Coal Creek Read online

  Praise for Autumn Laing

  ‘. . . in many respects Miller’s best yet . . . a penetrating and moving examination of long-dead dreams and the ravages of growing old.’

  –Times Literary Supplement

  ‘A beautiful book.’

  –Irish Times

  ‘Such riches. All of Alex Miller’s wisdom and experience—of art, of women and what drives them, of writing, of men and their ambitions—and every mirage and undulation of the Australian landscape are here, transmuted into rare and radiant fiction. An indispensable novel.’

  –Australian Book Review

  ‘That Alex Miller in a seemingly effortless fashion is able to gouge out the innermost recesses of the artistic soul in his latest novel, Autumn Laing, speaks volumes about the command he has of his craft and the insights that a lifetime of wrestling with his own creative impulses has brought. Miller has invested this story of art and passion with his own touch of genius and it is, without question, a triumph of a novel.’

  –Canberra Times, Panorama

  ‘Miller has fun with his cast of characters and humour, while black, ripples through the narrative, leavening Autumn’s more corrosive judgements and insights. Miller engages so fully with his female characters that divisions between the sexes seem to melt away and all stand culpable, vulnerable, human on equal ground. Miller is also adept at taking abstract concepts—about art or society—and securing them in the convincing form of his complex, unpredictable characters and their vivid interior monologues.’

  –The Monthly

  ‘Few writers have Miller’s ability to create tension of this depth out of old timbers such as guilt, jealousy, selfishness, betrayal, passion and vision. Autumn Laing is more than just beautifully crafted. It is inhabited by characters whose reality challenges our own.’

  –Saturday Age, Life & Style

  ‘Miller’s long honing of the craft of his fiction has never been seen to better advantage than in Autumn Laing.’

  –Sydney Morning Herald, Spectrum

  ‘Nowhere in Miller’s work has the drama of character been so wellsynthesised with the drama of ideas. Nowhere else have his characters drunk ideas like wine and exhaled them like cigarette smoke, a philosophical questing indistinguishable from defiant bohemian excess.’

  –Weekend Australian, Review

  ‘It’s a tale of love, of longing, of creation and of a Melbourne recently past. Ambitious, hypnotic and deeply moving.’

  –Sunday Telegraph, Insider

  ‘. . . fine balances are struck throughout the work. Conservatism and modernism, aesthetics and ethics, nationalism and cosmopolitanism, established class structures and creative aristocracy: each of these conflicting forces unfolds organically through the social interactions and the rhetorical back-and-forth that mark the Laings’ convivial artists’ parties . . . Miller’s prose is so simply wrought it almost disguises its sophistication. Yet we feel the soft impress of the Anglo-American modernists on his sentences; the fealty he shows to the great 19th-century realists when building the inner lives of his women and men. Like Dante, a voice that was not Miller’s own has entered his breast and breathes there. The result transforms one woman’s dying words into pure and living art.’

  –Weekend Australian, Review

  ‘Autumn Laing is a true triumph.’

  –Sunday Herald Sun

  ‘Autumn Laing is a magisterial work, multi-award-winning Miller’s longest and most compelling and a triumphant culmination of a series of novels about art and the artist’s relationship to it . . . a compulsively readable tale.’

  –Adelaide Advertiser

  ‘Miller’s language rises to his theme with a swaggering richness.’

  –Sunday Age

  Praise for Lovesong

  ‘With Lovesong, one of our finest novelists has written perhaps his finest book . . . Lovesong explores, with compassionate attentiveness, the essential solitariness of people. Miller’s prose is plain, lucid, yet full of plangent resonance.’

  –The Age

  ‘Miller’s brilliant, moving novel captures exactly that sense of a storybuilt life—wonderful and terrifying in equal measure, stirring and abysmal, a world in which both heaven and earth remain present, yet stubbornly out of reach.’

  –Sunday Age

  ‘Lovesong is a limpid and elegant study of the psychology of love and intimacy. The characterisation is captivating and the framing metafictional narrative skilfully constructed.’

  –Australian Book Review

  ‘. . . a ravishing, psychologically compelling work from one of our best . . .’

  –Courier-Mail

  ‘. . . another triumph: lyrical, soothing and compelling. Miller enriches human fragility with literary beauty . . .’

  –Newcastle Herald

  ‘The intertwining stories are told with gentleness, some humour, some tragedy and much sweetness. Miller is that rare writer who engages the intellect and the emotions simultaneously, with a creeping effect.’

  –Bookseller & Publisher

  ‘With exceptional skill, Miller records the ebb and flow of emotion . . . Lovesong is a poignant tale of infidelity; but it is more than that. It is a manifesto for the novel, a tribute to the human rite of fiction with the novelist officiating.’

  –Australian Literary Review

  Praise for Landscape of Farewell

  ‘The latest novel by the Australian master, so admired by other writers, and a work of subtle genius.’

  –Sebastian Barry

  ‘Landscape of Farewell is a triumph.’

  –Hilary McPhee

  ‘Alex Miller is a wonderful writer, one that Australia has been keeping secret from the rest of us for too long.’

  –John Banville

  ‘Landscape of Farewell has a rare level of wisdom and profundity. Few writers since Joseph Conrad have had so fine an appreciation of the equivocations of the individual conscience and their relationship to the long processes of history . . . [It is] a very human story, passionately told.’

  –Australian Book Review

  ‘As readers of his previous novels—The Ancestor Game, Prochownik’s Dream, Journey to the Stone Country—will know, Miller is keenly interested in inner lives. Landscape of Farewell continues his own quest, and in doing so, speaks to his reader at the deepest of levels. He juggles philosophical balls adroitly in prose pitched to an emotional perfection. Every action, every comma, is loaded with meaning. As one expects from the best fiction, the novel transforms the reader’s own inner life. Twice winner of the Miles Franklin Award, it is only a matter of time before Miller wins a Nobel. No Australian has written at this pitch since Patrick White. Indeed, some critics are comparing him with Joseph Conrad.’

  –Daily News, New Zealand

  Praise for Prochownik’s Dream

  ‘Assured and intense . . . truly gripping . . . This is a thoroughly engrossing piece of writing about the process of making art, a revelatory transformation in fact.’

  –Australian Bookseller & Publisher

  ‘With this searing, honest and exhilarating study of the inner life of an artist, Alex Miller has created another masterpiece.’

  –Good Reading

  ‘Prochownik’s Dream is an absorbing and satisfying novel, distinguished by Miller’s enviable ability to evoke the appearance and texture of paintings in the often unyielding medium of words.’

  –Andrew Riemer, Sydney Morning Herald

  ‘Miller is a master storyteller.’

  –The Monthly

  ‘A beautiful novel of ideas which never eclipse the characters.’

  –The Age

  Praise for Journey to the Stone Country

  ‘The most impressive and satisfying novel of recent years. It gave me a
ll the kinds of pleasure a reader can hope for.’

  –Tim Winton

  ‘A terrific tale of love and redemption that captivates from the first line.’

  –Nicholas Shakespeare, author of The Dancer Upstairs

  ‘Miller’s fiction has a mystifying power that is always far more than the sum of its parts . . . his footsteps—softly, deftly, steadily—take you places you may not have been, and their sound resonates for a long time.’

  –Andrea Stretton, Sydney Morning Herald

  Praise for Conditions of Faith

  ‘This is an amazing book. The reader can’t help but offer up a prayerful thank you: Thank you, God, that human beings still have the audacity to write like this.’

  –Washington Post

  ‘I think we shall see few finer or richer novels this year . . . a singular achievement.’

  –Andrew Riemer, Australian Book Review

  ‘A truly significant addition to our literature.’

  –The Australian

  ‘My private acid test of a literary work is whether, having read it, it lingers in my mind afterward. Conditions of Faith fulfils that criterion; I am still thinking about Emily.’

  –Colleen McCulloch

  Praise for The Sitters

  ‘Like Patrick White, Miller uses the painter to portray the ambivalence of art and the artist. In The Sitters is the brooding genius of light. Its presence is made manifest in Miller’s supple, painterly prose which layers words into textured moments.’

  –Simon Hughes, Sunday Age

  Praise for The Ancestor Game

  ‘A wonderful novel of stunning intricacy and great beauty.’

  –Michael Ondaatje

  ‘Extraordinary fictional portraits of China and Australia.’

  –New York Times Book Review

  ‘A major new novel of grand design and rich texture, a vast canvas of time and space, its gaze outward yet its vision intimate and intellectually abundant.’

  –The Age

  Praise for The Tivington Nott

  ‘The Tivington Nott abounds in symbols to stir the subconscious. It is a rich study of place, both elegant and urgent.’

  –The Age

  ‘An extraordinarily gripping novel.’

  –Melbourne Times

  ‘Altogether brilliant. This man knows his hunting country.’

  –Somerset County Gazette

  ‘In a virtuoso exhibition, Miller’s control never once falters.’

  –Canberra Times

  ALSO BY ALEX MILLER

  Autumn Laing

  Lovesong

  Landscape of Farewell

  Prochownik’s Dream

  Journey to the Stone Country

  Conditions of Faith

  The Sitters

  The Ancestor Game

  The Tivington Nott

  Watching the Climbers on the Mountain

  ALEX

  MILLER

  Coal Creek

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events have evolved from the author’s imagination.

  First published in 2013

  Copyright © Alex Miller 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available

  from the National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 1 74331 698 6

  eISBN 978 1 74343 557 1

  Text design by Lisa White

  Set in 12/20 pt Minion Pro by Bookhouse, Sydney

  For Stephanie

  And for Ross, Kate & Erin

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  PART TWO

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  PART ONE

  ONE

  My mother told me and Charley when we was children, Saint Paul said God has chosen the weak things of the world, the foolish things of the world, the base things of the world and those things which are despised. We all hang on the cross, she said. Whenever she seen I was suffering she touched my cheek and smiled her sad smile and said it to me: We all hang on the cross, Bobby Blue. Don’t you forget it. And that is what she always called me, her Bobby Blue. I was the youngest and her favourite of the two of us. Even as a boy Charley was always making off somewhere on his own. He had red hair and the rest of us was all dark-haired. I don’t think he ever felt like he was really one of us. I do still regret even at this time of my life not being with my mother when she closed her eyes for the last time and said her goodbyes to us and to this world, as I know she would have done even though we was not with her to hear her words of love and farewell. They have always burned in my mind, those words I never heard. I hear them now. She died without having no illness first, so there was no warning given me and Dad. By that time I thought I was a man, though I was still only a boy. I was out in the camp mustering the scrubs with Dad, and our Charley had gone off to the coast to get away from Dad’s impatience with him.

  Me and Dad learned Mother had died when we rode into town and was yarding the bullocks for Mr Dawson at the railhead. It was George Wilson, the constable at Mount Hay in them days, who come out to the holding yards in that Dodge pick-up truck he had then and told Dad that Mum was dead a week. Old George Wilson with his sagging moustache and his sagging khaki police uniform, which made him look sad, his big Webley revolver holstered on his right hip with the flap of the holster buckled down, which always had me thinking he would not want to get taken by surprise. And that never happened anyhow, except in my imagination, where I seen him shot in the chest and going to his knees, his fingers still fussing with the buckle of that holster. But the truth is I never seen George unholster that weapon and I doubt very much he ever did, but he always wore it. Just in case, I suppose. He stood alongside the chute that day, his sweated-up old police slouch hat in one hand, looking solemn and touching his moustache with the fingers of his other hand. I had noticed before how George was always nervous around my dad and stood back from him, like he feared my dad might blame him for bad news. Giving Dad a bit of room, which was George Wilson’s way with trouble of any kind. Not that my dad was a man for trouble, but he was a silent man and he did not smile a lot, and that made people careful around him.

  It was at that time of the late afternoon when the wind used to get up and them long grey clouds come floating in from the desert out west, as if they had once rained somewhere, casting sudden shadows across the stockyards and making the cattle restless. The beasts was setting up one great racket of bellowing and it was hard to hear what George was saying but I knew it was something important. I do not remember Dad answering nothing to George at the time but just pausing to listen, in the way my dad had, respecting the man, until George had finished telling his news, then getting on with dipping the beasts for ticks that we was in the middle of doing.

  Dad never did have much to say unless he was angry with you, then you heard from him. If Dad wanted me to do so
mething when we was out mustering he raised his whip hand and indicated. He knew I would be keeping an eye on him, like a man playing in a brass band has one eye on the bandmaster and the other eye on the music. That is the way all them old fellows did it. They indicated. And we understood them. They never had a lot of time for yelling and carrying on like people do today. Rip-tear-and-bust was not their style. Working in the scrubs alongside them there was just the trample of the beasts making their way through the timber ahead of your horse and them cows and calves that was separated bellowing to find each other. It was such a familiar music I believe we stopped hearing it. It was just there in our daily life. They was good days we had together and I will not forget them. If my dad seen the bad way my life and Ben’s went after he was gone over to the other side he would wish he might have had the chance to step in and redirect us with one of those indicating signs of his long before we was too far caught up in that trouble. Dad would have seen the trouble coming to us, the way he seen trouble coming when we was out in the scrubs. He had an ear for it. I seen him raise his head and listen many times when we was at supper around our fire out in the camps, and I would know something was up.

  But he would not speak of it till it was time to speak of it.

  . . .

  I did not weep out at the yards that day I heard my mother had been dead a week but I wept when I was on my own later. And since that day I have wept for my mother many times, thinking of her love for us all and her special regard for me that I was never to know again from any woman but one. Me and Dad buried my mother up there in the cemetery behind the town reservoir and everyone in town come to her funeral and walked up the hill behind me and Dad and Ben Tobin and his dad who were all carrying her coffin. Which weighed very little. At the graveside I seen my dad was weeping, his hat held in his hands in front of him, his face uncovered to the crowd and his grief at the loss of his beloved companion plain for everyone to see and no shame in him. It was the only time I ever seen my dad weep and it moved me greatly and my grief caught me in my chest and I wept with him. Charley did not get back from the coast for it.