The Girl in the Hard Hat (16 page)

It was Carl, with the others close on his heels. ‘Fuck! I thought we’d never get in here.’ His boss waved an authoritative hand at the bartender, who immediately hurried over. ‘I’ll have a round for my boys, thanks.’

Gavin grinned in acknowledgement. Carl wasn’t big on fishing and had been complaining about his seasickness since they’d first set out that morning. He suspected this was half a lie but couldn’t mistake Carl’s genuine delight to be off the boat and on dry land. Fish, however, wore the expression of a man who had been short-changed.

‘Damn it, Carl! You can’t order a round. By the time the rest of us have a go, we’ll have been here all afternoon.’

Carl’s eyebrows waggled. ‘That’s the fuckin’ plan. Now drink up and stop yapping. I’ve had enough of your fuckin’ rods and reels, spear guns and bait boxes. I just want my peace.’

Radar seemed pleased and reached for a frothing glass with unabashed enthusiasm. ‘I’ll have a bit of your peace, Carl.’

‘Me too,’ Leg declared with a flourish.

Fish grabbed his own glass in resignation. ‘I suppose not all is lost. We can still go crabbing in the evening.’

‘Fuck that.’ Carl firmly shook his head.

Fish turned to Gavin. ‘What about you, brother?’

‘So I’m your brother now?’ Gavin toasted him in faint amusement. ‘I don’t know, mate. I don’t think I have your stamina for the sport.’ His mood had definitely been blighted by that run-in with a certain blonde too attractive for her own good.

Fish groaned at the ease of his defeat. ‘Don’t you want a nice big juicy mud crab for dinner?’

‘Mate,’ Gavin frowned, not really in the mood to argue the point, ‘where will I cook it? It’s not like the dongas are equipped with kitchens.’

‘That’s easy,’ Fish said. ‘You’re going on R and R tomorrow, right? Just pack it in your bag.’

‘No fuckin’ way!’ Carl was moved to interrupt before Gavin could reply. ‘It’ll fuckin’ stink!’

Fish shook his head. ‘Not if it’s alive.’

Carl spluttered on beer froth. ‘Are you fuckin’ kidding me? You want Gav to take an angry mud crab as hand luggage back to Perth? Have you seen the fuckin’ claws on those things? What if it escapes?’

Fish rolled his eyes. ‘It’s not very fast. And you just tie its clippers together and it’ll be fine.’

Carl gawked at him. ‘Don’t tell me, you’ve fuckin’ done this before!’

Fish regarded him as though his question was stupid and unnecessary. ‘Carl, crabs don’t make any noise, you know. They’re not dogs. They don’t bark!’

Carl raised his hand for the bar attendant to come back over. ‘Fuck! I need another drink. I’m not pissed enough for this.’

But Fish had already turned eagerly towards Gavin again. ‘So how about it? You want one?’

There was no way around it. He was going to have to tell Fish. ‘I’m not going on R and R tomorrow. Craig is taking my leave instead.’

Fish rubbed his chin. ‘Really? So it’s just you and me holding down the fort? That ought to be interesting.’

Carl snorted. He already knew Gavin was skipping his R and R and had disapprovingly approved it. But it was news to Leg and Radar, as Gavin had known it would be. It wasn’t long before Radar’s nose was twitching and he was firing his first twenty questions.

‘So what’s with that? He got fatigue issues? The wife giving him grief?’

Gavin wasn’t about to tell the site gossip anything and covered his silence with a sip of beer.

So why did you tell Wendy then? You were pretty open with her.
It wasn’t like him to use another man’s business to impress a girl. If there was one thing he prided himself on, it was loyalty. Loyalty and the ability to keep a bloody secret. Wendy just seemed to provoke him. Provoke him to show her he was a better man. Funny how he didn’t care what anyone else thought of him.

You’re mad.

‘Give it a fuckin’ rest, Radar.’ Carl frowned. ‘And, Gavin, stop taking on everybody else’s shit.’

Gavin took another sip of beer and remained stubbornly silent. Carl eyed him shrewdly. ‘It’s one thing to be a good manager, but they’re not your fuckin’ family.’

Yes, they are.
‘So what are you doing tonight then, Carl?’ Gavin made the move to change the subject. ‘If you’re not crabbing, that is.’

To his surprise, his boss’s colour seemed to heighten. ‘Picking up my missus and her suitcases from camp. She’s moving in.’

Radar’s eyes lit like bulbs. ‘Really? That’s getting pretty serious! You’re going to have to hang up your bachelor hat soon.’

Carl grinned but added nothing further. Much to Gavin’s chagrin, Radar immediately turned back to him. Though to be fair to the site gossip, Gavin had no one to blame but himself for his reputation.

‘What about you, Gav?’ Radar asked. ‘You’ve always got something on the go. Maybe some local girl from Wickham this time?’

‘Nah,’ Fish snorted, a vengeful twinkle in his eye. ‘He’s sweet on the Sergeant. You remember that first engineers’ meeting she called? Me and Anton weren’t going to go and he came and fuckin’
collected
us!’

‘Is that so?’ Radar rocked back on his heels. Gavin groaned inwardly, wishing he could take a piece of masking tape to Fish’s mouth. To his relief, however, Carl was equally unimpressed.

‘And why the fuck weren’t you going to go?’

For the first time, Fish seemed to realise that his ploy may have backfired. ‘Oh . . . er . . . you know how it is, Carl . . .’

Carl’s voice was dangerously quiet. ‘Fuckin’ enlighten me.’

Fish grew petulant. ‘Well to be honest, mate, the Sergeant’s not into safety so much as she’s into nit-picking. She’s as bad as Bulldog. Last week she told me she was thinking about introducing random drug and alcohol tests! Do you know how much disruption that’s going to cause to our schedules?’

Carl didn’t blink. ‘I’m fully aware.’

Gavin put his glass on the counter with a snap. The mention of any sort of addiction, particularly drugs, never failed to get under his skin. ‘I don’t know about you, Fish, but I don’t want anyone driving my equipment hooked on drugs or booze. Drugs are the most dangerous thing on a site like this. On any site really.’

Fish rolled his eyes. ‘Yes, I’m not arguing that point, Gavin. But she won’t let us use our own judgement. And you’re hardly going to see my point of view, are you? Too bloody preoccupied with her blonde hair and her long legs. As for me, she could have three tits and I still wouldn’t be interested. You’d need a kilo of Vaseline to lube that frigid bitch. There’s only so much a man can take.’

‘Got that right.’ Gavin nodded, and then threw his fist into Fish’s face, shocking everyone, including himself.

Fish reeled from the blow, grabbing his jaw as Leg and Radar grabbed his arms, holding him back so that he couldn’t retaliate. Gavin watched Fish struggle as Carl pushed him away, his thick fingers digging into his arms.

‘What the fuck is the matter with you?’

The white hot rage that had flashed like a lightning bolt across Gavin’s vision cleared. He looked at Carl blankly, carefully weighing his options. He didn’t care so much about losing this job as letting his men down. He gritted his teeth. ‘I’m sorry, Carl.’

‘You ain’t sorry.’ Carl nodded knowingly.

Gavin set his face, hopefully locking any emotion behind his eyes.

Carl’s voice lowered to a growl. ‘Don’t get me wrong. He was out of line and Fish can be a dickhead sometimes but he’s my best friend. You don’t get to punch him like that without some sort of repercussion.’

‘You want a free throw, Carl?’ Gavin demanded, a bitter taste lacing his mouth. ‘Go ahead.’

Carl released him, pushing him back as he did so. ‘What I want is for you to stop living every day like it’s your last. I’m over it, Gavin. And you should be too!’

If that was his marching orders, Gavin was happy to take them. Without a word, he left the bar, not sparing his companions a second glance.

That evening, Gavin wasn’t in the mood to see anyone. For dinner, he grabbed a roll from the mess, stuffed it full of slices of roast beef and walked out. He’d rather eat alone on the front steps of his donga with a bottle of beer than have to endure the banter he was sure was going around by now. Radar would have had ample opportunity to get back to camp and spread the word about the bar incident. Not to mention the hecklers he’d passed on the way to the mess, who seemed to know about his upcoming dinner with Wendy. Someone must have heard the two of them talking. It just went to show that nothing was sacred on this job.
Nothing
.

He had to guard what he said more closely.

‘Hey.’ An unfriendly voice sounded from his left and had him looking up from his sandwich in resignation. To his surprise, it wasn’t the usual suspects, but Mike Hopkins.

‘Hey yourself, Mike.’ He lifted his bottle to toast the older man. He hadn’t had much to do with Mike, except maybe for one drunken ride in his ute the night of Lena Todd’s birthday. Not his finest hour and definitely not a night that would have inspired any kind of admiration from this particular site supervisor, or indeed anyone for that matter. He hoped he would never be that depressed again. He took another sip of beer as humiliating images chased themselves through his head.

Mike broke his wayward thoughts. ‘Don’t get cocky with me. I’m only here to say one thing.’

Gavin raised his eyebrows and said, with a complete lack of interest, ‘And what might that be?’

‘My niece isn’t in the market for a boyfriend.’

He suddenly remembered that Mike was also Wendy’s uncle and a sigh rippled through him. ‘Got your shotgun, Mike? You might need it.’

The older man tried to suck in a belly that was clearly beyond the point of being hidden as he straightened to full height.

‘I don’t want no louts messing with my family. She ain’t here to get mixed up with the likes of you.’

Gavin slowly lowered his beer. ‘So why is she here then, Mike?’

Mike stabbed a finger at him. ‘Same reason you should be – to work.’ He stalked away.

Damn it if the man wasn’t right. Better to focus on work than trying to figure out some woman he had no business messing with. Wendy was a great girl, but he wasn’t here to fight her battles. He had enough of his own to deal with. As though to illustrate the point, his phone buzzed in his pocket. A text message had come through:
Can I call you tomorrow around 7.30am? I have news.

His fingers tightened around the phone as he punched an affirmative reply and then put it back in his pocket.

Good news, I hope.

By the following morning, Gavin had gained the wisdom that came with sleeping on it. He was deeply regretting his actions at the bar. Sure, Fish deserved to be taken to task. But he should have waited till his anger cooled and then told the man off privately. Instead, he’d made a bloody spectacle of himself. And that was the
very last thing
he should be doing.

He got to work early, took a file and waited in the donga meeting room for Fish to show up. They had their pre-start meetings in there every morning with their men, and today he knew that first up he had to swallow his pride and offer the deck engineer an apology. The project was his priority. He wasn’t going to jeopardise the one thing in his life that stabilised him.

Luckily, Fish seemed to have the same idea. He walked into the meeting room five minutes early, a cagey expression on his face.

‘Look, Gav, about yesterday . . .’

Gavin looked up from his file. ‘Don’t say anything, Fish. I should apologise first. I shouldn’t have taken a swing at you.’

‘Well you shouldn’t have.’ Fish shrugged. ‘Not that I couldn’t have taken you if I needed to.’

Gavin allowed his eyes to rake the other man’s body before replying with a faint touch of amusement, ‘Of course not.’

‘It’s just that I hate being henpecked. It gets my goat.’

Gavin struggled to keep his hackles from rising as Fish continued unaware, ‘But if you’re with her then . . .’

‘It’s not about whether I’m
with
her or not,’ Gavin returned tightly. The conversation was once more teetering over into the path he didn’t want it to take. ‘Let’s just focus on the job from now on, okay? Doing it well and staying on schedule. We’ve got a lot to get through today.’

Fish grinned. ‘Speaking of stuff to do today, I had this great idea. Especially with Craig being away and everything. We spoke of it a while back.’

‘What idea?’

But Fish was forced to postpone his reply as both their teams and Craig’s filed in. There was scuffing of boots and the scraping of chairs as the guys all found seats, continuing to talk in loud jovial voices.

‘Heard you two had a scuffle yesterday,’ said Jack, nickname Spoon, who had a reputation for stirring. ‘Gavin steal your bait, Fish?’

Laughter rippled through the group.

Thanks, Radar.

‘It was more of a difference of opinion.’ Gavin dismissed the remark before he flung an arm around his fishy friend. ‘But, as you can see, we’re all good now, and that’s without even exchanging flowers or chocolates.’ He took his arm off Fish’s shoulders.

Fish coughed and rubbed his hands together. ‘Right, so let’s discuss today’s tasks and issues.’

The meeting seemed to go all right although Gavin noticed his site supervisor, Marvin, barely said a word. Marvin was relatively new. He was Yabber’s replacement and was finding it difficult to fill his predecessor’s big shoes. Yabber had been beloved and trusted by all. Gavin knew the guys missed him but wished they would at least
try
to make Marvin feel more welcome.

‘Another thing,’ he said, as the meeting came to a close. ‘I have a few important things to do in the office this morning so I won’t be coming out to the wharf for a few hours.’

He was sure this wouldn’t be an issue as they all had their morning workload pretty much set out. His presence wasn’t really needed. In fact, Fish seemed to be mighty pleased he wouldn’t be there. Gavin suspected it was because he liked being King Pin at the end of the wharf.

‘So I got all three teams then?’ Fish grinned as everyone stood up to go. ‘Yours, mine and Craig’s. Still trying to make it up to me, Gav?’