The Girl in Steel-Capped Boots

by Hill, Loretta

  ‘Look,’ she addressed Mike again in a slightly milder tone. ‘I need to take a couple of photos of the underside of the jetty. I haven’t finalised the connection design for the platform yet. If you have any suggestions, I could certainly use some –’

  ‘Just take your bloody photos.’ Mike dismissed her peace offering, confining his gaze to the ocean.

  She let it go. He was a lost cause. The whales were back, she noticed. Perhaps he found solace in their gentle might. Whatever the case, he couldn’t say she hadn’t tried to give him another chance.

  Lena climbed down the ladder on the other side of the skid so that she was on the walkway, sea side of the conveyor. As she looked under the wharf, three monkeys on the current access platform greeted her with the thumbs-up sign. There was no room for her with the three of them packing out the access platform. She laughed. ‘All right, you’re going to have to come up,’ she called. ‘I need to get down there to take some photos.’ She showed them the camera hanging round her neck and they climbed up onto the walkway.

  ‘Aw, we thought this was a social call, Madame E, to thank us for all our input.’

  Lena could see that they were in a teasing mood so she tried to inject firm professionalism into her voice, hoping it would put them off. ‘I did appreciate all your suggestions and, as you probably heard, they’re going to be put to good use.’

  ‘That’s it?’ the tall, skinny one complained. ‘You never talk to us.’ His nickname was Biro – his real name was Jack Penn. His body shape didn’t help his cause either.

  His coworker winked at Lena, tipping his hard hat with one grubby hand. ‘Heard you went on a fishing trip, Sunday. Why didn’t you invite us?’

  ‘I didn’t know you’d be interested in coming.’ She tried to gently brush him off. ‘Now if you’ll just –’

  But of course, they weren’t done with their goading. Lena wondered if Mike was listening upstairs, enjoying every second of her frustration.

  Geez, just when I thought these men were finally getting used to me as the engineer and not as the community toy.

  ‘’Course we’d be interested,’ Biro protested. ‘Wouldn’t we, boys?’

  The other two nodded their enthusiasm and Lena sighed. ‘Come on, guys, I need to get these photos. I’ve got a lot to do today.’ The walkway was too narrow for her to brush past them without physical contact. She knew that was the idea.

  ‘Shoot away,’ they grinned. ‘We don’t mind.’

  That’s when the posing started, first with the flexing biceps and then puffing out their chests to display non-existent pecks.

  Oh brother.

  They weren’t going to let her pass. If she was going to do this, she had to get creative. ‘You know what?’ Lena lifted her camera. ‘I should really get a group photo of the skid boys. Why don’t you guys hop up on the deck and I’ll take a shot of the lot of you?’

  The three of them beamed with surprised pleasure.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. Why not?’

  It was like she’d just handed them a hundred dollars each. They grunted with pride and scrambled up the ladder. Lena followed, trying not to laugh.

  Fieldmouse and Radar, who had been operating the crane, joined in, delighted at the opportunity to strut their stuff. Mike stared at the group in horror. ‘You’re turning this operation into a bloody freak show,’ he accused.

  Having by now warmed to her idea, Lena frowned at him. ‘It might be nice to have a memento. After all, you’re devoting at least a year of your life to the skid.’

  Mike choked. ‘Are you insane? This is not some tea party with your girlfriends, you know.’

  What a spoilsport.

  Lena ignored him as the men lined up, laughing at each other as they struck poses. They crowded around the crane, using it as a prop, perhaps because they thought it emphasised their masculinity. Lena began to enjoy herself as she snapped a few photos.

  Mike made a strangling sound deep within his throat. ‘This behaviour belittles the project.’

  Lena ignored him, too busy taking requests from the boys to capture different parts of the skid and the jetty. This wasn’t belittling their job. The men were proud of their work, proud of their part in the project and they wanted it to be recorded, so that they could show it off.

  They were asking for the pictures. She gave them her drawings so that they could scribble their emails on the back of it. She assured them she would forward the pictures on.

  ‘Thanks.’ Biro shuffled in his boots. ‘It would be good to send home. You know, for the wife and kids. Sometimes it’s hard to explain what we do here.’

  ‘Sure,’ she said, smiling, pleased that the guys were finally putting away their bullshit and getting real. ‘All right then. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll go down to the access platform and get what I really came for.’

  This time they let her pass.

  Lena walked into the gym that night for her hour of solitude to find twenty guys working out. This was some feat given the room only sported nine machines and a couple of mats. Half of the exercisers were simply standing around pumping hand weights.

  Their eyes moved to her in unison as the door swung shut behind her, tracing the outline of her T-shirt and then her bike pants. Gritting her teeth, she looped her towel around her neck and waited for the nearest machine to become available. When its user realised what she was doing, he immediately jumped off, grabbed his towel and wiped it down with so much flourish, it might have been a show pony.

  ‘Need some help with the settings, darling?’ he asked.

  ‘No thanks.’ She moved the hook from thirty kilos to ten and got on the machine, making sure not to meet his eyes for fear he might interpret it as an invitation to stay. He stayed anyway and proceeded to chat to her about the size of his biceps and how much they had benefited from use of said machine.

  It was in this moment that she realised it was official. Her quiet evenings at the gym were over. Her hour of solitude . . . gone. But how did they find out about my routine? She had been so careful. No one knew of her trips to the gym except Bulldog and Ethel. Had Bulldog let the cat out of the bag to punish her for the flag incident? It seemed too churlish even for him. Twenty minutes later, Lena’s frustration had only escalated. She had just turned down one date, five inappropriate compliments and one offer of personal training. She decided to quit and leave. Fitness was important, but so was sanity and privacy. But as it turned out, or as her bad luck would have it, that wasn’t the end of it.

  Outside the gym, on a small grassed patch, someone had set up a timber picnic table and benches from the mess. When she emerged from the gym, there were at least ten guys seated around that table drinking and laughing loudly. Most of them had stripped off their work uniform and were wearing tank tops and shorts with no shoes other than a pair of thongs here and there.

  ‘Hey there, it’s Madame Engineer,’ one of them called out. ‘Would you like to join us? We’ve been waiting for you.’

  His friend lifted the lid off the Esky next to the table and waved his hand over the contents, Sale of the Century style.

  She clutched her towel tighter. ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Come on, baby.’

  ‘What’s the matter? None of us good-looking enough for you?’

  She stopped walking, running her eyes over them in disbelief. It wasn’t like they were all young studs in their twenties. There were a couple of fifty-somethings, mixed in with a healthy dose of mid-thirty pot bellies, and leather-skinned forty-year-olds who really should have got out of the sun ten years ago. Half of them were probably married, or divorced, or both, with families back home in Perth. What were they doing chasing after her? And like a bell going off in her head, the answer suddenly came to her.

  She was sport.

  It wasn’t
personal. Their flirtation wasn’t serious. It was just that she was a distraction – a form of entertainment, a competition of sorts. Somewhere along the line, she had become a game and she didn’t like it.

  Instinctively, her hands went to her hips and she surveyed them as a teacher might the rottenest year nine students. They must have caught her mood because they all sat up straighter and a couple pulled in their bare feet, so that they were tucked under the bench.

  ‘Have you no shame?’ she demanded. ‘Can’t I have a simple work-out at the gym in peace?’

  ‘Come on, Madame E, it’s all in good fun.’ One of them spread his hands jovially. ‘There’s a shortage of pretty girls in this town, so when the skid boys told everyone –’

  Lena pounced. ‘The skid boys.’

  ‘Yeah, Fieldmouse and the others said that you went to the gym and they found out from Ethel what time so –’

  ‘The skid boys,’ she repeated, belatedly remembering that she might have let her gym visits slip to Fieldmouse while talking to Mike. ‘Those roaches!’

  She shook her head and started walking, ignoring the protests from behind. Her anger had already left the men on the picnic benches and redirected itself. As her brain sorted through the issues, a new truth revealed itself.

  So far, she had dealt with harassment by feigning deafness or giving a polite but firm brush-off. But the behaviour was only getting worse.

  She had to do something more.

  She had learned the hard way that letting people continue to make false assumptions about you only led to trouble. It was about time the skid boys knew who was boss. Suddenly a grin tickled her lips. What if she . . .? No, she couldn’t. The Barnes Inc Human Resources team back in Perth would have simultaneous coronaries if they found out. Bugger that! It was all well and good for a city-slicker HR manager to sue for sexual harassment. But how was that going to give her good engineering experience? How was that going to help her clear her conscience and earn her degree?

  Her decision solidified. Lena was going to do this her way.

  With new optimism, she looked at her watch. It was six-thirty pm – still a bit early to head over to the mess for dinner. She decided to do some laundry instead. Pulling a pair of baggy tracksuit pants on over her revealing bike shorts, she grabbed a sack of dirty clothes and headed in the direction of the nearest washing machine in donga seven. She was nearly there when she realised it was also a Monday which meant Bulldog would be doing his laundry there too. She spun around, intending to head to a different laundry donga on the other side of the camp site when guilt seized her. Did she really need to be so petty? The man was too arrogant for his own good but so far he was the only person who had decided to give her a second chance without being asked.

  Really, if anything, she owed him a thank you for not getting her fired over the whole flag incident. If it weren’t for his silence, she’d be sitting on a plane right now, her career in shreds. Squaring her shoulders and tilting her chin up, she turned back to donga number seven.

  Somebody had to be the bigger person here and this time it was going to be her.

  She entered donga number seven, a long rectangular box housing ten top-loaders and five dryers, one of which was humming gently. Bulldog was sitting on a bench waiting for his cycle to finish; and her feet slowed.

  Was this really such a good idea?

  He looked up from the magazine he was reading when she stalled in the doorway. The smell of freshly showered male assailed her. Wet black hair curled attractively over his ears. His shirt was uncollared and casual, setting off his broad shoulders to advantage.

  ‘Er . . . hi,’ she said, hoping that she didn’t sound too nervous.

  ‘Hi,’ he replied. By contrast, his tone sounded somewhere between annoyed and resigned. He certainly didn’t smile. Instead, he returned his attention to his magazine, lifting one booted ankle and resting it casually on his knee. It was clear that he had decided to ignore her. Her resolve strangely strengthened by this attitude, she deliberately tried to prolong the small talk.

  ‘Busy day?’

  He raised his eyes but not his chin. ‘Always.’ The twitch of his lips told her he knew what she was doing and was amused by it. It also made him look human. Human and unexpectedly more approachable. Encouraged by this, she chose the washing machine directly next to where he was sitting and opened the lid.

  ‘I’m glad I ran into you actually.’ She tried to keep her voice as laidback as possible. ‘I wanted to thank you for not saying anything about the flag.’

  Silence.

  She glanced over at him as she pulled her clothes from her sack and threw them into the machine. He had returned his attention to the magazine but feeling her eyes on him he nodded.

  ‘I mean, you were right. You could have had me fired, which would have been terrible for me. Not to mention humiliating.’

  He nodded again without looking up.

  ‘I’m really glad you didn’t do that. This job means a lot to me. I’m just starting out, as you’ve probably guessed, and I want to do well at this. Get some good experience, if you know what I mean.’

  He nodded a third time.

  She bit her lip. ‘What are you reading?’

  He closed the magazine. ‘Do you always talk this much?’

  ‘You consider this talking a lot? I –’ She broke off as something fell from the underside of the bundle she was transferring to the machine. A red number that could hardly be unfamiliar to him now lay draped over the brown boot propped on his knee. They both focused on it for a stunned second as she silently wished to die. ‘Er . . . that’s my, er . . . that’s my . . .’

  It’s obvious what it is, idiot. Don’t say it! Lena shut her gaping mouth.

  Her heart rattled against her rib cage as he leaned forwards, inserted his long fingers between the lacy cups and lifted them off his boot.

  ‘So you can be rendered speechless.’ His blue eyes seared through hers. ‘Good to know.’

  She snatched her bra from his proffered hand.

  ‘Thanks.’

  He leaned back in his chair again but his attention did not return to his magazine as she now hoped. Hastily, Lena packed the rest of her clothes into the machine, tipped in some powder and closed the lid with a thump.

  ‘I was right about the gym, wasn’t I?’

  His sudden re-entry into a conversation he had never wanted in the first place startled her. She turned around. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  His gaze flicked to the clock on the wall. ‘It’s only six-thirty and you’re not there. Get a bit too crowded for you?’

  Her lips thinned. ‘Something like that.’ His smile was just a little too I-told-you-so, so she decided on attack.

  ‘What about you? I haven’t seen you at the gym recently.’

  One black brow lifted. ‘Been looking, have you?’

  Okay, so maybe not the most well-thought-out attack in the history of repartee. ‘Of course not,’ she replied just a little too forcefully and then paused to modulate her voice. ‘Just a casual observation.’

  He re-opened the magazine, flicking through it efficiently as he searched for something of interest. ‘Actually,’ he mentioned as an aside, ‘I’ve taken to running. It’s nice to get out of the camp sometimes.’

  ‘So what’s wrong with taking your R and R then? I hear you’re giving it a miss.’ The question left her lips before she could stop it. She looked down in mortification. She might as well have just admitted his every move fascinated her. Damn it.

  Fully expecting to be told it was none of her business or teased once more about following his movements, Lena was surprised by his reply. ‘They need me here. They don’t need me at home.’

  He spoke the last words as if they were forced from him and she immediately knew that she was probing the e
dge of his ‘secret’. The question was, should she ignore it or press him further? She knew how carefully she guarded her own history. But her incurable curiosity won out.

  ‘Are you talking about your family? Why wouldn’t they need you?’

  ‘Did I say need?’ he mused. ‘I should have said want.’

  ‘They don’t want you?’ She shook her head. ‘I’m sure you’re over-dramatising.’

  ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘Maybe if you –’

  The hostile expression on his face cut her dead. ‘Don’t try and fix me, Madame Engineer. I’m not one of the camp drongos who’ll let you play Freud to get in your pants.’

  His pointed use of her site nickname worried her. Previously she hadn’t minded being given this pompous calling. If she was going to be lumped with something, which was a guarantee, it might as well be that. Better than Sod or Plod which were very pickable given the guys liked to choose things that rhymed with a person’s last name. But the way Bulldog said it made it sound so presumptuous, like she was trying to put on airs or something.

  Lena frowned. ‘I’m not trying to fix you, whatever that means. Why would you say something like that?’

  Bulldog didn’t respond to her question and then to thwart her further his dryer stopped and beeped. He rolled up his magazine and stood to collect his clothes. Without thinking, she put her hand on his wrist to stop him.

  ‘Wait. You can’t just accuse me of something and then take off. Clearly, you have a problem with me and I want to know what it is.’

  He looked down at her hand and she quickly detached it as though she’d been burned. He took his shirts from the machine and stuffed them in a laundry bag.

  ‘I asked you a question,’ Lena said, desperation squashing her fear.

  But when he turned around to confront her, she had to step back from the storm gathering in his eyes.

  Talk about making the wrong demand.

  ‘My problem is this,’ his voice was soft and deadly, ‘you are the least experienced person on this site and you don’t seem to know it. You want to be taken seriously but you organise fishing trips, steal flags and parade around in your underwear. You’ve got no life experience, no prudence and no ability to see beyond your own little bubble. You’re naive, stubborn and reckless. And the only reason you’ve had it so easy so far is because you’re so damn good-looking.’