The Golden Soak Read Online Free

‘Come in the spring,’ she had said, driving to the station that morning. ‘It’s lovely then with the wild flowers out.’ And she’d gone on to talk about the country, speaking of it as something beautiful, something to be loved as well as feared.
    There’d been Australians on the boat. But like the man from Batemans Bay I’d shared a cabin with, most of them were bound for Sydney. They didn’t know the West. Only Wade, who’d boarded the ship at Capetown, had ever been in the Pilbara. He’d worked with a construction gang on the iron ore railway, and the way he’d described it up here, he and the girl might have been talking about two different countries. I could hear the sound of his voice grating, see the fringe of gingery hair above the long face, the pile of beer cans in the cabin base. He’d hated it.
    That had been the night before we’d docked, the Italian immigrants lining the rails, staring out across the heat-still sea, the moon’s path like spilled milk. I had stood there with them for a time, all of us staring towards the future that lay veiled in the hot moon-haze. And when finally I had gone below, I had found the cabin packed with drunks, half awash with beer, and Wade perched on my bunk, his long legs dangling, sweat gleaming on his face, his hands trembling as he sucked at a cigarette. ‘You’re there, brother. Back in good old Aussie land. The Big Country.’ His cackling laugh, that grating voice – ‘So you’re headed for the Never Never, up into the Pilbara – the Iron Cauldron. Christ! You’ll fry. You’ll wish you’d never seen the blasted country.’ His drunken words merging with her clear, vibrant voice. ‘Come in the spring. It’s lovely with the wild flowers out’. And Kadek, long ago on that terrace in Spain, talking of the Golden Mile, envying me my degree: ‘If I’d had your education, I’d have been a millionaire by now.’ Dozing, I chased a wisp of molten gold through miles of desert blooms in a flat red waste, the only sound the rattle of the truck and Wade’s cackling laugh, his hatred of the Never Never.
    I woke with a jerk, the fallen cigarette burning a hole in my old khaki trousers. I stubbed it out and got to my feet, moving down towards the track. Would she have set out in darkness for the sake of a cooler ride? There was no sound, just the stillness, and the light increasing all the time.
    Feeling stiff and in need of exercise, I walked down to the junction with the dirt road. The sky was already flaring in the east, the shape of Mt Whalebeck showing black on the horizon. It did look rather like a whale, and above it hung a haze as though it had just vented. But it wasn’t moisture; it was iron ore dust, and as I stood there it began to redden with the rising sun. Something moved to my left and I turned my head. But it was already gone, a shadow, insubstantial.
    The sun came up and I retired to the shade, a prey to the fear that something might have been discovered in the long weeks I had been travelling out here. The police might accept the evidence of their eyes, but the insurance assessors would almost certainly probe deeper before they agreed to payment, and they’d find no body, no trace of human remains. All through the voyage I had been able to push this thought to the back of my mind. But now that I was thrusting myself on people who knew who I was, I could no longer ignore it.
    Everything I had done that night was clear in my mind, fixed there indelibly by knowledge of the risk I was taking. In spite of all I had had to drink, I could remember every detail, and going over it again step by step, remembering the emptiness of the house, my own numbness, the appalling sense of finality as I had lit that candle, I was sure I hadn’t slipped up. It had all been so carefully planned – everything except the sudden decision to involve