The Drover's Wife & Other Stories by Murray Bail

Author:Murray Bail
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC000000, FIC019000, FIC029000
ISBN: 9781921776960
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2010-11-20T16:00:00+00:00

Ore

The list of publications Wes Williams read carefully, especially between the lines.

Petroleum Intelligence Weekly

Wolfrom’s Commodity Digest

Financial Review

London Financial Times (Sat. only)

Sugar Review

Tin International

Skinner’s Mining International Yearbook

Rydge’s

Pamphlets from chartists. Annual reports.

Statements from as far away as Detroit—when

America catches a cold the rest of the world

gets pneumonia. Sundry newspapers.

In the saloon bar, legs apart, he spoke with a kind of mechanical earnestness, looking over the heads of the others. He and his friends wore the short-sleeve shirt; with a tie of course. They could have been tennis players showered and combed after a match. In fact they were from the one office, Wes has pale eyes like the water in one of those Sydney swimming pools, a small mouth and large wrist knuckles. About thirty odd.

They were talking about the gold price.

‘It was a cert. It was on the cards. The Americans had to let it go,’ Wes said simply.

Each was familiar with the other’s arguments, predictions, yet never tired of hearing them. ‘Shares’ were an infectious, endlessly comforting disease. It affected the nasal passages. If someone changed the subject, even to cars, Wes would look around, restless, till it returned.

Wes had a few sugar shares—bought on the crest of the nickel boom. Everybody knew that. But Wes had recently moved into gold as well. He was keeping quiet about that, though anyone could tell, if they opened their eyes, he had assumed the complacent, almost deaf, manner of an ‘insider’.

‘Tell you what, copper’ll go next.’

Ha, ha. Wes was always on about copper.

‘The currency crisis,’ Wes went on. ‘It’ll affect the commodities. Copper’s fucking low anyway.’

‘The Cobar mine’s doing all right.’

Wes smacked his lips.

‘Give me Mt Isa any day.’

Gazing over their heads he threw in a tonnage and price-earnings ratio. Then bulging his stomach, pressing his chin to his chest, he gave two short belches: something he always did after the first few mouthfuls of beer. It was a free country.

The trouble was, the others could only go on about iron ore. The finer arguments on gold, copper and silver, their relationships to the dollar and so forth, were beyond them. Really, completely.

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