The bridge building engineer had been listening closely, standing in front of her desk, clipboard on one arm, pencil still behind his ear, until The Lord Mayor wondered what the contracter might be able to do at all, considering the little he had delivered so far. It hardly seemed sensible to submit another budget before they knew if he could finish the project entire at any time, at all. Oughtn't they be clear on switching contractors, by now?
She didn’t want the village to have to stand on half a bridge when the HR Prince Archibald rowing competition would file though their humble valley. But changing teams never instilled confidence in HQ to hand over more money. And anyway how much more could they reasonably ask? There is a limit to budgets for bridges, she was no fool. The villagers loved their ferry, and Chiselham had a perfectly fine bridge 12 miles farther down.
He took the pencil from behind his ear and poised to take a note, mumbling the options mainly to himself. Well, Mrs Lord Mayor, there is that, the amount, and there is the goal that has to be met, and there, to be quite blunt, is the matter of how good our contracter ever was going to be…”
He lifted his eyes to meet the Mayor’s birdy beads and with more conviction assured, “The builders are fine. Stour and hale. I’ve watched them come in, rally around where the organisation left them hanging and they don’t push deadlines. They are a bike of bees.† But MacMalley, aye, he’s into the divide and conquer stategy, now that funds are running low. And the fear of losing their jobs makes them like dogs over bones. There is no sensible planning to be had with that.”
He cleared his throat while he scribbled a note. “If I may, M’am, I’d like to suggest you have another crack at it. You know like, sit down with the investor again and suggest he take his contractor in hand. They’re as good as you set them up to be, right? There is the illegal dumping you could remind him of. Charges were never dropped, just suspended. He will need to meet whatever new costs the contractor invents, because if he ticks off the contractor by dumping him, he’ll be sorry and he knows it. Who was the dumping for, in the first place?" The bridge building engineer raised his other eyebrow. "See, you’ve got to think in tight little circles. I wouldn’t beat about the bush, M’am, not if you want that bridge.”
It was clear to the bridge building engineer what he could possibly manage at his end, so he jotted down a few names fast, rattling his plan off to the Mrs Lord Mayor, who swivelled more freely now in her chair. ”If you get the investor to invest more, I can get Saunders to speak to Withers to get us a meeting with HQ on Thursday when Nessa is definitely back at work, but you have to get Bretly Green to look sharp and join Chiselham this time; then we have a new and perfectly impressive proposal. The press won’t be having it if they decline. Numbers, M’am. You’ve always got to build the numbers first. Them in HQ can let down one team but not four.”
The Lord Mayor felt infected and wanted to follow red-and-green-and-blue-tartan suit with the bridge building engineer’s optimism, but pointed out the age old argument that Wallace had no need for the bridge.
The bridge building engineer grinned and tapped the back of his pencil triumphantly against the steel of his paperwork, before using it as a conductor’s baton. ”The tenure of his fields, still goes back to 1608, remember! And that’s when they were ours. We’ve let it slide, but we could also choose not to….” he raised a meaningful eyebrow.
”Oh, Harry, must we really go there?” She sighed listlessly.
Not deterred by her resistance, he replied, “No, Jean, you could always stand on half a bridge come July, and Michael Lawrence next to you wearing the chain.”
Sitting back up in her chair and drawing herself to the desk to reach for the phone, ”Oh, you are tedious!” She moaned pressing the intercom to ask her secretary to get the Lord Mayor of Bretly Green on the line. ”Shoo-shoo!” she waved the back of her hand at him in little pushes towards the door. “Go get that bridge built.”
Read the text again closely before choosing to answer one of the following Essay Questions to write on in 1500 words or less.
Credit: "Hide and seek bridge" by Jakob Owens Unsplash
Footnotes:
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"Christo is a multimedia artist best known for large-scale temporary works of art in collaboration with his late wife, Jeanne-Claude. Notable pieces include Wrapped Reichstag, 1995, in which they wrapped Berlin’s Reichstag in fabric; The Pont Neuf Wrapped, 1985, in which they swathed Paris’s Pont Neuf bridge in sand-colored cloth; and The Gates in New York City’s Central Park, 2005, in which more than 7,000 bright orange vinyl watches were hung along paths in Central Park."
