Black Diamonds Read online

  ‘Where did you learn to do this?’ she says through her laughing.

  From Dad; a thousand Sundays of sitting out here with him cut into me. I just shrug.

  ‘You don’t say much, do you,’ she says, frowning, like she expected something different.

  ‘No,’ I say. That’s true, most of the time.

  She lets that laugh out again, and it’s hard not to join her. Don’t know what she finds so amusing but it’s good to hear that sound come out of me. I can’t remember the last time I heard it.

  The breeze catches the hair that’s fallen down her back and it drifts across her face. I’m gone. I could look at her forever.

  And I reckon she knows it. She lets me. After ten years she says: ‘Well, I’ll come back another time to call on your mother. Next Friday, about the same time?’

  ‘Sure,’ I say.

  ‘In the meantime, is there anything that you need?’

  Not that I can tell you about. But there is something, and I get my head out of her hair for long enough to say it: ‘Can you tell your father that my mother wants to buy the house? The mine owns it; she wants to know if they’ll sell it to her.’

  ‘Of course,’ she says. There’s that little frown again.

  I want to make her a cup of tea or something, to make her stay, but that’s not likely. No chance I’m going to lurch around in front of her. I’m not going to ask her to make me one either; I’m useless enough as it is.

  She goes to hand me back the kookaburra but I say: ‘You can have it.’

  Her face blooms out in red, and I’ve embarrassed her. She probably doesn’t want it; why would she? She makes that little mewling sound like a kitten as she’s looking at it. Finally she says, ‘Thank you,’ and her fingers curl back around it. ‘I shall treasure it,’ she says, suddenly smiling like we’ve shared a joke. Then she’s off.

  The breeze tears up through the gully, but I’m not feeling it. She’s that far out of bounds, but a bloke can dream. Maybe I dreamed the whole thing, I’m that bloody bored.

  FRANCINE

  Good God, Francine Connolly, what are you like? I waited a week, and couldn’t bear it any longer. Like he’s thrown a rope around my waist. And I flirted with him! I have little experience of young men; well, none to be exact, since the only fellows I ever seemed to meet in Sydney were from St Joseph’s, all of them so stitched up, and barely more articulate than The Lad himself. This is cruelty. Do I have a streak of wickedness in me that allows this? Likely. The way he looked at me! And I virtually encouraged him! I have no business doing any such thing. As if I’m practising wiles upon this fellow. I am a disgrace.

  But every time I look at the kookaburra my self-admonition is arrested. I don’t know what I imagined working men did in their spare time, but it certainly wasn’t that. The Lad may be reticent but there’s apparently something going on upstairs. How else could he have created this? My copy of Native Flora and Fauna finally arrived this afternoon, but I haven’t even opened the package. My watercolours, any watercolours, are pale dribbles compared to his abilities. And it is not the fact that is it so tiny and so detailed he must have gone half blind doing it. Neither is it in the practical skill of doing it at all. It’s the way the bird looks at me, on the verge of laughter. The way its claws reach around the bit of branch it sits upon as if poised to fly. The Lad is something of an artist, I’m afraid. That makes this all the more excruciating.

  I even tried to hide it when I first got home. Put it in the bottom drawer of the wardrobe where I keep things I never look for. Shame bit, and I had to take it out again and put it on the dressing table, where it sits now, looking at me.

  I tell myself that it is the fault of my inexperience. That I really am a child and have no idea of these things. That I’ll get it over with as soon as I find something sensible to do with myself. But I know all that is rot. I know, I don’t know how, but I know I am in love with him. Oh, but there must be a hundred girls dizzy in love with him. I see his sun-kissed chest, the knotted thickness of his shoulder, the fire-glimmer in his raven hair as it falls in a thick curtain across his forehead. His green eyes looking at me as if I am gaga, and wanting his opinion, wanting him to look at me.

  I shall have rather a few higher thoughts to contemplate at Mass on Sunday, if I can make it past the thoughts I should not be having at all.

  Father relieves me of my misery by coming home at four. But there is no relief, since I have to give him the message about the house, which requires me to mention His name.

  ‘Good, good,’ Father says, well pleased, and I can barely hear him above the rushing in my ears. ‘I’ll have a word with our John Drummond and get an answer shortly, shouldn’t be a problem with that, money’s money to him.’ Then he peers at me as I perch like a statue on the edge of the sofa. ‘You look a bit wan, Francy. What’s the matter?’

  How I want to tell him the whole terrible thing; have him make it go away with a jocular wave of his hand. But instead I force out a chuckle that I hope sounds dismissive but in fact sounds as if I am being strangled. ‘Nothing!’ I say. ‘I just drifted off for a minute.’

  ‘Where did you go, my girl?’ he asks and he’s sparkling above his pipe, damn him. I am so overstrung I suspect he knows, and is enjoying this torture along with everything else he’s put me through these past weeks. This is all his fault.

  Mine too, though. I was the fool who said she’d go back for more next Friday, and there’s no getting out of it this time.

  Oh the melodrama! But I simply can’t help it. This is hideous. Hideous. And even my own hyperbole is making me ill.

  ‘Actually, I am a little tired,’ I tell him. ‘I think I’ll just have some toast and go to bed.’

  He puffs on his pipe and nods. Leprechaun!

  Mass does not go well, as if I thought it would. I am contemplating how tall He might be standing up when Father Hurley spies me from the pulpit with his careworn forbearance. I’m sure he knows, as does everyone else here. The place is packed full of decent working people who are married and goodly with pure and simple lives, full of faces I don’t know, except Mr Drummond’s tight-shut dreary-old-bachelor face, and I studiously avoid looking at him. But everyone else knows me — I am the lunatic, too-good-for- this-town hussy who teases hapless miners. An injured, helpless, bereaved miner no less. Look at her! But I say in my defence that he tempts me. That God created him so well to punish me. I see apples rolling into my skirt — his hands putting them there. I am no Eve — he gave them to me! God is conspicuously quiet on the matter, as always. I should, like Father, give this farce away. There is no God that puts some people in mines and kills them, while others gather the profits in the parlour; no God that gives a widow compensation money only to have her pay it back to the mine responsible for her husband’s death, so that she might have what should be hers anyway: her home. No God that delivers me Achilles in the flesh and then says I can’t look at him.

  So much for Mass. Seems I’m being converted to, what’s that fashionable hoity-Melbourne heathen philosophy called again? Socialism? I have also just had a glimpse of the highest thought I’ve had to date. Father is right, it is a tangle, and I should know more of what things mean beyond myself. For the first time I see the vast realms of my ignorance and I am not afraid. Why should I be? They, at least, are mine.

  Even still, when Friday comes around again I find myself in a bother over what to wear. Despite the fact that I will be going now on serious business — I will carry the Transfer of the Title Deed with me. After calling in on Mrs Ackerman to agree on a price, Father went to the lawyers in Sydney during the week to arrange the papers, and he’s given me instructions as to where Mrs Ackerman will have to sign, and she will give me her bank cheque for one hundred and eighty pounds, and it will be done. I was surprised — what can surprise me next? — that he didn’t want to take it himself, pronounce his good news with a fanfare in his pipe, but perhaps, as he’d said to Mr Drummond, it’s not personal thanks h
e’s after in this. What then? My education in the tangle? Blow’d if I know, as they say in the classics. Father is a tangly paradox in himself. With a magic hand for all but me. Evidently there was no problem with Mr Drummond, and I find myself remembering the outraged way he talked about the miners that night; that gives me a bit of a chill now. I do know that business is designed to make money, rather than give it away, but it also seems to me that human beings should be rather less expendable than he was suggesting.

  In any case, my thoughts are quickly swamped by remembering my own appalling behaviour at that time. He’s a miner? Filthy, nameless. Please see that Mr Ackerman gets lunch & clothes: and is forthwith removed from my conscience. It calms me a little to self-flagellate about my craven incompetence. Keeps me from dwelling upon the impossibility of my Great Romance. I am, today, extremely grateful to have a significant purpose to my visit: I can’t have Achilles but I can hand over his house to his mother. Well, you can’t have everything, can you?

  The kookaburra looks at me.

  I feel my throat close over.

  DANIEL

  She’s sitting there with Mum at the table, showing her where to sign. She’s wearing a brown jacket buttoned right up her throat, the sort that makes a girl look like she actually wants to be a spinster; bloody awful, but somehow she makes even that look all right. Little splash of freckles on her nose. Not that it matters what I think. I’m over in the corner like a spare shovel. She hasn’t looked at me square on since she got here; just a quick hello and into the business. So much for dreaming; she really was after Mum, and was only being polite last time.

  ‘And that’s it, Mrs Ackerman,’ she says, packing her flash fountain pen away in her pencil box. She looks up at Mum again and smiles, regret in the blink. Mum smiles back and says to her: ‘You and your father have made this so easy. I can’t thank you enough.’

  I can’t believe I’ve been hanging on a line all week for this.

  ‘It’s the very least …’ she says. She and Mum get up with a scrape of chairs on the floorboards that grates right through me.

  Mum looks like she’s about to say something to her, but doesn’t, and there’s a look between them, like they’re having a chat without me. Excuse me for breathing. Francine Connolly. She steps around the end of the table, she’s leaving now, and she catches the toe of her shoe on the leg. And then she looks across and sees me.

  She says: ‘Oh. We should … Hmmm.’ She looks at Mum again. ‘I … think I should like to visit you again, Mrs Ackerman, if that’s all right with you.’

  Mum’s not expecting that but you wouldn’t know it unless you were looking for it. She says: ‘That would be nice.’

  They go to the door talking some rubbish about the camellias out the front. Then I hear her say, ‘Oh. I forgot my pencil box,’ and she whips back down the hall to grab it. She whispers to me: ‘Next Friday.’ And she’s gone.

  When Mum comes back she says: ‘Well, we have a house, then, ja.’ Not yes, but ja. And she sits at the table staring at nothing for a second, then she whispers, ‘Ungerecht,’ and puts her head in her hands: unjust. Yep. Dad was never interested in owning anything, but this house is him; now it’s Mum’s, without him.

  Her back shakes once and that’s the only clue to her crying. And I want to shake the rest of it out of her, shake out everything that she’s never said.

  But Mum heaves up a big sigh and shakes herself out of it. She says: ‘This Francine Connolly. She’s … unusual.’ Raising an eyebrow.

  Too right, but I say, ‘Ja,’ and we crack. Mum knows, without me saying anything, everything I’ve seen, plus some. When Mum laughs it’s like rain on the roof.

  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.’