by Heather Rose
Dan continued. ‘Welcome. Huan ying.’ Some of them nodded. ‘So here it is! And you can see we’ve got some work to do.’
The men at his back were watching. The air was tense. The Australian workers were observing the new arrivals like a patient observing a brain scan, wondering what the doctor will tell them.
‘Nothing on this bridge is more important than your safety and the safety of the men on your shift,’ Dan continued. ‘Here we are on a near perfect night. The weather is calm. The sea is calm. We are calm.’
Already he had them, interpreter and all. He stood with ease, as if he was speaking to each of them individually. He continued laying out his expectations for protocol and systems while they were onsite. This was what he did. This was what he was good at, melding men into a workforce.
It was such a risk. How could all these men, given the cultural divide, determine together exactly how tight the bolts should be screwed and the wires tensioned, en masse, as one mind? And it wasn’t just here. Over at the manufacturing site, all the components were being constructed. Steel sections were coming in on barges and being craned into place. Everything relied on expertise and skill and cooperation. It was easy to forget that. Human endeavour relied on cooperation. The construction of buildings, ships, aircraft, dams and bridges, all the great monuments to civilisation.
War was the defeat of that cooperation. In the process, it destroyed the labour of countless human beings. Perhaps that was its greatest flaw. It eviscerated the output of lifetimes. It laid waste the lives of women and men and made of them gravel and dust. The arrogance of that was staggering. But here was a man trying to coalesce a group to do quite the opposite. To give of their minds and bodies to create an engineering feat that would carry people across water for generations.
When Dan wound up his talk, a mixed crew of Australian and Chinese workers and interpreters was transferred onto barges that took them to the Bruny side of the bridge. The remainder flowed onto this worksite and shadowed their counterparts in this hour of crossover.
‘They cannot see themselves as adversaries,’ Dan had said to Mick Feltham. ‘You are asking for sabotage if you let that happen. I know the costs will increase. But we cannot trade budget for safety.’
Mick had given him until New Year. Three weeks of this hour of shared shift—the changeover—with Australian workers and Chinese workers. But after that, it was back to the standard quarter-hour changeover. Feltham had been immovable.
‘It’s not even his money,’ Dan had said to me, as we’d left that heated meeting.
‘Small-minded decisions are not special to the army …’ I said, quoting him.
He nodded. ‘Too right.’
It’s not just small-mindedness that’s driving Mick Feltham, I’d wanted to tell him. This will be his parting achievement. So, no, it’s not about money. It’s much more than that. It’s his legacy.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Feltham and I had been on our way to the site at Tinderbox in a government car a few days before. I’d asked him about his family. Discovered he kayaked each Sunday with a group of men who were mostly doctors. And then we’d got on to the Launceston dam and that was it. We’d left the government offices, been picked up by the chauffeur and driven down here to the bridge, and he hadn’t paused or asked me a single question.
Mick Feltham had a Gene Hackman face, smooth, doughy. He favoured check-patterned ties. He looked reasonable, affable, but he was becoming neither since the Chinese labour had been approved.
I’d wondered how Feltham’s wife put up with him. What did they talk about at dinner? Did he really know her? Had he taken an interest in her lately? What did people really do with their lives? As a single woman, it had grown harder to understand the idea of marriage. Why were men the way they were? How had we let them get so self-centred? I’d been married for twenty-five years and what did I have to show for it? Two beautiful kids. I was grateful for them. They were worth every hard day. I’d given it everything I had, but I was still a bit confused. How had it felt so unequal—support for Ben’s career and his needs versus the irritation he extended towards mine?
I’d decided while I was doing my PhD that academics were pretty dysfunctional people. My ideas on that hadn’t changed, only consolidated over the years. Most of them have never worked a day in the real world. I’d watched the way they behaved, saw the back-stabbing, cliques and paranoia Ben got caught up in. It was as if they were still in high school. Ben’s favourite hate over time: gender politics. He’d watched a lot of women rise on the academic ladder while his own career stalled, and he was bitter.
‘You women rule the world now, don’t you?’ he said. ‘You’re out there outdoing us. But it’s not merit. You do know that, don’t you? You’ve rigged the field. And look at you. Flying off here and there, trying to settle us all down. You’ve emasculated us.’
After we separated, a friend of ours came over with lemon meringue pie and a bottle of Grey Goose. He was a colleague of Ben’s but he had also become a friend of mine. He’d had a bad break-up himself a few years before. He told me two things that afternoon that helped at the time. He said, ‘Astrid, what I know about relationships is that people stay in them far too long.’ Later he said, ‘The thing about Ben is if it’s not shining on him, he makes it rain on everyone else.’
Mick Feltham was still talking. ‘The project was completed two weeks ahead of schedule, under budget, and is a scheme everyone on the team got immense professional satisfaction from.’
‘Great,’ I said, although he would have kept talking without my input, I was sure.
‘My grandchildren are going to drive past that dam and tell their children that I built it.’
‘On time and under budget,’ I murmured.
‘Your brother is going to get his ribbon-cutting on March the fourth. He has my word,’ Feltham continued.
‘So your concerns have been allayed?’ I asked.
‘Supply chain issues have been resolved,’ he said. ‘And we have all the men we need now. No reason to doubt that we can deliver.’
I knew Mick Feltham had been offered a huge bonus for meeting the bridge deadline by JC, following that meeting with Aid-n-Abet. There were also penalties for any day it went over. I wondered if Dan Macmillan had been offered an incentive too; Dan’s firm was subcontracted to Feltham’s. Somehow I doubted it. That would have been smart, on Feltham’s part, even fair. But still, I doubted it. I could see he thought Dan was a young buck, even if Dan wasn’t young. He was forty-three. I could see Dan rankled Feltham somehow. But Feltham needed him. Maybe Dan’s business partner—what was his name again? Talbot, Jimmy Talbot. Maybe Jimmy Talbot had been a more amenable type. But without Jimmy, it was Dan who knew the project inside out. Would have made no sense to bring in another firm at that stage.
‘And safety issues?’ I’d asked.
‘That’s Macmillan’s problem,’ Feltham replied. ‘He knows what’s at stake. This is a project of international significance.’
I thought about Dan and how what mattered to him was not losing a man. He and Feltham were going to come unstuck somewhere over the next few months.
I’d wondered if Ben’s new partner would finally get the man I’d always imagined he could be. I hoped she did. I hoped she didn’t get the other man, the one who could take all the light out of a room. I hoped her kids didn’t get him either. He was so good at hiding it. And then, when we least expected it, he’d be there. That other Ben. The Ben that rained on everyone. The Ben that could be savage. I hadn’t realised, until it was over, that I’d been like a windvane, swinging towards the breeze, trying to sense the incoming storm. I wasn’t quick enough. I was rarely quick enough. It could go from calm to chaos in moments, without warning. And then I’d be in peacemaking mode for days. Maybe that’s why I chose him. Building a version of my mother and father so it felt like home. Honing my skills at conflict resolution in the bedroom, kitchen and lounge room.
Last year I st
ood in the window of Dubai’s newest and tallest tower and it was then that I really understood what a tiny speck of sand I am. Over my lifetime I’ll take some photos, drink some wine, eat food of various types. Eventually, I’ll leave an apartment of clothes, furniture and books that will mostly end up in a charity store, and I’ll be out of here. Solistalgia? Melancholia? No, just reality.
Suddenly, I knew where this conversation with Mick Feltham was going. Why hadn’t I realised it before?
‘So, Mick,’ I said, ‘given the contribution you’ve made to this state, and this project, if the premier wanted to honour you … if he wanted to do that …’
He wriggled a bit in his seat. ‘You know, there’s not a single statue of an engineer here in Tasmania,’ he said. ‘Politicians. Antarctic explorers. Sporting legends. Soldiers. Farmers. Even a female convict, I believe. But the people who built Tasmania? The engineers? Not a one.’
‘So the Tinderbox headland or North Bruny, which location are you imagining?’ I asked, as we topped the rise and the car began the descent to the security gates at Tinderbox. I was the premier’s sister. He wasn’t telling me any of this for nothing.
‘Well, I think this side,’ he said. ‘As the road meets the bridge. A testament to all engineers, you understand. If the premier thinks that’s fitting.’
‘But a statue of you, yes?’
‘I think people will know I earned it,’ he said. He settled back into the seat and stretched out his legs. When we stopped to show our IDs, the wind whipped in the open window and blew his tie about.
I had dearly wanted to tell Dan about this conversation, but I didn’t. I’m a mistress of discretion. Secrets go in deep with me. And they stay there a long time.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The first fatality on the bridge was on a Tuesday. I heard about it at 4.22 am.
‘There’s a car on its way to you. A Chinese worker’s been lost.’ Frank Pringle’s voice on the phone. ‘Don’t know any details.’
I jumped out of bed, shed my pyjamas, grabbed a bra and knickers, track pants and a hoodie. I splashed my face with water, quickly cleaned my teeth, pulled on socks and runners. Four minutes after the call, I dashed upstairs. The lights were on in the lounge room and I could see JC in pyjamas and dressing-gown talking on the phone. I knocked on the glass. He came over and opened the balcony door, waving me in.
‘I understand,’ he said. ‘Yep. Talk later.’ Then he ended the call.
‘What happened?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. That was Frank. The foreman is still out searching.’
‘A worker disappeared?’
‘No, Ace! He fell. These people aren’t asylum risks. They’ve all been vetted for that. Apparently he was eighty feet up. I want you down there to make sure it doesn’t get out.’
‘Doesn’t get out?’ I repeated blankly.
‘Closed loop, Ace. No-one else is to know.’
‘Did he fall in the water?’
‘From eighty feet, Ace. No chance of survival, that’s what I’m told.’
I thought how what mattered to Dan was not losing a man. I thought about Jimmy Talbot and the suicide. He would make this personal.
JC said, ‘We have to hush it up.’
‘It’ll be on the police radios, JC,’ I said. ‘And the media will be down there faster than the police launch, you know that.’
‘No police. Bad publicity so early in the works. The Chinese are right. We don’t let it out.’
‘You’re taking orders from them? JC, this isn’t the People’s Republic. We can’t control what gets out.’
‘Yes, we can, Ace. Their workers are not going to be a problem. They won’t talk. Macmillan—you’re going to have to manage him. How well do you two get along?’
‘JC, every one of those workers has a phone. Someone will leak. We’re talking about a man’s life. This is never going to work.’
‘Yeah, it is, Ace. It’s already had the lid put on it.’
‘You’re really telling me the police haven’t been called?’
‘Fuck, Ace, I know. I haven’t been here before. But it has to be this way. I’ve got …’
I heard the buzzer go for the gate. I went and pressed it to let the government car up.
‘JC, you have to get police crawling over the place. If it gets out that someone tried to cover this up, that you tried to cover this up, you’re sunk.’
‘I can’t go against their wishes, Ace. The Chinese are our partner in this.’
‘You can’t go against their wishes?’ Things were getting a little heated now.
‘Ace, it’s a project of national significance. There are different rules … I can’t …’
‘What the fuck are you talking about? The Chinese have to understand that in this country, people like transparency. Don’t we? Don’t we? Or has that gone with the bridge? Make the call, JC—or I will.’
‘Ace, right now, you don’t get to call the shots. And you don’t get to go against me. It’s one worker. One accident. This gets out, it jeopardises the whole thing. Shut it down, Ace. Those are my instructions directly to you. Shut it down.’
‘You’re not thinking, JC. How will you explain it when some kid with the family dog comes across the body washed up on the shore?’
‘I’m told there’re sharks. Nobody washes up.’
I shook my head.
‘You’re here to do one job, Ace,’ he said. ‘Put out fires. Get down to the site and ensure the fire is out or it’s going burn this bridge down. And if the bridge goes …’
If the bridge goes, you go, I thought. But I didn’t say it. I walked out of the room and out to the waiting car. So the government was taking instructions from Beijing. Who hadn’t seen that coming.
At the site, there were men in fluoro high on the bridge looking like Christmas decorations. Vertical cables were being tensioned with the help of cranes. It was as if nothing had happened here at all.
Frank arrived and came to stand beside me.
‘Morning,’ he said.
‘This is wrong, Frank,’ I said. ‘This is not a thing you hush up. What happens if someone does find the body? A Chinese body in a fluoro vest?’
‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.’
‘Nothing about this is funny, Frank.’
He had the decency to look embarrassed.
‘Who knows it’s happened?’ I asked.
‘You, the premier. Macmillan. The Chinese obviously. They won’t talk. They’ll bus the workers back at the end of the shift and there’ll be a lockdown at their camp. No calls. No internet for a week. Let anyone thinking of breaking ranks cool off. Some re-education. But I’m assured every one of them is party faithful. They understand what’s at stake.’
Nature was putting on a breathtaking sunrise. For a moment I felt like I was in a Kurosawa movie. All sweeping vistas and human tragedy. I scanned the water and saw the Zodiac coming into the beach.
‘I’ll go talk to him,’ I said.
Frank nodded.
Dan jumped out and pulled the boat up on the sand.
‘Hey,’ I said.
‘Hey,’ he said. He did not meet my gaze.
‘I hear there was an incident.’
‘Of course you did,’ he said.
‘And knowing is a problem,’ I said.
Dan stared at me. ‘Yeah, seems so. Seems that some lives are worth more than others. I wonder where that puts us all, in the long run?’
‘You want to tell me what happened?’ I asked.
‘You want to know? Or you want to hear it so that, when I’m finished, you can thank me, then tell me I need to take a good, long vacation until this thing is done?’
I sat down on a rock. I left a flatter, easier rock to my left. It was first light and there were still long shadows on the beach.
‘Please, Dan,’ I said, ‘I want to know because I want to know. Tell me what happened.’
Dan did not take the flatter, easier rock besi
de me. He stayed standing. ‘It’s fucking nuts. I mean, these guys do not do occupational health and safety. I’ve been hounding them every night. I’ve got this interpreter, yeah, who’s with me through the shift, never leaves my side, but you would swear no-one understands me anyway.’
‘They don’t wear their harnesses?’
‘Not if they can get away with it. They’ll unlock them if they think they can do the job easier or faster without it.’
‘And then one of them falls.’
‘I heard him. I heard him scream as he fell. Then nothing. I yell to one of the team leaders to sound the alarm. It’s protocol, right, but suddenly the interpreter’s in front of me. “Yes, Mr Macmillan. We will sound the alarm.” I’m focused on getting to the bloke before he drowns, if he’s even still alive. I mean, if you hit the water from that height … But if he’s dead, then his family—they’ll want a body. I tell the interpreter to call the police. He’s running beside me. “Yes, yes, Mr Macmillan, we will take care of everything.” He gets out his phone and says to me, “Mine is nearly out of charge. Can I use yours?” And I hand it to him. I should have known then. I’m getting the Zodiac into the water. I see him making a call. I say, “How long? Tell them we have a man in the water.” He says, “Yes, yes, everything is under control, Mr Macmillan.” Then I’m out there, searching. It’s dark. There’s a big current. But there’re no police. Twenty minutes, thirty minutes. They should have been here. But no-one comes to help. I see that the workers are going on as if nothing’s happened. They’re all just carrying on. Then I see that the security guards are still back up at the gate. That’s when I realise something’s not right because they don’t know. They’d have been running about like headless chooks. So I come back to shore. There are three Chinese standing on the beach. And this woman, one of the interpreters, says to me, “We appreciate all you have done, Mr Macmillan, but we understand that the chance of survival is extremely unlikely. Less than five per cent.” “Where’re the police?” I ask. Then she says, “Mr MacMillan, we do not want any problems here in Tasmania. We do not want any problems for the government. We do not want any problems for you. We are not involving the police. Do we understand one another? I have the premier on the phone,” she says. She hands me a phone and the premier, your brother, says, “Hello, Dan. Thank you for doing all you can. This is a very delicate situation. We will handle it diplomatically. But now, what’s happened there this morning, it requires your absolute discretion. I know you signed the Official Secrets Act many years ago, when you were in the army. I need you to do your duty again. Do I have your commitment?”’