The Idea of Perfection (37 page)

In an automatic way he took the papers, feeling them warm from her hand. Then he wished he had not. Having the papers in his hand made him part of whatever it was that was happening. He tried to give them back, but she took a step away out of reach, shaking her head.

You show them that, she said. You tell them.

It was a petition, set out like a proper legal document.
Whereas Your Majesty,
he read at the top, and then a whole lot of dense writing in which he saw the words
known as The Bent Bridge.
The pages were dog-eared, the column of signatures amateurish-looking, with different kinds of pens, different kinds of writing.

The Shire went behind our backs, the woman said. Stacked the meeting, type of thing.

The light winked off the red glasses.

Took no account of the heritage value, she said.

That part was all rehearsed too.

She seemed to have run out of words now. She stared at him as if hoping he would say something she could answer.

He said nothing, just went on looking blindly at the pages of writing. He had no words. He certainly had no
Whereas Your Majesty
sort of words. He could not think of anything to say about Heritage value or the tourist aspect. There was a bad taste like fear in his mouth.

There seemed no reason why this frozen moment should not go on for the rest of the day, or even into next week. But finally the woman turned away and went back to join the others. He watched her go, wondering what would happen now. The group seemed to be mostly women, some with strollers, several with what seemed to be picnic baskets, a couple of elderly ones with home-made-looking floppy cloth hats. There was a little skinny man standing with one hip up, one down, his hands clasped in front of his privates, and a chunky Chinese man, his black hair gleaming in the sun, and an older fellow, standing to attention like one of the Legacy types, with a wide tie flapping sideways. At the front of the group was a gigantic young woman swaying a baby on her hip, a toddler beside her gripping the teat of a bottle in her teeth and staring solemnly at the man all by himself on the bridge.

He was a naughty boy. He was in big trouble.

The woman in the red glasses was speaking to them all.
Go home,
Douglas hoped she was telling them.
Everyonejust go home.
He watched hopefully, but when she had finished, no one turned to
go home.
Instead the little crowd began to shrink and flatten, as everyone sat down on the road. The woman in the red glasses perched cross-legged in front of them, and the huge woman bent down awkwardly on one hand, lowering herself slowly sideways so her tent-like dress ballooned around her, and finally lay stretched full-length on the roadway, the dusty timbers disappearing under the flowers of her dress.

Behind them, the bulldozer was big and dangerous-looking, the edge of the blade glinting in the sun where rocks had scraped through to the bare steel. The sun rained down steadily on them all. It was surprisingly quiet, considering how many people were gathered on such a small bridge. A bird called, unworried, from its bush.
Cheep cheep cheep a whee!

He was reminded of the outdoor classes he had had on site, as a student. It seemed a long time ago, those innocent times. The students were always invited to sit on the asphalt of some new road or the concrete of some new bridge, while the professor talked. Some of them never sat, no matter how long the professor talked. They would stand, shifting their weight from foot to foot as the lecture went on, as if there was something meek about sitting.

He himself had always sat down straight away, and he wished he could do it now, go over and sit with everyone waiting for someone else to work out what came next.

An untidy man with frizzy blond hair and two cameras slung around his neck seemed to be taking photographs of everyone. Beside him was a young man with a spiral notebook, counting the crowd with his pen jabbing the air. When the frizzy man turned the lens on Douglas, he realised too late that he had his mouth open. The sheaf of petition in his hand, his mouth agape. He could imagine the picture.

He turned away, ducking his head. There were the friendly old planks of the roadway. It might be nice to count them.
One, two, three, four.

While he counted, he let himself imagine a happy ending to all this. He would finish counting, and when he looked up, the people on the bridge would be gone. He would go over to the ute, get in and drive back into town. He imagined Room 8, how quiet it would be, and what comfort the
Engineering Digest
could offer. If he wanted something more exciting, he could go downstairs and watch the butcher rearrange the tins of tongue in his window.

He got to the end of one row of planks.
Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen.
He could see out of the corner of his eye that the people on the bridge were still there. They had done what they were going to do. It was his turn now.

Another man, that
leader of men
who followed him like a scornful shadow everywhere he went, would know what to do. A
leader of men
would take his hat off, stand up nice and straight, and take charge.

Ladies and gentlemen,
such a man would say. He would have a good carrying voice. It would not come out as a bleat, as his own tended to when he tried to make it loud.
Can I have your attention!

But what came next?

You are wrong about concrete,
he wanted to shout.
May I have your attention, ladies and gentlemen. Did you know that concrete is actually a very thick liquid?

He felt a ball of sweat trickle down his spine.

They were words, but even he knew they would not be the right ones.

 

 

Suddenly he saw Harley Savage in the crowd. She was wearing a big hat with a floppy brim that partly hid her face, but now that he saw her, he wondered how he had missed her before. It would take more than a hat for him not to recognise her.

He could not see the expression on her face under the brim, and as he watched, her hand went up and pulled it down further. He could only see her mouth and chin now, but he would know them anywhere.

She was saying something to the Chinese man next to her, the mouth shaping itself around a story. The Chinese man smiled a sudden white smile, threw his head back, laughed aloud. In the still air, he could hear it quite clearly:
Ha ha! Ha!

She had probably just told him about the cows, and the way he had looked when he poked his stick at them.

Now the Chinese man was telling her something. Her mouth was smiling, interested. She nodded and glanced over at where Douglas stood with the petition still held out as if someone might come along and relieve him of it. He knew that she saw him. You could hardly miss him, standing there in the middle of the bridge. But from the way she glanced at him, no one would ever imagine that she had once taken his hand in hers, or shared a plate of the world’s tiniest scones. She was leaning back on her hands now, staring at him. He had not thought she was that kind: to enjoy being part of a crowd, watching the one on the outside, to see what he would do.

She stared blandly, watching him suffer.

The sun was making him dizzy, or perhaps it was the unanchored sense of things slipping away from him. He did not know if it was heatstroke or just humiliation. I am under compression, he thought, subjected to a load beyond my capacity. My molecules are rearranging themselves into planes. I cannot stretch any further.

Catastrophic failure.
It was what concrete did, if it was asked to do something it could not do.

Finally, the woman with the red glasses saved him. She stood up and came over, right in front of him, so he felt like a bully towering over her.

He could see the man with the cameras, crouching down low so the photo would make him look even taller, the woman even tinier. It would make a good front page.
David and Goliath.
Something like that.

What I’d suggest, she said kindly, is get on the blower to your boss. We’re ready to do a blockade. You tell him that.

He stared down at her. From this angle he could see the roots of her hair, where the new growth was coming in grey underneath the black.

The blower, he repeated. A blockade.

Yes, she said patiently. We’ve got the sandwiches and the Thermoses and that.

She stared up into his face, waiting. He could hear the bird still going on and on in its bush. What a life. Nothing to do all day except hop around on a twig going
cheep cheep cheep a whee.

Okay? the woman with the red glasses was saying.

He made himself nod and smile, although he was not quite sure what was
okay.

We’ll go now, she said.

She seemed to be waiting for something, so he nodded and smiled some more.

Long as you get straight on to your boss, and hold off on pulling it down.

She made him shake hands, like a man would, to seal the agreement, but he misunderstood at first and thought she wanted the petition back. He felt Harley watching as he fumbled with the petition, finally got the woman’s hand in some kind of peculiar sideways grip.

Even after everyone had got up and gone back to their cars and driven away, he went on smiling automatically, frightened of what might happen if he stopped. He felt large and alone, and his eyes seemed to have gone stary and strange. It was possible that he was about to burst into tears.

He could hear the bird again: it seemed to have become two birds now.
Cheep CHEEP cheep a whee! Bic bic bic bic whip WHIP!
It was like a conversation, except of course that birds did not have conversations.

Harley Savage was the only one who had not gone. She was coming towards him, her head down so all he could see was her hat. She was not looking at him, but he could see that she was planning to say something.

Perhaps several things.

She was not wearing the torn tee-shirt today, but the knobby African thing she had worn to the Panorama Cafe. There was a slit on each side that he had not noticed before, that made it flap around her calves as she walked. It had a vigorous barbaric look, the pattern emphatic, energetic, bold as a danger sign.

She was close enough now for him to see some kind of primitive ornament on a strip of leather around her throat, carved out of bone perhaps, possibly a dagger. It was a decoration, but it was also a weapon.

He put his hat back on and took a step sideways, as if he might get out of her way. He could feel the smile still on his face, but he was pretty sure a smile would not be required for the sort of conversation they were about to have.

She stopped, within talking distance but not close, as if observing some invisible frontier, but the dog did not seem to recognise any frontier. It ran up gladly to him and circled several times sniffing at his trousers and once, quickly, politely, into his crotch. Then it did a figure of eight and flopped down in the dust between them.

When she cleared her throat, it was like the principal getting ready to
have a little chat
with you.

Tell me, she said, casually, still not quite looking at him. Who makes these decisions?

She was smiling a sweet but menacing smile.

About pulling things down?

He was taken by surprise. It was not the question he had expected.
Not me!
he wanted to blurt.
It wasn’t me!

Well, he started, and stopped.

In the silence the panting of the dog between them was very loud and eager, like another, more enthusiastic, language.

Look, he said.

It was always a mistake to start with
Look.

I’ve got a lot of sympathy for the Heritage aspect, he said.

Oh? Yes?

Her face was sceptical, resistant, an eyebrow arched wryly.

But the Inspector from Head Office has done the Report.

He hated himself for the way he was reverentially capi talising everything.

Given it the thumbs down, I’m afraid.

He heard himself in astonishment. He did not think he had ever talked about giving something the
thumbs down
before.

The timber is rotting right away. The corbels.

That sounded a bit too technical, as if he was trying to silence her with his special knowledge.

The what?

Because, see, the roadway lets the water in, and then it can’t get away.

That wasn’t too technical, but it wasn’t terribly clear, either. He was not trying hard enough, somehow, and he knew it was because his heart was not in it. All it took was a man who was brave enough to get on to Mr Denning and make him listen to the modules idea. A brave man would have done it as soon as he saw the first poster in town. A man such as his heroic father, for instance, would not have thought twice.