by Gary Kemble
‘I guess the thing with election campaigns is that you never really know what’s going to happen,’ Harry said.
But he knew what he and Christine would be doing. Miles wanted pen-portraits of all the local candidates. Harry expected weeks of various candidates toeing the party line, pointing to improvements in local areas that were tied to government initiatives, or to problems in local areas that could be traced back to local inaction. And all the local lobby groups would be aiming to use the election to their advantage. He didn’t expect much access to Cardinal or the PM – local papers tended to get shafted – but the Labor Party launch was expected to be held in Brisbane, so there’d be that. The trick on a weekly newspaper was to try and find a different angle, rather than trotting out news that people had read three or four days earlier.
The picture on the TV changed to the PM addressing a group of supporters at a nursing home in Melbourne. The images couldn’t have highlighted the differences between the PM and Cardinal any better. The PM was playing it safe, going for the baby boomers who were worried about Labor squandering their retirement funds. It had worked for his predecessor for years, but it was becoming an increasingly shortsighted strategy.
Harry’s phone rang. He scooped it up.
‘Chermside Chronicle. Harry Hendrick speaking.’
‘Ah, hello. This is Bill. From Save the Tower.’
‘Hey, Bill. Have you been talking to Fred?’
‘Ha. Yeah, you could say that. You know, we’ve seen so much of Brisbane’s heritage just disappear over the last few years. It’s not like London or Paris, where so much of the architecture is more permanent. . .’
No, thought Harry, it’s certainly not like London or Paris.
‘In Brisbane we’ve lost so much already just because our houses are wood. Easy to demolish, easy to ruin. Easy to raise them and add in an extra level below – great for families but not for the look and feel of Brisbane, so. . . anyway, Fred was saying you’ve moved in just down the road?’
‘Yep.’
‘Why don’t you pop round after work? We can go for a walk up there and I’ll show you exactly what I’m talking about.’
‘Sounds great. Thanks, Bill.’
Bill gave him the address and Harry jotted it down.
‘Oh, and thanks for that info on the Middle East stuff,’ Harry said.
‘My pleasure.’
***
Harry stood in the office kitchen, staring out the window towards the city. He couldn’t see the CBD from here – just a thin layer of smog, soiling the blue sky. Harry thought about what Christine said about his tattoo, about how she thought it suited him. He wondered what Bec would have thought of it. Thought of them, he reminded himself. Two tattoos now. She thought he couldn’t change. Well, he did. Just like that. Maybe she’d like the new, impulsive Harry.
He pulled out his phone, found Bec in his contacts. Stared at her photo. He missed her so much. He could do anything, right? He just got his second tattoo. Even if he didn’t remember it. He could call her. What’s the worst that could happen?
He dialled.
‘Hello?’
It was her. And even though he initiated contact, he was lost for words. His heart slammed in his chest, his brain went into vapour-lock.
There had been a moment of lucidity at some point, just before he dialled. He had to tell her what was going on. It wasn’t some random plea for attention, some vague hope that if she knew what was going on, she’d reach out to him (although that was in the back of his mind also). But as soon as she answered the phone, all of that slipped away.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi,’ Harry croaked. ‘It’s me.’ And then, when she didn’t say anything. ‘Harry.’
‘Hi, Harry.’ Guarded.
‘Hi.’
Harry could feel the sweat beading on his brow. A drop slid down the bridge of his nose and into his eye, stinging. He rubbed it away.
‘How’s things?’ Bec said.
Where did he even begin? There was nowhere. He could begin nowhere, and end in the same place. This was a big mistake. Bec was someone who once cared for him, loved him. She was someone who listened to whatever he had to tell her. She didn’t always tell Harry what he wanted to hear but she listened, and that was important.
Harry was conscious of how long he’d been standing there, phone to ear, not saying anything.
‘Yeah, okay,’ he finally squeezed out. ‘You?’
A pause. ‘Harry. . .’
‘I miss you, Bec. I miss you so much.’
And it was true. But he also missed life with Bec. The life where he wasn’t plagued with bizarre nightmares. The life where he wasn’t compelled to seek out tattoo artists while he was in some sort of dazed, not-really-there state. He was losing it. Fugue state or no, this was not normal behaviour. He was off the reservation.
‘Harry. . . This isn’t. . . I’m busy, okay. I’m sorry. I’ve gotta go.’
The line went dead. Harry said ‘Bye’ to the dial tone. He walked back to his desk, choking back tears. Slumped into his chair and stared at his screen. Community diary entries.
‘Are you okay?’ Christine asked. She pushed her glasses up onto her forehead. As much as Harry hated the glasses, the gesture was endearing.
‘Not really.’
He unbuttoned his shirt. Christine looked away, shuffled in her seat.
‘It’s okay,’ Harry said. ‘I haven’t lost it. Not totally, anyway.’
He pulled his shirt off his shoulder. Showed Christine the new tattoo.
‘Holy crap!’
‘Yeah, I know. I don’t remember getting it.’
He shrugged the shirt back on, did the buttons back up.
‘What? As in, you were wasted? Again?’
‘No,’ Harry said. Regretting getting into it now. ‘It’s like sleepwalking, except you’re awake.’
‘Are you. . .’
‘I’m seeing a counsellor. Yeah. He says most people get over it. Probably something to do with the break-up.’
‘Uh-huh. I’m sure it’ll be okay, Harry. You know. You’ll find someone.’
You’ll find someone.
Christine turned back to her computer. Tapped some keys. Then she asked him about the candidate profiles she was working on. Some bland, boring question. Something she clearly already knew the answer to. She wanted to change the subject, and Harry thanked her for it. He slid over beside her, watching as she typed.
‘Do you mind if I. . .’ he gestured at the keyboard.
She shook her head. He pulled the keyboard over and made a couple of corrections.
‘Hey, are you coming to the awards night?’ she asked him.
He usually avoided them if he could. But this year Christine was a finalist for a piece she’d done about bed shortages at the Prince Charles Hospital. Miles, bless him, had sought approval from head office to book a table.
‘Yeah, I guess.’
‘You guess? Frightened I’ll show you up?’
Harry laughed. No, that was the least of his worries. In fact, he hoped she’d win the award. She was up against the big guns from the Brisbane Mail so, to be honest, she didn’t really have a hope in hell. The main reason he didn’t want to be there was because it was an opportunity for all the people he went to university with, and all those who came after and heard the story at uni, to lord it over him.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘If I win, I’ll buy you a drink.’
‘Yeah, okay. It’s a date.’
CHAPTER 12
Bill’s place was a large Queenslander with verandahs all the way around. Tattered prayer flags hung out the front. The garden was tropical, overgrown but not messy. Harry pushed through the front gate. An aged Buddha statue peered through the foliage. He saw a ship’s bell by the open front door but didn’t have a chance to ring it. Bill lumbered across the threshold, big grin on his face, as though he’d been waiting for Harry to arrive.
‘Harry Hendrick!’ he said.
Bill was in his sixties, with a full head of grey hair, a wide-brimmed straw hat clamped down over it. He was stocky but not fat. He walked with a slight limp, one foot turned inwards, but it didn’t seem to slow him down. A couple of weeks earlier, before the urge to take up running had struck, Harry would have had trouble keeping up with him.
They shook hands. Bill turned to lock up. ‘Let’s go see this tower then,’ he said.
They walked to the end of Bill’s street, sun beating down on them, then up towards the water tower, past Harry’s car. Since he’d been leaving it in the street, the battery had stayed charged. He didn’t know whether it was something to do with the angle – maybe it did something to the fluid levels in the battery or caused a wire to lean a certain way – and he didn’t really care. It worked.
The tower loomed above them. If they were good climbers they could have scaled the rock wall at the top of Harry’s street, then another ten metres of steep, grassy land, and they would have been standing underneath it. But they weren’t, so they turned left, walking parallel to the rock wall. An old tree leant over the road, its roots intertwined with the stones. It looked as if one more big storm would send it crashing across the road and into the house below.
‘How are you settling in?’ Bill asked.
‘Yeah, not too bad,’ Harry said. ‘You know what it’s like. Getting used to new noises.’
He decided not to mention getting used to the phantom tattooist. He felt there’d been enough sharing already today.
‘Yeah. I know what you mean.’
They walked through a small park dominated by a massive old fig tree. There were benches in the shade, offering views out to the city below. As they crossed the grass, Harry felt the first puffs of a breeze, cooling the sweat on his shirt.
‘How about yourself? Have you lived in this area long?’
Bill nodded. Because of the hat, Harry had to stoop to see his face. ‘My whole life,’ Bill replied. ‘Well, not here. I grew up in Ashgrove. Lived out at The Gap for a while, after the war. But the past ten years, I’ve been here.’
He gestured behind them, the way they’d come.
‘It’s great for the grandkids.’
Bill led Harry up the hill, into a winding street that reminded Harry of the narrow alleyways in Athens, behind the Parthenon. The only things missing were stray cats and white paint.
‘My whole life, the water tower has been there. If I had a dollar for every time I’d seen that water tower, I’d be able to buy that place,’ Bill said.
He gestured then at an old Queenslander, imprisoned by temporary fencing. The place was deserted, windows smashed, graffiti marking its heritage pink walls. On the verandah sat a bathtub, also peppered with graffiti tags.
‘Jesus. What’s the deal?’
‘Swenson,’ Bill said. He almost spat the word. ‘He wants to buy up the top of this hill. He’s got that place, he’s got the water tower.’
They rounded the corner, and the tower came back into view. Bulky concrete stilts ten-to fifteen-metres high. Peeling paint. Water stains. The taggers had also made their mark here, although how they’d done it Harry couldn’t see. Mobile-phone towers stuck out at the top. Probably the most valuable thing about the entire structure.
The monolith was surrounded with more temporary fencing and a faded security sign: TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.
‘That mob went out of business two years ago,’ Bill said, gesturing at the logo on the sign.
The sections of fencing had been pushed and pulled until there were big gaps between them.
‘Back in the ’30s, this area was called “the dress circle of Paddington”,’ Bill said. ‘And this marvellous piece of technology allowed the locals to have their own supply of running water.’
They stood, sweating, staring at the structure. The whole situation was absurd. The tower was built for rich people. People who could enjoy the views and the breezes while the plebs sweated it out in the valleys below. And now Bill – who clearly had a bit of money behind him – was trying to stop the place being redeveloped for other rich people. Harry had seen this pattern play out time and time again. Well-off ‘Not in My Back Yard’ activists pushing developments into poorer areas where people didn’t know better or just didn’t have the resources to stand up to the developers.
On the other hand, the thing was a Brisbane icon, and poor old Brisbane needed all the icons it could get.
‘Come on,’ Bill said. He headed for the fence, pushing two sections apart. Harry hesitated.
Bill laughed. ‘It doesn’t matter. The sign’s just there to protect Swenson. Truth be told, they’d love it if someone fell off the tower. Swenson could couple the word “dangerous” with “eyesore” in his lobbying documents.’
Harry followed Bill through the fence. The old man scouted around the long grass under the tower until he found a lengthy steel pole with a hook on the end. He hefted it and moved over to a ladder, which had been pushed up, out of arm’s reach.
‘The taggers are doing their bit for the developers as well,’ he said, grunting as he hooked the ladder and pulled it down with the scrape of steel on steel. ‘But at least they don’t leave this thing down so little kids can get up there.’
The steel groaned under Bill’s weight as he climbed the ladder, the bolts that had once secured it to the concrete pylon long-since corroded. Bill climbed up onto a small walkway that ran under the water tank’s base. He waved Harry up.
Bill led the way along the creaking walkway. At the far end was another set of steel rungs, up the side of the tank, to the top. Harry was panting by the time he reached the final climb. Partly through lack of fitness, but mostly due to his fear of heights. As he gripped the steel, on the outside of the structure, his palms were sweating and his hands were buzzing. Bill peered down at him from the top.
‘Come on!’
Harry clutched the rungs. At least these ones were still securely attached. He started climbing, focusing on the concrete in front of his face. Halfway up there was a tag and, unlike most tags, he could read this one. TRENT! He wondered who this Trent was, and why he felt the need to express himself so exuberantly in such a precarious place.
Bill helped him up onto the top. There was nothing to protect them from the sun up here, but the wind was fresher, strong enough to whip at the collar of his shirt. There was a low railing around the edge, but it didn’t look strong enough or high enough to stop anyone from falling. Just looking at it induced pins and needles in the soles of Harry’s feet, and he moved to the centre.
‘Not a fan of heights, hey?’ Bill said. He stood near the edge, hands on hips. One hand held the hat. The wind snatched at his hair.
‘Not particularly.’
‘Used to be the same, a long time ago,’ Bill said. ‘But then after the war. . . ah, I dunno, war just teaches you the real meaning of fear.’
Bill took pity on Harry, and came over to where he stood. Harry felt like sitting down, but he managed to resist the urge by concentrating on his notebook. It was a ridiculous way to conduct an interview, but once he was focused, he found it easier to bear. He even risked a look out beyond the barrier, between the mobile-phone towers, and while he couldn’t fully appreciate it, he had to admit that other than the lookout at Mount Coot-tha, this would have to be the best view in Brisbane. In fact, in some ways it was better. Mount Coot-tha was perched on the city’s edge, whereas here they were close enough to see the undulations of the inner-city suburbs. Jacaranda trees. People sitting out on their decks enjoying the afternoon. And the flash of sunlight off the buildings in the city.
Bill skimmed through the history of the water tower, but it was barely more than the information on the flyer, and Harry doubted he’d put much of it in the story. What was more interesting were Bill’s personal stories. Anecdotes about the structure’s place in his life. He used to come up here with his wife when they were courting. Sometimes they’d climb it, sometimes they’d just walk the narrow
laneways around Paddington. He was within sight of it when he heard about the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, at a cafe just down the road. Someone changed the channel and they saw a replay of the passenger jet hitting the World Trade Center.
‘I walked outside, I was trying to phone my daughter and I couldn’t get a line. And I saw our tower there and, I don’t know, it grounded me,’ he said.
Harry wasn’t sure if that was how it was, or how it came to be through the retelling of the story. It didn’t matter. People wrote their own history. It was true for massive events, such as world wars and depressions, as much as the tiny, seemingly insignificant details in people’s lives. And there was nothing wrong with that.
Bill told him more about the social media campaign they’d started – his daughter’s idea. They wanted everyone to share their stories about Paddington water tower on Twitter and Facebook. The concept was that the tower was filled with memories, even if it was decades since it carried water. And, as such, destroying it would be just as wrong as if it were still a vital part of urban infrastructure. It was a vital part of cultural infrastructure. Harry had to admit, it was a good idea. People loved to share stories. When the structure was ‘full’ of stories, participants would get to vote on their favourites, and the winners would get a Save the Tower coffee mug or t-shirt.
‘Hey, I probably shouldn’t mention this. I might jinx it,’ Bill said.
Harry paused. He left the notebook down by his side. Sometimes it put people off. Sometimes, the best quotes came after the interview was over.
‘Andrew Cardinal’s people have been in touch,’ he said.
‘Oh yeah?’
‘My daughter, friend of a friend, all that kinda thing. Anyway, word is, he’s considering backing our cause.’