book. Even as I watched, I saw Micaelis put two and two together and get a resounding five. A married man, I was, having a bit on the side.
‘If anything else occurs to you that you think we should know about,’ he said.
‘I won’t hesitate to contact you,’ I told him. And I definitely would. In just a little less than twelve hours.
Opening the door, I ushered him to the foyer. The boys ran interference. ‘Guess what, Dad?’ said Red, tugging at my sleeve. ‘Tarquin crashed the computer.’
Trish looked daggers at me over the Macintosh, stabbing at her keyboard, desperately trying to recover her zapped files.
I fed the cop into the lift and we got out of there fast.
I gave the boys three choices. Gold of the Pharaohs at the Museum of Victoria, Treasures of the Forbidden City at the National Gallery, or an early lunch. The vote went two-nil for a capricciosa with extra cheese and a lemon gelati chaser.
We drove across Princes Bridge and headed through the city towards Lygon Street where the pizzerias and gelaterias were thicker on the ground than borlotti beans in a bowl of minestrone. Just past police headquarters, where Russell Street becomes Lygon, we hit a red light beside the Eight Hour Day monument. On the diagonal corner, on the tiny patch of lawn outside the Trades Hall, stood a newly erected hoarding. Art Exhibition, it read. Combined Unions Superannuation Scheme Art Collection. Free Admission. Opens Tuesday.
This was the event for which Agnelli had commanded me to write a mirthfully uplifting speech by the next morning. Since I was so close, and since I still had to keep the boys for another hour and a half, I decided to kill two birds with the one casual suggestion. ‘See that place, Red.’ I pointed to the age-stained Corinthian columns of the Trades Hall’s once-grand portico. ‘I used to work there before you were born. C’mon, I’ll show you.’
A mutinous grumble erupted from the boys. ‘We’ll only be ten minutes,’ I exaggerated. ‘Besides which, it’s only 11.30- they haven’t lit the pizza ovens yet.’
The Trades Hall had been built in the 1870s, a palace of labour, and a rich example of high Victorian neo- classical architecture. A brick annexe had been added in the 1960s, an erection of expedience, its design informed by the contemporary precept that nobody gave a rat’s arse about architecture. We went around the side, drove up a cobblestone lane and parked in an undercroft between the old and the new sections of the building. Little had changed in the thirteen years since my career had begun there as Research Officer for the Municipal Workers’ Union. The patina of grime that clung to the walls was perhaps a little thicker. The odours that wafted from the outdoor toilets were perhaps a little ranker. But the same threadbare red flag still dangled ironically from the flagpole. When I told the boys that it was here that the party that ruled the nation was founded, they rolled their eyes and complained about the smell.
‘C’mon,’ I urged, spotting a small sign that indicated our destination lay on the top floor. ‘Want to see the bullet holes from the gun battle where the ballot-stuffers killed the cop?’
‘Go ahead,’ said Red, unenthusiastically. ‘Make my day.’
The story of how, back in 1915, gangsters fought a running battle with police along its first-floor corridor had long been part of Trades Hall mythology. So much so that in the three years I’d worked there I never heard the same version twice. The only point of common agreement was that the bullet-riddled banister had been filched by a souvenir hunter back in the sixties. Which gave me plenty of scope. ‘They ran up these stairs,’ I improvised freely. ‘Firing from the hip.’
We went up a flight of stone-flagged steps eroded in the middle from the innumerable goings up and comings down of the uncountable conveners of the manifold committees of the dedicated champions of labour. On the wall at the first-floor landing was a carved wooden honour board, its faded copperplate listing every General Secretary of the Boilermakers and Gasfitters Union from 1881 to 1963. I touched Red on the shoulder and pointed. R. Cahill, 1903-09. ‘Redmond Cahill,’ I said. ‘Your great grandfather.’
‘So where’s the bullet hole?’ Red said, unimpressed. If I could take the trouble to invent a spurious ancestry, drenched in labour tradition, you’d think the kid could at least pretend to be interested. ‘This way,’ I lied, leading them along a deserted corridor. The place was so quiet that a regiment of mercenaries could have fired a bazooka down its by-ways without risk of hitting anyone.
The Trades Hall hadn’t always been so quiet. In its original form, it was built to accommodate the trade- based guilds whose members had made Melbourne the richest metropolis in the southern hemisphere. In time, it had come to house more than a hundred different unions. The Confectionery Makers’ Association, the Brotherhood of Farriers, the Boot Trade Employees’ Federation, the Tram and Motor Omnibus Drivers-no trade was so small, no occupation so specialised that its members did not have their own union. Eventually, over a period of a hundred years, every nook and cranny of the place had been colonised. Its once-imposing chambers became a rabbit warren of jerry-rigged offices filled with men in darned cardigans and its hallways bustled with women in beehive hair-dos and sensible shoes.
But those days had long gone. The inexorable march of progress had been through the joint like a dose of salts, amalgamating and rationalising the old organisations into industry-based super-unions with names like advertising agencies and a preference for more up-market accommodation. The AWU-FIME, the AFME-PKIU and the CFMEU had ditched the old dump for more modern digs elsewhere. Apart from the Trades Hall Council, which occupied the new wing, there were few remaining tenants.
The labour movement was not, however, entirely unmindful of its heritage. Bit by bit, as the dollars could be scrounged, the place was being restored to its vanished glory. Plasterers’ scaffolding cluttered the stairwells and the smell of fresh paint hung in the air. An art exhibition was about to be staged. Somewhere. If only I could find it. The signs had petered out.
Reaching the top floor, we came face-to-face with a pair of knee-high white socks. They were attached to Bob Allroy, the Trades Hall’s pot-bellied long-time caretaker. He was standing on a ladder, hanging a banner above a set of double doors. CUSS Art Exhibition, it read.
‘Here’s the only man still alive who personally witnessed the murdered policeman’s death agony,’ I told the boys. By now they’d figured out that my impromptu guided tour was just a pretext and were looking decidedly cheesed-off.
Bob Allroy climbed down from the ladder, wheezing. He was one of life’s casualties, never the same since a bag of wheat had fallen on him in a ship’s hold in 1953. His entire life since had been more a gesture of working- class solidarity than an affirmation of his usefulness. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he grunted, recalling my face but unable to summon up a name. He opened one of the doors and I helped him drag his ladder inside. ‘Unbelievable, eh?’ he panted.
Sure was. The last time I’d seen this room it had been a maze of cheap chipboard and second-hand Axminster, a lost dogs’ home for officials of the Society of Bricklayers and Tilers. Now it was a spacious reception room with buffed parquet flooring, hand-blocked wallpaper friezes and freshly antiqued skirting boards. Portable partitions had been erected at right angles to the walls to form a series of shallow alcoves and rows of paintings sat stacked against them, face to the wall, waiting to be hung.
‘Art exhibition,’ explained Bob, not entirely approvingly. ‘The girlie from the cultural office is off sick, so guess who’s been roped into doing all the work?’
Bob Allroy wouldn’t work in an iron lung and we both knew it. ‘Doesn’t officially open till tomorrer,’ he warned, in case I was thinking of stealing a free look. I wasn’t there for an unscheduled squiz, I reassured him, but to rustle up a bit of quick background for a speech I had to write.
Bob moved to one of the windows and licked his lips, his liver-spotted nose drawn like a lodestone to the revolving brewery sign atop the John Curtin Hotel, clearly visible across the road. The girlie from the arts office, he thought, would be back tomorrow. Better be, if everything was to be ready for the official opening. In the meantime, I’d better see Bernice Kaufman, next door in the admin office. She might know something about it.
This was a definite possibility. There was very little, by her own admission, that Bernice Kaufman didn’t know all about. She hadn’t been President of the Teachers’ Federation for nothing. A couple of minutes with Bernice and, chances were, I’d know more than I’d ever need to about the CUSS Art Collection. More than enough to write Agnelli’s speech. Not the jokes, though. I’d have to write the jokes myself.
Bob Allroy ascended his ladder and began screwing light globes into a reproduction etched-glass gas lamp hanging from the ceiling. ‘Don’t you kids go nowhere near the art,’ he warned. ‘That stuff ’s worth a lot of money.’
