The week after Ashleigh’s funeral had been unusually warm for spring, but suddenly the city had turned grey. Dark clouds appeared late morning, and by early evening there were storms — lightning, thunder, and heavy downpours. On the street, neighbours discussed Melbourne’s volatile weather, the predictions for a long, hot summer, and the ongoing fears that climate change was increasing the risk of bushfires. At home the conversation was minimal, reduced to the organisation of meals and Paolina’s doctor’s appointments. Most afternoons they made their way to their son’s house and sat with whoever happened to be there — Alex, Rae, Jane, Rae’s parents, neighbours, friends, extended family — in the kitchen or the front living room, keeping company. But all Antonello wanted to do was to be alone.
Some visitors spoke at length, didn’t stop speaking, told their stories about Ashleigh or avoided mentioning Ashleigh at all and instead recounted car accident after car accident, tragedy after tragedy, the horrible things that happened to other people. Alex came into the room to greet each new visitor, his face expectant, but after a few minutes, unable to sit still, he wandered off, into the garden or the garage or the shed. If Rae was in the room, she was the focus, the one they hugged, the one they wept over. Rae let them. She was an experienced school principal; she understood how to keep her emotions contained. In the gaps and silences, she talked about going back to work (maybe tomorrow, maybe next week) and she talked about the court case (we need to make sure that girl pays for what she’s done). In the bleakness, some visitors sprang at these statements, adding their own commentary: Drunk drivers should be locked up for a long time, throw away the key I reckon, they have to be taught a lesson. Those that might’ve spoken for Jo, who might’ve empathised with her, kept silent.
During these afternoons, life was in a holding pattern. Beyond it was the future, what people referred to as getting back to a normal life or moving on, something none of them could imagine. And so they continued gathering, as if by coming together they could stop time. Or spin it backwards.
When Sam rang, Antonello was listening to Rae’s mother sharing her memories of Ashleigh as a toddler. Beverly was a stocky woman in her seventies. Everything about her was large — her breasts, her belly, her head, with its crown of unruly grey hair — except for her legs, which were slender and shapely. She sat on the sofa next to her daughter, holding Rae’s hand, patting her arm. Her legs were stretched out across the rug. Antonello sat opposite and stared at her feet, at her strappy sandals, at her toenails painted a soft yellow.
‘Who was that? I heard the phone,’ Alex asked as Antonello came back in.
‘Sam. An old friend.’
‘I’ve never heard you mention him,’ he said.
‘We worked together once. It was a long time ago.’
Alex shrugged and left the room.
As a child, Alex was enthusiastic and overly energetic. He’d had lots of friends. Once, when he was six, three of his friends demanded he pick his best, best friend: they wanted him to choose and he couldn’t decide.
‘Dad, who is your best friend?’ Alex had asked him.
‘Your mother.’
‘But what about a boy, a friend who is a boy?’
‘Your Uncle Joe. Your Uncle Giacomo.’
‘No, someone else,’ Alex insisted. ‘Outside the family? Why don’t you have other friends? You know, like from work? Or from football?’
‘I’ve got responsibilities and I’ve got you and your sister and your mother, and my mother and father, and I don’t have time.’ Antonello wanted to say, Stop asking me all these questions, you little pest. But he knew that even Alex could see the flaw. What kind of man has no friends?
The following afternoon, when Antonello arrived at the Vic, Sam was already sitting at a table, a beer in front of him. On Antonello’s side was a glass of red wine. ‘I took a punt — ordered you a merlot.’
‘Thanks. Still my drink of choice. I used to pretend I liked beer, I thought it’d make me more Australian, but I gave up that a long time ago.’
‘Unfortunately, I like it too much. More ocker than the ones born here.’
In the bar, they were the sole customers. A middle-aged waitress carried a tray of salt and pepper shakers and placed a pair on each table. The barman and the chef played pool. From the games room next door, there was the constant beep and chime of the pokie machines, the clink of coins against the metal trays, the jackpot jingles and old-time tunes, vaguely familiar. Flashing lights reflected on the mirror above the bar.
It was a gloomy pub. Poorly renovated several times since the 1970s, the layers of change were visible, one on top of the other. Like make-up clumsily applied over scar tissue, it failed to camouflage its faults.
‘Don’t remember the bar ever being this empty,’ Antonello said.
‘No more factories around here, no more punters,’ Sam said.
It was difficult not to drift off into the past. Antonello had spent so many nights sitting at the bar with Sam and Slav, watching Bob play pool. Bob had a knack for it and there was usually some younger bloke willing to challenge him to a game. They’d throw a coin or two on the table, but no one ever took Bob’s money. Antonello remembered gathering around the bar after every shift. The pungent mix of sweat and beer, the arguments — mostly about football — and the yelling, the stupid jokes and the raucous laughter. The dead were back, sitting at the bar. They swung around to face him and raised their glasses.
‘Just a few compulsive gamblers now,’ Sam said, nodding towards the pokies. ‘Don’t come here anymore? This would still be your local?’
‘This or the Blarney. But I don’t go to the pub much. Paolina dragged me here one night about ten years ago — she wanted to have dinner and play the pokies. I couldn’t stomach it. I kept expecting to see Bob or Slav at the bar. I could hear Bob’s laughter … We didn’t even stay to eat.’
‘Should we go somewhere else?’ Sam asked, picking up his beer and taking a long swig. Sam had put on weight, but he wasn’t fat; there was just a hint of a beer belly under the blue Australian Workers’ Union windcheater. Antonello stared at his face: there were a few frown lines, some wrinkles, the flesh around his cheeks sagging, but he was still so familiar, with the broad Roman nose, the bushy eyebrows, and those luminous hazel eyes.
‘No. I was going to suggest somewhere else, but nowhere else seemed right, either.’
‘I’m surprised you’re still living in the area,’ Sam said. ‘I thought you might’ve shifted away. A lot of us did.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Geelong. I work out of the office there and live in a flat — small place, with a view of the bay from the bathroom window.’ Sam smiled, bringing his hands close together to show the narrowness of the view.
‘Paolina wanted to move. But I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.’ He didn’t tell Sam that the further from the bridge he was, the worse the nightmares. After Alex and Nicki had moved out of home, Antonello and Paolina went on a trip to Europe. They booked a twenty-day tour and spent time in Sicily with their extended families. Every night he was away, Antonello dreamt of the bridge. Not the falling bridge he’d witnessed, not the half-constructed bridge, but the finished bridge crowded with peak-hour traffic. He watched the piers crumbling, the roadway collapsing over and over again, cars and people dropping into the river like dead birds. He had those nightmares at home too, but he could get up, go outside, and see the bridge. Calm himself down. Away from it, the anxiety clung to him, and there was no reprieve. He was bound to the bridge, bound to living under its shadow.
‘I thought I might never see you again,’ Sam said, and Antonello heard the reproach. What kind of man refused to see his best friend?
‘I’m sorry, Sam. At first I needed to be alone, I didn’t want to see anyone. And then it seemed too much time had gone by.’
Antonello remembered watching Sam coming up
the driveway and shaking hands with Paolina’s father, who was digging over the soil in the vegetable patch. Sam knocked and pounded on the door while he stood inside the bungalow, gripping the back of the chair to stop himself from falling, from caving into himself, his head throbbing. His body shaking.
‘I gave up after Alice left,’ Sam said. ‘I had my own shit and I thought, bugger you.’
Antonello nodded. ‘I know for some of the blokes it helped to get together, working on the plaque and the memorial, and even on finishing the bridge, but for me …’
‘It was fucking hard for all of us,’ Sam said, pushing his empty glass aside.
‘Another round?’ Antonello asked. His own glass was still half full.
Sam nodded, and Antonello called out to the barman, ‘Same again.’
‘A couple of times I set out to come and see you,’ he continued. ‘Once I got as far as your gate. And then I thought I’d come back to work on the bridge and I’d see you on the site, but the week we were due back I got so sick I couldn’t get out of bed. They call them panic attacks now. I had the shakes so bad that at one point they did tests for Parkinson’s. Paolina was pregnant and we had the mortgage and I had to work. My father organised a storeman’s job at Bradmill’s. Most days the only sunlight I saw was through the gaps between the storeroom door and the containers. I stayed there for a couple of years, until Sandy organised the job in the library. So I took it and went back to school to retrain.’
‘White-collar.’ Sam grinned and ran his finger around the inside of his own collar. ‘Bit of a change from rigging.’
‘I miss the rigging. The library’s okay, but I miss being outside. Even miss the height work, even those freezing mornings.’
‘Great view, though, across the whole city. I loved the heights.’
‘You sure did.’ Antonello smiled. ‘No bloody fear.’ The barman put the drinks on the counter and Antonello stood up, paid, and brought them over.
‘I was young and silly. I thought I was invincible. Becoming a union organiser knocked some sense into me. Sometimes it feels too much like a desk job, so I hit the road and visit workers around the region.’
‘You’ve done a lot of good. I’ve seen you on the telly, at the rallies. You’re …’ Antonello was choking up and had to stop and take a breath. ‘I’m proud of you, Sam, proud of you.’ Over the years, when he’d seen Sam on television, he’d had the urge to shout out, that’s my best mate.
Sam shrugged. ‘It hasn’t been easy. I was a fucking mess for a long time and did a shitload of drinking. The survivors, we had permanent spots at the bar. Alice and I fought every day until she left. I blamed her, but it wasn’t her fault. Not mine, either.’
‘You were crazy about her. I thought you guys’d be together forever,’ Antonello said.
‘Still a bit crazy about her,’ Sam said, shaking his head.
‘I’m sorry, Sam.’ Antonello sighed and remembered Alice, a nonstop talker who loved going to the San Remo and being the only Australian girl there, and dancing all night with Sam, and plotting to convince Sam’s mother it wouldn’t be the end of the world if he married an Australiana.
‘She’s happy, married with a couple of kids. And I’m happy too — I met Judith twenty-years ago now, and we’re good together. She already had two boys, so it was an instant family. Alice and I’ll always be friends.’
‘We needed help, but no one offered,’ Antonello said.
‘No, I thought going back to the bridge would help, but it was tough. There were days working on the bridge when it shook, when I was sure I’d fall … I could hear Bob’s voice calling me and I wanted to fall. There were times I considered, just a step, just a step, and I’d be gone too.’
‘It’s surprising no one did,’ Antonello said.
‘Blokes died in other ways: heart attacks, strokes. But yeah, these days they’d have us all on suicide watch. I believed if the bridge didn’t get finished, Bob and Slav and the other blokes would’ve lost their lives for nothing. As if the fucking bridge was something. And I thought I owed it to ’em to get the thing done. I wanted to see it finished. Alice and my mother were furious. Finally, they agreed on something … But I went back. Most of the time, I was either drunk or hung-over, but it was the only way I could keep going. And the bloody companies were as bad as ever — as if they hadn’t learnt anything from the accident, nothing. So of course there were strikes and stopworks, and money was tight. Alice was trying to get pregnant. She had two miscarriages and I wasn’t around. It was the last straw. After she left, I lost the house and had to move in with my parents. Now, that was hell.’
Antonello nodded and they both laughed at the memory of Sam’s bossy mother.
Could he have made a difference to Sam’s life? If he’d let Sam into the bungalow, if he’d picked up the phone, would life have been better for both of them? The sharp yank of regret: another trap.
‘Things got worse until Gary Willis gave me a job.’
‘Gary Willis, I remember him. He was a racist bastard,’ Antonello said before he could think to censor himself. Gary had been their shop steward on the bridge. He was a tough guy, prepared to stand up to the bosses, but often that put him off side with the men as well. In hindsight, they knew Gary had been right about so many of the problems on the bridge: the asbestos in the welding blankets and gloves, the damage to hearing caused by constant loud noise, the lead and chromium in the paints, the need for scaffolding and guards, and of course the problems with the structural design and the construction processes. There had been so many accidents. The men who survived were still paying the costs years later, but no work meant no pay, and that meant not enough money for the mortgage or the rent, to buy food or pay bills. So even for the committed unionists, it became difficult.
‘He wasn’t all bad,’ Sam insisted. ‘He taught me a lot.’
‘He hated us wogs,’ Antonello said. ‘He never referred to any of us by name — we were the dago bastards or a pack of bludgers and scabs, even when we were out on strike.’ At one meeting, after the workers voted against Gary’s proposal to strike, Gary had let loose on the fucking dagos, who shouldn’t have been allowed in the fucking country. Antonello and Sam and Slav had been in his line of vision. He stood only inches from Antonello’s face with his fists raised: ‘You should fucking go back to where you fucking come from.’ Antonello wasn’t a fighter; even as a child he’d avoided boyish tumbles. But he wanted to hit Gary that day. Sam and Bob had to pull him away. In Gary’s eyes, he was scum, he could see that.
‘The day I started working, my father said to me, “You never step onto a work site without union membership. Otherwise, the bosses will screw you. When everyone stands together, that’s when workers can have some power.” So I’d expected the unionists to be the good guys,’ Antonello said.
‘Okay, yes, Gary can be a bastard, but he was right about Freeman Fox and World Services — they didn’t know the fuck what they were doing. He was right about a lot of things, including Milford.’
With the mention of the Milford Haven Bridge, Antonello winced; he felt as if Sam had taken a swipe at him. Milford should’ve been the warning that saved them. Four men had been killed. The Milford and the West Gate had the same design, by the same company. Gary organised a meeting and urged them to strike. Then the engineer, Michael Shields, came to talk to them. ‘I’m one of the best engineers in the world. I’ve worked on more bridges than most of you have had hot dinners,’ he said. ‘The West Gate is safe. If I didn’t think it was safe, I wouldn’t be working on it.’ Of all the engineers, Michael Shields had been most like them, down-to-earth, a father of young children. He sounded confident. ‘Our bridge isn’t the same as the bridge in Wales. We have a stronger bridge — it’s better designed, it’s better built.’
They believed him, and made naïve reassurances to their families. They were unwilling to believe that the bridge
, their bridge, could be faulty, capable of that kind of betrayal.
‘I wake up in the middle of the night sometimes,’ Antonello said, ‘thinking, why the hell did we believe that man?’
‘Because he believed it,’ Sam said. ‘Bloody fool, cost him his life.’
‘And he took thirty-four other men with him.’ Antonello took off his jacket. It seemed to have gotten hotter in the pub and he could feel a sweaty dampness in his armpits. Why had he agreed to meet Sam? Why now? He knew they’d talk about the bridge — that’s where their friendship lived, as if it were still trapped under the debris of the collapsed span.
Sam lifted his glass up. ‘Another?’
‘No, but you go ahead.’
Sam went to the bar.
Antonello remembered the overwhelming feeling of pride when he started working on the bridge. But as they fell behind schedule, further and further, it turned into shame and embarrassment — that bridge is taking longer than Rome to build, are you guys building it with tweezers? He remembered the mounting pressure to complete the project, to ignore the problems.
Sam came back with a beer and some salt and vinegar chips.
‘Haven’t had these for years, they’re so salty.’ Antonello opened the packet and took a chip.
‘You need to drink beer with them,’ Sam said, pushing the packet closer to Antonello. ‘Anyway, Gary was the one who convinced me to get more involved in the union when we went back to finish the bridge. We ended up on strike straightaway because they didn’t want to let the shop stewards on the job. Can you imagine: they wanted us to forget the accident and work on the bridge as if nothing had happened?’
Antonello didn’t say anything, and Sam continued, ‘Okay, maybe Gary was racist — things were different then — but he’s been a good mate, and together we’ve done important work.’
Antonello frowned. Was that kind of racism defensible? Sam was defending Gary, a man who had been awful to all the Italians, to the Greeks and the Yugoslavs. Had Gary’s good work compensated for it? Could everything and anything be forgiven?
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