The Comfort of Figs

by Simon Cleary

  They’ve gotten to know the waitress since they’ve been coming here and they like her. She is older than they are, but not yet beyond them. She manages them. Is stern or teasing or efficient, depending on her mood, or theirs. She looks after them and, for what they are doing, she respects them.

  ‘Righto then,’ Betty says as she takes down the order.

  ‘Charlie?’

  ‘Toast and coffee,’ Stahl says looking up at her and noticing the pins in her hair. She gives him a smile before making for the counter and placing their order.

  Stahl turns to Hodges. ‘Jack’s serious. There’s no work today.

  The conditions aren’t right. It’s wait and see tomorrow.’

  Hodges ignores Stahl and continues to eat.

  ‘Hi ho!’ A high-pitched voice calls out from across the room.

  Carleton comes towards them. He lives at home, has breakfast before he leaves, but likes to join them here before the working day begins. He reaches the table and settles clumsily into the remaining chair.

  ‘The weather’s not right. It’s not happening today, Carleton,’

  Stahl tells him.

  ‘Don’t believe a word they say,’ Hodges mutters.

  ‘We’ve just seen Lawrence down at the bridge,’ Stahl continues.

  ‘It’s too hot a day. The bridge can’t be closed. We’ve got the day off.’

  Carleton looks across to O’Hara who gives a short nod.

  ‘Settle in, Carleton,’ O’Hara says, ‘we can take our time this morning.’ O’Hara pauses – ‘Seconds of beans for you Billy?’

  ‘Piss off.’

  Carleton can’t hold on any longer, and the question bursts from him: ‘What’s happening?’

  The high-pitched enthusiasm of his greeting distorts into a childish plea. There is something here the men know. And he – young, growing, shining Carleton – is desperate to have it.

  O’Hara answers, patient.

  ‘We can’t link the bridge unless the weather’s just right.

  We’re looking for a day when there is only the smallest temperature change. It’s got to be warm enough in the morning, but not rising too much. So the whole bridge is the same temperature.

  An overcast day, that’s what we’re after. That would be perfect.’

  Carleton looks at Stahl, at Hodges, but neither of them are listening.

  ‘I still don’t understand,’ he says to O’Hara, his need to know greater than any embarrassment.

  ‘What do you know about steel?’

  Carleton looks at him blankly, the question too big before him.

  ‘Expands with the heat, contracts with the cold,’ O’Hara answers his own question for the boy.

  Hodges laughs, the sound of a mule, and thumps Carleton on the shoulder:

  ‘You’ll learn about that when you get older,’ he snorts.

  O’Hara ignores him.

  ‘On an overcast day there’s less risk of one side of the bridge heating faster than the other, of the bridge itself getting out of shape.’

  Carleton starts nodding.

  ‘I’ve got it,’ he says, his head bouncing up and down, faster and faster in growing enthusiasm.

  ‘Watch it, lad,’ O’Hara says to him, ‘you’ll shake something loose if you’re not careful.’

  O’Hara goes out onto the street where he buys the morning edition of the Telegraph and brings it back for them to read, dividing it and handing pages to Stahl. They eat and read without talking, though Carleton is distracted, caught still in his thoughts, and doesn’t look over O’Hara’s shoulder as he usually would.

  When they are done, Betty clears their plates and brings them coffee, wiping her hands on her apron by habit as she lingers at their table. She knows their routines, knows their work, follows the progress of it, even feels part of it through them. She passes on the stories they tell to her husband at night, to her girlfriends. Stories with currency, weight, authority.

  ‘You boys should be getting off to work, shouldn’t you?’

  Stahl fills her in.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ she says, her head nodding slowly as she considers what Stahl has said. She feels let down, slightly annoyed. She can’t help it, though she has no right. Partly it is from the disappointment, but it is also because she feels left out. ‘So it’s out of your control, then? You spend four years getting this far, and at the end of the day it’s still Nature’s say?’

  None of them respond. There is more than just observation in her comments. They feel the criticism. It is personal. They don’t know what to say, though she stands there still, wanting an answer of some sort.

  ‘So, Nature’s still in control,’ she repeats, prodding, challenging.

  ‘Yep,’ O’Hara says, short and curt and irritated, ending the conversation. The waitress turns away shaking her head.

  ‘No,’ says Carleton when she is gone, ‘I think they know exactly what they’re doing.’

  Carleton is the boatman. While the others work the steel a hundred feet or more above, Carleton works the river, patrolling the water under the bridge in his dinghy, collecting anything that falls from the superstructure and floats. He ties his boat up under the Howard Smith Wharf on the northern bank every evening, and every morning at eight o’clock rows out to the centre of the river where he stays for as much of the day as possible, positioning the dinghy beyond the range of falling objects.

  Whenever a steamer passes by he pulls anchor and returns to the bank, rowing hard to evade the ships, their wake and the obscenities hurled at him by their crews.

  On the river Carleton has learnt to listen. Spending all day on the water in the middle of the river waiting for objects to fall, it is impossible to see everything. So Carleton learns to hear.

  Usually when something goes over a worker will call out from above, and if Carleton himself hasn’t seen the thing plunge, he’ll follow the pointing man’s finger to the place on the river where it has landed, expanding ripple-rings marking the spot with precision.

  So Carleton knows the sounds of objects hitting the river.

  He’s learnt to discriminate between the routine noises of river life – oars entering and leaving the water, ropes thrown from boat to wharf and falling short, gulls diving for food, and pelicans taking flight – and the sounds of things falling accidentally from the bridge into the water. First Carleton learnt to filter the familiar sounds so it was only the sound of debris hitting the surface which turned his head. Then he learnt the different sounds that things make through the air in the split-second before hitting the water. That the whistle of air from a plank of wood is different from a paintbrush, or a tin, or a man’s jacket or his hat. That falling objects have their own accents.

  Carleton sits on the river and longs to be part of the brotherhood high on the steel above. To be accepted by the workers, one of them, and part of this great bridge. To prove himself.

  But there are obstacles. He is on the water, they are in the air. He is the youngest. And – it is this he fears is fatal – his background sets him apart. Carleton is a son of the professional class, the connected class. His parents know the chief steel engineer Lawrence, personally, a relationship which led to the job.

  There had been a dinner party at the engineer’s home, a dinner to which even the ‘children’ were invited, Carleton having just finished school. He paid keen attention to the engineer’s reports of the bridge’s progress, and the engineer had been impressed by the boy’s interest, his unusual enthusiasms. Later Carleton’s father enquired over a pipe of tobacco in the drawing room after the meal if there might be any work for his son. The engineer offered to see what he could do, and called the next day about the dinghy job. The perfect job for a schoolboy rower like Carleton, the engineer had joked with him his first day on the river. Later, in moments of doubt, Carleton wondered if the position had been created for him, though he was too fearful of the answer to ask.

  Carleton feels the things that set him apart, but he is determin
ed to make up for them.

  And he has his stories. Though they are not stories in the true sense. More theories. What Carleton does, is unveil theories.

  Great verbal maps of how the world works: intricate patterns of behaviour, of class and migration and wealth and war. Of economies and what shakes them. Of nations and what holds them together. They are the products of sleepless nights, and days floating on the river, of his whirring, fervent, dreaming, wondering mind.

  ‘I’ve got this theory.’

  That was how he’d start. It was always unexpected. The men would be drinking beer, throwing darts, or waiting at the racecourse for the gates to open. There’d be a pause in the talk, and Carleton would lean in towards them, catch one or two of them in the eye and say it: I’ve got this theory. Someone would groan, or laugh or slap him on the back in mock-derision. But they listen. His theories are irresistible. They hear him out. And laying down his theories he is no longer an awkward youth with an ambiguous job on the river. He is transformed. He is an entertainer, strange and unpredictable, vulnerable and powerful.

  After the waitress from the Empire has left their table, turned and left them with their inadequacies, Carleton says, ‘I think they know exactly what they’re doing. Listen, I’ve got this theory.’

  No one teases him today. They are off-balance, and are glad for the distraction, something to fill their uneasy silence. And if Carleton’s theory offers an explanation to a doubt which is in them too, then so much the better.

  ‘There’s nothing they don’t know,’ Carleton continues, feeding off their interest. ‘The engineers and the surveyors know.

  They’re just giving Nature her head for a bit. But they’ll reign her in when it’s time. Like breaking in a horse.’ Here Carleton turns to Hodges who comes from the land. He animates his words with gestures. ‘Let them play, let them wear themselves out, wait for the right moment, then bang: the bridle’s on and you’ve got ’em.’

  ‘It’s different,’ Hodges says. ‘That’s just a horse, this is about building a great bloody bridge over a great bloody broad river, mate.’

  ‘The principle’s the same, but,’ Carleton responds. ‘They know building bridges like you know breaking horses.’

  Carleton isn’t sure if Hodges has ever broken in a horse but he takes a punt.

  ‘They know every piece of this bridge,’ he goes on. ‘Better than any of us. We’re just filling in their plans. They know to the half degree how hot the furnace needs to be before the steel can be fabricated, to the cubic inch how much cement we’re going to need, to the foot how many ironbarks and how many grey gums need to be cut for the falsework. They even know exactly how many rivets are needed to hold this thing together.

  It’s all been worked out. Everything! Everything’s been factored in.’

  Carleton quietens. They are with him. He senses it. He leans forward, across the table, closer to them all, his face flushed.

  They wait for him, for the next part. The heart of it, this, his theory.

  ‘And I reckon they’ve factored in how many of us are going to die building this bridge.’

  There’s a silence.

  He sweeps their faces, searching out their reactions, whether or not he has lost them, whether he has gone too far. O’Hara is expressionless, staring at him hard, waiting for him to continue.

  Stahl is intrigued. But Hodges. Hodges rolls his eyes, derisive.

  ‘Bloody hell, kid. Accidents. Accidents. That’s all they are. It happens or it doesn’t. It’s no one’s fault, or if it is, it’s whoever made the mistake. Jackson, or Myerhoffler or whoever slipped up.’

  Carleton doesn’t answer straight away. The two dead men have joined them. He understands that, though they died before he started. He never knew them, but Jackson and Myerhoffler have been called up by Hodges and now sit with the four of them.

  Jackson died on 13 May 1939, carrying a plank of ironbark across his shoulders. A rogue gust of wind took it and twisted him around and off-balance and off the main deck and then long seconds later onto the ground below. Myerhoffler was hit by a section of steelwork being craned into place the previous July, his temple taking a clean blow from the swinging frame, his body crumpling.

  O’Hara and Stahl wish Hodges hadn’t spoken the names of the dead men, hadn’t violated their memory by using them for what is, after all, just an argument. Hodges shouldn’t have called them up. No one says anything for a long time.

  ‘I’m not saying that they caused the deaths, but.’ Carleton begins again. ‘I’m not saying any of the engineers actually killed Jackson and Myerhoffler. I’m not saying that at all, Billy. What I’m saying is that they know how many there’ll be. It’s like the rivets. They may not know which rivet goes where, but they know exactly how many they need. It’s the same thing. You heard Irish the other day. He’s seen men die around the world.

  The Golden Gate in San Fran, and the Sydney Harbour Bridge before here. He’s seen men die. It’s always been the same. The Pyramids, the Great Wall of China, Westminster Cathedral, Big Ben, the Empire State –’

  He is getting excited, looks like he is ready to list every great building or monument he knows. But O’Hara interrupts him with a piercing look, pinning him:

  ‘How do they work it out then, in this theory of yours?’

  Carleton calms himself with a couple of slow breaths. ‘I don’t know that. But it’s just a calculation, that’s all it is. There’ll be a formula. Based on what they know from other bridges, from other building sites. Based on how long construction takes, what type of job it is, how much height work there is. Those types of things. It’s factored in. They’ll know.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ Hodges snarls, glaring at Carleton.

  ‘No, it’s not.’ Determined. ‘And you know what? It’s probably even in the tender. It’ll be in the plans – the number of lives they expect to lose.’

  Carleton hasn’t thought about this before. This wasn’t part of the theory he’d been developing on the water, waiting for men to fall. It just rushed out, this need for corroboration. Rushed out under the pressure of O’Hara’s question, and the heat of Hodges’ disdain.

  ‘Rubbish,’ Hodges says again, but this time it is a mutter which trails away and swallows itself at the prospect the boy’s theory could be proved.

  ‘I bet you it’s in the plans,’ Carleton repeats, ‘that there’s a number in there.’

  It is quiet. Nothing happens. There is a long lull. Like waiting for the wake of a small boat to reach the banks of a wide river. In time the men rise from the table and leave the hotel, the prospect of death accompanying them, opaque and ambiguous.

  Chapter Six

  Men die on bridges. It is what happens. Men die that a bridge is born. They all understand it, each of them who leaves his home in the morning to mount the steel. Men will die. Enough precautions cannot be taken. Or sometimes, the most superstitious of them believe, it is in spite of the precautions.

  Do not test the Lord your God. Some of them will die. Some among them will be selected. They know this, are ready for it, or at least accept it. What they do not know is who. The certainty and the uncertainty draw them closer, and into a larger destiny, rarefied.

  But Carleton does not understand. He does not understand, as he lists the engineering feats of his schoolboy history lessons – the Pyramids, the Empire State Building, the Hoover Dam, the Sydney Harbour Bridge – that O’Hara and Stahl and Hodges long to be part of that history. They all know the toll but they have no need to speak of it. The sixteen who died for the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The eleven on the Golden Gate. That Brooklyn Bridge claimed twenty-seven. That Hoover Dam, ruthlessly pursued by its engineers gluttonous for construction bonuses, took one hundred and twelve lives. That thousands perished pushing blocks of Egyptian granite into pyramids.

  That New York, which sought to span earth and sky rather than merely the banks of a river, was unrelenting in the human tithe paid to it. Some of the men on the bridge coul
d give these statistics if they were pressed, like cricket scores. But the figures are ephemeral, almost inconsequential. Pale and mean beside the achievements themselves. Beside the great events of the age.

  The thought is intoxicating: that history might one day add this bridge to that group! That provincial Brisbane with its four hundred thousand citizens and its fat lazy river, has given them a chance at glory.

  Carleton understands none of this as he rows his boat about on the river below them, busy with saving things, with preventing things.

  No, it is not the dying that disturbs them, but that the engineers might already know the exact numbers. That the game is rigged. That the forces of fate can be documented in advance, history calculated according to some formula. It is this that feels like an abuse of trust. A blasphemy.

  Chapter Seven

  It is nearly three-thirty in the afternoon. O’Hara and Stahl rest on the grass in a park at the northern end of the bridge.

  O’Hara balances a pyramid of small stones on his elbow, which he has raised parallel to his eyes. The pebbles are sedimentary gravel dredged from the floor of the river, destined for concrete mix if he hadn’t scooped this handful from the pile at the foot of the north pier. O’Hara balances the pebbles on his cocked elbow and then, when perfectly still, whips his arm forward and catches them mid-air. The stones thud into his palm. He increases their number by one with each successful catch. Eight, then nine, then ten, until there are too many to fit in the mitt of his hand as he scoops them out of the air. When eventually he drops some and the stones clatter to the ground, he begins the game again. Increasing the numbers one by one till he misses once more. O’Hara passes the time. He balances, whips, catches. Balances, whips catches. Testing himself.

  Beside him Stahl is sketching. A pad rests on his knees and he is intent on whatever river scene has caught his attention below them. His head rises from the pad to take something more in, or to check or correct what he has seen, and then he lowers his eyes once more and his hand with the charcoal resumes its work on the paper.