‘Edie, ring the office and tell them I won’t be in for the next week or so.’
Paul threw off his jacket and handed it to Beth. ‘Well, go on, Edie, they can do without me for a week or so.’ And with that Paul picked up a crowbar and stepped in with the men and wrenched at the palings.
An hour later Paul had removed his vest and shirt and stripped down to his singlet and braces like the rest of the men. He looked about him. Mounds of dark brown earth were quickly growing into small hills. Bluestone blocks and timber palings were being loosed from the bottom of the house and scattered in piles about the garden.
‘Papa, what are you doing, besides giving us all a headache?’ Edie jostled Gracie in her arms.
He touched Gracie and left a muddy fingerprint on the white skin of her arm.
‘Hmm,’ was all he said, and as Edie stood and watched he walked off and jiggered at another block of bluestone with the crowbar.
Jack and Daphne Puce stood at their kitchen window in their pyjamas, Daphne’s hair tied up in knots of fraying cotton cloth. She looked at her husband and said, ‘This is all your fault. You should’ve done something to stop this sooner.’
On Wednesday 20 December, the men are still hard at work.
The men muttered and swore and sometimes slapped each other on the back as they dug away under the house. Soft soil meant the job was a good lark and they nodded to each other at their luck landing the job and congratulated themselves on being sensible enough to respond to the advert in the paper; when they struck hard soil and stone they grumbled in each other’s ears that they should have asked for more.
At ten-thirty Paul would put down whatever tool he had in his hand and invite the men in for morning tea, but they would look at their boots and Laidlaw always said, ‘Nah judge, us blokes are right out here.’ So Paul would go into the kitchen and Beth would have his favourite apple cake and tea waiting for him and then most days she would say, ‘Well, when are you going to tell us what’s going on?’ Most days Paul would smile, lift the cake in the air and say, ‘Best apple cake as always, Beth.’ Then any leftovers he would take out to the men.
When Paul went inside for morning tea Barrett would turn to the others and say, ‘I reckon Cottingham is mad or greedy. The old bugger is looking for gold under the bluestone stumps of his own family home.’ And he would grind the stub of his cigarette into the dirt with his boot and light up his next.
‘Nah, my missus says he’s gone mad with grief for his wife,’ said Johnno.
‘I reckon we should all shut the fuck up,’ said Laidlaw, drinking tea from his thermos lid. ‘This is the best fucking work conditions we are ever likely to get.’ And the men couldn’t disagree.
All the men except Laidlaw whistled at Beth when she hung the nappies on the line, despite Paul’s stern looks and reminders that each and every one of them was married, and despite Laidlaw reminding them that Beth was his sister-in-law. They tipped their hats when Edie walked outside but she hardly noticed, her mind was a scurry of worry for her father. Had the heat cooked him? Like the Swiss-Italians, would he suddenly collapse and die? She checked on him often and would stop him mid-digging and put her hand on his sweaty forehead, her face screwed up with anxiety.
‘It’s just good honest sweat, Edie,’ he would say and bend to shovel more soil or yank more planks and bluestone.
She spent hours holding Gracie, who fell into her arms like she belonged nowhere else, and looked at the excavation happening in their yard and shook her head. Her father really had lost his marbles.
On Friday 22 December, it’s getting awfully close to Christmas.
Paul told the men they wouldn’t be working Christmas Day — nor Christmas Eve, given it was a Sunday and he never let them work on a Sunday. Edie handed them each a basket of fruit and Beth handed them each a fruit cake as a gift to take home to their families for Christmas lunch. Paul shook their hands and said he would see them 6 a.m. sharp on Boxing Day and gave them each an envelope with an extra two shillings and said, ‘Buy your children and wives a treat.’ The men thought of the Bunch of Grapes and saw Cottingham looking at them like he knew exactly what they were thinking and Laidlaw quickly said, ‘We’re off to the milliner’s for ribbons, lads.’
On Tuesday 26 December, it’s getting awfully close to 1906.
On the Tuesday at 6 a.m. they were back on the job. The underbelly of the house had become more than a rabbit hole; it stretched out and in just a few days the space had become big enough for Paddy, the smallest of the workers, to fit inside. Paul purchased supporting beams which were delivered by lumbering Clydesdales that came right up to the end of the driveway and the men dragged the beams from the cart under the house and the space under there became wider and deeper and then two of them could work under there, then four, then eight and finally all of them could work under the house and so
