Bernie’s Irony
Bernie comes to
the glassmaking environment wearing black pants and a white blouse filled to
button bursting with bosom and looking official with a long black tie. She is
to be the new nightshift security guard patrolling when the plant is manned by
only a skeleton crew. As she scans the horizon of this busy landscape, her
experience tells her it will be a very different place when surrounded by
darkness.
Driving the
emergency vehicle, Military Mike, the security manager, takes his newest guard on
a tour of the site pointing out landmarks and speaking with pride. ‘This is the
Mirror line, and this is the Laminating line. Then there’s Hot End, the Cold
End, Da1 dispatch, Da2 dispatch, Da3 dispatch Da4 dispatch; and this is Toughened
Door Panels. And then there’s the cullet system, the cullet tunnel, the oil
farm, the gas farm, the furnace basement, and the stores. You’ll need to let people
into the stores for spares after hours. Oh, yes and this is the Batch House.’ Bernie
spins to see the building he refers to and then looks back in bewilderment at
the security manager. ‘Don’t worry,’ says Military Mike. ‘If you have any
concerns ring the nightshift electrician; he knows everything and will help
you.’ Then with a wry smile he says; ‘I should also tell you that while the
The Batch House
is the building that mixes raw materials into batches that go into making
glass. Ten tall silos filled with ingredients stand like sentinels alongside
this three story, iron clad building. Because of the extensions added over the
years, it looks like a collection of giant metal boxes pushed together long ago
and then painted cream. The cream competes with the rust. Some of the
corrugated iron sheets have been removed and replaced with clear Perspex to
make windows, but those windows are now coated in a fine glass dust, creating
an opaque effect.
On her first
nightshift, alone, Bernie pulls out one of the specials rolled by her husband, just
for her. One drag and suddenly, with its outside lights accentuating shapes and
shadows, the Batch House becomes a majestic castle. Its silos are turrets; its
rusty corrugated iron walls seem like textured granite and the opaque view
through the windows has a sinister gothic depth as objects within twist into
unrecognizable shapes. The two five meter high rubber doors look like castle
gates through which trailer trucks laden with raw materials push there way in when
entering to unload onto basement conveyors. The Batch House castle stands
formidable, in the dark, as Bernie begins to patrol its perimeter.
Rain falls.
Bernie moves under a covered way. The sound of rain pounding on corrugated iron
brings back memories. In the darkness she remembers herself as a schoolgirl, taller,
skinnier and smarter than the others. She walks with a stride that looks too
long. The school bitches call her String Bean the geek, and pull her under the
metal shelter where, amid the noise of rain pounding on the tin roof that
drowns out her cries of pain, they torture her. Three peers hold her tight
while a fourth gives a Chinese burn. It becomes regular sport, holding her so tight
when they inflict their pain, she feels dizzy. Then solace comes from the only
other geek in her school year; Bruce, a boy who sees, understands and runs to
her rescue. And so it is that, when the rain comes, the bitches torture and
Bruce runs to rescue. It becomes a game; get a geek to bring out a geek and get
away. The rain on the Batch House corrugated iron eases but her memories don’t
as she continues to patrol.
Bernie, the
string bean, becomes tolerant of the torture and her reaction becomes a
willingness to succumb. The geek wants it! In their desperate lust for
dominance the bitches go beyond a Chinese burn and pull the belt from Bernie’s pants
tighten it around her neck. At the point of blackout Bruce appears and Bernie
falls into his arms. He pulls her tightly into his body to stop her falling and
at that point Bernie’s feelings reach a height like never before; it is as if
her whole body is vibrating.
As the school
years pass, the geeks become luckier than the rest. While other teenage
relationships form and fall, the only attractions to Bernie and Bruce come from
each other; and theirs is the relationship that lasts. To this day, Bruce is
still Bernie’s knight in shining armour.
As she comes
around the final corner of the Batch House castle, Bernie drifts back to the
present and sees a lazy, pot bellied, truck driver park his vehicle in a way
that could block the path of the emergency vehicle. She lopes out of the
shadows with that unmistakable too long stride; her blonde hair flowing, her shoulders
rounded and her elbows out. She’s not what the truck driver expects to jump up
onto the running board of the cab to be there in his face. ‘Move it!’ And move
it he does. Satisfied, Bernie infiltrates the castle.
The flaking
paint and the piled dust that has settled on posts, girders, steel ropes,
machine parts and every other flat surface, convince Bernie that this is as old
as a castle gets. This raw materials stronghold is a labyrinth to be revealed.
In a corner, a light burns silently in a toilet. Suddenly the building begins
to shake violently and fill with noise. Dislodged dust falls lightly like mist.
Bernie anticipates the building collapsing, pinning her under a mountain of
twisted metal. Then the shaking and the noise stop as suddenly as they began: the
dusty mist hangs silently in the air. Only the light from the toilet disturbs
the silence.
Bernie goes
into the toilet. Fearing nothing that might hang out in a man’s toilet, she
turns off the light and walks out. But when she looks back the light is on again.
She turns it off a second time. Once outside Bernie sees the light come on
again. Mmm?
Not funny! The hairs on her forearms
stand erect as Military Mike’s tales of Stan the Ghost cross her mind. Rubbish!
Just a yarn! She searches the area but finds no-one then goes back into the
toilet, turns off the light and comes back out in time to see the light go on
yet again. As she stares and wonders, a deep, gravely voice rolls out from the
blackness behind her.
‘Bernie!’
‘Aaaaaaah!’ Bernie turns to see a dark figure with
scary hair coming towards her and she’s almost in need a new pair of knickers.
But it’s only Laurie the electrician passing through; and all is revealed when he investigates and finds a faulty light
switch. How disappointing.
‘I thought you were Stan the Ghost.
‘Never met him,’ says Laurie, ‘if he really exists.’
Then he flicks his grey eyebrows and says; ‘Eugine
swears he’s seen him and just won’t use this toilet.’
Left alone
again and at a new height of excitement, Bernie climbs the longer of the two
iron staircases. When she reaches the top, it opens into a vast space that
looks like a cavern, the ceiling being made up of massive dome shapes which, in
fact, are the bottoms of the silos. Hanging from the domes are cone shaped
scales shackled by steel ropes and copper wires, and under the cones hang
orange coloured rack like vibrators that shake
materials onto scales. It’s a torture chamber!
At the end of
this cavern, in a small, brightly lit control room, sits Eugine,
the Batch House operator. Looking like a futuristic magician in his cave of
electronic controls, he watches red and green lights blinking among rows of
bright blue numbers. To Bernie he becomes a Merlin who makes magic when he
reaches forward, pushes a black button, and the cavern explodes into shaking
and noise again. Seven of the orange vibrators shake material onto scales that
weigh portions before emptying onto conveyors belts humming below. This noise,
this vibration, these shadows tighten around Bernie in an experience only she
can understand. She leans against the steelwork soaking it all up as a big
round mixer the size of a small car spins to mix the raw materials that drop
into it from the end of the conveyors. The dusty mist falls again while the
blue lights that Eugine watches race up to high values
of predetermined weight, and race down again to their original numbers. Then
the silence returns, and the dusty mist hangs in the air.
Bernie leaves
the Batch House trembling and thinking of her husband. There’s no-one like
Bruce. There are none so lucky as Bernie, she thinks.
Bruce satisfies her special needs and his readiness and willingness are, to
Bernie, a measure of her importance in his life. She knows what she asks of him
no-one else could provide, and she knows she can’t do what she does without
him. He is still her protector, making sure her pleasure and her pain are just
enough. Alone they are still geeks; but together, chained by their love for
each other, they are something else. Bernie smiles as she thinks of their dawn conversation.
‘Gees you’re ugly, Potato Head!’
‘You’re no basket of fruit yourself, String
Bean.’
But together,
as Bruce slackens the ropes releasing her for the start of a new week of
nightshifts, there are none more beautiful than this pair of oddball lovers
locked in a kiss.
At the end of
this nightshift Bernie will have much to confess and delight her knight in
shining armour; much to tantalize him with; much with
which to persuade him to adventure into a new unknown. He will, be reluctant.
As well as
being a noisy, dusty place, the Batch House can be a lonely place. The
operators, who work alone, know every noise and can account for every sound as
it happens. Out of seven vibrators vibrating at any one time they can tell if
one is crook. If the rumble of the mixer is not right they will recognise it, and by the sound differences they will know
when the slide gate doesn’t slide and the flop gate doesn’t flop. The operator
has an immense pride in his Batch House and the way he operates it, sitting
tall in front of the controls when visitors come to look. But now it’s the
beginning of a new week and tonight the only visitor, after a trip from
‘Bloody bitch!’
he tells Eugine as he sits in his high-viz vest and sweaty smell, and with an alert expression
caused by the pills he takes. ‘In my face, she said! Move it! Who does she
think she is; bloody hairless orangutan loping around with her arse on fire and her tits swinging low enough to tuck her
nipples in ‘er knicker
elastic!’ Eugine smiles as he watches the blue
numbers flicker. What he doesn’t see are the two wispy shadows that are
suddenly there and then gone.
Eugine leans forward and presses the black
button. The Batch House bursts into noise and fills with vibration. The blue
numbers race up to their high value and then race down again; but not as he
expects. As the slide gate slides and the flop gate flops, scale three sounds
wrong and is over-weight by 187 kilos. Eugine
ventures out into the cavern to see why. Two ghostly shadows, chained together
and swinging, are not what he expects.
The emergency
vehicle bursts through the big black rubber gates with its lights flashing. Eugine and truck driver with the sweaty smell unchain and lower
the two shadows and lay them into the settled dust. The
inquest concludes that Bruce had drawn his wife into a bazaar sexual ritual
that had tragically cost a life.