Peter Temple: An Iron Rose

The rest of the news was the usual line-up of accidents, strikes, bomb threats and businessmen in court, concluding with the heartwarmer: a man had rescued a guinea pig from a burning house.

Lew was silent during our meal but I couldn’t feel any tension in him, so I didn’t make an effort to talk. When we’d finished, he said, ‘Good stew. Gotta show me how to do it. I’ll wash.’

I left him washing up and went out to the office, picking up the dog on the way. The night was still and clear. I heard a car door slam down at the pub and a woman’s laugh. I thought about the naked girl falling down the mine shaft, into the absolute blackness of the earth. Was she still alive when she was stuffed into the opening in the ground?

I’d put the boxes with Ned’s papers and personal things in a corner. The one holding the work diary was on top. I took the old ledger over to the table and leafed through the pages recording about twenty years of Ned’s working life. In his neat, slanting hand, he had noted every job he did: date, client, type, number of hours worked, amount charged, expenses. The last entry read: July 10. Butler’s Bridge Nursery. Rip subsoil approx acre. Four hours. $120.00. Fuel 36 km.

I turned back to 1985. The first half of the year had been lean, sometimes no more than three or four small jobs a week, entries like: Mrs Readshaw. Fixed garage door. Half hour. $5.00. 14 km.

In July, things began to pick up. He had three weeks fencing a property at Trentham, then he did a big paving job, demolished a house, spent five weeks putting in a driveway, gates and fences on a horse property. In October, he built a wall at Kinross Hall, the first of a series of jobs there that took up most of his time until late November. That was where he had found the old anvil. December and January were quiet, but from mid-February, for most of 1986, Ned worked on an old school being turned into a conference centre.

I read on, through 1987 and 1988, 1989, 1990. I went back and read 1982 to 1984. Then I sat back and thought. About fifteen employers’ names occurred regularly across the years, people who gave Ned jobs big and small. I looked at 1982 again. Two employers appeared for the first time: J. Harris of Alder Lodge, the horse property, and Kinross Hall. I read forward. Alder Lodge became a regular source of work, most recently in May when Ned repaired a kicked-about stable. Kinross Hall employed him three times in 1982, for two long periods in 1983, for almost three months in 1984, and in 1985 he did five separate jobs there, the last a three-week engagement ending on 22 November. That was the end of Kinross Hall. Ned never worked there again.

I told Lew where I was going and the dog and I walked over to the pub. Half a dozen or so regulars were in place, including, down at the end of the bar talking to Vinnie, Mick Doolan. He was a small man, chubby, florid, head of tight grey curls and eyes as bright and innocent as a baby’s. Everything about Mick was Australian except his Irish accent. I sat down next to him.

‘Well, Moc,’ he said, ‘just sayin to Vinnie, can’t get over Ned goin out like that. No sense in it. Not Neddy.’

‘No,’ I said.

He drank some stout. ‘Had these police fellas around today. Murderers roamin the countryside and they’re out makin life difficult for small businessmen such as misself.’

Mick was a dealer in what he called Old Wares, mostly junk, and the police took a keen interest in the provenance of his stock.

I said, ‘Small businessman? The police think you’re a small receiver of stolen property.’

He sighed. ‘Well and that’s exactly what I’m sayin, Moc. They form theories based on nothin but ignorance and then they devote the taxpayers’ time to provin them. And naturally they can’t. Vinnie, give us a coupla jars and a bag of the salt and vinegar. Two bags.’

‘One, Vinnie,’ I said. ‘Mick, what’s Kinross Hall?’

‘Kinross Hall? It’s what they used to call a place of safety. For naughty girls. They won’t let you in, Moc.’

‘Did Ned ever talk about working there? Late ’85?’

He scratched his curls. ‘Well, you know Ned. Not one to gossip.’

Vinnie arrived with the drinks and the chips. I paid.

I persisted. ‘Did he ever say anything about the place?’

Mick munched on chips, washed them down with a big swallow, wiped his mouth. ‘From what I could gather,’ he said, ‘he thought the place should be closed down. He said he wouldn’t work there again.’

‘Why?’

‘He heard some story. Went to see the police about it and they told him basically piss off, mind yer own business. That’s how I remember it.’

‘What kind of story?’

‘I couldn’t tell you. He never said. You know Ned. Y’had to read his mind.’ He offered me the chip packet. ‘Now you’re a cert for Satdee? And you’d be settin an example to the young fellas by attendin Wednesday trainin. I’ve bin workin on a new strategy, could be revolutionary, turnin point in the history of the game.’

I said, ‘New strategy? What, we kick a goal? That’ll shock ’em rigid.’

A girl with a broken neck, a naked girl, thrown down a mine shaft and the entrance covered. I couldn’t get it out of my mind.

I thought about these things all through the morning as Allie Morris and I worked at the forge on an order for four dozen garden-hose hooks. It was pleasant enough work once we had forty-eight lengths: heat the flat steel to glowing red, use jaws in the anvil hardie hole to put a bend in one end, bend sixty centimetres down to make a flap, squeeze the top half in the vice to make a doubled length. Then curve the rest into a three-quarter circle over the anvil horn. The job was finished by putting a stake point on the end that went into the ground. Two people working with red-hot metal can be awkward, but we found a rhythm quickly, taking turns at heating, bending and hammering, Allie’s deftness compensating for my occasional clumsiness.

We finished just before one pm: four dozen hose hooks, neatly stacked on Allie’s truck to be dropped off for priming and painting.

‘That’s a day’s work,’ Allie said. ‘Does the pub do a sandwich?’

We took turns to clean up in the bathroom I’d built on to the office so that I didn’t have to traipse into the house in a filthy condition, and walked down the road in silence. The dog appeared ahead of us: taken a short cut through the neighbour’s paddock. The sky was clearing, the cloud cover broken, harried fragments streaming east in full retreat. Suddenly the world was high and light and full of promise. I hadn’t talked much to Allie since she started. She had a reserved way about her, not rude but not forthcoming. And I didn’t have any experience of working relationships like this. Man and a woman working with hot metal.

At the pub, it was just us and Vinnie and two hard-looking women in tracksuits playing pool. The fat one had a lipstick smear at the edge of her mouth. It looked like a bruise when she bent her head. Allie put the beers down and said, ‘Know someone called Alan Snelling?’

‘Know who he is.’

‘What’s he do?’

‘Runs a few horses. Nice house. Nice cars. Gets married every now and again.’

‘He asked me out.’

‘Available to be asked out?’ I instantly regretted the question.

She smiled, drank some beer, wiped away a thin tidemark of foam on her upper lip with a fingertip. ‘I’m between engagements. He was at Glentroon Lodge yesterday, looking at a horse. Asked my opinion.’

‘Who wouldn’t,’ I said. ‘An older man. They can be attracted to capable young women.’

She put her head on one side. ‘Older man? He’s about your age.’

‘That’s what I mean.’