Spearritt’s book was a detailed, readable study of the bridge, from the germ of the idea to build one through all the politicking and chicanery that necessarily followed. He had a ton of information on the actual construction from the technical and human points of view, and chapters on the impact the bridge made on the life of the city. I wished I had time to read it all. Spearritt was no whitewash merchant. He discussed the plight of people who had lost their homes as a result of the construction, and he had a chapter on those who had actually been killed on the job. Sixteen of them, apparently mostly rivetters, but the casualty list included painters, quarrymen and others. One sentence on page 68 took my eye: ‘Safety regulations scarcely existed, and it is amazing that there were not many more deaths.’
I copied a few pages, including the photograph of the almost closed arch, which lost a lot in the reproduction but still constituted part of my evidence. I sat back in my chair in front of the empty screen. Computers are wonderful, but they can’t actually help you to think. If I entered into a database what I had: two dead engineers and one missing plus a policeman mentioning ‘bridge cases’ and supposing there was a key marked ‘Conclusions’ what would I get? My own conclusion was ‘What else have you got?’
I scrolled back through the catalogue entries in case I’d missed something and came across a pamphlet entitled Your Bridge, Our History. One of the librarians discovered it in a filing case, after a search that threatened to turn into a major stock-take. The pamphlet was just a few pages stapled together. It was published a few years back by something called the Veterans of the Bridge Society. It contained a couple of reminiscences from men who had worked on the bridge, a couple of Mallard’s photographs, a list of the men killed and seriously injured in the course of the work, and a selection of opinions from ordinary people. Some praised the bridge as an engineering marvel, others condemned it for ruining the Rocks area and Circular Quay. The secretary of the Veterans of the Bridge Society was Stan Livermore, and the pamphlet carried his address-43A Pump Street, The Rocks.
All this had taken me a couple of hours, but I hadn’t spent much of Louise Madden’s money. I hadn’t even got a receipt for the photocopies. So a cab to the Rocks seemed not unreasonable.
We pulled up near enough to the Argyle Centre for me to feel that, with the best will in the world, restorers and preservers have an uphill battle. The old buildings were too clean, too sanitised to be convincing, even though every stone in them was original and genuine. Still, since leaving it alone isn’t an option, cleaning it up is better than tearing it down. Around a couple of corners in Pump Street things changed for the better or the worse, depending on your point of view. The narrow houses seemed to be holding each other up and for decades corroded guttering and downpipes had leaked rusty water across stones and cement, leaving a brown stain that would never wear away. Though none of the buildings was more than two storeys high, they blocked out the late afternoon sunshine so that the street was cold and gloomy. No trees, no front gardens sprouting wattle. This was more like the old Rocks-convict-built, working-class-inhabited, drink-loving and police-hating. A large red brick warehouse or bond store dominated the end of the street.
A man in a heavy overcoat turned out of a lane ahead of me and hurried along the narrow footpath. The street was lined with terrace houses and he disappeared into one of them, maybe number 43A, maybe the house next door, I couldn’t be sure. Number 43A was a skinny sandstone terrace, one of five built so that you stepped directly from the front door onto the footpath. The balcony above had been boxed in with fibro cement and dimpled glass louvres. The door was scarred at the bottom by generations of collisions with solid boots, and its locks had been changed so many times that the area around the present one was composed of as much old, cracked putty and paint as wood. I knocked and then rubbed my hands together. It was cold in Pump Street, really cold. I jammed my hands into my pockets and waited. A few cars cruised by and a man carrying a half-carton of beer weaved across the street and went into the house al the end of the terrace. To gain admittance he kicked at the bottom of the door. I was getting nowhere, and considered trying a kick. I knocked again and heard a shuffling inside.
“Yes?”
I had to look a long way down to see the face of the woman who had opened the door a few inches. Even then it was hard. She was a tiny, bent figure with white hair and her back was so bowed the unbuttoned cardigan she wore hung almost to the floor. She turned her head sideways to look up at me-ancient eyes in a face so lined and wrinkled that it looked like an ill-fitting rubber mask. Her head sat stiffly at an odd angle to her shoulders and she had to swivel the upper part of her body to change her line of vision.
“I’m looking for Stan Livermore,” I said. “Does he live here?”
She poked a yellow arthritic claw out from the greasy, turned-back sleeve of the cardigan. “Five dollars.”
“What?”
“I ask everyone who knocks at my bloody door for five dollars. You’d be surprised how many pay up.”
I paid up in coins. She waited patiently while I collected the amount. She stuffed the money in a pocket of the cardigan and shuffled back. “Just a minute,” I said. “I asked you about Mr Livermore.”
“Old Stan?”
“That’s right.”
“Silly old bugger.”
The idea of this crone emphasising the fact of someone else’s age struck me as funny and I smiled.
“What’re you laughing at?”
Even with her head turned like that, dry, moth-eaten hair hanging in her face and the skin around them warty and puckered like a toad’s, the eyes were still serving her. “Nothing,” I said. “Look, madam, it’s terribly cold out here. Could I come in?”
“You might rape me.”
“I won’t, I assure you.” I showed her my licence as if a piece of paper was some kind of guarantee against rape.
“Hardy,” she said, reading the licence from a distance of a couple of feet. “Knew a woman named Hardy once. Silly bitch.”
“Mrs…?”
“Tracey, Betty Tracey. Have you got live dollars?”
“I already gave you five dollars. They’re in your pocket.”
I was suddenly aware of sounds around and above me. A door had opened in the next house, and a couple of the louvre windows had been operated. I guessed what was going on-old Betty was putting on her show for an always-appreciative audience. It was called ‘Make the stranger look like an idiot’ and it ran for as many acts as he was dopey enough to allow. I didn’t feel like playing. I took out a twenty-dollar note and waved it in front of Betty’s forty-five-degree face. Suddenly she was the bit player and I was the lead. I snapped the note. “If you want this, invite me in.”
She stepped back and let the door open wide enough to let me as well as my money pass through it. But that was as much as she was willing to concede. She let the door sit ajar and moved only a few feet down the hallway. There was almost no light; I had an impression of narrow, steep stairs at the end of the passage and one room off to the right.
“Are you going to give me the money or rape me? Did you see that Lady whatshername got raped? She was older than me.”
She was referring to a wealthy titled north shore woman whose life had ended the way no one’s should- raped, robbed, bashed to death. The recollection made me disinclined to any kind of coercion. Risking the chance that she’d suddenly stand up straight and waltz away up the stairs, I handed her the twenty. “I want to talk to Stan Livermore. I was given this as his address. Does he live here?”
“Old Stan?”
Oh, Christ, not again, I thought. “Yes, old Stan. Is he here?”
“No.”
“Does he live here?”
She folded the note three times and put it in the pocket along with the coins. “Yes.”
“Where is he now?”
She sucked in a deep breath and sniffed. Slowly, she swivelled her head around in a ninety degree turn so that instead of looking up with her head cocked towards her right shoulder, it was cocked towards her left. The manoeuvre seemed to take a full minute. When she was ready she sniffed again and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “What’s the time?”
