by Judy Nunn
Once she was ensconced with the bunch in the corner, the general focus returned to drinking and camaraderie, but there had been a subtle change in the tone of the evening. The Swede was a distraction and furtive glances continued to be cast in her direction.
Dan made the introductions – he knew everyone in Dampier – and as he did so, Mike realised, with an involuntary stab of disappointment, that Mia was in the company of her husband. Then he reminded himself that it was just as well. He'd avoided female company for the past six months, and he wanted to keep it that way.
Mia's friend, Eva, however, wasn't going to make it easy.
'Hello,' she said as they were introduced. She'd greeted the other men, all of whom she knew – two of them intimately, a one-night stand apiece. 'I saw you in Woolworths about a month ago.' She cosied up to him, the cramped surrounds serving as a perfect excuse.
Mike smiled. 'You've got a good memory.'
Memory had nothing to do with it, Eva thought, who could forget a bloke this good-looking? She'd been keeping her eye out for him ever since.
'How come you haven't been around town?' she asked. Eva worked in Dampier's busy shopping arcade, the hub of the township where everyone gathered. In fact, the shopping arcade virtually was the town. She found it most strange that she'd only seen him the once.
'Mike's a bit of a nomad,' Dan said as Eric topped up everyone's glasses. 'He keeps pretty much to himself.'
Unfazed, Eva continued to invade Mike's space, tucking her arm possessively through his. She was accustomed to having her pick of the men and she'd decided that this one was hers for the night.
Mike found her proximity impossible to ignore, the ample breast that nuzzled his side alerting his body to the fact that he hadn't had sex for eight months. Not since that night. He cursed himself. He should have avoided the Mermaid. In fact, he should leave this very minute. But he didn't. He stayed right where he was, Eva's arm snaking about him, her body wriggling enticingly against his. Even when it was his round and he went to the bar, she insisted on going with him under the pretext of helping him carry the jugs back, holding his hand, which announced to the few other women present that he was her property. As the night grew louder and drunker and rougher and tougher, Mike's libido couldn't help but respond to the knowledge that she was his for the taking.
A fight broke out on the verandah, as it inevitably did, and a man was sent sprawling over a table. Freshly filled beer jugs crashed to the floor, which infuriated the drinkers, and both protagonists were hauled out bodily into the street where the brawl, now involving half a dozen men, continued. No-one knew what the original fight had been about, presumably a woman, but they didn't care. It was the waste of good beer that was unforgivable.
Aggression and lust went hand in hand, and Mia, the beautiful Swede, was no longer merely the object of covert admiration. As men grew drunker, looks stopped being furtive and mutters ceased to be inaudible; she'd become a tantalising object of desire. They all wanted her. The air was palpable with lust, and at one table bets were being mysteriously laid.
Mia herself was aware of the effect she was having, and appeared to be basking in the attention. Eva, too, was revelling in the reflected glory of her friend and the sexual undercurrent it aroused. Mia was a useful magnet to be around.
Mike, lately unaccustomed to heavy drinking sessions, was feeling heady and a little bit out of it, but he could sense the tension. He glanced at Eric, the Swede's husband, a tough-looking man, presumably good with his fists. Surely there was going to be trouble. But Eric, far from being offended, seemed proud of the effect his wife was having on the men, even pleased that she might be a source of disruption. Perhaps he was spoiling for a fight, Mike thought. Perhaps he was waiting for someone to make a move.
Then a young man pushed his way through the crowd and thrust a folded piece of paper into Mia's hand. He pointed to the table where the bets were being laid, and disappeared without a word.
Mia opened the note and read it. She laughed lightly and looked over at the table where a mixture of Japanese and Australians were seated. All eyes – eleven men in number – were on her and none said a word as they waited for her answer. Several at nearby tables, obviously in the know, also waited and watched, and the group gathered about Mia fell silent, wondering what was going on.
She lifted an eyebrow, intrigued, and waved the note in the air, querying which one had sent it. All interested eyes were now directed to the table. A squat man seated at the far end, heavily built for a Japanese, raised his hand.
Mia smiled and shook her head, and the table erupted into laughter, the Japanese's comrades slapping him on the back in commiseration. They'd won the bet.
'What the hell was that all about?' Eric asked.
Mia read the note aloud in her attractively broken accent. 'One thousand dollars if you will sleep with me.' Then she passed it around for the others to see.
Mike cast another glance at Eric; surely this was the signal for a fight. But Eric simply looked over at the Japanese, his expression one of curiosity more than anything. Mike, along with the others, automatically looked back at the table too. The Japanese, who hadn't joined in his companions' laughter, once again raised his hand. Two fingers. The bid had gone up.
Eva ground her pelvis against Mike's leg in an unmistakable signal. She found it all intensely erotic. If the offer had been made to her, she would certainly have accepted. Not that she was a working girl – she'd never prostituted herself, and she never would – but to be openly bid for like this! How flattering, and how sexy!
Once again Mia shook her head, and this time the colleagues of the Japanese didn't laugh. Realising that the game was in earnest, they waited for him to make his next move.
Word had quickly spread from table to table and now every drinker on the verandah was watching the proceedings.
The Japanese slowly held up three fingers. He was the skipper of an iron-ore tanker, he made good money and as a single man he had nothing to spend it on. He was wealthy, he could afford it. He sat back and waited for the Swedish beauty's response.
Word had also reached the bar and men left the queues thronging for drinks and came outside to watch.
Mia glanced at her husband. 'Three thousand dollars,' she murmured. The sum was impressive.
Eric muttered something to her under his breath.
Mia smiled across the verandah to the Japanese, and the Japanese smiled back.
Never had there been silence at the Mermaid Pub on a Saturday night, but there wasn't a word uttered as the entire verandah waited.
Mia held up her hand, five fingers splayed, just as Eric had instructed.
The Japanese nodded and rose from the table.
There was a huge round of applause and the crowd parted to make way for him as he crossed to the Swede in the corner. Some slapped him on the back and made lewd remarks, but he paid them no heed. Tohito was pleased with the outcome of his bid. The purchase had cost him nothing. Each of his companions had bet five hundred dollars that he couldn't buy the girl – wagers that amounted to exactly five thousand. He'd been prepared to go far higher. For a blonde such as this, he would have bid ten thousand.
The Japanese and the Swede left wordlessly arm in arm to the cheers of all, and Eric skolled his beer as if in a toast.
After they'd gone, the drinking and general hubbub returned to normal, but much of the conversation was about the Swede and the Jap. Men were aroused, and the few women present had become the focus of the night. There were bound to be more fights.
Eva knew that she could have had the pick of the bar – they were all as randy as hell. So was she, but she'd made her choice.
'Let's go down the beach,' she said to Mike, and they left.
They didn't make it to the beach. Barely a hundred metres away, amongst the trees and palms that surrounded the tavern, they started tearing at each other's clothes, unable to wait any longer.
Mike lifted her from her feet and took her ag
ainst the smooth trunk of a lemon-scented gum, the nearby sound of drunken carousing drowning out her rapidly mounting moans. He made little noise himself as he drove into her with a desperate urgency. Their coupling to him was no more than a long-awaited sexual release, and eyes closed, teeth clenched, he grunted slightly as his climax approached.
She was orgasming now, crying out as she thrust herself back at him, and as Mike neared ejaculation he opened his eyes. But the girl bucking wildly, legs wrapped around him, head thrown back in ecstasy, was not the girl from the verandah. It was the dead girl. His belt about her broken neck, her tongue lolling from her mouth, she stared at him in grotesque accusation.
It was over in a matter of seconds and he turned away, pulling up his shorts, not daring to look at the girl whose name he'd suddenly forgotten. He felt sickened.
'Well, we certainly needed that, didn't we?' Eva giggled as she scrambled into her panties. 'A quickie but a goodie, eh? God, I was hot, and you were too obviously. Do you want to come back to my place?' She pushed an exposed breast back into her brassiere. 'I've got plenty of beer. You could stay the night and we could have a repeat performance.'
He didn't reply, which she took for a yes.
'Come on,' she said, grabbing his hand.
'No.' Mike wanted to shake his hand free, but he didn't. It wasn't her fault after all. 'Thanks for the offer, but no.' He forced himself to look at her, and attempted a smile with little success. 'Come on, I'll take you back to the pub.'
'Oh.' Eva looked surprised. 'All right, if that's the way you want it.'
Hand in hand they walked back to the tavern. Eva would have preferred to storm off in a huff, but she didn't want to return alone. She needed it known that she'd made her conquest with the handsome young stranger. But she was insulted nonetheless. So he'd just been after a quick fuck, she thought. She knew the sort. Thought he was too good for her, did he? Well, fuck him.
She was further insulted when he left her at the steps that led up to the verandah.
'I have to go,' he said abruptly.
She watched him walk off to his car. Fuck you, you bastard, she wanted to scream after him, but she didn't. She had her reputation to think of.
Mike drove out of town and into the scrub, to a water-hole where he often camped. He didn't lie on the bank and gaze up at the diamond-studded sky. He didn't marvel at the stillness of the night and hold his breath wondering which of the myriad creatures it might be rustling gently in the nearby spinifex. He didn't even get out of the car. He sat hunched over the wheel staring unseeingly at the windscreen.
How could he have so deluded himself? How could he have presumed that the dead girl had left him?
The Burrup Peninsula and Dampier Archipelago, approximately fifteen hundred kilometres north of Perth, belonged to the region known as the Pilbara, one of Australia's most remote and primitive areas. A rugged landscape of ancient rock formations, treeless islands and harsh interior, the peninsula and its surrounds could seem, to some, an inhospitable place. But none could deny the power of its stark and timeless beauty. The Pilbara could cast a spell. It could get into the blood. Everyone who'd been there knew that. It had got into Mike McAllister's.
At first, he hadn't been sure what had compelled him to stay on in the region after the completion of the museum team's two-month survey. Was it his love for the place? Or was it his need to escape? He still had dreams about the girl. He could see her hanging there in that Scarborough Beach boatshed, his own leather belt about her neck, and he knew that for as long as he lived she'd never leave him. Like Muzza, he'd be visited by the image of a past he wished he'd never known.
Muzza himself had sensed something, Mike remembered. All that time ago when he'd called in to say goodbye.
'What is it, mate?'
Muzza had been puzzled when Mike had phoned a number of times to say he was busy, and hurt that Mike hadn't been around for a whole six weeks and had now only come to say goodbye. He hadn't commented upon the fact though, simply fetching a couple of beers from the fridge as usual, but when he'd positioned himself at his easel and taken up his brush to put the finishing touches to the portrait, he'd been startled by what he'd seen in Mike's eyes. The man before him was different from the man in the painting.
'What's happened?'
'What do you mean, what's happened? Nothing. I told you, I've been busy preparing for the trip, that's all.' Mike had deliberately misunderstood the question. 'No painting today, Muz, I'm not in the mood.' Then, not wishing to be hurtful, he'd added, 'Sorry, mate, too much on my mind.'
'Sure.' Muzza had downed tools and joined him at the table. 'It's finished anyway, you can take a look if you like.'
The portrait was finished, Muzza had thought. He could only paint what he saw. And he didn't want to paint what he saw in Mike's eyes.
'It's the best thing you've done, Muz.'
Mike had stared in awe at the painting. It was more than a likeness; Muzza had captured the very essence of him. Or perhaps the him he'd once been, he thought. Things had changed now. He didn't like himself any more.
'Yes, it is good, isn't it?'
An hour later, when Mike left, Muzza had offered him the portrait, but he hadn't accepted it.
'I can't take it up north,' he'd said. 'You look after it for me, Muz.' He'd studied the painting a moment longer. 'I like to think that I'll be here with you.' Then he'd added, as nonchalantly as he could, 'Share a beer with me every now and then, eh?'
After Mike had gone with the empty promise that he'd write, both of them knowing he wouldn't, Muzza had stared at the portrait for a very long time. And he'd prayed that whatever demon was tormenting Mike McAllister might have disappeared when next they met.
The marine biological and ecological survey of the Dampier Archipelago had offered Mike the perfect escape. The museum team had concentrated upon the Hamersley Shoals between the outer islands, from Rosemary Island to the west across to Legendre Island to the east, and each day's diving had found Mike lost in the underwater world he loved, the image of the girl blanked from his memory. And when they'd cruised past the islands' giant granite cliffs and anchored in one of the pristine sandy coves for a leisurely swim, the girl had not been with him. But then nothing had. This primitive landscape rendered one mind-less. It obliterated the past and negated the future in its own agelessness.
But ashore, in the township of Dampier, walking the streets in the sweltering heat, or drinking at the Mermaid with mates from the team, things had been different. Whenever he'd caught sight of an attractive woman, the image of the dead girl had flashed startlingly before him. Any alluring aspect of the female body – the shape of a breast, the curve of a buttock – and the girl was there. Just for a second. Until he looked away. He'd taken to avoiding female company.
When the team had finally returned to Perth, there'd been no agony in Mike's decision to stay on. The Pilbara had changed him. Or perhaps the girl had. Perhaps the need to escape her memory had enhanced the effect of this isolated and desolate part of the world – he'd lost sight of the reason, but his career no longer seemed of the utmost importance. He'd decided to put everything on hold. He was single, he was free, and he was in the Pilbara; there'd be time for a career further down the track. But then, perhaps not. His burning ambition to serve a purpose in life seemed to have faded.
He'd bought a second-hand Toyota Scout, stocked it up and explored the region, camping as he went, travelling into the hinterland, where the rocky hills gave way to the clay country with its red earth and dry creek beds. Even in this forbidding territory, the flora had its own beauty. Seas of bastard bush, a prickly acacia that would rip a man to shreds if he walked through it bare-legged, were prettily clothed in yellow, and the aptly named snakewood tree's reptilian limbs writhed in a series of lifelike configurations. After the healthy monsoonal rains, colour had abounded. The silver-gold of the spinifex was tinged mauve with the flowering mulla mulla shrub, and clumps of vivid red Sturt desert peas splattere
d the land like blood.