Tourmaline Read Online Free PDF Page A

it there grows no grain,
    nor any habitation
    wherein for to remain…’
    I pushed open my gate. I paused in my barren garden, beside the dead pepper tree.
    ‘But the sugar-canes are plenty,
    and the wine drops from the tree…’
    I lit the hurricane lantern on the bench by the door, and entered my dark habitation.
    Byrne, like most of Tourmaline, did a bit of fossicking to keep himself in liquor. But since he was lazy and unlucky, he also relied very often on the charity of his cousin Kestrel, for whom he did odd jobs round the hotel. Depending on his activities and his state of sobriety he had two homes: one a single-roomed miner’s hut of dry stone on the hill behind the church, the other a small back room of the hotel containing only a bed, on which he had many times been dumped, like a bag of wheat, by sympathetic but exasperated drinking-mates. On one celebrated occasion Kestrel and Horse Carson had succeeded in landing him on it by throwing him through the air from the doorway. He claimed to remember nothing of this, and to disbelieve it.
    After I left him he did not start drinking again, but went to this room and lay down on the bed and messed about with his guitar. He was very thoughtful. Presently Kestrel stuck his head through the door, and said: ‘Where’s that bloody Deborah?’ Byrne said that she was nursing the new bloke. ‘Go and get her,’ Kestrel said. ‘I want to eat tonight.’ But Byrne got up from the bed and said he would hash up a bit of tucker. He was very obliging.
    In the course of the meal, which Kestrel ate between trips to the bar, Kestrel said that the bloke was sure to die and that Deborah might as well come home. Byrne said nothing. His cousin added that Byrne ate like an old dog, and that there was no necessity for it, as at least one part of his body, his teeth, was in fair condition. He considered, moreover, that if Byrne ate more and drank less he would be healthier and less of a drain on the pub’s resources. Byrne concentrated on eating less obtrusively, and seemed to contemplate Kestrel’s advice; which was odd, as it was not the first time he had heard it. He then stated that he was ready to shoot himself at any time, if Kestrel thought that was the best thing for him. Kestrel said: ‘You corny bastard,’ and went back to the bar.
    Byrne washed up, taking care to keep as pure as possible the red water in the basin, which had still several days service to do. Then he returned to his bed, and went to sleep, eventually, still holding his guitar.
    At eleven he woke again, and found Kestrel standing in the room with a lamp in his hand, looking blacker and more bitter than ever. Kestrel said: ‘Deborah’s still over there.’
    ‘Watching the bloke,’ Byrne said, squinting at the light.
    ‘Go and get her for me, will you?’
    Byrne rolled over, yawning. ‘She wouldn’t listen to me.’
    ‘I’m not going,’ Kestrel said. ‘Not to start an argument with old Mary. Do me a favour.’
    Byrne sat up and rubbed his eyes. When he thought about it, he seemed to like the idea. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll take over from her.’ He pulled on his boots (Deborah was trying to domesticate him) and followed Kestrel through the hotel to the front door; through which the road showed all pale and silver-rose in the moonlight, and the Springs’ white store gleamed like a tomb. There was no light there, but the sick man’s room faced the yard in any case.
    He crossed the road, his footprints making great pits of shadow in the soft dust, and walked round to the back of the store. A pale-yellow glow came from the sick-room, where Deborah sat in a cane chair by the bed, the lamp beside her, reading some aged magazine. I suppose it was the property of Tom’s grandmother. He called to her from the window, and she rose and came to him.
    ‘Kes wants you,’ he said.
    ‘Why?’ she whispered back. And knowing him, I imagine that he blushed.
    ‘I’ll watch the bloke,’ he