Rose Madigan - Baz's description

 He had heard a great deal about her before ever they met.   As soon as she arrived in the city, some three years or so ago now, there had been would-be scurrilous and often bitchy gossip – from blokes – most of whom had tried it on with her and failed to impress, or had actively earned her allegedly considerable wrath, usually for incompetence or for patronising her.   Much of it stemming from jealousy of her reputation, which they refused to admit could be due to talent and hard work.   Having met her, go to know her, he thought ‘feisty,’ as used by the less prejudiced, more literate, was one of the better words to describe her, but one which was insufficient to fully encompass what he admired in her, which was her hard-working professionalism and her tenacity.   And her dislike of playing the feminist card, particularly the two-face, only-when-it-suited version.   What he had not heard was any hint of any other man – or men – in her life;  he doubted she was celibate and guessed she’d raised discretion to a hitherto unheard-of level in the newspaper world.

Waiting at the bar, for the pint of Dark Island she had asked for – he had not known in advance what to order and, having arrived earlier, was already halfway down his pint of the same, impressed that her choice coincided – he watched her reflection in the mirror behind the bar, unseen by her because she was studying a notebook she had pulled from her scruffy leather shoulder bag.   As  with every entrance she made, although he did not think it was intentional, just came naturally, she had come through the double entrance doors of the tartan-carpeted bar with all the energy of a mini-tornado, her thick tawny-coloured hair looking wind-clumped as usual,  salt-rinsed even, as though she had crossed a particularly stormy stretch of ocean to reach here:  incongruous in the centre of the city.  

Her eyes this evening were grey and peaceable, almost matching the jacket she wore, over a plain white cotton top, but he knew that they were capable of flashing a vivid green when angry or especially heated about something.   And when in the throes of sexual  passion no doubt. (He smiled at himself here)   And smiled again, knowing this to be a comparison he would never – probably – tell her of, but at such times – the anger, not the passion – she reminded him of a Tasmanian devil he had once seen in Ballarat zoo, solid-packed with muscle and bad-temper.   She certainly wasn’t skinny, was well fit, in the old-fashioned, conventional sense and he knew that as well as sailing occasionally she climbed and ran regularly.   Rumour had it she boxed too but he hadn’t ever asked about that.  

What she would be like as a wife he could not imagine.   He certainly couldn’t see her as ever being  meek and subservient, and, thinking about it, realised that he didn’t even know the extent of her domestic skills, if any.