Free Tourmaline by Randolph Stow Page A

break his wrist, perhaps.
    ‘It’s all right,’ the diviner said, very quiet and tense. He put up his arm, and they engaged.
    Meanwhile Rock stood over them, hawk-eyed.
    It was, I’ve heard, the longest and most tedious encounter that ever took place in that bar; and it was watched in silence, lasting a quarter of an hour. The earnestness of the diviner infected them; infected Byrne, too, who began to resist as if he were fighting for his life. They grunted, they sweated; they moved through an angle of a hundred and eighty degrees in their efforts to find the most rewarding position. And for minutes at a time they stared into each other’s faces with a peculiar, though apparently meaningless, fixity. In their view, evidently, it had become a Homeric struggle. Even the spectators were not quite bored by it.
    At last Byrne began to weaken. Very slowly his arm was forced downward. Then it hurt him, and he bit his lip. The diviner watched him intently.
    ‘Give in, Byrnie,’ Rock said.
    ‘Yair,’ Byrne whispered. ‘Okay, give in. Give in, give in.’ His voice suddenly rose to a yelp. ‘I give in. Mike. Mike.’
    Then Rock prodded the diviner in the ribs with the toe of his boot. And he, almost reluctantly, it seemed, let Byrne go and stood up, brushing his dusty trousers.
    ‘You don’t want to hurt him, do you?’ Rock said, as if he were not too sure.
    ‘No,’ said the diviner, panting a little. ‘No. You all right, Byrnie?’ And suddenly he was recognizable again, he was prepossessing.
    ‘I’m okay,’ Byrne muttered. He staggered to his feet, rubbing his wrist, then reached for a glass on the bar and emptied it. ‘I’m drunk,’ he complained. It was obvious enough.
    ‘Have another drink,’ Kestrel said to the diviner. ‘The house owes you something.’
    ‘No,’ he said, ‘thanks,’ standing awkward and confused, in a general air of anticlimax. ‘I was going then.’
    ‘Don’t go,’ Byrne said, turning back to him. ‘You don’t want to go yet.’
    ‘Yes, I do,’ said the diviner patiently.
    ‘I’ll wrestle you,’ Byrne was so kind as to offer.
    ‘No, thanks,’ said the diviner; and did begin to go away. But this time Byrne leaped on him.
    It was soon over; a brief struggle, followed by a startling thunk. And there was the diviner alone, in the middle of the room, looking annoyed; and there was Byrne on the floor, with his head against the brass footrail of the bar, and the blood welling from a gash above one satanic eyebrow. Everyone was surprised.
    ‘Oh hell,’ said the diviner. ‘I’m sorry.’ He knelt beside Byrne and lifted his wounded head.
    Byrne was alternately laughing and moaning. ‘What’d you do that for?’ he wanted to know. ‘Mike, what’d you do that for? Mike.’
    ‘Why did you jump on me?’ the diviner countered. ‘I’m sorry. But you shouldn’t have done it.’
    ‘You hurt me,’ Byrne accused him, in self-pity. ‘What’d you want to hurt me for, Mike?’ He groaned.
    ‘For the love of Jesus,’ Kestrel prayed, ‘someone put him to bed. Rocky, Jack, deal with him, will you.’
    Byrne sat up and squinted around, with an air of martyrdom. ‘Mike can do it,’ he said. ‘Mike’s the bugger that hurt me.’
    ‘You had it coming,’ Kestrel said. ‘By God you did.’ He looked angry.
    ‘I’ll see him off,’ said the diviner, dragging him to his feet and propping him against the bar. ‘What about his head? He’s bleeding.’
    ‘We can fix it here,’ Kestrel said. He opened a cupboard and took out a bottle of iodine and some prehistoric sticking plaster, which he gave to the diviner. ‘Don’t think you’re the first bloke that ever did his block with Byrnie in this bar.’
    ‘But I didn’t——’ the diviner started to say, before thinking better of it. Instead he opened the bottle, and stood poised with it.
    ‘Put your head back, drongo,’ Kestrel said to Byrne. ‘And shut your flicking eyes. You should know the drill by now.’
    The