Enza Gandolfo
THE BRIDGE
For the men who built the West Gate Bridge: the victims and the survivors
For Teresa Corcoran (1959–2005)
1970
Prologue
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?’