The Following by Roger McDonald Page A

bark on them, knotholes exposed, insect scribbles in the wood.
    Tarbett’s grandfather, an honest drover, had lived in such places in the sticks. Tarbett never shut up about it. He called for an earth-built architectural revolution: ‘Think of the structure as two sheds overlapping with a screened arcade joining them. You’ve seen the idea.’
    They had. And primitive it was. Though it kept out the flies.
    In those first weeks they made clay bricks in wooden moulds. Heavy, irregular window frames were hammered from second-hand iron. On the plans it looked like a fruit-packing shed or a shearing shed. A house of the sort to match the bloke’s deserves should at least have verandahs, where the heat and glare would not penetrate and the bloke would be able to hang a waterbag, go around in a singlet and shorts, stretch out in a deckchair, read up on philosophy and such. Or say his prayers. If Tarbett had called for gold leaf, they would have slapped it on. But this?
    ‘Here’s where the arcade comes in,’ said Tarbett, ‘a screened space between two lots of rooms, overhanging eaves in a house facing north giving shade in summer, letting sun through early in winter, climbing up the inside walls. It’s a verandah inside a house.’
    No verandahs were allowed under postwar austerity rules that the bloke himself had brought in, so argument was pointless – there would be no verandahs, whatever anyone thought. There would be an arcade.
    Don Devlin did not speak of the job as a rushed job, but they all knew that if the house wasn’t finished in time the bloke would never live there. It raised the question: ‘The bloke was born in a bark hut. He’s lived in railway barracks all over the joint. The last few years he’s lived at the Kurrajong Hotel in a room where you couldn’t swing a cat. Why does he need a house at all?’
    ‘It’s none of your business,’ said Don.
    Marcus Friendly sat under a tree and watched them work. They liked seeing him in the shade of the old yellow box tree, the honey tree, talking to Tarbett with plans spread over a card table, blueprints held down by a rock. He took an interest in details but kept his distance. He was one of those old-time, working-class serving members whose climb through the workingman’s ranks from railway sheds’ apprentice to national secretary of the union to parliamentarian and wartime cabinet minister had won him the honour he craved – to sit in the place where the worker was king, on a leather bench in the Commonwealth of Australia’s parliament, in Canberra. First as a backbencher, then as Munitions minister, then as Treasurer, War Cabinet member, and then, just before the war ended, stepping up to the top job that was lately taken from him, leaving him this shell with a need for shelter.
    Tarbett cajoled the men, demanding a standard of finish they’d hardly thought they could meet before the job started. They learned that Tarbett could be grateful, admitting, in his own way, that he didn’t know everything. As the weeks passed, Tarbett admitted that he never needed to say anything twice to any of Don’s men.
    ‘You bastards are good,’ he said. ‘You are bloody good.’
    ‘As if we didn’t know it,’ they answered, though not in those words. In fact, with no words at all.
    At smoko each day Marcus set the billy on a fire of sawhorse offcuts. Signalling it was ready, he threw in a handful of tea-leaves. Ross Devlin, Don’s fifteen-year-old, ran over and carried the billy back to the men.
    Ever since Ross was born – since a son was born – Don Devlin had spoken of taking on his son as his carpentry apprentice. Don liked seeing Ross and the bloke getting on. Each generation threw their achievements to the top of a pile from where it was easier for the next to take off. In Don’s family the connections went back to immigrants from Ireland. So did the bloke’s.
    ‘Show him the stone, Roscoe,’ he said one day. ‘Tell him the story.’
    Ross