Читать книгу Bangalore - Roger Crook - Страница 3

Michelle, Roddy and Rachael.

As Pat walked down the hallway to find Angus she looked at her watch. It was a pilot’s watch, big enough to read at a glance with numerous functions that would help with dead reckoning navigation if instruments failed. Ewen had bought it for her and she thought about him somewhere in the cold mountains of Afghanistan, maybe injured, maybe dying, maybe under fire, running, fighting his way to safety with his mates.

She thought about her contact with SAS Troopers. Seeing them return after weeks in the hills of Afghanistan, where they had been self-sufficient, carrying all their needs on their backs. She remembered the tiredness, the exhaustion in their eyes, the smell of fighting men who hadn’t showered, maybe hadn’t washed in all the time they had been away. But most of all she remembered the cautiousness, the wariness in their behaviour, always checking, always looking out for each other. When they were being evacuated there was no scrambling to get away, each man watched the others’ backs until the last one got in the helicopter; even then one of his mates watched his back from the door. Always searching the landscape, always watching. She knew that if Ewen was going to survive, it would be because of those men.

Pat found Angus on the veranda, in the chair he had been in before breakfast. He was rolling a cigarette. As he licked the paper he motioned towards his tobacco and papers on the table, offering them to her.

As she picked up the pouch and papers, she said, “Haven’t smoked for six months. Ewen got me off them. Now I think I need one. I can always stop again.”

“Don’t let me lead you astray.”

“You’re not. I was dying for a smoke yesterday when I was driving out here, but I didn’t have any.” As she was speaking she was, quickly and with a definite dexterity that could only have been acquired with practice, taking a filter from the pouch, licking the paper and rolling a cigarette. Angus held out his lighter to her.

“I’m the same, with smoking that is. I just find it so hard to give up. All those holier than thou people, even governments, don’t seem to understand. They spend so much money on anti-smoking campaigns, and Drink Safe, and Work Safe and Drive Safe or whatever it’s called, and here we are in the new millennium and there are still thousands of kids living on the street, homeless. Old people needing blankets every winter. They tell me the cost of electricity is going through the roof. Taxes on everything. Now a carbon tax, which seems to have everyone confused, including me.

“More people paying twice for education and don’t even mention the Aboriginal people. There was a time when we had a school for all of the kids on Bangalore, and they all learned to read and write at the very least. Now many of the black kids in the desert communities are illiterate, and the stories are coming out of some of the remote communities about child abuse and petrol sniffing causing permanent brain damage, I sometimes wonder what’s happened to all the money over the last forty years. It’s so very sad…”

“Is that why you like it up here?”

“What, away from the maelstrom of what is called modern life, the new millennium? Probably. It’s getting more and more difficult to run this place, but up here we like to think we have kept some vestige of real values, some might say old values. Maybe they have no place in the world anymore. Now it’s a dog against dog world. It’s a litigious world. Everybody wants to blame someone else for every stumble they make in life. So yes, to answer your question, I like to be away from all of that.

“I have a small circle of wonderful friends who I know are not on the make, as far as our friendship is concerned. I have a larger circle of friends, many introduced to me by my ex-wife, most of whom work in the big end of town, who I would not trust an inch and certainly not with my secrets or my money.” Angus looked at her. “I’m sorry; didn’t mean to sermonise, although some of my family think I am a bit monastic living out here.” Then he grinned. “They don’t know what they’re missing.”

She looked at him as she stubbed her cigarette in the ashtray on the table. “Can’t say I blame you. You and my dad will get along fine. He hates lawyers and accountants.”

“What does he do?”

“He’s a mining engineer. Got re-trenched two years ago after twenty years of loyalty to one company. The firm he worked for was taken over by an American company. Dad was the Chief Engineer. He was integral to the takeover; it was his knowledge that secured the deal with the American investors. After assuring him there would be no changes they called him in one morning and put his retrenchment deal on the table, told him take it or fight, but ‘clean out your desk and be gone by lunchtime’. They had a security man stand by his desk. He had to catch a taxi home. They humiliated him and it hurt him so deeply.

“Dad fought them until he had spent all his savings and re-mortgaged the house. When all that money was gone, then he gave up. He’d spent his entire package and his savings on legal fees and then his lawyer told him that they were still at least two years away from the Supreme Court and that he had better have eighty thousand dollars available when the time came. So he gave up. His lawyer also told him that they had done everything they could and the decision was up to the Court, and whether the Judge had shit on his liver and whether he liked the look of Dad when the case started. That really depressed him. Now he hates lawyers and the legal system.”

“He and I do have something in common then. The whole legal system seems to be out of control. Justice it seems to me is now the province of the rich in this land. Who is right and who is wrong doesn’t seem to matter. Whoever has the most money to pay the best lawyers wins. What average workingman or woman can afford lawyers at anything from three hundred to five hundred dollars an hour? Lawyers are leaches. What’s your father doing now?”

“He formed a small engineering consultancy firm with a friend. With the boom in mining they are now in great demand. He’s changed though.”

“How?”

“He split up with my mother after thirty-two years. I don’t think it was because of the lawsuit. I think they’d been unhappy for years, but the lawsuit and the cost wouldn’t have helped. She’d always worked as a theatre nurse; she now works in Royal Perth. Dad knew nothing but work – so they drifted apart. Then Mum and a skin specialist found each other and she moved out to live with him down by the river. The settlement went through very quickly. Her lawyers started on Dad when he was at his most vulnerable, so he gave her everything that was left. Basically he got screwed when he was most exposed. I lent him some money when times got really bad and that embarrassed him, I think. The whole thing made him very bitter against my mother.”

With a knowing look, Angus replied, “I’m not surprised he’s bitter. I sometimes wonder about the law, justice and lawyers, it’s – they – are almost an oxymoron.”

“He paid all the legal costs out of what was left of his share of their house when it was sold. He now lives in a rented apartment in East Perth, overlooking the river. If he has another good year he says he will be able to buy in the same complex. Mother bought a BMW with her share of the house.”

“Do I occasionally catch a hint of an accent in your voice?”

“I thought it had all gone. Mum and Dad came out from Scotland when I was ten. He’d been in the coal industry and, as he often says, he got ‘Thatchered’ or ‘hand bagged’ when the British coalmines were closed down. Being a mining engineer, they eventually came out here.”

Angus looked at her. “We lead such complicated lives don’t we? Much of it is not of our own making.” Then, smiling, he said, “I suppose we’ll have to wait for Michelle and the others to get here before we can have lunch. Cup of tea?”

Pat moved to stand up and said, “You stay there, I’ll get it. I know where everything is.”

“Sit down, Pat. You’ve hardly been here what, fifteen, sixteen hours? And not found what you expected, I’m sure.”

Before she could answer the flywire door banged behind Angus as he went into the house. She thought about the last twenty-four hours. She had to admit she hadn’t known what to expect. What Ewen had told her about his father didn’t really fit with what she’d found. For a start she’d expected to find someone older than Angus. She didn’t know how old, but Ewen was thirty-two and from what Alice had said when they were making the beds, Angus was just fifty-one or two, but he looked younger. So Angus and Michelle must have been quite young when they got married, twenty maybe. Ewen had said that Angus and his mother just drifted apart and that was not the true story, again according to Alice; it looked as if they had been moving apart for years, since Ewen was a boy.

Every time Ewen had spoken about Angus to her it had been almost with awe. His father was the giant in his life and she had felt more than once that the regard in which he held his father was the reason Ewen had decided not to return to Bangalore. Even though he had told her he loved the place and he knew he would be breaking the dynasty as he called it, he had chosen a career in the army. Was Angus just too big a character for Ewen to live with? She hoped she would get a chance to find out, sometime, when Ewen came home.

Her thoughts then turned to Michelle, the ex-wife. Before her thoughts could develop, the flywire door opened and Angus came through with two mugs of tea. “Here you go – milk no sugar.”

As he handed her a mug of tea and sat down he said, “How are you feeling, Pat? You look tired.”

“It’s been a busy twenty-four hours, Angus. I’m glad I’m here; I think Ewen would want me to be here. Even though we are a long way from Perth, I’m glad I’m here. But you’re right, I’m tired, and we won’t get much sleep tonight either. I keep on thinking about those men, those warrior soldiers, Ewen, and those ghastly mountains in Afghanistan.”

“So do I. It’s practically impossible to make conversation. I find myself thinking about them and feeling so helpless. I’m sure it will be good news when we get it. I still can’t help wondering why his mother wants to be here. She usually only comes up here when the races are on… doesn’t seem to make any difference to her that we’ve been divorced for so long… she still waltzes about the place as if she’d never left.” Angus didn’t seem to be talking to Pat directly, just letting his mind wander.

“It’ll be good to see Rach though. Haven’t seen her for…must be twelve months. We won’t see much of Alice while Michelle is here; she’ll stay well clear. Michelle and Rachael are very alike, but very different, certainly in looks. Both of them are very brainy. I sometimes think Michelle envies Rachael and what she’s achieved. It’s a strange paradox, almost an absurdity. I have always felt that what Rach really wanted was to be here on Bangalore. She was always as good or better than Ewen around the station – terrific horsewoman, loved the station life. But Michelle wanted more from her. I've often wondered if Michelle persuaded Rachael to do those things she never had a chance to do because we got married so young and we lived out here. So Rachael went off at just twenty to university and did Medicine. Was it to please her mother? God knows. I never understood it. There I go again, talking about my family and soon to be your in-laws.” He laughed at her and added, “We’re a strange lot the Sinclair Clan; been in the mulga too long.”

Pat stood up from her armchair and stretched her arms out wide above her head and took a deep breath, giving Angus the opportunity to admire her slim figure and his son’s choice of a wife. ‘She really is quite beautiful,’ he thought. ‘The sort of beauty that’s not apparent to start with. She’s not startling like Michelle was at nineteen, even at thirty. There’s quietness there, a depth.’

She could feel him watching her and for some reason didn’t mind. When she turned to face him he was looking the other way. “I’m glad you’ve told me what you have, Angus. In some ways if Ewen hadn’t gone missing it might have taken me years to learn what you’ve told me in hours. I don’t have such a tale.

“All my grandparents are dead. Dad was the first of four generations not to go down the coalmine, the pit, as it’s called. I’m an only child. I think Dad wanted more but Mum couldn’t wait to get back to work.

“Dad broke the mould in his family. All his cousins became miners or married miners. Even in the seventies, miner’s sons just didn’t go to university, didn’t get a profession and certainly didn’t become one of the bosses. It was against their tradition. They were working class and proud of it.

“When Dad applied and was accepted for Nottingham University, he almost became estranged from his father. Gran was very proud, told anybody who would listen, but not my grandfather; he just ignored it all.

“After four years, when Dad got his engineering degree and joined the National Coal Board, a nationalised industry, he got a job in Yorkshire, away from Scotland, away from family. Gran attended his graduation in Nottingham, but not grandfather. I think he felt it would be a betrayal of all he believed in to attend those hallowed halls.

“Dad has told me that when he visited Scotland as a young mining engineer, my grandfather wouldn’t talk to him about his degree, his job or anything. I think he thought he’d gone to the other side; he’d become one of the bosses – one of the oppressors of the working class.

“Britain was riven with strikes in those days, especially in the mining, steel and vehicle industries. Even though most of them had been nationalised after the war, there was a definite them and us divide – the workers and the bosses. The mining unions were very strong, many somewhere to the left of Mao in their political beliefs.

“My grandfather ruled the house and his family with a rod of iron. There was always an underlying bitterness about him. His word was the law. He worked down the pit, as he had since the age of fourteen, starting as a pit pony boy until he was big enough to handle a shovel. Gran did everything else; she even cleaned his best shoes. There was no sharing of house duties in those days.

“He’d been told how his family and his community had been decimated by World War One. As a boy he’d suffered, like everyone, through the Great Depression. The ‘coal barons’ owned the coal industry in those days between the wars, and most of them were English and many had connections with if not the genuine aristocracy then the ‘new aristocracy’ the nouveau riche of industrial Britain.

“In just a few generations families had risen from almost obscurity to be part of what was then the technology centre of the world. They owned the mines, they owned the steel works, they owned the shipyards, they owned everything. Even the houses the miners lived in.

“Conditions were poor down the mine. Many worked twelve-hour shifts and were poorly paid. In Scotland, men like my grandfather literally hated the bosses and hated the English even more.

“Then after World War Two the coalmines were nationalised. The new Labour government was dedicated to wealth sharing. The workers, through the government, owned the mines. So the miners wanted their money.

“Every miner supported the Unions in their demands for more and more pay. The tables were turned and the miners became the nouveau riche of post-war Britain. Miners were paid more than schoolteachers, policemen and many ‘white collar’ professions. Miners demanded and got houses in the new council estates and the rents were low. They demanded and got a free allocation of coal every month.

“Even with their newfound wealth my grandfather remained a bitter man. He apparently had a huge fight with my grandmother when Dad received a scholarship to go to grammar school. No son of his, he claimed, would ever go to grammar school – State education was good enough for the working classes was his socialist mantra. He even claimed no workingman could afford the uniform and the extras, like books and sports equipment. The additional insult was that the grammar school played rugby; no son of his would play rugby. It was a rich man’s sport.

“The reality was that many miners were among the best-paid workers in the country and often earned more than some of the so-called professions. Grandfather finally relented when Dad’s primary school teacher went round to their house to try and change Grandfather’s mind. It turned out the schoolteacher was the son of a miner. My grandfather knew his father; they had worked together on the coalface.

“The schoolteacher, it turned out, had been to grammar school and then to teachers training college and then on to university and had then decided to be a teacher. He told my grandfather his income was just over half of what his father earned down the mine.

“Grandfather asked him why he was a teacher then. The reply left Grandfather without an argument. The teacher just said he loved his job. He liked being a teacher; he didn’t want to and had never wanted to be a miner. He wanted his own children to get out of the mining environment and get an education. He and his wife were both teachers, had two children – both were going to the grammar school.

“The mine, his local pub, the Miners Welfare, his union and the Labour Party ruled Grandfather’s life. Dad’s mum was a sweet quiet woman. I remember her crying when we left for Australia. She made me promise to go to Sunday school. Grandfather said goodbye at his house. Stony faced I remember him letting me kiss him and he hugged me for the first time I could remember. Then he made Dad cry when he shook his hand and said, ‘Don’t suppose I’ll see you again then?”

“Did you go to Sunday School?” Angus asked.

“No. We went to church though; Dad’s always been a good Christian, I think. He doesn’t talk about it, he never imposed it on me, but he and I went to church together until I went to Melbourne University.”

“Did he see his father again?”

“No. Grandfather died in his favourite pub with his friends and family, a pint of McEwen’s in his hand.”

“I’d assumed you’d always been in the military.”

“No, I went to Melbourne University to do aeronautical engineering. Someone there told me I could be an officer in the RAAF and get paid to study, so I did.”

“So you’re not in the army?”

“No. I’m in the RAAF. I’m seconded to the army at present; I have to go back to RAAF sometime soon. My job is to study army operational needs, requirements if you like, for the next generation of rotary wing aircraft. Flying, talking, listening, that sort of thing. Of course, what the army gets the RAAF will get as well, so we need to consider everything we can.”