CHAPTER 59
We made a sizeable group in Rod’s workshop, but Rhona had brought some spare folding chairs, so at least we didn’t have to stand. This was Chad’s baby, we had decided as a group, so he was the one on the mobile phone, passing directions to our visitors from the East Coast. Eventually, he walked out to the road.

“Yeah, I’m on the road, and I’m waving… Got you! Kettle will be going on, boys”

The camper van rolled in just as he flicked the switch on Rod’s boiler, and then it was all smiles and handshakes. The two in the van, Brendan and Howie, weren’t as hairy as I had been expecting, but they were all smiles.

“Hiya Chad! Ripper RV, mate! Never missed a bloody beat. Where’s Vern?”

“Got his own job, mate. I’ll introduce you to the rest, and start with Rod, who is the van man”

Rod almost seemed to be blushing, which was odd for him; I could only assume it was in response to that effusive praise. Chad continued round our group.

“Kul, our office head; Mike, our Mister Fixit; Maz, the smoothest of all of us; Rhona, who runs the surf school I told you about”

The taller of the two new friends, Brendan, turned straight to Rod with a smile.

“Get myself round a cuppa, mate, then talk about the spannering? Give the old girl a chance to cool down, then check the fluids. Needs a little bit of attention to the shower head, that’s all”

Rod’s eyes narrowed.

“What sort of attention?”

“Ah, someone looks to have pulled it off the hose, then fixed it, or tried to, with PTFE tape and epoxy. Lad who signed it in off the two Italians missed it, but Howie and me, no way we’re driving all this way without having a good look-see of our own. So, what we did…”

I left the two of them to discuss and compare their tools and joined Rhona, who was being quite precisely questioned by Howie, but as it was almost all about technical aspects of surfing and board-sailing kit, I was quickly lost. What did strike me, though, was that both men seemed very, very switched on. I started to hand round cups of tea, and whispered my opinion to Chad.

“I do believe you have caught us some live ones, mate. Nice one!”

‘Mister Fixit’, indeed. I waved ‘Ms Smooth’ over, and we relaxed as so many of our strands seemed to be coming together nicely.

“Plans for the weekend, Ms M.B.R.?”

“Plan for tomorrow night, actually. Taking a young man out for the evening”

“Who’s that?”

“Dal”

“Mmm?”

“Oh, plus Kul and Geeta, and I assume you. Found some music. It’s just floor spots, as Kul put it, but it’ll give us an idea of what the local scene is. That was what Kul said, anyway”

I sipped my tea while the others rattled through the sort of business discussions I had no part in, until Rhona drove off with Howie to show him her spinnaker or davits or something, and Rod was offering a spare pair of overalls to Brendan so they could jointly service the van. Maz asked the obvious question, and Brendan grinned.

“Oh, in another van, love. Once Howie’s scoped out Rhona’s place, we’re joining one of their groups by Margaret River. Sod camping. Don’t need to sleep in a tent to tell customers about it. Rod says he’s got a fresh van for us, and as soon as Rhona’s back with my bro, we’ll crossdeck all our shit”

Maz gave him her best smile, then looked at Chad, who had a cardboard folder ready. I started to relax: the contract was not something I wanted forgotten.

The two absentees were back just as Brendan and Rod were degreasing their hands and pulling off their overalls, and I saw a very emphatic nod from Howie followed by a grin from his ‘bro’. An hour later, and the two boys were in a fresh van following Rhona’s ‘ute’. As Chad made sure all our paperwork was put away neatly and securely, I looked over to Rod, who grinned.

“Always hard, that bit, leaving someone else to do the work and not ‘help’ them. That fella knows his engines, mate. You caught me a live one, Chad!”

“All part of the service, Rod. Now, some of the surfers were asking about Shark Bay trips, and…”

We left a very happy Rod to finish cleaning down the returned van, and headed in two cars back to our office, where I did the donkeywork of scanning and downloading everything for the report back to Sheffield that Kul was briskly typing. It was a remarkably profitable day.

The following day was devoted to a wash-up combined to a brainstorming session about any possible money-grubbing angles we might have missed. Chad’s suggestion that one of us volunteer to ride on a roof-rack to serve as camp cook for each hire met with zero enthusiasm, but it was a good example of how wide our storm’s range was. It was a second or two after I had finished laughing before the idea hit me.

“Maz?”

“Yeah?”

“That place we visited a while ago, with the posh sausages. Do you think he’d be interested in some fridge packs for the vans?”

Storm Force Profit that day. It also summed up what our business actually did, in finding new opportunities for, well, profits for ourselves, except we didn’t call it that, of course, but more of that stuff about business development and opportunity-matching for our valued clients.

The music session was in a pub, as was just about inevitable. We were joined by Vern, Ronnie and Rufe for that evening, and to my delight, Rufus brought a banjo, which he was rather accomplished at playing. I sang a few songs, as did various other people, and there were guitars and squeezeboxes, whistles and fiddles, while the accents were different, it was, in the end, just like an evening in the Red Lion or Spotted Cow. Even some of the jokes were familiar, and by ‘some’, I mean ‘most’. In a way, it was a second-home-coming, as in a return to a second home, for ‘second home’ had always been Caro’s term for the club. I wondered how Alys was doing just then. It wasn’t a club night, but both girls loved the music, and then, of course, there was the former Ginger Misery.

All of that was bouncing around in the back of my mind because I was still trying to het my head around the visa system, and realising how good the fit was with the woman sitting with one hand casually but warmly lying on my thigh. There was, naturally, a raffle, and Maz looked up at me as I wondered how many dollars-worth of tickets to take.

“Just stick a fiver in, love. We’ll argue about whose money it was if we win. Oh, and depending on what we win, of course”

I expected nothing less, till she turned back to me.

“Picked up some stuff from that camping shock, Mike, for this weekend”

She looked slightly worried, so I smiled and waited on her self-confidence.

“I just have no idea what we’ll really need, so I asked…”

“Go on”

“Well, the bike, yes? I don’t think either of us is really open to that right now, so I thought, well. I have bought a tent, big enough for both of us, and the shop says it’s very lightweight. I have two lightweight mats as well, and Geeta’s got sleeping bags”

“Ah. Where are you suggesting?”

“Just one night, love. It’s ten kilometre walk each way. If someone drops us off at the road, we can walk in for a night, then back out. I get to birdwatch, we both get to stargaze and there’s no vehicle noise or streetlights because it’s on a long-distance footpath. I don’t… I know you’ve done the hill stuff, and I’m completely new to rucksacks and that. I bought a pack as well, but they said my walking shoes were fine”

She squeezed my leg, very gently.

“Ut would be a way of sharing something with you and… It would be a way of sharing something with your wife. I keep thinking of what I said about Alan taking you for a pint, and I was wondering if Caro would be the same. About me”

She looked away, shaking her head, then kept her eyes down as I slowly turned her face back to me with the pressure of one fingertip. A couple of droplets trembled under her lashes, so I wiped them away as gently as I could.

“We’ll never know that, Maz? How could we? All I will say is from Keith and Penny, and they knew her almost as well as I did. They… Penny is very direct about you. She is very clear about us getting together being a good thing, so, yeah. I think you’re probably on the money about Caro”

The voices were back, and they were challenging me to make a choice, one or the other, so I clamped down on them as best I could, took Maryam’s hand and did my damnedest to concentrate on the music. In bed that night, Maz showed me where everything lay on the map, and the reviews about water tanks and ‘dunny paper’. We had a choice of one or two nights for the scheme, but for her first go at backpacking I didn’t want to risk ending up benighted partway there. One night it would be, then.

I did my own little bit of shopping, obtaining a small stove plus some cooking pans, as well as some freeze-dried meals. The guide said ‘water tanks’, but I also made sure I had a decent-sized hydration bladder in my large rucksack, a smaller one in hers, plus multiple bottles, and then, that Saturday morning, Kul dropped us off near Mundaring Weir and our access to the Bibbulman Track. It was a broad dirt road, in essence, but the woodlands that surrounded it were very different to the trimmed and cleared Maggie River surroundings. This place gave a real feeling of ‘wild place’, and while it was scruffy, with broken sight lines and forest debris scattered profusely, I loved it.

We had only about six miles to walk to our site, so we ambled, stopping frequently to allow Maz the chance to identify some of an astonishing range of birds, from a really pretty red parrot she called a rosella, through a very large number of honeyeaters to a range of small olive-green birds that all looked identical to me. I could hear kookaburras in the distance, and rather small-headed and very fat pigeons scuttled around.

“Bronzewings, love. Common as”

We were both gleaming with sweat, as she added white-winged trillers, multiple apparently different robins, golden whistlers and others I simply forget. She was absolutely in ger element--- all my worries about sore feet or chafed shoulders now moot--- and then we were there.

The view had opened out as we moved up the side of a wide valley, several ‘grass trees by the side of the track, and our campsite consisted of a lot of open ground edged by sheets and boulders of granite, along with a ‘facility’ that was water tanks, ‘dunnies’ and picnic table and bench sets under a wide tin roof. We found a space for Maz’s new tent, and I quickly gave up on pegs in the baked ground, using loose lumps pf granite to tie some lines to. The tent was a self-supporting dome, so there was no problem, but it made me feel happier.

It was still early afternoon, so I made us each a mug of tea and settled down with mine at one of the shaded tables, while Maz continued to bliss out over the birds around us. Apart from the occasional bird name, and such things as “Cuppa?”, we had hardly spoken since starting the walk, and that was far from a problem. We were both simply comfortable, each with the other, and as I started snapping interesting bits of rock, or the view across the valley, or simply her backside as she bent over a [pool table] plant or footprint, so I was getting better at telling the voices to find someone else to bother.

We ate an evening meal with a few passing strangers, and watched the sun go down. As the skies filled with stars, we made our way to our pitch, and made love, and that was when I decided that it was indeed the right word for me, and that we had both found our fit.