It was typical of Julia that thirty years earlier, when she saw the looming environmental disaster, she started her own green engineering company. At that time most of her contemporaries were demanding government action.
‘No point,’ she said to Ro, who was drumming up numbers for a demonstration about the Chernobyl reactor disaster.
‘You’ve lost heart.’
‘On the contrary. But I’m sick of hanging round waiting. Political solutions are never going to work.’
‘That’s not true! What about the Franklin? What about Vietnam?’
Julia shrugged impatiently. ‘But how long did it take? Are we going to mount a massive campaign every time there’s a problem?’
‘Maybe. Probably.’
‘Great, if you think there’s time. I’m more interested in what private enterprise can do.’
Ro was shocked. She knew that on some issues she and Julia didn’t have exactly the same ideas. But this was right off the rails. ‘Capitalism?’
‘Yeah, I’m going to become a capitalist. Get things done.’
‘You mean better-designed houses?’ Ro asked.
‘Bigger than that. Better-designed cities, better-designed transport, better-designed economics.’
‘So you’ll be a consultant?’
‘No. I don’t want to advise. I want to actually do it. Do the designing myself.’
Ro understood. ‘Local government. That’s what you could do. In planning.’
‘No thanks.’
‘Or you could work for the Housing Trust. That’d be really useful.’
‘No way. I don’t want to be a public servant. I want to be in charge.’
‘You probably would be in a few minutes, knowing you.’
‘No. Not my thing.’
‘You could turn those departments inside out, put a rocket under them. Get them moving.’
‘Ro! Listen to me. I DO NOT WANT TO WORK FOR GOVERNMENT.’
Ro looked at her anxiously. ‘So what will you do?’
‘Set up my own company.’
It didn’t sound good to Ro.
‘Government should be doing that stuff.’
‘But they aren’t. They’re too slow.’
‘Yeah, but you’re going to make money out of it. You’re going to profit because other people aren’t doing their jobs properly. That’s what private enterprise specialises in, exploitation and opportunism.’
Julia laughed.
‘It’s not funny. You’re doing an Ayn Rand on me.’
‘I know. It’s sacrilege.’ Julia saw the expression on Ro’s face and relented. ‘Don’t panic. I haven’t switched sides. But I can see that industry has a huge interest. When environmental damage affects their results, then companies will act more quickly and more effectively than any government can.’
‘Why? All they care about is profit.’
‘Maybe. But it’s pragmatism. Say you build an office block that’s completely self-sufficient in power and water. It might cost more to build, but there’d be big savings for the occupants. They’d go for it. And that would give you an edge over other builders.’
‘But I don’t want any more office blocks. Why don’t we do away with big buildings?’
‘Pie in the sky, Ro. The world isn’t going to change that much. But call it a block of flats, if that suits you better.’
Ro was reeling. All she could see was a huge gulf between her and Julia. ‘I don’t want any more blocks of flats either. People shouldn’t have to live like that.’
‘How are you going to house them all? The suburban dream? How are you going to move them around? Build more freeways? Let them have two cars? Waste of energy, more emissions, inefficient use of infrastructure.’
‘Maybe we shouldn’t live in cities at all.’
Julia grinned. ‘I’ll be Ayn Rand, and you be Chairman Mao. Make them go out and learn from the lower and middle peasants. Re-populate the country towns.’
‘Well, why not?’
‘Perhaps. But you’re going to want a house that’s self-sufficient, wherever you are. I’ll design it for you. I’d rather do that than go on a march, or sit on endless committees. You can do the committee bit. Maybe someone has to. But not me.’
It was the first of a number of blows that Ro was to sustain. She came to terms with the idea of Julia starting a company. But she pictured her tucked away alone in a little office designing the ideal home.
This was not at all what Julia had in mind.
‘I’ve taken on an architect and another engineer,’ she told Ro a few months later as they walked on the beach.
‘Employed them you mean?’
‘Yep.’
‘You’re a boss?’
‘Yep.’
‘Oh shit. But you’ll be a good one, won’t you? I mean, you know, pay them properly, give them plenty of time off and all that?’
‘Depends how well they perform,’ Julia said coolly.
The next challenge was Ro’s discovery that Julia was not exclusively employing women.
‘But wouldn’t it be better?’ Ro saw a ray of hope for Julia’s salvation. ‘You could make opportunities for women, encourage them to go through engineering or whatever. Tradeswomen too. You could make sure tradeswomen are employed on your projects.’
‘Sure. If they’re good. But I won’t employ them simply because they’re women. Not if there’s a man who’s better.’
And from that position Ro could not budge her.
This phase coincided with the end of any serious lover relationship between them. Ro declared that she was a casualty of Julia’s conversion to capitalism. Julia didn’t bother to argue. And it was true that all her energy went into setting up the company. The work was her passion. In those early years of the business she had no time for anything except the most casual affairs.
Julia’s approach was prescient. She threw herself into the computer revolution and the communications revolution as they arrived in turn. At each step of the way she submitted herself cheerfully to Ro’s pessimism. It became a reverse checkpoint for her. If Ro disapproved, then she was probably on the right track.
‘Computers,’ Ro squeaked. ‘What do you need computers for? I thought you were an architect. Or engineer, or whatever you are.’
‘Computers? Where shall I start? In twenty years there won’t be any part of our lives that isn’t touched by computers.’
Ro was torn between disbelief and horror. ‘You’re wrong. That can’t be true. Nobody I know wants one.’
‘Everybody I know does.’
‘Your world is weird. And scary.’ But she wanted to be fair. ‘I suppose you can use them for doing calculations, things like that. That must be useful.’
‘You wait. It will affect you too. The contents of an entire bookshop will be a small fleck on a microchip.’
‘What do you mean? There’ll still be books.’
‘No. We’ll read what we need on a computer screen.’
‘No! I love books. Lots of people love books. I won’t let it happen.’
In Adelaide there were longer summers, droughts—what the media would later call extreme weather events. Maddie lost her pride and joy, the silver birches around her cottage.
‘Canaries,’ Julia said.
‘Canaries?’ It was Anne’s birthday party and they had to shout to hear each other.
‘The first to die in the mine, before the rest of us drop dead too.’
Maddie’s nose turned pink with distress and Julia regretted her flippancy. There’d never been any pleasure in teasing Maddie.
‘Why don’t you plant natives? Locals. I know how you nursed those birches along. But they were never right for this climate.’
‘No.’ Maddie had been reading about food security. ‘I’ve decided to grow veggies.’
They were interrupted by a summons to sing. When I’m Sixty-four, the new standard.
Julia found Ro looking disgruntled next to the gluten- and dairy-free snacks.
‘What’s the matter?’ Julia asked. ‘Nothing to eat?’
‘It’s the song,’ Ro said. ‘We used to sing punchy songs. I Will Survive. Now we’re mumbling into our gruel with the Beatles.’
She gave the snacks a withering glance.
‘Perhaps this is what survival looks like,’ said Julia.
There were speeches for Anne.
‘I want to add something,’ said Anne’s older daughter. ‘On behalf of the three of us. I know it’s Mum’s celebration, but it’s as good a time as any to say thank you to Julia, too. Tell her what she means to us. Her arrival was the best thing that ever happened in our family …’
‘Shut your mouth,’ Ro whispered to Julia. ‘It’s hanging open.’
‘… well, apart from having Anne as the best mother. But you know Julia has been Other-Mum to us for twenty years this month. And now she’s Other-Granny to our kids. We so appreciate everything she’s done for us, and for Mum.’ She smiled in Julia’s direction and lifted her glass.
‘Raise your glasses everyone … a toast to Julia!’
‘Looks like they didn’t hate you after all,’ said Ro.