Bleak City (34 page)

Alice thought about that for a moment. ‘One group exploiting another,’ she said. ‘Setting up the system to do so.’

‘Think about your mum and dad’s project manager,’ Neil said. ‘Kevin said he seemed very matey with the structural engineer. Assume the project manager gets a bonus for reducing costs. Do they?’

‘I don’t know,’ Alice said. ‘Some of them are pretty motivated to keep costs down. But that’s more because we know we’re dealing with taxpayers’ money, I don’t know what it’s like for the private insurers.’

‘Well let’s just say a project manager does get some kind of bonus,’ Neil continued. ‘So it’s to his advantage to get a structural engineer who is on his side, going to say what he wants them to say. He picks his mate, gives his mate the business. If he does this with all the houses he’s managing...’

‘Homeowners don’t get the repairs they should get, but the project manager gets his bonus and the structural engineer gets the insurance company’s assessment work,’ Alice said, nodding. It was corruption, but it was a different way of thinking about it than she was used to. It was a way of looking at matters that she certainly wouldn’t be bringing up at work, where some of the staff felt that any homeowner who questioned their repair strategy was expecting a gold-plated mansion from their as-when-new policy. If her grandad was right, project managers and other PMO staff would be motivated to keep the insureds’ expectations low.

‘Do you think Gerry Brownlee’s corrupt?’ Alice asked. ‘That he’s getting some sort of kickback from, I don’t know, Fletchers? Insurance companies?’

Neil thought about it for a few moments, paused to speak, then paused to think again, choosing his words carefully. ‘No, that would be too simple an explanation,’ he finally said. ‘I think he’s incompetent. The way he shoots off his mouth is not the mark of a strong thinker.’

‘Well he’s certainly not concerned with people,’ Heather said. ‘He’s supposed to be our minister, the Minster for Earthquake Recovery. Anyone who questions why things are being done the way they are or points out some detail the Government has missed gets called a name. Ignored. Put in their place.’

Alice nodded. ‘Did you hear what he said about Kevin McCloud?’

‘Grand Designs Kevin McCloud?’ Heather said. It was her favourite show, and it surprised Alice that given the state of her house she could still watch other people building their dream homes, because it was looking less and less likely that Neil and Heather would get their retirement home built. The issue of the fifty percent vacant land offers looked like it was going to court, but even if they did get 100 percent in the end, they couldn’t afford a section in Christchurch on a payout based on 2007 values.

‘Yes, him,’ Alice said. ‘He said a great city needs to be built with local input. But Gerry dismissed him as a tourist.’

‘A tourist who’s more qualified to talk about architecture than that... that... old dunger!’ Heather said, huffing.

‘You shouldn’t call people names, Nana,’ Alice said. ‘It’s the last refuge of the ignorant.’

‘That’s profanity, love,’ Neil said. ‘Your grandmother is perfectly correct.’

Later, on her way home, Alice stopped the car and pulled over. She walked up the road to the roadworks, where the road was reduced to one-way traffic by a series of the orange traffic cones that were everywhere in Christchurch. For the first anniversary of the quake the previous year, people had decorated some of the road cones, putting flowers and decorations in their tops. In Alice’s neighbourhood, there had been purple agapanthas in many of the road cones, the long-stemmed flowers were common in the neighbourhood. But this year, the custom had really taken off and most of the road cones Alice had seen that day had flowers in them, of many different varieties. These, though, were something else. Someone had brought bouquets of yellow, orange, white and pink lilies, red roses, freesias and carnations and decorated all the cones on that stretch of the road. It was thoughtful and beautiful, and Alice hoped that this was one part of the rebuild that would persist, no matter how many years passed. Yes, there would be far fewer road cones in the city in the decades to come, but the custom of putting flowers in them for the February anniversary was one mark of the quakes that should endure.

When people think of earthquake damage, they think of what the shaking does, how it causes buildings to break up and collapse, all the above-ground damage. What people don’t really think about is what goes on below the ground, where the shaking can push groundwater up through the soil, the process known as liquefaction. Liquefaction damages foundations, roads and underground pipes, undermining structures, destabilising them from below. Liquefaction was a huge problem in Christchurch, especially in the east, and the extent of the damage to what was referred to as the city’s horizontal infrastructure was immense.

In 2012, it became known that the city’s horizontal infrastructure – its roads, pipes, drains and the sewerage system – had been vastly underinsured. This was a consequence of the local council’s need to balance what it charges ratepayers with what ratepayers get in the way of services. Insurance is invisible, an apparent pouring of money down the drain, until a claim needs to be made. One way of minimising the cost of insurance is to cut the amount of coverage, which had been the case in Christchurch before the quakes started. It’s a gamble to reduce one’s insurance cover, one that pays off as long as nothing happens.

At first, the bill for repairing the horizontal infrastructure was estimated to be about two billion dollars. But damage to underground services is often invisible, it doesn’t necessarily result in water pipes bursting and water flowing all over streets or sewerage flowing back onto properties. It’s not until a camera is put down a pipe that it can be known how damaged it is. What was determined during 2011 and 2012 was that many of the pipes on the eastern side of the city were full of silt. And cracks. A great deal more of the city’s pipes would need replacing than had been thought in the immediate aftermath of the earthquakes.

By early 2013, the bill for the city’s horizontal infrastructure had been estimated at nearly four billion dollars, nearly twice the initial estimate. But who was going to pay for it? It was usual in New Zealand for local government and national government to split the bill for underground services. In Christchurch, the question looming was exactly how this would be split. If the city itself had to assume responsibility for the lion’s share, where would this money come from? The city’s ratepayers were already facing regular rates increases. Would the Government agree to spend more? Good questions, especially considering it was no big secret that the Government wanted to get the country’s budget back into surplus before the next election. Helping out Christchurch would put the Government’s promise of a surplus at risk. How would the Government balance the needs of one city with those of the rest of the country?

Gerald thought he knew. It was two years since the February earthquake and he wasn’t impressed at the pace of the rebuild. Sure, at the start of the year people were saying this would be the year the rebuild really took off, but would it? The same had been said at the start of 2012, and yet here they were again, a significant part of the central city still cordoned off, the bureaucracy around getting into the city still a swampy mire.

Fortunately Gerald no longer needed to deal with that, he had enough repair work that he could step away from the pre-demolition work he had been doing in 2012. His company was doing repairs that fell within the EQC opt-out range of below $100,000, and enough claims of that value were being settled that Gerald had been able to keep on his existing staff. He had even been able to take on half a dozen more. Often a homeowner wanted to do something extra to the place, make their settlement money go further or put in some of their own money. These were the happy people, the ones free of the overwhelming weight of working through an insurance claim, the ones who felt that they were the captains of their own ships once again.

The private insurers tended to want to manage repairs and rebuilds through their project management offices, this was a way of containing costs. But Gerald was staying away from PMO work, the rates offered weren’t nearly high enough to do the job properly, and pressure was being applied to the contractors to just do the job on the scope, they were encouraged to ignore damage discovered during repairs. Gerald had taken on one builder, a guy with two young kids, he was stressed out, not sleeping. He had been working for a company contracted to a PMO and had a camera full of photos showing damage to a property he was working on. He had shown his boss the photos, asked what to do, whether they should get onto the project manager about getting the work added to the scope. No, his boss insisted, the job would stop, possibly for months, given the pace of producing these scopes of works, and if they stopped jobs every time they discovered unassessed damage, no one would get paid and they would all have to bugger off back to wherever they came from.

Sylvia and Gerald’s sister Suzanne were running the office together, an arrangement that had worked well in the past. Lately, though, Suzanne had been complaining to them about how much time Alice was spending with her grandchildren.

‘They get along,’ Gerald or Sylvia would say, ‘what’s wrong with them spending time together?’

‘She’s a lot older than them,’ Suzanne said.

‘She’s a year older than Sean.’

‘She’s five years older than Charlotte, and Charlotte looks up to her. It’s not good,’ Suzanne insisted. She was out of her townhouse for repairs, staying with Rebecca and her family, so seeing Sean and Charlotte every day, rather than once or twice a week. Charlotte was Suzanne’s favourite grandchild, and as she had grown into a teenager, Suzanne had started to feel that she and Charlotte were no longer as close as they had been. Charlotte had been born soon after Suzanne’s husband Stan had died, and Suzanne had offered to babysit when Rebecca decided to go back to work. Looking after Charlotte and Sean would take her mind off Stan’s death, she had said.

‘Is she a bad influence?’ Gerald asked one day.

‘Yes, she is,’ Suzanne said. She was decisive in her statement, clearly she had been thinking about this.

‘She has them drinking? Doing drugs?’ Gerald said, trying not to laugh. He knew very well that what Suzanne disapproved of was that Alice encouraged Charlotte’s interest in art. Different art installations were popping up all over the city, and Alice, Sean and Charlotte tried to see as many as they could. They were young people, after all, with no obligations, why shouldn’t they get out and do things?

‘You know what I’m saying, Gerald,’ Suzanne said. ‘Charlotte has a bright future ahead of her, if she applies herself, and your Alice...’

‘She’s not my Alice, Suzanne,’ Gerald interrupted. ‘She’s her own person.’

‘Your Alice encourages her to spend her time daydreaming and doodling, when she should be studying.’

‘Surely an interest outside of studying is not a bad thing, Suzanne,’ Gerald said. ‘The girl can take a break every now and then.’

‘Well if she decides to do some arts degree because of your Alice, I won’t be helping her with her university fees,’ Suzanne said. ‘My contribution towards my grandchildren’s education is so they can make something of themselves, not muck around being artful.’

It wasn’t worth continuing with the discussion, Suzanne would just get wound up and infect the whole office with her black mood. But it concerned Gerald that Suzanne wanted such a level of control over the choices her grandchildren made.

Suzanne herself hadn’t had many choices in life. Their mother had always treated her children as disappointments. Suzanne had grown up quiet, pliable, trying to guess what her mother wanted of her, but never getting it right.

Gerald had never liked Stan, didn’t understand why his father had kept him on. Yes, he was a good with customers, charming, but when Bill’s back was turned, Stan took every opportunity to bully the younger workers, including Gerald, if he thought he could get away with it. And most of the time he did get away with it, he was subtle, cunning, little digs about the boss’s son being given more leeway than the other apprentices. Gerald hadn’t been particularly interested in being a builder when he left school, but his father had insisted he do something. Stan’s presence had motivated Gerald to work hard at picking up the necessary skills, and that improved focus had revealed to him a job he loved, that of crafting something, taking the raw materials, imagining a result and doing his best to achieve what was in his mind’s eye. Yes, Stan had made Gerald a better builder, but that didn’t in any way result in Gerald liking Stan, or even respecting him very much. He kept silent because his father’s opinion of the man was so high, whereas that of his son was low. But Stan’s continued presence in his father’s business was a significant factor in Gerald deciding to set up his own building company. He hated the bullying, the subtly dishonest manner in which Stan conducted business and the continual reminder that his parents approved of Stan’s tactics.

Stan’s courtship of Suzanne had happened so quickly that it was only when they became engaged that Gerald became aware of it. Looking back, he could see how their mother had helped the relationship along, encouraged them to be discreet. Marjorie knew Gerald felt protective of his sister, and she also knew that he didn’t like Stan. But once they were engaged and Suzanne had hung her hopes on a future with Stan, there was nothing Gerald could do. He had asked her if she was sure marrying Stan was what she wanted. He had tried to put into his voice a seed of concern so that if she did have doubts, she would hear it, hang onto it and know that he would support her if she wanted to change her mind. Her reply had been an enthusiastic yes, that of a girl in love, seeing a perfect future stretching out before her.

Suzanne continued working in the office after she and Stan married, but once she was pregnant with Rebecca, Stan insisted she stop working, stay at home and get ready for the baby. Of course that was in an era where baby clothes were made, not purchased, so there was plenty for Suzanne to do to prepare for the arrival of their first child, Bill and Marjorie’s first grandchild. Gerald knew it hurt Suzanne that their parents didn’t disguise their disappointment in that grandchild being a girl. But the second was a boy, Tony, which pleased both grandparents no end, although all Marjorie had said to Suzanne was that she had taken her time. There had been four years between Rebecca and Tony.