The Blue Mile (10 page)

And I'm half him, aren't I. I am a sparkling princess-cut pebble of shame every way I look at myself.

‘You are better than all of them put together.' Mother places a finger under my chin to make me look at her. ‘And revenge is in your grasp.'

‘Revenge?' I half-smile at that: Mother, for all her sharp edges, is far too lovely to play a convincing wicked witch.

‘Yes,' she says and she smiles; outrageously lovely: ‘The only revenge worth having. And I want it to be yours.'

‘And what's that?' I sigh, not giving up forlorn.

‘To live well, darling.' She says, her fingernail pressing the point into my chin: ‘Live well. Be happy. Become
you
. Nothing annoys a bully so much as success –
your
success. You shall have it – please, trust me.' She releases my chin, enough said about it, on with the show, and she consults her watch again: ‘Now, if this Bridge chap isn't here by – well, soonish – I shall have to telephone Bart about the girl. One of his chums is a magistrate at the Children's Court, he'll know what to do. And we must –'

‘No, please, miss!' Agnes leaps up from the table, suddenly and desperately klaxon-loud: ‘Please. Please, don't nark on us.'

Yo

‘
Y
ou get yourself a hat for Monday too, right?' Tarzan says on the crate back down, or the ‘cradle' as they call it. ‘Sandshoes and a hat. The back of your neck is a beauty, sunshine – that's going to kill tonight.'

Sunburn. I don't doubt I'm sunburned. I'd reach round to see how bad it is but I'm not letting go of the rail.

Adams, the sub-foreman and likely the Devil from Dungannon, has his bastard eye on me to see that I don't. I take a good look at him now, half to help me ignore the feeling that my kneecaps are going to slide down my shins and off the end of my toes with the swinging of the cradle as we descend. Adams looks like one of them British pit-bull terriers: bastard-faced Ulsterman. If the cable above us snapped, he'd take it in his iron jaws, no big issue. Or rip your guts out.

He keeps that bastard eye on me and I think he's going to give me another gobful for staring, but instead he says: ‘You get here early, too, Monday. You go back to Mattie Harrison at the shops and you tell him I said you're to join with the IA – the Ironworkers Assistants.'

No idea what he's talking about but my face is so busy trying not to look ignorant I can't get a word out to ask.

‘The union, lad,' he says, casting his pig eyes heavenward up the cable, like he's in want of asking the crane driver if he could be sent someone a bit more ignorant next time. ‘You'll be with the FIU – Federated Ironworkers – under the Assistants with them. Right?'

‘Right.' I don't know the first thing about unions; never got my invitation to join one.

‘It's important – listen.' He starts barking on, in that way as he might be telling me I'm a scruttery waste of breath, et cetera, but he's only explaining: ‘You're not looked after by us in the gang up here – we're all United Boilermakers or Ironworkers or Engineers. You're with them down there – and as a labourer associated with the shops you're with the FIU. If you were a labourer associated with any of the other trades, you'd be with the BLF – the Builders Labourers. See? It's important you know who you're with and who your delegate is. There's nine different unions on this Bridge. Right?'

‘Right. Federated Ironworkers.' If you say so.

‘Right. Under the Ironworkers Assistants Union.'

‘Right.' Jesus. He can't talk without yelling, this fella; maybe he's permanently deaf from the rivet gun.

‘If you're not with the union, you'll not get paid. Like working for nothing, do you?'

I'm not expected to answer that, I don't think.

‘And if you're not with the right union, you'll not be looked after. Right? There'll be a fine from the Industrial Court, too, if you don't get on to it, a fine to you, two pounds or more – get that paperwork in Monday morning. Right?'

‘Yeah righto, Wal, lay off,' says Tarzan. ‘Now where's my five bob, ay?'

Wal Adams turns them devil-pig eyes at Tarzan: ‘I made no bet with you – if he lasts the week, I'll give ten to –'

I don't hear what he says as they start arguing the odds on Pretty Boy, and Clarkie, the cooker and chucker of hot cocks, winks across it at me: ‘You did all right, kid.'

Yeah? Did I hear that right? I did all right? Clarkie nods. I did all right. My heart flies out across the water and back into me with the realisation, and the relief. I've got a job. I've got to join a union. I did all right. And I got through this day. Thank you, Lord, for looking after me. I look across the harbour at the Gardens and thank the little folk too, and as the cradle comes to a rest on the barge my hand comes off the rail and goes straight to my forehead, to make the sign of the cross. I just manage to stop myself, turn it into a scratch as Tarzan elbows me in the ribs.

‘Come for a dive with us this arvie, ay Pretty?'

‘A dive?'

‘Yeah, off the southern abutment – it's a beaut day for it.' I still don't know what an abutment is, but he's pointing across the water, at the other side of the Bridge. He says to my disbelieving face: ‘I'm joking.'

‘Right.' Forgive me for not rolling about laughing.

He has a good one, with everyone in the cradle, seven of them having a good old wheeze at me, then Tarzan stops laughing and points west, away from the city: ‘We dive round Balmain – off the coal gantry at the wharves this arvie. Got a bit of a competition going. North and South riveters. We get a crowd. Drink at the Opera House after.'

That sounds so much more reasonable, doesn't it? But the laughter's stopped and I hear in that I'd be well advised to attend this activity of diving and drinking. He's just said Balmain, too, hasn't he – I could ask around for accommodation there. But besides not ever having learned to swim, never mind hurl myself off something the height of a ship, I can't be in sniffing distance of a pub, not today, not now – I might go a keg – and I have to get to Ag. It must be heading for four o'clock, as we finished at half-past three, and I've still got to find this Strand Arcade place. And I've got less than two quid to my name, with no idea when I might get paid. I say: ‘Ah.' As I play at being distracted rolling my smoke.

‘You don't want to be going round with them,' Adams says as the barge gets going back to the workshops, but I don't know if that's said to me, and I don't look up from my smoke.

‘You don't want to lose another bet,' Tarzan says to him.

‘I haven't made a fucking bet,' says Adams. ‘But if I did, I'd put my money on Kelly and I wouldn't lose.'

Everyone in the cradle goes in at that, all arguing about their favourite, and the names are all Irish, apart from Tarzan McCall and you wouldn't say for sure he's not; there's this Vince Kelly who they call Ned, and a Flanagan, a Murphy and a Mick Doolan; a Sean someone. It's not that they're Irish that grabs me, or that they're all Irish and obviously monkey-nutted enough to chuck themselves off coal gantries, it's that they're all Irish boilermakers: tradesmen. I want to be one, I see, as if the idea has been sitting here on this barge waiting for me all this time to see: I want to be one of them that drives the rivet gun. Ticketed. Respected. How do I do that? The only ones I know that have got out of the Neighbourhood, or out of poverty at least, are knocking-shop proprietors, publicans, dope smugglers or cops. Or SP bookmakers. Never tradesmen.

‘So, you coming, Pretty?' Tarzan nudges me again.

I have to say yes, don't I. But I can't. Not today. I have no trouble looking troubled about it as I say: ‘I've got to get away today . . . family . . . obligation . . .'

I watch the idea of getting a trade disappear into the wake of the barge as quick as it came. An opportunity missed. I'll never be one of this lot. I'll never drink with them. I don't drink at all, do I? I do not. It's a whole boat missed as I'm too old to learn a trade anyway – they only want boys straight from school for indenturing and that, don't they.

But that Adams claps me on the shoulder, ‘Good enough, lad,' and nearly knocks me into the water with the surprise of it. An Ulsterman
not
calling me a faggotty old nana for having an excuse to avoid the pub. He's looking at me with what I think might be a smile; it looks painful. ‘Some of us have families need looking after, don't we.' That smile; Jesus, is there a wife that loves that face? Seems so. But he's got more in store for me; he says: ‘Now, you don't happen to play cricket, do you?'

‘Cricket?' I'm smacked. This is just about the least believable thing I have ever heard: an Irishman asking me if I play cricket? Do they play cricket in Belfast? I didn't think them from the North were that odd.

‘Yes, lad.' Adams is a cricket-playing grog-forgoing freak potato. ‘The UBU are short a couple of bats for tomorrow,' he says. ‘We don't expect to do well against Sheet Metal anyway but we'll give it a go. Birchgrove Oval – midday. It's a hat-around for the Ambulance Fund.'

If I wasn't so smacked, I would be rolling around on the deck of this barge with it. I drag hard on my smoke, thinking: this is an opportunity that's not getting away from me. Take it. Take it now. But I don't play cricket, not unless you can include the couple of Friday afternoons I was made to stand on the pitch at Redfern Park at the beginning of sixth class to avoid the attention of the truant officer. I don't play any sports at all, besides darts, which I do not play anymore, do I, because I've only ever played it pissed. What do I say?

I say: ‘I could give it a go, Mr Adams.' Don't I. And it's at Birchgrove. That's near Balmain, isn't it, where the colliery is over there? They probably all live round that way – where else do you get a job load of boilermakers and ironworkers but round where there's wharves?

‘Good on you, then,' says Adams, a freak potato but not a devil of any kind at all; he says: ‘I'd not have picked you for a family man.'

I give him what I hope looks like an affirming smile in reply: I am a family man. Family of two that we are.

He asks me as the barge starts churning up the water, pulling in: ‘You have far to get home?'

‘No, ah . . .' Think. Opportunity. A more important, and urgent, one. We need to find a place to stay: now. ‘Um, yes, actually . . . it's a fair way home, from out west . . .' I give him another hopeful smile: ‘I'm looking for somewhere closer. Round Balmain, as it happens.'

He shakes his head, not hopeful. ‘Not easy these days, is it? Not easy at all. I don't envy anyone looking for any affordable housing nearer the city today.' He folds his iron-hard forearms across his chest and turns up his lip: ‘But I might know someone who could help you.'

‘True?' I sound like Ag on the tram to Hordern's. This could be the best day of my life. Please.

‘True. Ha!' He barks a laugh at my disbelieving face. ‘As it happens, I know of someone who's just had a tenant do a flit on them – little old place, round behind White Bay, but it's good enough and might do you, if there's not too many of you, that is. Three rooms, only nineteen a week.'

‘That sounds exactly what I'm looking for.' Nineteen shillings a week? You can't get anything under twenty in the Neighbourhood – not a house. Can't be worse than the one we've come from. A broom cupboard will do us. I say: ‘We'll take it.'

‘Hold your horses,' he says. ‘You come round, in the morning – Fawcett Street, on the corner with Gladstone. Come at eleven o'clock, after Mass. We can go across to Birchgrove after then too.'

‘All right.' Saints alive, and he's Catholic, too? Can this get any more promising? Keep my head on; thinking: might have to try a pub round there after all, for a bed for me and Ag, for tonight, get us to Mass, somewhere . . . ‘See you tomorrow, then.'

‘Tomorrow it is.' He nods, and he's got one more surprise for me as he does: ‘Eoghan, isn't it?'

‘Yes.'
Yaw-in
, he just said it; more than near enough, he knows the name. My name. ‘Eoghan it is,' I say. ‘Eoghan O'Keenan.' And my kneecaps want to slide down my shins again at that: he's known my name all along? Mr Harrison must've said, I suppose, but – ? But the clock on the wharf says it's half past four – horseshit. The girl said never mind how late, but – sweet Jesus, I'm going to see that girl again. Don't think about the girl. I've got to find Ag. Find them kneecaps, O'Keenan, and get running first.

Olivia

‘
O
livia Jane, I must,' Mother hisses, whispering in the fitting room, buttoning me up. ‘Before he leaves to meet us.'

Must call Bart at Rose Bay to nark Agnes in to the Children's Court at Surry Hills before you nark your own child in to an evening of misery and humiliation at the Merrick.

‘No,' I hiss back. ‘It's only five – perhaps they don't finish until five.'

‘It's ten past and they don't finish at five – I know they don't. They went on strike about it – their shift hours and what have you. One of Bart's associates is an industrial lawyer. The unionists – they won.' She says that as if victory entailed finding a typhus-infested bag of rats on the doorstep.

And doesn't Bart just know everything and everyone.

‘Wait until half-past,' I insist.

‘
We
have to leave at half-past,' she insists.

‘We do
not
– don't have to be there until six, do we? And you're always
late
.'

‘Ollie, you are impossible.'

I peep out the curtain into the salon: Agnes is still there, at my work table, daintily and slowly eating the cheese sandwich I got her from the Aristocrat just now. So quiet and dainty, she'd turn herself into a Florentine lily and vanish into the rug beneath her if it were at all possible. She's not going to the Children's Court. Whatever she is, whatever her brother is, she's not a criminal.

Mother hisses at my ear: ‘You've been had. This child is unwanted. Ollie, these sorts of things are happening with increasing –'

‘No,' I hiss back; this child can't be unwanted.
That
is impossible. Look at her: she is a perfect and perfectly dear little human being. I don't know what to do about her, though. What could have gone wrong? A kind of panic starts to bubble up in me. The boy has fallen off the Bridge. Or been eaten by one of the big machines in the workshops: I saw a picture of one in the paper: a wheel of torture. Spitting out hot metal; they're always getting burned and cut and packed off to the Royal North Shore, shop siren going
waaa waaa waaa
across the bay in the middle of the night. And my hiss now is shrill as a kettle about to boil: ‘If we telephone anyone, we must telephone the Bridge people.'

‘Bridge people? Who, where and what for? Don't be silly.' Mother yanks me back into the fitting room by the crystal choker, fixing the clasp. ‘Now, put the shoes on.'

The shoes. Heels. Navy satin sling-backs, pointed toes. ‘No.' I will look eight feet tall and my feet will look enormous: clown feet flapping on the end of my stick legs.

‘You are not wearing mary-janes with this.'

‘My black ones – why not?'

‘Because I said so!'

‘But I don't want –'

‘Put them on!'

Rattle the windows with shrill.

And a
thunk, thunk,
knocking at the salon door.

As a little voice cries: ‘Yo-Yo!'

I dash out of the fitting room to let him in, telling Mother behind me: ‘Told you.'

And then I see him – it's him all right. Good God, look at that shoulderline. Male mannequin. Live one. Smiling eyes for his little sister. Perfectly dear, sweet boy. Sunburned too. Laughably gorgeous nevertheless, and I am laughing as I open the door: ‘We'd just about given you up.'

He looks at me and something in his expression changes; his words dulled, not dancing: ‘I'm sorry I'm late, miss, I missed a ferry and then I went to the wrong arcade.'

‘Oh dear, not to worry,' I assure him, ‘honestly,' but he's already looked away. He must be embarrassed at his lateness.

‘Come on, Ag,' he calls her over to him. ‘You look like you've had a good day. Say thank you to the lady.'

‘Thank you, Miss Greene.' Agnes smiles up at me as she attaches herself to her brother's side, her hand in his. ‘Thank you for a very nice day.' Oh, but I do want to steal her back.

‘It was a pleasure,' I assure both of them, but the boy doesn't look at me. He's deliberately not looking at me, isn't he.

Ah, I see. My reflection. In the window. I am a great glamorous vision of multi-blue catastrophe. Shoeless one.

Embarrassing all round, really.