by Robbi Neal
‘I have a renovation in mind, but I want to keep it a surprise.’
‘Well, don’t you want builders — not miners?’ asked Edie.
‘No, I need miners — you’ll see.’
He took his cup of tea in one hand, and with Gracie still nestling on his other arm, quietly crying as she always did now, he walked down to the front fence, settled his cup of tea on top of the letterbox, gently jostled Gracie into a better position and interviewed the men in his slippers and housecoat right there on the street.
‘Who has children?’ he asked. ‘No, no, don’t all answer at once, put up your hand if you’re a father.’ The younger men smiled — he was going to send the old fellas home for sure and they would be taken on.
‘Okay, those of you that aren’t fathers can go,’ he said, and the younger ones grumbled as they wandered off. Paul counted how many were left. Ten. He had halved the number so that was a start, but he really only needed eight strong men. He looked at the men before him: sad, bedraggled-looking humans. He wondered what their kids looked like, whether they were skinny and underfed, whether their shoes were patched with wads of paper and leather straps.
‘I’ll take all of you,’ he said. He couldn’t bear to send any who were fathers away. They were older-looking miners, the ones with several children and a wife to support; men with dirt in their pores that would never wash out, men with clothes that were patches on patches.
‘Two sovereigns a week for six days; you don’t work Sunday because I am sure like me you will all be in church.’ The men chuckled uncomfortably and Paul continued, ‘Plus overtime. All up that’s got to be at least double what you’d hoped for, and a darn lot more than the one sovereign a week you’d have got before tributes were brought in.’
On hearing this good news the men seemed to grow taller.
‘But don’t go thinking you can drag that two sovereigns out for the next six months. I want this job finished in two weeks, one if you can, even if you have to work around the clock in shifts,’ he said.
‘Yes, judge,’ they chorused, as though they were at school.
‘I’m not a judge, not yet — sir is fine,’ he said. ‘I hope to God that the good wages I’m going to pay you goes home to your families and not to the Bunch of Grapes.’
‘Yes, judge,’ they murmured, wondering how much they could get away with spending at the Bunch of Grapes without sending their wives flying off the handle. The wives would hear how much they were getting paid; there was no hiding anything in this town.
‘You have to start immediately, as in right now,’ Paul said knowing full well they were ready to do so and had nothing else to do.
‘We’re on it, judge,’ Laidlaw said in his booming voice, and the others all put in, ‘Yes, judge — right on it.’
‘What’s your name?’ he asked the loud one.
‘Laidlaw, sir,’
‘Laidlaw, ah yes, our Beth’s brother-in-law. Well, you seem to have the loudest voice, you’re now the foreman. You get an extra sovereign a week.’
The others all wished they had had the balls Laidlaw had and had spoken the loudest.
‘But I won’t stand for any bullying. Any bullies will get their marching orders on the spot. Well — get going. I think you’ll find all the tools you need in the garden shed. Anything else — well, let me know what you need and I’ll get it. I’ll explain to Laidlaw what I want done and then he can direct you as he sees fit.’
The men went to the garden shed and began pulling out tools while Laidlaw stayed behind to find out what the judge wanted that was so special he was willing to pay double rates. Paul pulled an old newspaper article out of his dressing gown pocket to show Laidlaw and Laidlaw stepped back, his eyes wide, considered the enormity of what the judge had just shown him, and then nodded his head.
‘It’s like bloody Noah building the ark,’ said Laidlaw to the other men after he had explained Cottingham’s plan, ‘’cept the other way round.’
‘Do ya reckon he’s gone mad on account of his grief ?’ asked Paddy.
‘What’s it matter to us? As long as we get paid,’ said Barrett, ‘and right on bloody Christmas.’
Paul gave Gracie to Edie. He hadn’t said a word about the doctor’s concerns about Gracie having come so early. He would just make sure that the child had everything she needed; he would give her the best chance possible. He dressed for the office, downed a cup of tea and a slice of toast and butter, grabbed his briefcase and umbrella and went back outside. Laidlaw told him he had sent Simpson off for more tools.
‘Well, I should have given you some money to purchase them.’
‘No need, judge,’ said Laidlaw, ‘some of the fellas have the tools at home already. I’ll let you know if I need to order something special and when we are going to need those supplies I mentioned.’
The rest of the men had started pulling palings off the bottom of the house.
Paul stood and watched.
Edie came out into the garden, Beth following close behind. ‘Papa, what’s going on? It sounds like Armageddon.’
Paul watched the men, but his uneasiness grew and his chest constricted, God’s giant hand was clasping tighter and tighter, squeezing the breath out of him. He gasped at the air. Something was wrong but he couldn’t think what. He tapped the tip of his umbrella against his head and then jabbed it into the ground. This was his plan, his idea, and … his Taj Mahal. This was his last love letter to Lucy. It had to be made with his love.
‘Edie, ring the office and tell them I won’t be in for the next week or so.’
Paul threw off his jacket and handed it to Beth. ‘Well, go on, Edie, they can do without me for a week or so.’ And with that Paul picked up a crowbar and stepped in with the men and wrenched at the palings.
An hour later Paul had removed his vest and shirt and stripped down to his singlet and braces like the rest of the men. He looked about him. Mounds of dark brown earth were quickly growing into small hills. Bluestone blocks and timber palings were being loosed from the bottom of the house and scattered in piles about the garden.
‘Papa, what are you doing, besides giving us all a headache?’ Edie jostled Gracie in her arms.
He touched Gracie and left a muddy fingerprint on the white skin of her arm.
‘Hmm,’ was all he said, and as Edie stood and watched he walked off and jiggered at another block of bluestone with the crowbar.
Jack and Daphne Puce stood at their kitchen window in their pyjamas, Daphne’s hair tied up in knots of fraying cotton cloth. She looked at her husband and said, ‘This is all your fault. You should’ve done something to stop this sooner.’
On Wednesday 20 December, the men are still hard at work.
The men muttered and swore and sometimes slapped each other on the back as they dug away under the house. Soft soil meant the job was a good lark and they nodded to each other at their luck landing the job and congratulated themselves on being sensible enough to respond to the advert in the paper; when they struck hard soil and stone they grumbled in each other’s ears that they should have asked for more.
At ten-thirty Paul would put down whatever tool he had in his hand and invite the men in for morning tea, but they would look at their boots and Laidlaw always said, ‘Nah judge, us blokes are right out here.’ So Paul would go into the kitchen and Beth would have his favourite apple cake and tea waiting for him and then most days she would say, ‘Well, when are you going to tell us what’s going on?’ Most days Paul would smile, lift the cake in the air and say, ‘Best apple cake as always, Beth.’ Then any leftovers he would take out to the men.
When Paul went inside for morning tea Barrett would turn to the others and say, ‘I reckon Cottingham is mad or greedy. The old bugger is looking for gold under the bluestone stumps of his own family home.’ And he would grind the stub of his cigarette into the dirt with his boot and light up his next.
‘Nah, my missus says he’s gone mad with grief for his wife,’ said Johnno
.
‘I reckon we should all shut the fuck up,’ said Laidlaw, drinking tea from his thermos lid. ‘This is the best fucking work conditions we are ever likely to get.’ And the men couldn’t disagree.
All the men except Laidlaw whistled at Beth when she hung the nappies on the line, despite Paul’s stern looks and reminders that each and every one of them was married, and despite Laidlaw reminding them that Beth was his sister-in-law. They tipped their hats when Edie walked outside but she hardly noticed, her mind was a scurry of worry for her father. Had the heat cooked him? Like the Swiss-Italians, would he suddenly collapse and die? She checked on him often and would stop him mid-digging and put her hand on his sweaty forehead, her face screwed up with anxiety.
‘It’s just good honest sweat, Edie,’ he would say and bend to shovel more soil or yank more planks and bluestone.
She spent hours holding Gracie, who fell into her arms like she belonged nowhere else, and looked at the excavation happening in their yard and shook her head. Her father really had lost his marbles.
On Friday 22 December, it’s getting awfully close to Christmas.
Paul told the men they wouldn’t be working Christmas Day — nor Christmas Eve, given it was a Sunday and he never let them work on a Sunday. Edie handed them each a basket of fruit and Beth handed them each a fruit cake as a gift to take home to their families for Christmas lunch. Paul shook their hands and said he would see them 6 a.m. sharp on Boxing Day and gave them each an envelope with an extra two shillings and said, ‘Buy your children and wives a treat.’ The men thought of the Bunch of Grapes and saw Cottingham looking at them like he knew exactly what they were thinking and Laidlaw quickly said, ‘We’re off to the milliner’s for ribbons, lads.’
On Tuesday 26 December, it’s getting awfully close to 1906.
On the Tuesday at 6 a.m. they were back on the job. The underbelly of the house had become more than a rabbit hole; it stretched out and in just a few days the space had become big enough for Paddy, the smallest of the workers, to fit inside. Paul purchased supporting beams which were delivered by lumbering Clydesdales that came right up to the end of the driveway and the men dragged the beams from the cart under the house and the space under there became wider and deeper and then two of them could work under there, then four, then eight and finally all of them could work under the house and so doors and timbers for architraves, mantles and skirting boards were delivered and carried under the house. The underbelly of the house took shape and formed itself into passages and rooms and the men were convinced the old bugger was indeed mining for gold under his own house but obviously had some stupid rich man’s idea of what a mine looked like.
As cartloads of earth were lugged away by the Clydesdales, Paul began to notice that the air he sucked into his lungs stung less. As rooms and passages grew he was able to breathe more easily, and he became more enthused.
‘I want a spiral staircase,’ he said, ‘up to the house! I want a dining room, a sitting room and a hallway!’
That was when the men realised he wasn’t digging for gold at all, he had some other mad plan to build a house under a house. They didn’t care what deranged thing he asked for, as long as it kept them in work.
More earth was lugged away.
‘I want a doorway with a glass pane directly out onto the garden, so we can take her straight out to wander among her mother’s grevilleas in the evening when it’s cooler.’
The men rolled their eyes and patted their pockets full of sovereigns.
‘I want it to duplicate the house upstairs except for the kitchen, as that is where the staircase is,’ he said and he dragged Laidlaw, who quickly threw off his boots, barefooted and muddy through the house to show him the layout and Laidlaw went down to tell the men they would be working through the night to change the walls they had already built. When the walls were built and Paul had approved them the men rendered them and then painted them with off white just like the walls upstairs.
When the walls were finished, timber flooring was laid, the electricals installed and then it was done — all in three weeks. It had taken longer than Paul had wanted as his plan kept growing, but now the result was exactly what he wished for.
On Monday 8 January the men said a sad goodbye to their good luck.
Paul had created an underground house as his last gift to Lucy. A sanctuary away from the summer with its suffocating heat and sweat and bushfires, each wall built with Paul’s longing and loss.
Paul looked at the miners standing around him, their faces filled with amazement at what they had created. As the enormity of what they had accomplished took root they started to congratulate themselves and Paul and shook everyone’s hands till they nearly fell off.
Congratulations done, Paul needed Beth, and found her in the kitchen washing preserving bottles.
‘Beth, you can look now,’ he said.
She dropped her tea towel. ‘Really?’
‘Most assuredly,’ he said, ‘Come on,’ and he took her outside into the garden and down the path they had cut that sloped down into the ground to the door of the underground house.
‘What am I looking at?’ she asked peering into blackness.
He pulled the cord and the electric lights flickered to life and he watched her face fill with wonder.
‘Bloody hell,’ she said. And then, ‘I’m sorry, sir.’
He laughed and it didn’t hurt his chest and he took her hand and led her down the steps and into a small entranceway, and then he took her through each of the rooms he had created.
‘I want you to clean it,’ he said. ‘Give it the best clean you have ever given anything in your life — make it gleam. Let me know when you have finished.’ He took her up the spiral staircase and opened the door they had built in at the top and she found herself looking at her own kitchen.
‘And I thought you were just putting in a pantry,’ she said.
‘Now I’ll wait while you clean downstairs for me.’
Paul paced in the garden, Gracie whimpering in his arms. The men sat on the grass enjoying the break and sharing smokes. Beth brought out a broom and mop for the floor and cloths for dusting and oil for the woodwork and a bucket of warm soapy water. She cleaned the underground house till it sparkled under the electric lights. She called Laidlaw when she needed the water changed and he brought her a fresh bucket, the soap suds bubbling over the top. An hour or so later Beth announced she had finished and Paul said, ‘Just wait, not much longer.’ So the men lit up new cigarettes and Beth got glasses of water for everyone and they waited in silence, awed by what Paul had created.
‘Ah, right on time,’ Paul said as horses pulled a cart piled with furniture up the drive. Edie came out at the sound of the horses; she expected they were delivering more building materials.
‘Can I see what you’ve done to our house?’ she asked.
‘Not quite,’ said Paul, passing Gracie to her.
Paul directed the men to carry the furniture into the underground house and showed them where each piece must go, directly under its mirror upstairs: a new bassinet, easy chairs, a bookshelf, a bed, a change table.
Paul walked through the rooms. Yes, it was perfect. Then he took Edie’s hand, ignoring her wide eyes and stunned face.
‘Follow me,’ he said, and with Gracie in her arms led her through his underground house. Immediately the coolness of the earth enveloped them and he felt Edie shiver. It was hard to believe it was so hot out and so cool down here. Paul walked to the bedroom that had been built directly under Lucy’s.
‘Go on,’ he said, ‘lay her down.’ She laid Gracie in the bassinet Paul had had the men put there in the cool, and at last the baby fell asleep.
Now his love letter was finished he said, ‘Okay, I’m going to call in this Nurse Drake. We’re ready for her now.’
Twelve
The Nurse
Wednesday, 10 January 1906, when Nurse Beatrix can’t believe her luck.
‘It’s a fact th
at lawyers and doctors are all richer than they deserve or need to be,’ said Beatrix Drake to her fella George, who had recently been promoted to First Constable, ‘and that’s why, Georgie, last September, when Missus Cottingham turned up at my door to see if I could midwife at the birth, clever me — Nurse Beatrix Drake,’ she said pointing at herself, ‘knowing Missus Cottingham was a lawyer’s wife, I quoted triple my usual figure and she never bat an eyelid.’
Beatrix sat on the edge of the bed and pulled on her stocking, ‘Where’s the other one, George?’
George laughed and looked among the sheets that were tangled about his legs. ‘Here it is, love,’ and he waved it in the air just out of reach so she had to lunge over him to get it.
And now, thought Beatrix, putting on her other stocking, Missus Cottingham had gone and died, God-bless-her-soul, and they’d need to put the child somewhere. A new baby, only a few weeks old, a rich baby.
‘I could ask a sovereign a week for the care of the Cottingham baby, I reckon,’ she said and George slapped her bare bottom and readily agreed. He said her bottom was like two warm loaves of bread, soft, doughy and pliable. He said she was so comfortable that a man just wanted to plunge himself into her and forget all his worries, which he did every Wednesday afternoon at two when he should have been walking the streets.
She thought about the last kid she’d taken on. It was only last week she’d got rid of her, so the Cottingham baby had come along at just the right time. The mother of the other kid had turned up on her doorstep looking all mournful and in a hurry and offered her half a sovereign a week for the kid’s keep and said she was off to Hamilton to work as a housemaid. Beatrix had looked hard at the kid, trying to assess whether she was a brat or not, whether she’d be more trouble than the mother was willing to pay for her keep. The kid looked at the ground like she wanted it to open up and suck her into a different world. She looked hungry, Beatrix could see that much straight off, she looked like a half-drowned kitten.