“When did we start buying dead wool, Mr. Joseph?” asked the storeman.

“We never buy dead wool,” Joseph said sharply. “What are you talking about?”

“There’s a bale of it down at the far end.”

“Not in this store.”

“I’m good for a bet on it.”

“What’s biting you? Why d’you say it’s dead?”

“Gawd, Mr. Joseph, I’ve been in the game long enough, haven’t I? Don’t I know dead wool when I smell it? It pongs.”

“Here!” said Sammy Joseph. “Where is this bale?”

“Come and see.”

They walked down the aisle between ranks of baled wool. The storeman at intervals switched on more lights and the aisle was extended before them. At the far end he paused and jerked his thumb at the last bale. “Take a sniff, Mr. Joseph,” he said.

Sammy Joseph bent towards the bale. His shadow was thrown up on the surface, across stencilled letters, a number and a rough crescent.

“That’s from the Mount Moon clip,” he said.

“I know it is.” The storeman’s voice rose nervously. “Stinks, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Joseph. “It does.”

“Dead wool.”

“I’ve never bought dead wool in my life. Least of all from Mount Moon. And the smell of dead wool goes off after it’s plucked. You know that as well as I do. Dead rat, more likely. Have you looked?”

“Yes, I have looked, Mr. Joseph. I shifted her out the other day. It’s in the bale. You can tell.”

“Split her up,” Mr. Joseph commanded.

The storeman pulled out a clasp-knife, opened it, and dug the blade into the front of the bale. Sammy Joseph watched him in a silence that was broken only by the uneasy sighing of the rafters above their heads.

“It’s hot in here,” said Sammy Joseph. “There’s a nor’west gale blowing outside. I hate a hot wind.”

“Oppressive,” said the storeman. He drew the blade of his knife downwards, sawing at the bale. The strands of sacking parted in a series of tiny explosions. Through the fissure bulged a ridge of white wool.

“Get a lungful of that,” said the storeman, straightening himself. “It’s something chronic. Try.”

Mr. Joseph said: “I get it from here, thanks. I can’t understand it. It’s not bellies in that pack, either. Bellies smell a bit but nothing to touch this.” He opened his cigarette case. “Have one?”

“Ta, Mr. Joseph. I don’t mind if I do. It’s not so good, this pong, is it?”

“It’s coming from inside, all right. They must have baled up something in the press. A rat.”

“You will have your rat, sir, won’t you?”

“Let’s have some of that wool out.” Mr. Joseph glanced at his neat worsted suit. “You’re in your working clothes,” he added.

The storeman pulled at a tuft of wool. “Half a sec’, Mr. Joseph. She’s packed too solid.” He moved away to the end wall. Sammy Joseph looked at the rent in the bale, reached out his hand and drew it back again. The storeman returned wearing a gauntleted canvas glove on his right hand and carrying one of the iron hooks used for shifting wool bales. He worked it into the fissure and began to drag out lumps of fleece.

“Phew!” whispered Sammy Joseph.

“I’ll have to hand it to you in one respect, sir. She’s not dead wool.”

Mr. Joseph picked a lock from the floor, looked at it, and dropped it. He turned away and wiped his hand vigorously on a bale. “It’s frightful,” he said. “It’s a God-almighty stench. What the hell’s wrong with you!”

The storeman had sworn with violence and extreme obscenity. Joseph turned to look at him. His gloved hand had disappeared inside the fissure. The edge of the gauntlet showed and no more. His face was turned towards Joseph.

The eyes and mouth were wide-open.

“I’m touching something.”

“With the hook?”

The storeman nodded. “I won’t look any more,” he said loudly.

“Why not?”

“I won’t look.”

“Why the hell?”

“It’s the Mount Moon clip.”

“I know that. What of it?”

“Don’t you read the papers?”

Sammy Joseph changed colour. “You’re mad,” he said. “God, you’re crazy.”

“It’s three weeks, isn’t it, and they can’t find her. I was in the last war. I know what that stink reminds me of. Flanders.”

“Go to hell,” said Mr. Joseph, incredulous but violent. “What do you think you are? A radio play or what?”

The storeman plucked his arm from the bale. Locks of fleece were sticking to the canvas glove. With a violent movement he jerked them free and they lay on the floor, rust-coloured and wet.

“You’ve left the hook in the bale.”

“— the hook.”

“Get it out, Alf.”

“Come on. What’s wrong with you? Get it out.” The storeman looked at Sammy Joseph as if he hated him. A loose sheet of galvanized iron on the roof rattled in the wind and the store was filled momentarily with a vague soughing.

“Come on,” Sammy Joseph said again. “It’s only a rat.”

The storeman plunged his hand into the fissure. His bare arm twisted and worked. He braced the palm of his left hand against the bale and wrenched out the hook. With an air of incredulity he held the hook out, displaying it.

“Look!” he said. With an imperative gesture he waved Mr. Joseph aside, leant forward, and vomited comprehensively. The iron hook fell at Sammy Joseph’s feet. A strand of metallic-gold hair was twisted about it.

CHAPTER I

ALLEYN AT MOUNT MOON

May 1943

A service car pulled out of the township below the Pass. It mounted a steep shingled road until its passengers looked down on the iron roof of the pub and upon a child’s farm-animal design of tiny horses tethered to verandah posts, upon specks that were sheep-dogs and upon a toy sulky with motor-car wheels that moved slowly along the road, down-country. Beyond this a system of foot-hills, gorges, and clumps of Pinus insignis stepped down into a plain fifty miles wide, a plain that rose slowly as its horizon mounted with the eyes of the mounting passengers.

Though their tops were shrouded by a heavy mask of cloud, the hills about the Pass grew more formidable. The interval between cloud roof and earth floor lessened. The Pass climbed into the sky. A mountain rain now fell.

“Going into bad weather?” suggested the passenger on the front seat.

“Going out of it, you mean,” rejoined the driver.

“Do I?”

“Take a look at the sky, sir.”

The passenger wound down his window for a moment and craned out. “Jet-black and lowering,” he said, “but there’s a good smell in the air.”

“Watch ahead.”

The passenger dutifully peered through the rain-blinded windscreen and saw nothing to justify the driver’s prediction but only a confusion of black cones whose peaks were cut off by the curtain of the sky. The head of the Pass was lost in a blur of rain. The road now hung above a gorge through whose bed hurried a stream, its turbulence seen but not heard at that height. The driver changed down and the engine whined and roared. Pieces of shingle banged violently on the underneath of the car.

“Hullo!” said the passenger. “Is this the top?” And a moment later—“Good God, how remarkable!”

The mountain tops had marched away to left and right. The head of the Pass was an open square of piercing blue. As they reached it the black cloud drew back like a curtain. In a moment it was behind them and they looked down into another country.

It was a great plateau, high itself, but ringed about with mountains that were crowned in a perpetual snow. It was laced with rivers of snow water. Three lakes of a strange milky green lay across its surface. It stretched bare and golden under a sky that was brilliant as a paladin’s mantle. Upon the plateau and the foot-hills, up to the level of perpetual snow, grew giant tussocks, but there were no forests. Many miles apart, patches of Pinus insignis or Lombardy poplars could be seen and these marked the solitary homesteads of the sheep farmers. The air was clear beyond belief, unbreathed, one would have said, newly poured out from the blue chalice of the sky.