Underground

She insisted on going with him the next time he headed north.
‘I want to see what it’s like.’
‘What?’ he said. ‘The donga?’
He was being sarcastic. His living arrangements were spartan, and anyway she’d stayed in the boxy little huts before, with other men. He knew that. But if he was trying to put her off it didn’t work.
‘I want to see that you’re comfortable.’
She wouldn’t say it but she felt he was slipping away from her.
‘They’re all the same,’ he said. ‘There’s a bathroom, a bench, a fridge, a microwave, a bed and a verandah. That’s it.’
Whole townships of dongas were often to be seen on the backs of ‘two dog’ semis, moving from some rundown dump in the middle of nowhere to another, to places lucky enough to find themselves at the heart of a newly discovered gas field. They were townships of men and yet, she mused once, these places were like women past their prime. They knew how to keep secrets. When she’d thought this she looked sideways into a mirror to examine her throat.
So as he prepared to leave again, stowing his rusty Landcruiser with boxes of dry goods, hangers of navy shirts and trousers and his extra steel-capped boots for the trip north, her cotton dresses and Chacos sandals went in the back too. For the first time, she noticed, his business suit wasn’t in its plastic envelope alongside his other clothes. She remembered then that he hadn’t brought it home with him either.
They drove mostly in silence. When they’d first met, he’d been animated, talking about the ancient striations of basalt and sandstone that lay beneath the surface of the earth. His favourite ‘building’, if you could call it that, was the underground Serbian church in Coober Pedy.
‘The walls have circular patterns,’ he explained, ‘where the tunnelling machines have gone through.’
‘Lovely,’ she’d said, admiring his neat ears. They’d met on an online dating site. She couldn’t believe her luck when she saw him – he was good looking, with big dark eyes and a slightly sharp face, like a goat. He dressed well. She could see he earned a lot. He was going to make a good father.
‘Where I am now,’ he’d explained, ‘there are underground springs that have carved huge cavernous spaces. When you’re inside it’s like a cathedral.’
He didn’t talk to her like that any more.
Finally they were in Queensland again, pulling in beside one of the identical boxes that made a streetscape on the white concrete of the caravan park. No-one came out to peer as he stumped up the two front steps, tugged open the sliding glass door and put her case inside. He never bothered packing or unpacking, just used the Landcruiser as a mobile wardrobe, his shirts and pants hanging from a rail rigged across the passenger window until he was ready to wear them. Everything about his life made it easy for him to move on.
She went for a walk to get her bearings. ‘Rundown dump’ was probably too kind a description of the gun-barrel main street which interrupted what was essentially the business of the highway. There wasn’t really a town as such, just a strip development of motels and hotels and a few timber houses. And there were the donga settlements of course, laid out in their miniature streets like graves. Lorry loads of cattle and timber thumped along the road, roaring east and slowing only for the railway crossing at the back. The din of so much braking and revving was extreme.
‘At least we can have a drink without getting breathalysed,’ she said as she came back inside. She put her hands to his smooth jaw, trying not to notice as he flinched away. ‘Everything’s nice and close.’
‘Hmmm,’ he said, sitting down to his laptop.
At home in Adelaide he’d mentioned an eatery he liked and she’d pictured a romantic stroll back together, back to their cosy accommodation. On her walk she’d noticed a café called Deb’s.
‘Is Deb’s the place you meant?’ she said.
He stared straight through her, his mind elsewhere. She’d been hoping he might think of sex, some time.
‘Think so,’ he said.
It was a town for men, and as Deb’s was a pub café she guessed it would be fluorescently bright (so unflattering to the skin) with a menu of fried stodge and a ‘wine’ list of rum or beer. As for the acoustics – apart from non-stop cowpoke songs about your girl haven’t left ya for another fella, there’d be the roar of male laughter crescendo-ing from the public bar, not one of them unhappy to be amongst his mates. She didn’t like that about men.
Deb’s was crowded when they got there and it wasn’t as she’d imagined. The lighting was dim, and the little tables circular, like those at a Parisian bistro. Even the music was interesting – Diana Krall, someone like that. People greeted him and he paused to chat, but he didn’t introduce her and they sat separately from the others. He took a table by the wall.
‘My shout,’ he said standing above her. ‘What’ll it be?’
She settled on grilled fish and a Perrier. She was a bit older than him; she had to think of her figure. He ordered the roast beef and vegetables and a fourex. Deb brought it to their table herself.
‘How are ya Pete,’ she said. ‘Brung the missus?’
‘Yeah,’ he said, adopting her rough speech, ‘the ball and chain.’
Deb winked her crow’s feet at him, cackling as though she’d never heard it before, when it was the sort of thing men said all the time. Once she’d gone the fellow at the next table leaned over.
‘I have a good Voyager Red that needs sharing,’ he said to them both, lifting the bottle lengthways to display it with both hands, like an auctioneer. ‘Would you like to try it?’
‘No thanks mate,’ Pete said, without asking her. ‘Haven’t got wine glasses.’
The man stood. He was tall in his slim black suit. Tall and dapper and old-fashioned looking with a bland oval face and well-tailored brown hair showing his flat ears. She always noticed ears. Her own were over-large and hidden under blonde curls which she now tossed having thought of them. Men loved her hair.
‘That’s easily fixed,’ he said smiling at her. He went through a small door in the wall behind them.
‘Do you know him?’ she asked. The man’s attentions had given her quite a glow.
‘Seen him around,’ was all he said.
The table next to them was set for one. The finished plate was pushed to one side, with two uneaten pieces of roast pumpkin and a fish head still attached to its empty spine. She eyed the flat eyes of the flat-head.
‘Caught locally,’ he said. ‘You could take up fishing.’
‘No thanks.’
She hated the hook, and the writhing worms.
Beside the wine bottle was a bulging black bound book.
‘Maybe it’s a bible?’ she whispered looking at the book. ‘And he wants to consecrate us with the wine?’
‘Try not to be too silly,’ Pete said. ‘People can hear you.’
She put her hand over his, stroking the bony knuckles and fine hairs that sprouted across the first joints of his fingers. His skin was pale and his hair black. There was a bit of the gypsy in him that turned her on. She leaned over and nuzzled his ear but he pushed her away just as the man returned with two wine-glasses for their table.
‘I won’t have any,’ she said, hoping they’d persuade her against her will. The two men finished off the bottle between them without offering again. When Pete tried to order another the man stood and yawned.
‘Big day tomorrow,’ he said picking up a wide brimmed felt hat. ‘I’ll leave you two love birds to it.’
It turned out the night traffic was far worse than during the day, lorries and trucks barrelling down the darkened street, their rigs lit up like shop fronts. So all night the howls of tyres and hydraulic brakes penetrated the quiet, and no matter how she tried she couldn’t sleep. By day-break when the traffic finally stopped for a while (the trucks faced due east, straight into the sun) and had paused at Deb’s for fried eggs and sausage, the birds started up and she abandoned all hope of sleep. She went outside to sit on the tiny verandah while Pete snored on undisturbed.
‘Breakfast?’ she said watching him towel down later, then shave and dress in his tough gaberdine shirt and trousers. He smelt nice, of shaving soap and damp skin.
‘I’ll grab some down the road,’ he said kissing her chastely on the top of her head and scooping keys from the bench at the same time.
‘Wait,’ she said, already dressed, ‘I’ll come too.’
She’d selected a mauve skirt with ripples of pink flowing out in flamenco tiers.
‘No time,’ he said, shaking his head and jumping down the little front steps and into the car before she could protest. She watched as he backed out and headed towards the temporary office building he shared.
Behind the caravan park, on the other side of the railway line, two immense sheds had been erected, one with a grain silo looming over the line, the other with a sign on it advertising itself as a game meat slaughter-house. This was the other big street in the town. It ran parallel to the main road and she set off along it later in the day when the heat was already rising, walking the empty asphalt to the clang of machinery and the feeling of eyes watching. Her skin and hair were dry from lack of sleep. In the distance a car approached drifting above the road surface like a duck on a lake.
Across the town she could see where the men had gathered for the day, identical boxy 4WDs nuzzled into a parking lot like piglets around a sow. The noise of their laughter seemed physical, like a wall which excluded her. Pete stood with one foot on the running board he’d made out of steel piping, talking to a few men. Most of them wore navy shirts with orange logos on the single breast pocket, and khaki pants. Only Pete and one other man were in dark trousers. They were the career miners, not the Johnny come latelys, in it for the ready money.
There was nothing to do in the donga, not even sleep or sex, apparently. After Pete had left each day to share breakfast at the truck stop she sat on the tiny verandah with a slow coffee and contemplated the hours ahead unfilled by access to a phone or internet (the connection was at best intermittent). She wasn’t a reader. The Chinese contractors had all sorts of businesses going with laundry and cleaning so there was no house-work, no cooking and no shopping or washing to be done. During the day she roamed, umbrella up, sunglasses firmly in place, taking the short distance from the tiny bridge at one end of town, to the edge of nothing at the other. Each day seemed more and more like an abyss she could fall into any minute.
At night if they ate out together she had a proper meal, if not she stayed home and drank whiskey. Not eating was the way she kept her slim figure. If they went anywhere together he bought the food, chatted to people he knew and along with everyone else ignored her. Out on her walks she sensed them ignoring her too but the broken nights meant that she was too tired to care. As for the whispering there was no end to it, and no use heeding it, any more than she could make sense of the upended roos dangling in the back of trucks, their bodies fat as overcoats; or the dark green house with painted windows where men forever came and went, ceaseless as ants.
One day she asked Pete if they could have a meal with the man who’d offered them his wine.
‘He was nice to me,’ she said. ‘Not like everyone else in this God-awful hole.’
He was the last other person who’d actually spoken to her. Even the Chinese contractors didn’t acknowledging she was there.
‘No,’ Pete said. ‘I have other dealings with him. I don’t want to be mixing my interests.’
A couple of times she’d seen them standing outside the dark house, both of them in dark suits. Pete was the older, but it was the younger man whose authority commanded the scene.
Her inability to sleep affected everything.
‘When you get up and read you wake me too,’ he said. ‘And I’m studying.’
That was the first she knew.
‘Studying what?’
‘It’s not something I can discuss with you,’ he said.
That upset her. She wanted to be close to him. But the longer she stayed the further from him she felt.
‘Find me somewhere else then,’ she said. Then she paused with a pretense of thought. ‘No wait. Go and stay with your poofter mate. Then I can’t disturb you.’
Accommodation was hard to come by. She knew there was nowhere else to go.
‘Why do you say those horrible things?’ he said. At least she’d made him angry.
She didn’t answer. Wasn’t it obvious? He was avoiding her so much he even showered at the truck-stop before breakfasting there.
‘And do you have to roam around all day with that ridiculous umbrella?’
‘I don’t want to turn into a wrinkled prune,’ she said. ‘Like that Deb you’re so fond of.’
‘She’s a good woman,’ he said. ‘She looks after us all.’
‘I bet she does,’ she shouted in his face. ‘Especially you.’
‘Watch what you say,’ he shouted back. ‘A woman with your history.’
If he didn’t want her roaming around with an umbrella during the day she would go out late at night when she didn’t need it. It was eerie in the empty streets. The town dogs were shut inside. Only the sound of her own breathing and foot-steps went with her. Everything was dark, even the pub lights were out except for a dim sign winking its name. She passed the slaughter-shed and reached the house with its green windows. It was dark and silent too but with just a tiny fence to step over, voila, she was on the prickly lawn and in front of the front door. There was an embossed metal sign over the doorway, like a pair of dancing legs, and something else she couldn’t see properly without her glasses. Round the back were tools – long-handled picks, hoes, shovels, barrows – all leaned against a hillock of earth, almost as high as a shed. These were not the tools of mining any more – but they were the tools of burial.
After that she stayed home more. She would change tack. Her focus would be on Pete. Things had to work between them, she would just have to try hard enough for them both. Every day she rinsed her hair in an oil which gave off the fragrance of Berlin and the Lindenstrasse (as advertised). Even Pete noticed and commented favourably. The next time they went to Deb’s she insisted on getting dinner.
‘It’s my treat,’ she said. ‘To show how happy I am to be with you.’
She led him to the table where they had first sat, where by coincidence the man in the hat was again seated beside them.
‘I’m Doug,’ he said holding out a hand to her. ‘And you’re Minnie, I know.’
She nodded and smiled, her hair releasing its heavy scent and her low-cut dress gaping a glimpse of her breasts, as intended. This time it was Minnie who bought the Voyager Red while Pete sat quietly, not joining the usual joshing and banter of the little café at night. This time Deb didn’t bring the food to the table, sending one of the kitchen staff with Pete’s usual (roast lamb) and Minnie’s fish. Minnie was determined to be happy.
‘To us,’ she said, raising her glass after pouring one each for the men. Pete returned half the wine from his glass to hers.
‘Beer for me,’ he said, getting up for a fourex.
By the end of the evening Minnie had finished off the bottle and got another.
‘That’s probably enough,’ Pete said, standing. ‘I’ll walk you home, and then I have work to do.’
She picked up the bottle and stumbling slightly at the front steps almost fell. The bottle broke on the lintel of the door, sending the red wine in a cascade onto her cut feet. Wine and blood mingled in her bright pink sandals.
‘I’ll look after her,’ Doug said, stepping forward. ‘You go and finish your studies.’
And he took her arm and steered her to a bench outside the pub. His hands had a quiet thoughtfulness all their own. With water and a cloth he cleaned the blood and checked each square of skin for broken glass, and the hairs on her skin began to crawl involuntarily under his fingers.
‘Can I walk you home?’ he said.
She stood up, swishing her skirt and curls.
‘Of course,’ she said.
She leaned into him as they walked along, enclosing him in the Linden blossom.
‘Pete is a good man,’ he said. ‘A serious man.’
‘Yes,’ she said, hoping the lace of her Fifi Chachnil bra was visible just above her neckline.
‘Studying,’ she said. She pretended to know what.
‘Soon he’ll be a Master,’ he said. ‘And the Lodge is almost finished.’
As they reached the donga she put a hand to the back of his head and another on his chest. He stepped out of her grasp to open the door.
‘Sweet dreams,’ he said, giving her quick kiss on the cheek.
Pete didn’t come back that night. In the morning when she was sober again she saw the file of photographs on his laptop. They were of the green house, its front doors opening into an empty shell. Every picture told of progress. The rooms, and then the floor changing: at first a stairway entrance appeared in the middle, then a set of descending stairs emerging from the carved rock below. Electric wires were strung down into the cavern below, then coach-lamps began to replace the bare bulbs that lit the way. Finally a polished oak banister appeared and the stairs themselves were complete.
And below, as the sequence of pictures showed, the big cavernous space had also been transformed, V shaped seating appearing on the polished stone floor, and around the vault of the ceiling timber architraves inserted, with coach lamps set into the stone walls. At the very centre of the space the letter G dangled above a mosaic of the sign she had noticed outside but hadn’t been able to discern properly: a square with compass opened across it.
Outside a car door slammed and she heard Doug’s voice.
‘Are you decent?’
‘Yes,’ she said, sliding the glass open. ‘But Pete isn’t here.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I advised him his studies should come first. He had somewhere else he could stay.’
She had made her coffee for the morning.
‘Would you like a coffee?’ she said. She felt flirtatious in his presence after the intimacy of his hands on her last night. ‘Or something else?’
‘I’m leaving for Adelaide in an hour,’ he said. ‘You might like to come with me?’
She felt her face flush with excitement. Here was a way forward.
‘Yes,’ she said.
An hour later they were already out of town, driving through the gidgee and coolabah woodlands that crossed the New South Wales border.
‘I left a note for Pete,’ she said.
‘He knows you won’t be back,’ he said. ‘I’ve told him.’
‘I hope he won’t miss me,’ she said.
‘He’s completing the Third Degree,’ he said. ‘He’s a very ambitious man.’
That was something Doug admired, she could tell.
‘And you?’ she said.
‘Oh I’ve been a Master for years,’ he said. ‘As my father was before me.’
Doug was a chatty man. Mostly he talked some masculine gobbledygook she could feign an interest in. It was hard to believe anyone cared about stuff like freemasonry, but apparently Pete and Doug did. The memory of his attentive fingers interested her much more.
‘Pete’s done a wonderful job with the Lodge,’ he was saying. ‘The whole structure’s underground, but so beautifully crafted. He’ll be a Worshipful Master in no time.’
She pulled the sunshade down to check her lips in its pocket mirror. The Chanel Glossimer was lasting well. And Wild Rose had been a good colour choice for her complexion.
‘You can’t see the Lodge of course.’
‘Why not?’
‘Women aren’t allowed.’
He talked on about God, about the infinite nature of everything. About the sky at night, the mystery of the galaxies. His ears were long and fleshy, like her own. He wasn’t sexy like Pete, in fact he seemed staid, the sort to wear a wedding ring. And there wasn’t one. She put a hand on his arm.