The Blue Mile (17 page)

I lie down on the old sofa and wonder if the previous tenants had to leave it here in their rush to get away from her. I close my eyes. Wait for Ag. She'll be pleased Nettie won't be here anymore when she gets home from school. She never did warm to her, only little Johnny and she'll survive without him tipping coal dust all round the floor. She'll be eight in May, on the tenth. She's old enough to get herself to and from school. She can go and help Mrs Buddle on Saturday and Wednesday nights, give her a shilling for the wash if we can't manage it all ourselves. Or Ag can stop with the Hanrahans – her and Gladdy, giggling Gerties having the stay-overs they keep whining for. If Mrs Adams doesn't grab her first: Ag is always welcome round there, and she'd only ever be a help with Kenny, he's always that happy to see her – she marches round the yard to his strange beat, making up songs about castles built of cheese and great armies of possums and rats, making him laugh along like no one else does. We have other friends. We'll be looked after.

Nettie Becker can go and do herself a favour.

Nipper Addison died today.

I cover my face with my hands and I pray for him; for him and for his new young wife and all her hopes come to nothing. No amount of being looked after can do anything for that.

It's just luck. Brilliant one minute; horseshit the next. Nothing personal. Just a test of faith.

I am alive.

I did not fall.

And when I open my eyes again, Ag's flying through the door: ‘Yo-Yo!'

Light of my life. How could I not have faith? I might go and see about getting me some swimming lessons, though . . .

Olivia

‘
L
ady Game is partial to a fine hat, so I've discovered.' Leona Bloxom gives me a scheming smile, as she signs her cheque for her own vice-regal welcome ensemble, as if Lady Game had cabled her personally from the ship when it docked yesterday in Fremantle, to tip her off. ‘She is particular, however. Low-brimmed and modest, the style of which you yourself are fond. Her outfits are always of a certain simplicity. A continental elegance.'

‘That's interesting,' I say, practising my poker face – not imperious but hopefully more nonchalant – covering my surprise: an upper-class Englishwoman with taste? How extraordinary. Gwendolen Game, whose imminent arrival is all any woman who walks in here can talk about, is the daughter of a long line of beknighted British bankers, a forty-four-year-old mother of three who's also partial to ball sports, so simplicity and continental elegance could well mean corduroy tunic and fleecy-lined bloomers. But, partial to a hat or not, a hat is what she'll be getting: a welcome gift from Miss Olivia Greene. A bold gesture, risky too – and one I dreamed up myself, well before Mother's letter arrived from London suggesting the very same, with the advice:
Gwen Game is long-limbed and lithely built; why don't you style her a smart jacket for the harbour chill as well, one that suits yourself, so that it's ready when she can't resist your invitation to the salon? Send her a small sample of sketches too, my darling – just a dozen or so. I can see you sketching into the night now as I write, oh how I miss you, Ollie – terribly. I do wish you'd recon–

No, I'm not going to reconsider London. Don't want to. Don't need to. The wedding of Mr and Mrs Bartholomew Harley was superb, down to every detail – half-page splash across the Monday's
Evening News,
and the Thursday's
Herald
at the dock of the RMS
Oberon
, both displaying the frockery of
talented daughter, Miss Olivia Greene.
Thank you, Mother. When I get a moment to write back you'll be pleased to know that I refused to be a pitiable figure lingering on the dock as the ship pulled out.
Tooooot.
I went home and watched you vanish from the front steps; then I stank up the house frying eggs and onion for my supper, for old times' sake, listening for the traces of your horror ringing off the stone walls:
Ollie, close the wardrobe door!
What's the difference between London and Rose Bay anyway? Just a bit more sea. And eight standard weeks for a letter, not a telephone connection to speak of. But honestly, I've barely had time to think about your abandoning of me. Really.

‘I don't know how you're managing all this on your own.' Mrs Bloxom's smile shifts from one scheme to the next, folding her chequebook back into her handbag: she's still after me for her Rick. Mystifying but true, she's holding on for my aristocratic connections: dubious as they are, her intentions are as plain as the schnonk on my face. She is especially fond of likening me among the vice-regal set to Lady Ursula Woodridge, whose West End salon in London is becoming quite the place for beige wallpaper at present.
Poor little war waifs,
Mrs Bloxom calls us, for the circumstances of fate that have led to our need to earn a living by hats and frocks. Never mind that Ursula Woodridge's father actually
died
in the war, rather than having had his sense of morality removed and the fact distributed throughout the Empire by Cinesound. Or perhaps Mrs Bloxom is simply grateful I've got her out of brown crepe and into mauve georgette, with a mid-calf hem – she does have a decently turned pair of ankles, for a dowager. She chastises me affectionately: ‘I don't know when you find the time to sleep.'

‘Oh, I manage.' I stifle a yawn, slipping the cheque into the drawer and sliding my eyes over the figures scribbled across it as I do. One can't be too careful, I have managed to learn quickly enough: in the past few weeks I've had Mr Trumble, from Barnaby's Furs, short-change me
accidentally
by two yards of chinchilla trim, and I've had a pair of gloves disappear.

Mrs Bloxom pulls on her own pair now, gathers her bags: ‘Now, Olivia dear, you won't reconsider and come with me, will you?'

No, not reconsidering this one either – attending the welcome garden party, for the Games. Hoorah for them. I smile, my gaze lingering at the bags on Mrs Bloxom's arm,
Olivia Couture
printed on them, as it is now printed on the window and on my cards. Black on white, tootling-smart as a Sydney ferry; I've even reupholstered the chaise thus in crisp, wide taffeta stripes, and
Couture
is so much more sophisticated than
Costumière,
mais non? I'm a personal designer, an artist, not a seamstress who takes instruction from her clients, and I'm still smiling as I meet Mrs Bloxom's gaze: ‘I'm sorry, no, I won't be able to attend.'

And it's not merely my usual social reticence speaking here, but some strategy and one based on the example standing before me. The more aloof and yonderly I have become, the more Mrs Bloxom seems to buy. It's happened with a couple of barristers' wives I met at Mother's wedding and then at the Tulip farewell, too – I've turned down invitations and they've turned up at the salon, following some commercial law of scarcity I don't quite understand and am certainly not about to question.

Mrs Bloxom replies now, feigning cross: ‘I am most disappointed, young lady. This famous shyness of yours . . .' She shakes her head at me knowingly and not knowing a thing about it. ‘You really are a wonderful girl, every last bit of you. I'll get you along to something one day . . .'

‘You might just,' my smile deepens, genuinely, as I wave her good day out the door; whatever I might think of Mrs Bloxom and her grasping at status, she and her friends, who think nothing of spending thirty of forty pounds an outfit, are doing wonderful things for my business. My plans. My visions. Letting me dare to believe that they might be realities, one day. Truly, Mother, I have not stopped for weeks now – months, God, is it? I've not had time to take a full breath since you blew me your kisses and tossed me your streamers from the promenade deck, and it seems I've caught every one . . . I will catch Lady Game, too: I will have her as my top client, and from there I will go triumphantly to London, to show you what I have made of myself
by
myself, and to steal Ursula Woodridge's clients, on my way to Paris, where I will somehow steal an invitation to meet Madame Chanel. Alternatively, I could go via New York with
vice-regal couturier
embossed on my card, couldn't I? Rich Americans love that splashy sort of thing, don't they? Make my fortune first. I am beginning to taste it already.

See my success, here in the salon. Look: all that's left of my Bridge series, one lonely little aeroplane grey vagabond among my batch of new samples that range across the hat tree, and this one remains unpurchased, I would say, only because the grey is a little severe, perhaps too severe given the times. I'll snazz it slightly for my next series, another Bridge series – they walked out the door; honestly, what a thrill. Everything to do with the Bridge is exciting: the arms are almost touching now, truly only a few yards apart, and there'll be parties galore all across the city when they finally meet, with their great big clanking steel kiss. But – roll the drum – will they meet? Or will the whole thing fall into the sea when the restraining lines are let go? So, so very exciting. I'll simply have to do a special one for Lady Game, won't I. Hers, I see now, is the moss stocking cloche on the topmost branch above the aeroplane vagabond: softest cashmere, which should fit her so long as she comes with a head, and its only embellishment shall be a small gilt buckle, left of centre. I see her jacket against it, masculine pea-style, double-breasted, but cut from rich buttery gamboge tussah. Quilted. That will look superb in the window, too – an advertisement of pure luxury – and Lady Game shall have the colours of the harbour at dawn. With taupe gloves and shoes . . .

Shhhh. Wait until she's here, for the details. Get in with her private secretary if possible: I have her name too, a Miss Isabel Crowdy. But for now, I'd better interrupt my dreaming and get cracking on the practicalities, draw up the pattern for that jacket. Reception's on Saturday. The streets will be aflutter with hoorah bunting and flags as their ship comes in. The thirty-first of May. Really? It will be June on Sunday. No . . .

I release the yawn, a great big lion yawn, and look out the window, to the sliver of sky I can see through the glass roof from here. It's not yet half-past four, but it's getting dark, and I don't know how I'm going to get everything done that needs doing. I've got Glor's engagement frock to finish before I cut any jacket pattern. Only the collar to do, on the floatiest copper-shot chiffon chemise, gaspingly backless, but it's a pernickety thing, bands of bronze and lapis and scarlet baguette beads. Worth it, though: she'll look like Queen Nefertiti gazing out from her barge on the Nile. Or the lawns of Waverley Tennis Club, at least. And I won't be able to get out of that party – tomorrow night – that'll be at least four hours' interruption to vice-regal jacket enterprise. I'm yet to go through my sketchbooks too – or should I design entirely new creations for Lady Game?
A dozen or so
. . .
I should most certainly get a sandwich down at the Aristocrat before I do or think another thing – before they close for the evening, too.

Don't know how I'm managing at all, in fact. I look at the stockroom door as I grab my handbag off the coat stand and wonder if I might slip a little trundle bed in there, don't tell the Jabours I even thought that. But even the ferry to and fro seems a loss of time I can't afford. And I can't afford it: who knows how long these charmeuse dreams will stay afloat? I'm stitching myself an ark against it. Most nights I don't have time to remember I'm alone to even miss Mother. Which reminds me: the baby is arriving sometime around August – God, I should make it something, too. Shouldn't I. Perhaps not; it'll have plenty of attention otherwise, won't it. Regardless, if things keep up, as I surely hope they will, I'm going to have to start thinking about getting a girl in to help me here. Who though? I don't want to work with a stranger, or some middling thing waiting for marriage. I don't want to work with some – some
seamstress
.

I laugh aloud at my own snobbery. As if every great designer doesn't start out slaving over the nuts and bolts of their craft. Perhaps I'll find a girl who wants to be inspired. I'll word my advertisement somehow to attract one, an apprentice of some kind . . .

Someone like me . . .

I catch sight of my reflection in the window as I look up from the clasp of my cape: same neglected crop of tempest on my head in need of a hat, same schnonk in need of a low brim, but how far I have come otherwise, and in such a brief time. I have more than six casually crumpled pounds in my purse, for a start. I don't even need our Lordship's pittance. I can ignore him back: that is so very satisfying, it makes my fears of having his disregard for me exposed for all the world to see seem small, some forgettable unsnipped squiggle on the hem of my life. Makes the opinions of Cassie Fortescue and the Ladies College set seem laughable, whatever they might be, some long ago, little girl insecurity.

It's incredible to me now that I could ever have felt inferior to a girl who spends her Saturday nights sipping fizzy gins at the Merrick cabaret – which are fizzy not from soda, Liz Hardy let a whisper slip to me, but from cocaine. She told me that the funsters threw a mammoth party in the Jazz Room after one of the Randwick races – some horse called Phar Lap won it, taking in almost twenty-five
thousand
pounds, who would believe – and Liz said wild was not the word: they danced so hard they almost did tear up the floor. They get this fizzy ‘snow' through Customs House, right under the Commissioner's nose – a nose which belongs of course to Cassie's Denis's daddy. She's leading Min astray, too. Poor Min: her response to her ditching appears to have been to make herself as silly as her cousin, and they both look like showgirls, satin and sequins from some faux bohemian designer of haute catastrophe in the Imperial.
La Boutique
, it's called.

I open the salon door and a blast of chill air shooshes up through the arcade as I step out.
La Boutique
– whoever heard of anything more revoltingly chi-chi? Revenge: it really can best be served with one's enemy entirely oblivious to it. But good God, isn't the Imperial going downhill –

Going
what
?

Something small, dark and fast hurtles towards me. Wanting to get
through
me.

And I just about sail head over celluloid heels.