Putting up fences - Page 2
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 2: Dreams of Land
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Tess Brady
BUT WE FELT AS IF THE PARK WAS BEING TAKEN AWAY from us. We didn't care what fancy ideas some town developer had for it. It was our park: we knew this land, we walked it, we picked mushrooms there. If the women of Bethnal Green Common could do it, then so could we. We put our new renovation skills into action – organising, dividing large jobs up into small ones.
Someone remembered Veronica was back from Berlin so we called her. We needed as many ideas as we could get. Organising a demonstration was the easy bit, getting the media and putting public pressure on the council was the hard part. In the end it was young Penny who thought of it. We'd hook the national media by using our very own dominatrix and her great dane. After all, the local photographer had been taken with her in our first attempt at getting publicity. Marianne went quite pale but the girls gave her a hug and Wendy made her another cup of tea. We were all sold on the idea and set about convincing Marianne that she could do it – that it would be the making of her. She might even get her business up and running again.
Veronica arrived late. She'd brought us all souvenirs from Europe – tiny pieces of the Berlin Wall, officially stamped to guarantee they were genuine. She then offered to organise Marianne's detox – the full treatment – and Sandy, who was the best with dogs, took over the great dane for a few days and initiated some serious training.
Back at home the cranes had at last removed the old tree and a new, very Japanese-looking version had arrived. On my side of the fence things were now back on track. Thankfully, and I'd kept out of it, my team had finally agreed on the exact shade of yellow, which had to be specially mixed. The industrial chemist was ready and Bob, the renderer, was finally back from his hot-air balloon trip.
But things were not so happy for my neighbour, whose tenants had left demanding their full bond and compensation. Serge, the owner, was, I'm sure, annoyed with me but it was hard to tell – our language difference made it difficult to have anything but the most basic of conversations. On this occasion he needed to borrow a spanner to mend some plumbing before his new tenants arrived, so he was civil enough. Generally, he kept to his side of the fence and I to mine.
I left everyone to it and went back to my phone-around. The demo plans were going well. One mention of our dominatrix and her great dane and the media were as keen as ... Then I saw it. Serge had stormed into my courtyard-in-progress and had the whole team up against the yet-to-be feature wall. He was threatening my fence builder with my spanner. The noise, mostly from Serge, was terrible. And then the dog joined in.
Eventually someone arrived – to this day I don't know from where, possibly from the café at the end of the street – who could speak Serge's language. He was past being able to utter anything at all in English. We found out, between scuffles and spanners and pulling out of white pegs, that we had put the posts for the screen aka fence halfway on his land and halfway on mine. It was only a matter of centimetres but he wasn't having any of it. That was his land and he'd protect it more fiercely than any politician.
I WAS BEGINNING TO UNDERSTAND ABOUT FENCES. Serge didn't see them as containers, as friendly bits of Tupperware to keep things in. He saw them as national boundaries. Centimetres mattered. They had been fought for in the long history of land and ownership. It was men like Serge who had built the Berlin Wall, men like him who had knocked it down again and men like him who had efficiently stamped the pieces as genuine, selling them in the marketplace.
The surveyors were recalled and new pegs put in. The fencing blokes disappeared for a couple of days and I heard later there was a WorkCover claim for stress. The rest of us moved the entire fence – posts, rails, palings, screens, the lot – over to my land.
It was my fence and it was on my land. Okay, I could handle this.
Just when I thought I'd calmed the world down Marianne escaped from detox. No one realised that she'd had an anchorman as a longstanding client and all the television interest was, in the end, too much for her. The memories were too hard. It was the usual just-one-drink story.
But we had a demonstration on our hands and a huge amount of media interest. We'd even set up an office in Sandy's back room and we were all part of the phone roster. It seemed impossible to turn back, and Trudy had no intention of it. Nothing would stop her now. She'd take over Marianne's role and while her red heeler wasn't exactly a great dane, none of us had worked out the dog's role in the act so we thought we could improvise.
The only problem was Trudy needed to rehearse. It's harder than you think being a dominatrix and none of us really knew what Marianne's act looked like. She agreed to help out, to be a consultant. She was conscious enough for that and Wendy was getting good at understanding her slurred speech.
The girls and dogs arrived. The security gate wasn't operating but it could be climbed over. And the walkway entrance made the area even more private. The workers had done a great job and I felt proud that it was my almost-completed private courtyard that was to be used. The girls really liked the trompe l'oeil desert scene and I gave Marianne a bottle of gin and a cocktail glass – every girl needs style. For the rest of us I made coffee. Trudy looked great in the gear. We hadn't figured out the dog's role yet but she was getting the riding whip action down to a tee and was a natural in the lace-up stilettos.
To this day I don't know if Serge was returning the spanner or if he had come back to continue the argument. But quite suddenly there he was in the walkway. I didn't have time to say anything. There was a blur of the whip, the dogs, Trudy's stilettos and Marianne's cocktail glass, and Serge was down. This ferocious man who had terrorised my entire building team was, in my private courtyard, kneeling on all fours – we now understood the role of the dog – and he was most definitely leaking from the trousers area.
I did not ask him for the spanner back.
THE DEMO AT THE PARK TURNED OUT TO BE BIGGER than the Middle East peace rallies I'd been to. There were women and dogs and prams and signs and an awful lot of men, and a busload of sex workers had come up from St Kilda, which was a terrific gesture of solidarity for Marianne. Some local bikies had decided to support our cause and came in their colours. The Great Dane Club had come along and the Greens were there. There was a small Refugees Support Park Rights contingent and Architects for Fences wanted speaking rights on the platform, which was a little bit unfortunate as there wasn't space. At the back of the march was a group of people carrying teddy bears. (I never did get to the bottom of that.) It was quite a carnival. Trudy was magnificent. She took to the stage like primer does to wood and led us all in a chant: What do we want? Park rights. When do we want it? Now! What do we want? Fences. When do we want them? Now! In her mask not even her husband recognised her on the news that night. The mayor was there, of course, making his statement and saving face.
The fence reconstruction began the next day. They put back low designer fences but they were enough of a barrier to keep the dogs in. Trudy liked the dominatrix gear so much she bought it from Marianne, who had decided to open a cigarette shop in Frankston. All the fines were dropped, including the ones over the mushrooms, and my auction went off like a dream, topping the record for sales in the area. The agent said it was the private courtyard with its sensitivity to the current drought that made all the difference. It gave the place class.
Fortunately, no one had seen Serge, on his side of the fence, standing guard over the white surveyor pegs and muttering something, over and over, in his own language. ♦