Enza Gandolfo - The Bridge

‘Never trust the bosses again,’ one of the other speakers said. ‘That was the lesson. That’s our motto.’

The last speaker read out the names of the thirty-five dead. Men took off their beanies. The crowd bowed their heads.

Sarah arrived at the bridge after the speeches were over, and the crowd was thinning. She stood in front of the memorial. The wreaths and bouquets laid out by the mourners created a tiny carpet of colour under the mammoth bridge.

She walked towards Williamstown on the path that ran alongside a row of grey and red stone pillars, a sculptural installation. Each pillar was slightly different. Each represented one of the men who’d lost their lives. Sarah ran her hand over the surface of one of the pillars. Overhead, drivers kept driving. There was no stopping on the bridge, except for emergencies. She supposed that for Ada life had been unbearable, death an urgent desire.

Sarah walked on, to a small clearing. Here a new plaque acknowledged the death of a thirty-sixth worker in 1972 on one side, and on the other it read: Forty years after the tragedy of 1970, the workers of the WEST GATE BRIDGE strengthening project remember the sacrifices of an earlier generation. They left us a mighty legacy. The struggle continues and in the words of a great philosopher — ‘Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battle lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers.’

Sarah knew the quote was from Engels and Marx’s The Communist Manifesto . Why didn’t the unionists name the philosophers? It was government land, so she could easily imagine the careful negotiations between union and government officials that had led to this compromise.

From her position in the small clearing, the bridge looming over her was ominous. Her brother Paul had studied the West Gate in his engineering course, examining the reasons for the collapse and the lessons that could be learned about the structure and architecture of bridges. ‘But their downfall was ego,’ he told her. ‘They thought they were so clever. These were the best bridge designers in the world, supposedly. A couple had been knighted for their bridge-building contributions.’

Sarah understood about ego: there were plenty of egos knocking into one another in the legal profession. But while some lawyers, some people — more men than women — were good at shouting out their own virtues, at making grand gestures, at pushing themselves forward, of thinking about how they might get ahead, that wasn’t her problem. Her problem was the doubt and the self-loathing, and that had been Jo’s problem too. A damaged ego could be as harmful. She had to find another way to live.

Sarah had gone to see Jo in the prison the week before the bridge memorial. She was in Castlemaine for a meeting of a working group of the Prison Reform Committee. She took Jo a stack of novels, some magazines, and chocolate. During the visit, Jo didn’t ask for anything, and didn’t complain. She was working, she told Sarah, on prison maintenance, painting the social areas. ‘It’s better having something to do,’ she said. ‘It’s good to see you. It’s good to talk to someone who isn’t — who is outside. Good to remember there is a world outside.’

‘You don’t have many visitors?’

‘Mum and Nan having been coming once a fortnight, but it’s hard. Nan cries most of the time. The strange thing is that a little while ago, I started receiving photocopies of pages from Ash’s journals. They’re out of sequence, some more recent, some from years ago, but they are pages where she’s talking about us, about me, about being good friends. It’s weird. Some of it’s surprising, not what I thought she was thinking and writing. How could I have been so wrong?’

‘Someone wants you to know that Ashleigh loved you.’

Jo didn’t know who was sending them, though she suspected it might be Ashleigh’s grandfather.

‘We’ll apply for parole as soon as we can,’ Sarah said.

‘It’s better for everyone,’ Jo said, ‘if I do all the time I was given.’

‘You have to forgive yourself, Jo, and stop trying to make things harder than they already are.’

‘I know, but I killed her… and I doubted her friendship, and it was all in my head, stuff I was making up. Lots of time to think in here and dissect things.’

‘You could study,’ Sarah said. ‘There are some education programs; it’ll help when you get out, and stop you going over and over things you can’t change.’

‘I know, I’m not ready for that yet. But I’ll think about it.’

At the end of the visit, Jo gave Sarah a hug. ‘Thank you. I realised I never said thank you for everything you’ve done for me and for my mother.’

On her way home from the bridge, Sarah went to visit Mandy, and, just as they did during those months before the trial, they gravitated to the backyard.

‘Did you go down to the anniversary memorial?’ Sarah asked.

‘Just for a little while. I listened to some of the speeches. It was teeming down with rain, but there was a big crowd. It’s good to see that people remember.’

They talked about the bridge and about Jo. It would be the last time Sarah would visit — the house was sold, and in a few weeks Mandy was moving to a farm cottage outside Bendigo. She’d be closer to Jo, would be able to visit more regularly. Sarah would miss Mandy.

‘Drop in if you are ever up that way,’ Mandy said as they embraced at the door. It was a casual invitation, and Sarah knew she shouldn’t make too much of it.

After the memorial, there was a party in a nearby hall. A local band was playing Seventies covers, and Antonello recognised one of the guitarists — he’d been a young carpenter on the bridge, one of Slav’s crew. The band played the ‘Ballad of the Westgate Disaster’, and by the last line most people were openly weeping. The band continued with Mark Seymour’s ‘Westgate’. When they stopped, young men standing close to the stage called out, ‘Play Lennon,’ and the band members nodded and the crowd clapped as they played the familiar chords of John Lennon’s ‘Working Class Hero’. There was nothing heroic about working long hours in dangerous jobs — Antonello knew that better than most — but he could not help being carried away by the song, and he sang along with his mates.

Alice and Paolina sat in a quiet corner together, reminding Antonello of the young women they once were, of the nights they had spent together at the San Remo Ballroom, of the dancing and the music. When someone patted Antonello on the shoulder, he turned, expecting it to be one of the men, but it was his son. Alex with Nicki, Rae, and Jane. Alex gave Antonello a hug. And they both got teary. It had been forty years since the bridge and more than twelve months since Ashleigh’s death, but they were all still hurting.

‘You refused to talk about the bridge all those years,’ Nicki said, giving him a quick peck on the cheek.

‘I’m sorry, Nicki.’ He drew his daughter into an embrace; there was a moment’s hesitation, before she also wrapped her arms around him.

‘It was a tough thing to deal with,’ Nicki said as they moved apart.

‘Other blokes managed better than me.’

‘We aren’t all the same,’ Alex said.

Back at the house, they sat around the kitchen table. Paolina carried in a dusty box, from which she pulled out two sketchbooks and a framed sketch wrapped in newspaper.

‘The only ones I managed to save,’ she said, handing them to Alex and Nicki.

In the books, there were sketches of Paolina, Emilia, and Franco, of the river and, of course, of the bridge, in all its stages, and of the many bridge builders, including Sam and Slav and Bob. Antonello watched his children flicking through the sketchbooks. He watched Jane unwrapping the framed watercolour sketch of the half-made bridge.