The Bridge

by Enza Gandolfo

  Contents

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  1970

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  2009

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  2010

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Acknowledgements

  THE BRIDGE

  Enza Gandolfo is a Melbourne writer and honorary professor in creative writing at Victoria University. She is interested in the power of stories to create understanding and empathy, with a focus on feminist and political fiction. Enza’s first novel, Swimming (2009), was shortlisted for the Barbara Jefferis Award. She also writes short stories and essays, and has co-authored three books, including Inventory: on op shops (2007) and It Keeps Me Sane: women craft wellbeing (2009).

  Scribe Publications

  18–20 Edward St, Brunswick, Victoria 3056, Australia

  2 John Street, Clerkenwell, London, WC1N 2ES, United Kingdom

  First published by Scribe 2018

  Copyright © Enza Gandolfo 2018

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publishers of this book.

  9781925713015 (paperback edition)

  9781925548938 (e-book edition)

  A CiP record for this title is available from the National Library of Australia.

  scribepublications.com.au

  scribepublications.co.uk

  For the men who built the West Gate Bridge:

  the victims and the survivors

  For Teresa Corcoran (1959–2005)

  1970

  The factories rang their end-of-shift sirens, and herds of workers dashed through cyclone-wire gates towards their cars and bikes, or the narrow footpaths that lead to railway stations and bus stops. Sweat dripped from foreheads and armpits, down the backs of their necks. Trailed by the stench of rubber and glue, of animal fat, of burnt metal and sawdust, the women turned their thoughts to home, to dinner, to gathering scattered children, while the men headed straight for the pub.

  Antonello changed into jeans and a t-shirt, grabbed his satchel, and clocked off. His mates, Sam and Slav, called after him, keen to entice him to the Vic, to a game of pool and a few drinks before dinner.

  ‘You’re not going home? Henpecked already,’ Sam yelled. Antonello laughed and shook his head. Since he’d confessed he preferred to spend his evenings at home with Paolina, Sam teased him at every opportunity.

  ‘Newlyweds. It’ll wear off,’ he heard an older bloke telling Sam. ‘Give it six months.’

  But he wasn’t going straight home. Today, as had become his habit of late, he walked north along the Yarra, almost to the point where it met the Maribyrnong.

  At the riverbank he sat on a boulder and watched the descending sun rain silver and gold on the river. From Coode Island and the dockyards, he could hear the distant rattle of chains, the thump of hammers, and the groan of motors as cranes hoisted containers on and off ships, on and off trucks. In the distance, the city centre, flat and one-dimensional, faded behind a soft mist. Nearby, the leaves of the ghost gums fluttered, and two adolescent fishermen laughed as they chased squawking gulls away from their bait bucket.

  In his notebooks, amid sketches of the river and birdlife, his family, Paolina, he’d rendered the West Gate Bridge under construction in all its various stages and moods, with and without the tons of building equipment and the piles of raw materials sprawled around its base on both sides of the river. The bridge, with and without the builders, all men — riggers, carpenters, boilermakers, ironworkers, crane drivers — in their overalls or shorts and blue singlets, steel-capped work boots and hard hats; an army at its beckoning. There were detailed pencil and charcoal sketches of the bridge in the daytime, caught under a blazing Melbourne sun, the two spans towering over the river like prehistoric reptiles with mouths agape. There were quick, watercolour drawings capturing the bridge at either end of the day — at dawn and at dusk — when in the soft light it rose from the earth, grey and ethereal and indistinguishable from the clouds.

  From a distance the bridge, so diminished, reminded Antonello of a high-wire on which a tightrope artist might balance; a thin line across a blue sky. That bridge bore no resemblance to the one he was working on, with its eight vehicle lanes ready to bear the weight of the city’s progress. Up close, when he was standing under the base of one of the 28 piers, each a massive tower of concrete — that bridge was sometimes monstrous.

  The two arms rising from opposite sides were advancing towards each other; soon the West Gate would span the Yarra River. Soon.

  Antonello began sketching the bridge long before Premier Bolte signed off on the contracts. Studying the artist’s representations and architects’ blueprints printed in the newspapers — the solid piers, the long roadway, the spires, the snaking expanse across the water — he drew his own bridge: lines, curves, shadows.

  He imagined driving over the West Gate. He imagined flying.

  To bridge a river, especially one as wide as the Yarra, was a grand ambition.

  Once, when he was a boy, his grandfather had taken him to the wharf in Messina to see the ferry leave Sicily for mainland Italy.

  ‘They say they’re going to build a bridge so that we can walk across the sea,’ said Nonno Giovanni.

  ‘Who is going to build it, Nonno?’ he asked, awestruck. ‘What kind of man can build a bridge across the sea?’

  ‘It’s nonsense,’ Nonno Giovanni said. ‘Impossible. The sea can’t be conquered, and only Jesus can walk on water.’

  Just after five o’clock, Paolina snuck up behind Antonello, slipping her hands over his eyes.

  ‘Cara mia,’ he said, folding his hands over hers.

  She sat next to him. ‘The bridge looks gloomy.’

  ‘It’s the clouds,’ he replied, turning his attention to her. Paolina wore her blonde hair in one long plait, but strands had escaped, and floated in the breeze. He paused for a moment and smiled. She moved closer and kissed him. He didn’t want her to stop. Before he met Paolina, public displays of affection between couples embarrassed him. With past girlfriends, he’d controlled his desires, waited until they were able to find a quiet, private place, but not with Paolina. Not even now that they were married and could go home and make love whenever they wanted to. He searched for her hand as they walked; if they were sitting, he pushed his leg against hers; if they were standing, he wrapped his arm around her waist. His body gravitated towards her. He loved to touch her hair, her skin, the soft hollow of her neck. He hadn’t known it was possible to spend so many hours kissing.

  One of the boys fishing downriver wolf-whistled; they stopped kissing and laughed. Paolina rested her head on Antonello’s shoulder
. ‘I think you are in love with that bridge.’

  ‘Maybe,’ he admitted. ‘You know it’s going to be the biggest —’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she interrupted, ‘I know.’ She stretched her arms wide and grinned, and Antonello watched, captivated, as the dimples transformed her face. ‘The longest, most amazing bridge, higher, taller, more spectacular than the one across Sydney Harbour … You’re lucky I’m not one of those jealous Sicilian women.’

  There was a maternal indulgence in Paolina’s voice, making her seem older than her twenty years. Antonello assumed it was an attitude primary-school teachers cultivated. He assumed it was her training, that she acquired it along with the ability to organise whole days into a series of learning activities she mapped onto a weekly grid.

  A container ship slid silently under the half-made bridge. Grey foam splashed onto the bank. The tugboat guiding the ship down the river blew its horn, and the punt travelling across from the east side stopped and waited. Antonello reached for his pencil again: his hand danced across the page, and the lines transformed into a ship stacked with containers floating on the rippled water.

  ‘You’re so talented. You’d make a great art teacher,’ Paolina said, running her hands through his thick black hair.

  ‘I’m happy being a rigger,’ he said without looking up from the sketch, absorbed in capturing the smaller details now — the masts and towers, the flags.

  When he first told his brothers that Paolina was a teacher, Vince asked, ‘So she’s clever?’

  ‘Yes,’ he’d confirmed, with pride.

  ‘They say a man should never marry a woman who is smarter than him.’

  ‘Are you saying I’m dumb?’

  All three brothers laughed.

  ‘Well, maybe not as smart as Mamma thinks you are,’ Vince said, grabbing Antonello in a playful stranglehold, as if they were boys playing on the street in the village.

  He proposed to Paolina six months after their first date, and when she said yes, he asked her again and again, ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure,’ she said with a laugh as he slipped the gold ring on her finger. ‘You’re the most handsome man I know.’

  ‘More handsome that Marcello Mastroianni in La Dolce Vita?’ he teased. They had seen the movie at La Scala in Footscray, with Sam and his fiancée Alice, and the two women had declared Mastroianni a heartthrob.

  That Paolina chose him was a miracle. He still said thank-you prayers at night before he slid into their bed. Bellissima e molto buona. Would Paolina one day regret marrying him — a labourer with no education?

  ‘Come on, let’s go,’ Paolina said. ‘It smells like dead fish and burnt oil here.’

  Antonello raised his head and sniffed the air. ‘You have a better sense of smell than me. Working down here, I’ve stopped noticing it.’ Before he closed his notebook, he gazed at the completed sketch: the bridge, half-made, reaching across the river from both sides. A promise not yet fulfilled.

  But they were close to finishing. In a few more months, the bridge would be whole, and when they relinquished it to the city, they’d make history. A bunch of working blokes would forever be part of Melbourne.

  Chapter 1

  It was late Thursday morning during Paolina’s third week with her Grade 3 class. This was her fourth appointment as a replacement teacher, her second at the same school. Agnes Hunt, the permanent teacher who was now on maternity leave, had warned her that there were several mischief-makers who needed constant surveillance, and they’d already made themselves known: Marisa Percelli had twisted her ankle doing back flips between the desks, the Papageorgiou triplets had brought matches to school and set the bins on fire, and Gary Dyson spat hand-rolled paper missiles across the room whenever she wasn’t looking. But more concerning to Paolina were the students who were struggling and found every activity a challenge.

  Terri, whose turn it was to read, was short and shy, with pale skin and green eyes that she hid behind a long fringe. She stood up as one of the Papageorgiou boys — Paolina hadn’t got as far as telling them apart — passed her the book. She was trembling and already her face was turning red.

  ‘Oh no, not her, we’ll be here all day,’ yelled out Willie, the class talker, from the back of the room, where he was supposed to be facing the wall with his hands on his head in an enforced five-minute silence. Giggles rippled along the desks.

  Paolina ignored him and focused on Terri. The girl’s tongue flapped about, her lips opened and closed, she alternately sucked and bloated her cheeks, but nothing came out. It was as if the words were glue in her mouth. When she finally found her voice, some words came out in a rush of spit, while others were stretched beyond recognition as she painstakingly sounded out each letter. Around the room students were twitching and fiddling, and some were sniggering. Paolina was thinking about how to help the girl, how to spare her any further embarrassment, when she noticed Jimmy, a smallish boy she’d caught fighting the day before, scribbling in his book. She tiptoed across the room and stood by his desk. In the margins of the novel, there were pencil sketches of birds — not the stick-birds other children his age drew, but fully formed sparrows, and seagulls, and a half-drawn heron, its long sharp beak protruding from a small head with, as yet, no body. She hesitated for a moment, then snatched the pencil out of Jimmy’s hand. Startled, he knocked his book and it tumbled to the floor. Around him, the students laughed. Terri continued stuttering and stammering through her allotted page. Paolina gave the class the stern look she’d been practising since her lecturer at Melbourne Teachers’ College told her she needed to be more serious when disciplining her students. Firm but fair.

  A few streets away, Emilia washed the coffee cups and put away the single remaining piece of lemon cake. Both her son Antonello and his father, Franco, had been too nervous to eat their breakfast before their meeting at the bank. But of course they were famished afterwards.

  ‘Asking for a loan feels like begging,’ Franco had said days earlier, trying to convince Emilia to come with him to the bank.

  ‘Wait until we save the money,’ she insisted.

  But Franco refused to postpone buying a new car. ‘I earn the money, and I’ll buy a car if I want to.’

  Franco was a firecracker, too easy to ignite. When they disagreed, they could argue for days. Emilia knew that Antonello hated his father’s inability to control his temper, and the ease with which she goaded him, so to put an end to the ongoing battle he’d volunteered to take the morning off and go to the bank with Franco.

  The bank manager, a benign middle-aged man in a grey suit who apparently thought getting his message across to a migrant required long pauses between every word, happily agreed to the loan, and now Franco was working in the garden and, Emilia assumed, dreaming about his new car as if it weren’t going to cost them a small fortune, with the interest and bank fees.

  Emilia stirred the pasta sauce simmering on the back burner. Garlic and onions, basil and chilli, homemade pork sausage and tomato passata, a pinch of sugar and a splash of their own wine — well, more than a splash, but she wouldn’t tell her daughter, Carmela, who, since the maternal and child health nurse at the council told her even one drop of alcohol could damage a child’s brain, had been on a constant campaign to stop Emilia using wine in her cooking. Carmela was trying to be more Australiana, and as a result, she had eliminated wine, and garlic (bad breath) and chilli (too spicy), from her diet. Carmela’s food was bland and boring (though Emilia couldn’t blame Australia; her oldest daughter was a terrible cook), so most days Carmela came for lunch, with her children and her husband, before Marco’s afternoon shift at the foundry. Emilia didn’t mind: all her married life in Italy, she’d shared the cooking with her mother-in-law and youngest sister-in-law, and even though they had their own kitchens in their own separate sections of the three-storey house, all three households ate together.

  Whe
n Emilia had suggested to Antonello that he and Paolina might move in with them, at least until they had saved enough for their own house, he’d laughed.

  ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea,’ he said finally when she asked him what was so funny. ‘You’re too bossy.’

  She’d thrown her tea towel at him, but she knew he was right. It was nostalgia. She was grateful to no longer share her kitchen.

  As she set the table, the sun streamed in through the louvre windows, creating soft, warm stripes across the room. It was 15 October, her mother’s eighty-fourth birthday. She’d sent her money and later, after dinner, she’d call. Her mother’s hearing had deteriorated and Emilia would have to shout. The thin phone line was an inadequate channel for the weight of their emotions.

  Emilia checked the sauce once more. It was spicier than, and not as sweet as, her mother’s. The memory rolled in: she a short ten-year-old, standing on a stool so she could look into the pot. ‘Attenzione a non troppo peperoncino, basta, basta!’ Her mother pinching her arm to stop her adding the extra chilli.

  Just after 11.40 am, Antonello arrived on site and made his way to the lift, where he’d arranged to meet Slav and Sam. Even though drinking before a shift was against company policy, almost everyone had a liquid lunch on payday. To avoid problems, the workers went to the Vic and the Commercial, leaving the Railway to the engineers. Most of the workers from the local factories and refineries were paid on Thursdays, so all three bars would be crowded until the clock hit one, when the men downed their pints and rushed back to work.

  Des, a boilermaker, tapped Antonello on the arm. ‘Wouldn’t go up there if I was you — it’s a fucking circus. They reckon they can’t get rid of the buckles caused by those heavy blocks you guys heaved up there, so they’re going to take the bolts out. Bob’s real fucking pissed, but they’re the bloody bosses.’

  Des belonged to a group of Australiani who kept their distance from the dagos and wogs. He’d never spoken to Antonello before.