the
table again. ‘He's all for me … he's … He knows precisely
how I feel and his approval is unconscionable. It's that …'

What?
I wait for ten years, trying not to think about what she's just said so that I won't miss what's coming.

‘My father is very unwell …'

Another ten years. ‘That's no good.' Like an idiot.

‘He won't live for much longer.' Then out in a flood: ‘And I don't have any friends, not proper ones, and no relatives — I've been ripped up and transplanted here to Lithgow where I know no one except Mr Drummond and Father Hurley, and you and your mother — barely. Not counting Mr Symes at the post office, who knows me for a pest. My mother died when I was small which means I'm soon to be an orphan, and I'll own half the Wattle mine in my own right. And this, with you, well, it's not reasonable, not any of this, not anything I feel.'

She pauses, thankfully; I'm struggling to follow.

Then she starts again: ‘So I thought you should know, to explain my behaviour. I don't have a habit of imposing myself on young men I don't know, men who …'

But she runs out of steam there. Then finally looks across at me. Blink. Blink. I
want to kiss her, like I've heard only about her attachment and her father's
approval of it. She's a fair bit more than unusual. I've never met a girl that
comes anywhere near to her, and I've met a few, pretty enough and lively enough, but
no girl that makes me want to … I'm not thinking about the consequences other
than the ones I'm after, which are, well, only one right now: to kiss her. I know
I'm not going to but …

‘That's a lot to think about, but it's not all bad, is it,' I say, not asking but telling her. I'm not going to let this go.

‘No.' Bit of a smile.

‘No.' Definitely; very badly hopeful.

‘Then I suppose that means the exploration of this unlikely possibility is begun,' she says.

‘You could say that.' Through those words that she threads all around like string, I hear that she's not going to let it go either. Somewhere I know that she's still out of bounds and I shouldn't be doing this, but: ‘I'm fairly desperate to get out of here. You want to go for a drive in the trap?'

‘Of course!' she says, like she's been shaken from a dream.

‘You still want this tea?'

‘No!' That bell that comes out of her bounces round the walls.

And I know I won't try to kiss her, because I feel like I already have.