The Blue Mile (2 page)

Olivia

‘
T
hat's gorgeous, Ollie –
gorgeous
. I love those bebe roses.' Mother touches the brim of the vagabond I'm trimming, her lips brushing my cheek before she's out the door in a heady whirl of Chanel and jade chiffon. ‘Toodles.'

‘Will you be late?' I turn to see the tassels of her handbag disappear past the
COSTUMIÈRE
on the window. I stick my needle back in the pincushion and frown at the backwards lettering, fresh gold lettering that is Mother's response to international financial catastrophe:
The middlings will let us down now, you'll see,
she said of the ladies of modest means and the majority of our clientele,
so we must go upwards, Ollie. Up. Up. Up
. So that our window and our card now glitter:

EMILY COSTUMIÈRE

– Exclusif Couture et Chappellerie Féminine –

paris ♦ london ♦ new york ♦ sydney

And we've just this morning taken delivery of new ‘mahogany' display cabinets and one velveteen chaise. In ivory. With gold brocade trim. So ostentatious, so obvious, I can hardly look at the thing.

Don't give me that face, Ollie,
Mother said when the men brought the furniture in,
you'll get frown lines. If you'd be happier with ‘
Miss Greene's Hats & Frocks
' you're welcome to it.
She waved at the door:
Out in – in – in Homebush or somewhere. You can dress chickens as a sideline.

That made me laugh, and appreciate her efforts, as I always do, if not always the sense of them. She's doing all this for me, to give me a chance, signing the lease here the week I missed my debut with a head cold I didn't have, which in April will be two years ago. It's not as though other offers of society or dancing with smelly old Barker College boys have run thick and fast since, and it's not as though I'd want them to, not now anyway. I love this shop. Our little salon, on the second floor of the Strand, up in the gods, snug between the optometrist's and Monty's Photography. It's me, my heart is here, and when I'm here, dreaming and scheming up my designs, I can forget that I'm five feet and eleven inches tall and that all I possess of the Greenes' wealth and position is the prominent placing of an aquiline nose.
If we were in Paris, you'd be muse to a thousand, Ollie,
Mother says,
you're gorgeous.
She's blind. Love is, isn't it? I'm eighteen, and three-quarters, and no one's ever looked at me as if I might be something worth looking at; certainly not the way Mother does. Don't look at that chaise either. Good God. Atrocity.

Back to my bebe roses then, my work, my salvation from all things atrocious, and our only means of paying for them. What I can't do with the twist of a ribbon isn't worth doing, and Miss Min Bromley is most certainly going to look gorgeous in this hat. We're designing her whole trousseau, and this is one of two afternoon casuals I'm creating for her. She's a very sweet blonde, and this shell pink is going to double her sweets so her girlfriends writhe in envy and must have one too – and won't ever get it because I only do one-offs. Minerva Bromley is also the daughter of one of the directors of the Commonwealth Bank. If she's pleased with her trousseau, we might indeed be travelling upwards. I stab my needle through the base of my next bebe with her other, less appealing connection: Minerva Bromley is also the cousin of Cassie Fortescue, with whom I went to school at Pymble Ladies, and the taunts still seem as nasty as they ever were:
Sticky, sticky, stick insect. Is she a bug or is she a boy?

I transform into a Parisienne muse now as I stitch. I'll show Cassie and her ilk. One day, I'm going to be a costumière of international renown. I'm going to be as famous and fabulous as Coco Chanel.

‘Ollie?' the shop bell dings with my name.

It's Glor, my friend, my newest and in some odd way my first real friend. Gloria Jabour, from downstairs. I turn and smile: ‘Hello, lovely one.'

‘Ollie, it's six-thirty,' her smoky amber eyes rouse on me. God but she's relentlessly lovely: I don't see her all day and it catches me up as if I'm seeing her anew. ‘Dad says it's a mad mob of riffraff down at the Quay – he doesn't want you waiting for the ferry after dark, and neither do I. Come on, knock-off time.'

‘All right.' I smile at that too: Mr Jabour takes his fatherly responsibilities so seriously he extends them to every child he knows. He's also our favourite and exclusive purveyor of all things silk. Jabour's Oriental Emporium – he's got a stock of gold-shot flouncery in at the moment that looks like it wafted in from Persia via magic carpet. I ask Glor: ‘Anything come in that I must have?'

‘Mmm, maybe a couple of samples,' she says with a teasing grin. ‘Some fantastic Fujis, tough as leather, soft as cloud – in candy stripes. But you'll have to wait until tomorrow. Dad's locking up now.'

That he is: I hear the grille screech and thump over their shopfront, echoing up from the ground floor. A newly installed contraption, unfortunately necessary: there've been three robberies, in this arcade alone, this month. I'm compelled myself now to check our new cabinets are locked, the three of them we spent most of today fussing about with, arranging and rearranging our perfumery, our jewellery, our hosiery and glovery, and as I half-gag on an acrid whiff of the gleaming new polish I take some comfort at the thought that thieves would have a hard time heaving these things out into the street: well made, at least, even if the ‘mahogany' is painted-on pine.

‘Oh Ollie, the chaise – doesn't it look grand?' Glor spots the atrocity, as if it might be possible to miss it, and she bends to run her hand over the ivory velveteen, that firm, graceful sweep over fabric that says she could true-up the edges of the air if she had need to measure it.

But I look away, and I say, ‘Grand, yes.' Distractedly, pretending my locking of the stockroom door now requires my full concentration, as I fight off a rush of resentment: well, you would think it grand, wouldn't you, Gloria. Chi-chi showiness designed to attract those who like glittery things. And money: all Arabs worship money, don't they. Equal rush of remorse for these thoughts as I think them, too; as if the Jabours don't work hard for their money. As if I'm any better. Above money. Still, a nasty little voice says I am. Grand. I'm the only child of Viscount Mosely, Lord Shelby Lawrence Ashton Greene. Shouldn't have a shop at all; shouldn't be worried about the debt this stupid furniture has put us in.

I keep a grip on the stockroom door handle, to keep this all locked in. Glor knows nothing of it, of course, no one here does – it's our private atrocity. As far as the wider world's concerned, poor old Daddy was lost in the war, and I would be happy to believe that if it weren't for the birthday cards, the payment of my school fees, and these days a contemptibly pitiful allowance that barely buys my thread – £15 per month. How old does he think I am? Ten? He's in Kenya at present, on a hunting expedition, and I hope a lion eats him. Forgive me. Mother might've picked herself up from the divorce and carried on, sent home from whence she came, but I didn't; haven't. I was only seven when he put us out to sea –

‘Oh! And these fresh flowers, too?' Glor is now gushing over the white roses, the ones that are sitting on the magazine table by the chaise; the bold extravagance of two dozen white roses, which arrived this afternoon at about five past three.

‘Oh yes,' I laugh, not looking at them either, and my laugh is so brittle Glor guesses that these are
not
part of Mother's refurbishment.

‘Oh.' A say-no-more-about-it sort of oh.

The Jabours will have seen Mother flying by their window, jade chiffon whirling out to the waiting cab. His cab. This barrister chap: Bartholomew Harley. A criminal barrister, chasing Mother. And Mother chasing in return.
Darling Em,
the card says,
see you at 6.15 – try not to be
too
late. Bart x
. She only kept him waiting ten, if that. He's something heroic around town, name in the papers for putting some terrible razor-gang crook behind bars, and he's taking Mother to the Merrick Club, for the third time now. Which is where they met: in the Jazz Room. Which
is
part of the refurbishment: Mother parading our creations on the dancefloor of the latest and most popular place in town on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. Not a bad idea at all: her beauty alone is enough to draw attention. No one would ever guess, to look at her, that she herself is the seamstress, and no one could be more admiring of her glamour than me. But really. She didn't get in until almost two o'clock on Sunday morning. She's not known him a fortnight. This in itself isn't entirely unusual, but the
Darling Em
and the spectacular nature of these roses are. I don't like it. I haven't met him – I never meet them – but I don't like him either.

‘Ollie?' Glor's concern is the sound of loveliness itself, but I turn away from her again, packing my bits and pieces into the drawers of my work table, brushing up my squiggles of thread ends. ‘Why don't you come to ours for dinner? You could stay the night – Mum would love to have you over.'

Yes, I know she would, and genuinely: if Mrs Jabour could have the whole world over to her house in Randwick for dinner she would never be happier. But I can't accept the invitation, not tonight. I'd be there ten minutes, squeezed in amongst their big boisterous happy family, half of Beirut round the table, Mrs Jabour telling me I'm too thin, while her sister, Aunty Karma, pinches my arm to demonstrate it, and I'd be wanting to run. I tell Glor: ‘Thanks, lovely one, but I've got so much to do with this trousseau, I'm going to plough on with it – at home, don't worry.' I'm already reaching for a hatbox.

‘If you're sure . . .'

‘I'm sure. Toodle-oo. Off you scoot. I won't be far behind you.'

‘Promise.' She rolls those delicious Arabian eyes, because I will linger a little longer here. I always do. ‘Lunch tomorrow,' she insists. ‘Just you and me. Pearson's, yes? Before the silly season gets too silly and we don't have time to scratch ourselves.'

‘Yes, that sounds fab.' I wave her out, and I will have lunch with her at Pearson's tomorrow. Plate of sweet, fat summer prawns: yummy. I'll look at those candy stripe Fujis in the morning, too, get to them before anyone else does – could be just the thing for a kimono I've half-conceived for Min Bromley's loungery.

But for now I go back to my ribbons, back to half-finished afternoon casual bebes, and I'm about to toss a card of the pink satin into the box when I decide, no, I'm not going to work on the trousseau at all tonight, not taking this vagabond home with me. I'm going to have some fun of my own. Design something especially for Glor. Something snazz, for Christmas. I do love her so. But what shall I make her? It takes a while to come to a decision, staring into the limbs of our hat tree, our style samples that ramble over the steel display frame that covers almost the whole of the back wall, but finally I see it: a little taupe sisal mid-brim I'd almost forgotten we had. I pluck it and pack it into the box with some silver and bronze ribbons – colours that will look more than gorgeous against those amber eyes and that creamy, flawless skin.

I pat the lid down on the box with that swish of good feeling I get whenever I'm about to begin something new. Not knowing what it will be until it is, letting inspiration take me. With a little help from
Vogue
: I lay the October and November issues in my portfolio and clip it closed, swing it over my arm, hatbox following, and as I lock the door of the shop behind me, I look up through the glass roof of the arcade to see the sky is the most divine shade: gold-shot teal. Magic-carpet sky.

And it is getting on for late:
bonggg
. . .
bonggg
. . .
bonggg
. . .
the Town Hall clock strikes seven as I scoot down the stairs around the lift well, through this dim cavern of shut-up shops, only the Aristocrat Cafe across from Electrolux still open, at the George Street end, and it'll close in a minute as well. Out on Pitt, Ned the barrow man is shutting up too, tossing his leftover bits and pieces of fruit into a crate and tipping his hat to me, ‘Night, miss.'

‘Goodnight to you too, Ned,' I reply under my brim, already scooting past him.

Mindful of Mr Jabour's warning of mad mobs, I quicken my steps, keep my eyes on my mary-janes and my mind on their rhythm, soon joined by the oompah-pah of a Salvo band playing ‘Good King Wenceslas' in front of the Commonwealth Bank on the corner of Martin Place. I don't stop to hunt about for change to pop in their box, though; I've barely got tuppence for a tram myself and whatever I do have I shall be spending on Pearson's prawns. I don't look up.

There is quite a mob out tonight, mad or not, a lot of shoes. I keep my eyes on my mary-janes; I really must give these a fresh coat of paint: starting to look like crumbling stucco. Certainly can't afford a new pair. Glance up as I near the corner of Hunter Street, where Bartholomew Harley's chambers are, and where Mother met him for lunch at the Tulip on Tuesday.
Bart.
I really don't want to think about him, them, about what this might mean for us, if . . . No, that won't happen. I just hope she's safe with him. I'm sure she is; of course she is. She knows what she's doing, even if it might not be immediately apparent to anyone but herself; even if the neckline on that jade chiffon plunges just a little too . . . dramatically.

Take a deep breath. Take in the salty smells of the harbour drifting up on the warm breeze and I'm here, at the Quay. Glance up again as I cross the broad boulevard of tramlines and there's no one about. No mad mob anyway, only the normal quantity of late-ferry stragglers, and a few tramps, the usual poor souls; the blind man with his cup and his sign under the awning of the kiosk:
spare a bob for a digger
. Not from me tonight, I'm afraid – my ferry is here, I see, and I just about scoot through the old beggar for it as the deckhand reaches for the board rails of the gangway.