Antonello and Paolina saw the bridge daily; there was no avoiding it. Whenever they went to the shops or walked to Alex’s house or picked up their granddaughters from school, the bridge towered over them. Whenever they took the train into the city or headed for a drive to Williamstown or Altona, it was there, a deep scar on the horizon. Antonello never drove across it, not even to visit Nicki in Port Melbourne, on the other side of the bridge.
Paolina watched him hammer in the last stake. She loved him. She belonged to him, and he to her, but he wasn’t the man she married. That Antonello, young and carefree, existed only in her memories and imaginings, constructed from what ifs and if onlys. He was phantom lingering at edges of their marriage. For years she prayed he’d return, but he never did.
The bridge was having a bad year. In the summer, a father stopped at the top, picked up his young daughter, and threw her over the side, into the river below, while her helpless brothers, aged two and six, sat in the car watching and crying. A few days later, a teenage boy, bullied at school, strolled onto the bridge — where walkers are banned — and jumped off.
‘The West Gate is a well-known suicide spot,’ Alex had told her recently.
‘I’ve never heard any reported.’
‘There are media protocols to stop the reporting,’ Alex had explained. ‘After each suicide reported in the newspaper, there is a spate of other suicides, copycatting.’ Copycat: an insult her students had often flung at one another. Copycat from Ballarat… It was a child’s word, for harmless teasing and mocking, for childish games, for wanting to be included and liked, for wanting to do what your friends were doing.
Paolina turned her attention back to the newspaper article. According to the journalist, it was predicted that the temporary barriers would prevent at least two suicides a month. She whispered a short prayer for all those people in such despair that they saw death as their only option. Even with the cancer and the treatment, which was awful, she could not imagine voluntarily giving up her life.
Antonello left the hammer on the low brick fence that surrounded the garden, discarded his gloves, and limped towards the bench under the lemon tree. His back was stiff. His knee ached. The doctor said he needed a knee reconstruction, but the knee was a legacy, and he didn’t think he could have it repaired. His body was sluggish and unreliable. As a young man he had taken his strength for granted. Six days a week of physical labour, extra shifts whenever he could get them, soccer after work, and dancing on Friday and Saturday nights. The first time he danced with Paolina, they waltzed and rocked and twisted around the dance floor, resting only when the band took breaks. She was so light in his arms, he was so strong. He remembered the sweet smell of her jasmine perfume and the pleasure of his hand on the hollow of her back.
Antonello could hear the shouts and laughter of children and their parents making their way to the oval for Saturday afternoon football. He could hear the constant hum of traffic on the bridge. Every day, at least once a day, he gave the bridge his undivided attention. At least once a week this included a pilgrimage to the site to stand in front of the monument to the dead, but today he stayed in the garden and whispered their names: Slav Stronvenji and Bob Westland and young Ted Richards, whose surname he hadn’t learnt until after the collapse. It was a prayer of sorts, though not to any God, but to the ghosts, ever present, and to the unfinished business between them.
His past was a web of black tunnels. Some days he was trapped in them for hours. Some days the chanting of the names was the only way to stop the memories, and the pain, but the morning’s newspaper articles about the bridge had triggered his anxiety. His hands were shaking. And when he closed his eyes, to calm himself, he was sucked back in time as if through a portal. He could see himself, a young man, standing on the viewing platform, gazing up at the half-made bridge. It was a cold morning, and ominous black clouds threatened rain. He was waiting for Paolina’s class. The children, when they arrived after 10.00 am, were wearing scarves and jackets. Twenty-four excited ten-year-olds, lined up in twos on the viewing platform.
In the days beforehand, Paolina had researched bridges as symbols — of crossings and transitions, of journeys between places. Antonello helped her draw pictures of bridges in her workbook and on project paper, pictures she planned to reproduce with coloured chalk on the blackboard. He helped her find copies of the bridge designs and photographs of different kinds of bridges: logs tossed over streams, with people walking across like trapeze artists on balance beams; small wooden bridges for pedestrians; bigger wooden bridges made to be used by horses and carts. Then the modern bridges — the Sydney Harbour, the Golden Gate, and the George Washington.
Slav helped Paolina look for poems and songs about bridges. But they found that many of the poems were about bridges falling, like ‘London Bridge Is Falling Down’. She left those off her list, and settled instead on Will Allen Dromgoole’s ‘The Bridge Builder’.
She and Slav insisted on reading the poem to Antonello. ‘This poem is about you and your workmates,’ she said, ‘building a bridge for the future.’
She asked Antonello if he would talk to her students about the bridge. He told her there were people whose job it was to talk to schoolchildren, but she insisted she wanted him to talk to them too, and he agreed because he knew she was making an effort, working against her own apprehensions.
After the education officer, Robert, had spoken to the children about the bridge and its construction, Antonello told them about his job as a rigger.
‘Is it scary up there?’ one of the boys asked.
‘Sometimes,’ Antonello said, ‘but you get used to it.’
‘How do they stick those giant towers into the water? Seems like they’d fall over,’ another kid called out.
‘They’re called piers or pylons, and they’re solid concrete,’ Antonello said. ‘I can tell you they dug deep holes to put them in.’
‘Your husband is cute, Miss,’ Antonello heard a girl call out cheekily.
‘I am going to be a rigger,’ another girl said.
‘Girls can’t be riggers,’ a boy yelled back.
‘Yes, they can.’
Soon all the children were arguing and it took some effort for Paolina to settle them.
‘Come on, children, Mr Milovich and Mr Bassillo have work to do. Say thank you and good-bye.’
‘Thank you Mr Milovich and thank you Mr Bassillo,’ the children called out in a sing-song tone.
Antonello chuckled as he watched them disappearing around the corner. He turned and caught sight of a tanker gliding under the bridge towards Williamstown. On the eastern side, the punt waited for the ship to pass. The piers stood tall and grey, formidable, twenty-eight of them in a row, like gravestones. Gravestones. He made the sign of the cross over his chest and said a prayer. Dear God, please keep the bridge safe.
‘By the time those kids are in high school, the punt will be history. The cars and the trucks will come and go on the bridge, and they won’t notice the ships.’ Bob came up behind him. They collected their sandwiches from the lunchroom and headed for the riverbank. Crows, gulls, and miners flew around them, undisturbed by the bridge building. The birds flew out towards the tankers and the punt, and circled to land by the men in the hope that they’d be thrown scraps.
‘Sometimes I don’t think we are ever going to finish this bridge,’ Antonello said.