The Girl in Steel-Capped Boots (5 page)

Carl’s first words startled her back to the present. ‘What the fuck were you doing out there?’ He was standing behind his desk with his hands on his hips.

She racked her brain for an excuse and decided she might as well give him the truth. After all, what privileges did she have to lose? ‘I needed a breather.’

‘What the fuck?’

He took off his helmet and flung it on his desk. There was a giant band mark across his sweaty forehead from the plastic strap inside the hard hat. The comical crease distracted her for a second and she found herself biting back a laugh.

‘You think this is funny?’ he demanded.

Lena sucked in her cheeks. ‘No.’

‘Don’t you know you’re not allowed out on the wharf without a fuckin’ safety induction?’

Something broke in Lena’s brain. He’d left her sitting in his
fuckin’
office for six days straight doing a job a monkey could probably do
blindfolded
. She crossed her arms. ‘No, Carl, I didn’t know that. Why should I? You never bothered to tell me. No one has.’

‘Don’t try and pin this shit on me.’ He pointed a finger at her. ‘You shouldn’t have been out there and you fuckin’ know it.’

She gaped at him, her indignation growing like a hot air balloon being filled. ‘With all
due
respect, Carl,’ she said, ‘yes, I should. I was sent here from Perth to be a site engineer. And instead I’ve been nothing but a prisoner in this office for the last six days. If I needed an induction, you should have given me one on my first day. So yes, I blame you.’

‘Prisoner,
my arse
.’ Carl rolled his eyes. ‘There’s no need to be so fuckin’ melodramatic.’ He pulled back his chair and threw himself down on it. The action caused a number of loose papers to fly up and then settle again.

Lena put her hands on the edge of his desk and leaned forwards. ‘I can’t do this any more, Carl. I can’t stay in here, day in, day out and play with your database. It’s a waste of my . . .’ she faltered, ‘degree.’

Carl didn’t appear to notice the strange inflection in her voice. His eyes flicked to hers. ‘No shit. So why didn’t you tell me this before you went fuckin’ walkabout?’

‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you for days; you’re never here.’ She threw up her hands as her courage returned. ‘Besides,
it’s common sense. What does an engineer from Perth come here to do?’

He snorted. ‘You forget that you’re also young, female and fuckin’ inexperienced.’

‘Believe me,’ she said through her teeth, ‘I’m never allowed to forget it.’

At that point she spun on her heel and headed for the door. There was no way she was having an emotional breakdown right in front of him. Clearly she was going to get nowhere with him anyway. She might as well go back to her donga and pack instead of wasting more time. If she was going to be sent back to Perth, she’d much prefer just to get on with it.

‘Hold it, Todd.’ Carl’s voice rang out sharply from behind her. ‘We’re not finished yet.’

Lena stopped walking but didn’t turn around.

‘You want me to admit I fucked up. Fine. I fucked up. I should have sent you for a safety induction.’

She turned back slowly. His surrender was so unexpected that she didn’t trust it and scanned his eyes for mockery.

‘Sit down and we’ll figure out what to do with you.’

Lena still didn’t believe it and continued to stand there speechless. Men
never
admitted they were wrong – at least not in her experience. Things couldn’t be
that
different on the Pilbara, surely.

Carl grinned. ‘For fuck’s sake, Todd, sit down. You’re giving me a crick in my neck.’

A little devil prompted her to test the limits of his benevolence. ‘Do you always swear so much?’

‘What the fuck are you talking about? I never swear.’ Carl looked down and became absorbed in his right thumbnail.

She laughed, partly in amusement but mostly in relief, and ventured back to his desk.

His eyes snapped up from his hands to her. ‘If you were hoping for some bullshit apology about my French, you’re barking up the wrong tree. A man doesn’t change, and especially not for some female with an identity crisis.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Pardon granted,’ he grunted. ‘Now, for fuck’s sake,
sit down
.’

Grinning, Lena plonked herself in the chair opposite his. ‘Okay, I’m listening.’

‘Did you see much out there today?’

‘Not really,’ she began. ‘I saw them banging the first pile in but you told me to go away before they’d finished.’

‘We
drive
piles, Todd, we don’t bang them in.’

Heat scorched her skin. ‘Right. Yeah. Of course.’

His lip twitched suspiciously before he continued. ‘At this stage, we’ve got the piling sorted. Gavin’s looking after that and that’s not where I need an engineer.’

He folded his arms on the desktop. ‘I need you to widen the jetty for the second conveyor.’

‘
What?
’ Her mouth dried. Lena had been expecting responsibility but not this much.

‘Not running scared, are you, Todd?’

‘No.’ She shook her head immediately, though her palms had begun to sweat.

He spun on his chair and stabbed a finger at October on the calendar behind him. ‘You have five months. Don’t disappoint me.’

She felt adrenaline pump from her heart to her temple. Had she just dug her own grave and jumped into it?

‘However,’ Carl added severely, ‘you will not be setting foot on the wharf again until you’ve had a fuckin’ safety induction. The amount of fuckin’ excuses I had to pull out of my arse this morning because that dickhead saw you fuckin’ around was un-befuckin-lievable.’

Lena was momentarily diverted. ‘Excuses?’ she retorted. ‘To who? Not that jerk I met on the wharf. He wasn’t even in uniform.’

‘That’s because,’ Carl told her with awful patience, ‘he’s the bloody client.’

‘I’m not a gynaecologist, but if you have a need, I can take a look at it for you.’ The guy who had spoken raised his stubby in a silent toast. His friend leaned forwards with a slow cringe-worthy wink.

‘That goes double for me.’

Lena shuddered, turned away and kept walking. Raucous laughter followed her down the gravelled path.

The worst part about camp, she decided, was evening drinks. Six o’clock, when everyone went back to their dongas to chew the fat and drink a carton. They congregated in groups of five or six, sitting on the concrete steps in front of their tin rooms-for-one. Usually boots and pants were substituted for shorts and thongs. Lena could have joined any number of these groups if she wanted to. Invitations flew out across the yard, loudly and daily. But she didn’t like the way some of the guys got when they were drunk. Brave was one way to describe it. Sleazy was probably more accurate. Besides, Lena wasn’t big on beer. She thought there was a reason they called it piss. In her opinion it tasted worse than awful. Even when Party-Girl had been her middle name, she hadn’t managed to acquire
the taste. Kevin had come along in her third year and also had a preference for wine. She’d thought it was another great thing they had in common. Looking back now, she realised how desperate she’d been to justify their relationship. It was a beverage, for goodness sake, not a sign of compatibility.

She quickened her step. There was one advantage to happy hour. While the guys were busy with their beer, the gym was usually empty and she wanted to make the most of the time. It was Ethel who had tipped her off about that. The rude camp receptionist was slowly changing her tune. Ever since she’d seen Lena’s efforts with her site uniform, as ineffective as they had been, she had started giving Lena some modicum of respect. In fact, every time Lena ran into her, she seemed to drop a new hint.

‘They’re making steak tonight so get to the mess early.’ Or ‘The washing machines in C block are brand new.’ Or ‘There’s mobile reception in the car park.’ These tips were always pronounced in a gruff voice as if torn from her against her will. She never waited for a reply, just kept walking as if she was worried someone would see them together. Lena regarded the gym membership as a lifesaver. Having nothing but work in her life had been taking its toll. The gym gave her some personal time that wasn’t spent confined to the four walls of her donga.

The equipment was old and the room was small but she had it all to herself. It was finally an environment where she had control. For the last three days she’d been there every night, working off the stress of her new-found responsibility.

The pride and bane of her life.

She wished she was ready for it.

Carl had been right. Lena was as green as a golf course – and getting greener by the minute. She had spent the last couple of days researching her position, going through files and reading correspondence. All she’d found out was how much she didn’t know. She had so many questions and no one to answer them.

Not that she wanted to be spoonfed. She knew the dangers of that better than anyone. But just a hint or two would be nice. Carl never had time for her. He was always too busy putting out fires. It was going to be a teach-yourself job and doubts assailed her.

Can I do this? Can I
really
do this?

How will I know if I’m doing it right? Do I have to wait till some piece of the jetty falls off to find out?

Sometimes the fear almost paralysed her; other times it kept her moving like day-old meat does a hyena. All she could do was keep trying – and hope and pray that she was making the right calls.

Another anxiety which constantly plagued her was stuffing up again in front of Dan Hullog. The client. Every time Lena thought about their first meeting, she cringed. Had she
intended
to give him a complete lack of confidence in her, she couldn’t have done a better job of it.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Sharon had tried to reassure her. ‘He’s not worth impressing.’

But Sharon didn’t understand. Sharon didn’t know what was at stake. Sharon, as far as Lena was concerned, had the mentality of everyone else in Barnes Inc. It was like a religion with them, a fanatical belief that all the Barnes Inc personnel followed. The project was divided into two teams.
Us and Them.

Dan Hullog was the leader of the foe, the nemesis of the Barnes Inc project. If Lena had any sense of loyalty to her people, she would hate him on principle.

There was no love lost between Barnes Inc and TCN, whose staff worked in a smaller set of office dongas on the other side of site near the start of the jetty. They watched Barnes Inc’s every move like white-bellied sea eagles.

‘Nitpicking bastards,’ Leg ruthlessly labelled the lot of them. ‘Don’t know a nut from a bolt and they want to tell us how to do our jobs.’

Sharon often delivered the mail between the two offices during her bus runs and was one of the few Barnes Inc personnel to have actually been behind enemy lines. ‘They’re a lot tidier than we are,’ she told Lena, as though it was proof that they were hiding something. ‘You wouldn’t think it was a site office with Bulldog’s floors so clean.’

That’s what Barnes Inc staff called Dan Hullog – Bulldog. Apparently, once he got it between his teeth, he didn’t let go – a perfectionist with impossible standards. Apparently, he had an overly critical eye and a penchant for finding the tiniest flaw in anything.

Like that was supposed to make Lena feel better.

She was surprised to learn that he lived in the camp. Carl chose to live in a proper house in Wickham, so Lena would never run into him on the way to the shower. She was grateful for that. It was good to have a bit of distance from her boss after knock-off and at least Carl had the common decency to give it to his staff.

Not Bulldog.

He lived right in among Carl’s staff and his own. The Barnes Inc boys said it was to keep his nose to the ground – sniff out any insurrection or laziness. He wanted them on their toes day and night.

‘Does his laundry every Monday at six-thirty pm in laundry donga seven,’ Radar tipped her off one day. ‘All the guys know it’s the place to avoid at that time, if you know what I mean.’

Despite the instructions on how to evade him, Lena saw Dan at breakfast the day after their run-in on the wharf and then at dinner that night. He didn’t acknowledge her and she made sure to ignore him, but it didn’t stop her knowing more about him than she cared to. At camp, titbits about the personal life of Dan and his staff were not only available, they were sought after. Gossip was the most common form of entertainment. After all, there wasn’t anything else to do. People couldn’t go
down to the local cinema and catch a movie. Project workers got their soap operas and dramas at work.

Word on the street was that Bulldog had a secret.

It made Lena roll her eyes.
A secret? What did that mean and why was it a crime?

Hell, she couldn’t point fingers. If Barnes Inc knew her history, she’d be fired on the spot: no notice, no questions asked. So how could she judge a man who kept his cards close to his chest? She couldn’t. That being said, it didn’t stop her from being curious with the rest of them or speculating at his expense. She listened in when his name came up at the dinner table and followed the stories about his eccentric behaviour with an interest that she couldn’t resist.

Generally, if she didn’t see Sharon, Lena would sit with Radar and Leg for dinner. They were the only two guys who had taken an interest in her that wasn’t sexual and even then she couldn’t be certain. Leg was an outrageous flirt. However, she found out over the course of several dinners that he was married with a five-month-old daughter. So it seemed unlikely that he was really in the market.

‘Don’t you find that hard?’ she asked one time. ‘That you only see your family ten weeks of the year?’

But he’d just grinned. ‘Makes them appreciate me more, doesn’t it?’

Leg was right about Radar. The man always had something to report back at the end of the day. Sometimes it was about one of the riggers or a barge boy, but more often than not, it was about Bulldog.

‘Heard he’s not taking his R and R,’ he told them towards the end of the week.

‘Not taking his R and R,’ Sharon scoffed. ‘The man will go nuts.’

Lena nodded. ‘The only thing that’s keeping me going is the light at the end of the tunnel. If I didn’t know there was a week off after five, I’d go mad.’

‘So would most guys,’ Radar agreed. ‘Bulldog’s a workaholic, or maybe there’s nothing at home to go back to.’

‘Hasn’t he got a family?’ Lena enquired, unable to picture them even as she asked it. A wife and kids, brothers and sisters, Christmas at home and Mother’s shepherd’s pie just didn’t seem to fit with Bulldog’s hard-nosed persona.

Radar lowered his voice as though imparting something he normally wouldn’t give away. ‘He ain’t married. But I think there’s a woman in his life.’

Despite herself, Lena’s curiosity jack-knifed. ‘He’s dating someone?’

Radar shrugged. ‘Maybe. He’s always on the phone to someone back in Perth or at least that’s what my sources tell me.’

Sharon rolled her eyes. ‘Geez, can you imagine it? Dating him, I mean. “I’ll pick you up at eight, dinner’s at nine, sex is at ten. I will review everything in the morning and get back to you about the possibility of a repeat.”’

Leg sniggered. ‘“But if you’re successful, you’ll get a list of improvement requirements with the go-ahead.”’

Radar laughed. ‘Ain’t that the truth.’

‘Speaking of having a personal life,’ Lena said. ‘What are you guys doing Sunday?’

Every two weeks Barnes Inc had a Sunday off. Lena’s first experience of this was in three days and she was counting the minutes.

Leg and Radar shrugged. ‘Nothing.’

‘Come on, guys.’ She scanned their faces for a hint of enthusiasm. ‘What do people do here for fun?’

‘Fun?’ Sharon joked. ‘What’s that?’

Lena persisted. ‘Seriously. Don’t you guys have plans?’

‘What do you think this is?’ Leg said. ‘New York City?’

‘I have a plan,’ Radar said. ‘Pick me up a carton, a few girlie mags and the newspaper, then sit in the shade under the gum behind the mess for a few hours.’

‘More drinking.’ Lena frowned. ‘Aren’t you an alcoholic by now?’

Radar grunted with greater satisfaction than contrition. ‘I’m working on it.’

Lena closed her eyes, conjuring her perfect day off – a half-price sale at Georgette’s, followed by a Caesar salad and a skim latte at Dome with Robyn. But she had to work with what she had. Opening her eyes, she looked at Sharon. ‘What do you normally do?’

Sharon shrugged. ‘Read . . . sleep.’

‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’ Lena sat back in her plastic dining chair, arms folded across her chest. Her stubborn streak was digging in its heels again. ‘I refuse to stay in this camp. I’ve got to get out of here. Come on, guys,’ she protested. ‘There’s got to be something we can do to get us away from these bloody dongas. What do the locals get up to?’

‘Well,’ Radar said slowly, ‘there’s always fishing. Pilbara’s bloody ripe for it.’

‘Hmmm.’ Lena thought it over. Fishing was only a slight step up from drinking. Generally she wasn’t into playing with her food besides being strictly a deadatarian. As in, she only ate stuff that was already dead the first time she saw it. The thought of pulling a slimy wriggling fish from a hook and chopping its head off so that she could cook it gave her the heebie-jeebies.

‘Anything else?’ She scanned Radar’s face with faint hope.

‘Nup, that’s it.’

Lena sighed and glanced at Sharon.

‘Hey, I’m willing if you can muster up a vehicle.’

She had no choice. It was this or nothing. ‘Fine.’ Lena blew at her fringe. ‘Let’s go fishing.’

The safety induction Carl had booked for Lena took most of the following day and bored her senseless. She was further
disappointed by the fact that it took place in a small community hall in Wickham instead of in the client’s site office – she’d hoped for a chance to check out the forbidden building. The unnatural need made her realise that the Pilbara was starting to get to her. Even so, her brain had not yet hit madness, like Gavin’s. His return to the office coincided with hers.

She saw him jump off the bus from the wharf, his face red with sweat and annoyance.

‘You’ll never believe what they’ve done now.’

‘Who?’

‘Who do you think?’

The client. ‘What have they done?’

‘They’ve erected a bloody flag on their front donga.’

‘A flag?’

‘Big blue thing with their emblem on it.’ Gavin wiped the sweat off his brow. ‘It’s giving my men the shits.’

She laughed. ‘It’s just a flag.’

‘It’s a bloody offence is what it is,’ Gavin said. ‘The boys reckon we should wait till nightfall, steal it and erect a Barnes Inc one in its place.’

Lena raised her eyebrows. ‘You’re kidding, right?’

He was silent.

‘Gavin,’ she began slowly. ‘You can’t do that.’

He hesitated. ‘You’re right. It’s not enough. We need a bigger flag if we’re going to make a statement.’