The Blue Mile (21 page)

Olivia

‘
W
ell, we won't keep you longer. It was very nice of you to have Agnes over this evening. Say thank you to Miss Greene, Ag,' he says, slowly, carefully, as if he might've been robbed of his personality on the way here.

And I know. I don't know how I know, but there's something in his eyes, something in his looking away from me as he does, that tells me now: he feels this too. This tingling . . . singing . . . swooping . . . sensation. Sensational, he is. The collar of his duffel coat turned up at the back of his neck; the flush of his cheek; his fair skin; his dark hair. Black on white, and those deep blue – ooh . . .

He's folding Agnes's magazine and placing it back on the pile. He smooths out the dog-eared bottom corner of the cover, unthinkingly respectful of the value in everything. I see his fingers again, such fine fingers on one who does metal things. Such pristine and particularly cared-for fingernails. These are tailor's hands. Hands for fine work; hands to make valuable things with. He has a grazy scrape on the back of his left one and I want to kiss it.

Agnes says: ‘Thank you, Miss Greene. I've had such a lot of fun.'

I say to both of them: ‘Please, call me Olivia.' And I retie the bow at the end of her plait, as much to still my hands, my damn nervy hands, as to slake the compulsion for tying untied bows. ‘I suppose you do have to go home,' my attempt at a sigh comes out in little fly-away breaths and can't hide the plea when I add, ‘so that you might come back again. Yes?'

‘Can I, Yoey?' Please.

‘Well, I don't know, Ag, I . . .'

He looks to be in a torment over it. Please be in a torment for me, and not some other thing, some other girl. My conscience says it should be another girl. Some nice girl from Balmain. But I can't help it. If it's cruel, it's cruel to us equally:
please.

He says: ‘All right, then. Next Wednesday will be all right, I think.'

‘Hooray!' Agnes throws her arms around his waist, and I don't know how I'm going to last the week.

*

The romance doesn't last a day longer. In the morning, I find a note under the salon door.

Dear Miss Greene

Thank you for your thoughtful gift of the hat and the sketches of your designs. Such beautiful designs, precisely my style, and I have already worn the cloche twice – I didn't expect that Sydney would be so cold! I shall telephone to arrange an appointment at your salon for our mutual convenience as I have found my wardrobe terribly short on warmth, I'm afraid.

Sincerely

Gwendolen Game

Fantasy finishes here. I must keep my eye on the dreams that will keep me. Dreams of figment boys need losing in the back of the stockroom – forthwith.

Yo

I
'm halfway through slapping the cold cream on my face at the mirror in the kitchen, not two minutes in from work, and there's a knock at the door. Jesus, I think it's her, unlikely as that might be. I call out, ‘Hang on!' scraping it off my face, with Ag laughing at me all the while.

But it's not her, of course. It's that Merridale woman from Welfare.

‘Mr O'Keenan. Good afternoon, I –'

I step out the door and close it behind me; she's not coming in my house again. She's not going to scare Ag again. The trouble these people cause. The least of it is that Nettie's had what was coming: even the chooks are gone from next door, and I'm not overjoyed at that. A mob of Sturgess's Waterside Workers ‘bailiffs' had their furniture all up the lane when we got in last night, which might have been done at Mr Adams's bidding, but there should be a law against the government coming into your house and stealing kids on the word of a neighbour anyway.

I say: ‘What do you want?'

‘Oh, please don't worry, there's nothing wrong here – not with you and your sister's living arrangements. I'm here only to let you know that, ah, after some checking of records it appears that your mother has been claiming Child Endowment payments for Agnes, er, unlawfully, for quite some time.'

I say: ‘I'm not surprised. She's an alcoholic. It's grog money to her. Nothing to do with me.' I wish. Our poor mother.

‘Yes, well. The Department has put a stop to that. But, ah, given the circumstances of your mother's, er, incapacity, there may be grounds here for you to legally adopt your sister, without your mother's consent.'

That changes my feeling: ‘How so? What would I have to do?'

‘Make an application to the court. Such an application would be unlikely to succeed for a single man, in your circumstances, but if you were to marry, then I would say, although I can't promise it as fact, that it would be a mere formality.'

‘Marry?'

‘Yes – is that likely?'

Is it? No. It's a promised fact that it's extremely unlikely. I won't marry Miss Greene. I can hardly say her name to myself: Olivia. O'Paddys do not marry girls with names such as Olivia. I tell this Merridale woman: ‘No, marriage is not likely for me.'

She says: ‘Well, there is another avenue by which you might achieve adoption – have your mother sign consent. Is that likely?'

Is it? No. I couldn't ask that of our mother, not to her face: your daughter's not your own anymore, right? How could anyone do that? I know I may already have done it to her. But to front her with it? Rub her nose in it? No. I shake my head.

The Welfare woman says: ‘It's worth thinking about, Mr O'Keenan. A legal adoption would protect you in future – protect you both – from busybodies making false claims against you. If Agnes is unsupervised after school and she is your daughter, then that is
your
affair. It might entitle you to claim the Endowment too. But while you're a bachelor, well, another Welfare officer might not be able to take the time to investigate your situation properly . . . Do you understand what I mean?'

‘Yes, I do.' This horseshit could happen again, or worse, because Ag isn't lawfully mine. I say: ‘I'll have a think about it.'

She gives me her card: ‘If you would like to discuss it further, make an appointment with me at the Department and I'll see what I might do to assist you.'

That takes me by surprise: she's really only come to help us, gone out of her way. Making amends maybe, but I say: ‘That's kind of you, thank you.'

‘Good evening,' she smiles, and walks away.

I open the door and Ag's there, had her ear to it, and she jumps up at me: ‘You can marry Miss Olivia, Yoey!'

I say: ‘That's not possible, Ag, and don't listen at doors or the Devil will fly in your ear.'

‘Will not. Silly. And you can marry Miss Olivia. She loves you back. I know she does.' Ag puts her hands on her hips like it's done already: ‘Easy.'

‘No, it's not, Ag. It's not easy at all.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because it's not.' We're not good enough for that. Shitful but undeniable fact of the matter. ‘Now, enough about it – where's my tea then, girl?'

She shakes her head, eight going on eighteen, had enough of my idiocy, and goes back out to the kitchen.

I go back to the cold cream at the sink, and think. Think about a visit to our mother.

*

I wait till the following Wednesday, for that hour I've got between getting to tech and going into the class. I usually go straight to the library, head-down round here to keep from looking down any street or at any face I might know, but this day I keep walking up to the brewery. Let our father see me, if he's in Ryan's at the bar now, come out and challenge me here. I'll fucking kill him, I'm that much stronger from the work and not drinking.

But no one comes out for me. And I can't get halfway past the convent behind St Ben's. I just can't go further. I can't go anywhere this side of George Street West. My hands start shaking and my breath is short and I want a fucking drink like no other want. I just can't do it. I can't look on our mother again. If she's even there. I can't look on Mrs Callaghan looking down at me telling me our mother is not here because she's already in the lock-up for her thieving from the government. Or that she's dead. Too. Dead for as long as I can remember her. I start running, back over to Ultimo. Running to stop from crying over it. I'm not crying for her again. If our mother should ever want us, she knows where she can get us: through Welfare. If she'd wanted us at all she could have got us with one word through St Ben's. She doesn't want us. She wants nothing but her misery.

‘Hey, Yo.' One of the young fellas from my class, Teddy Moss, is waiting for me by the library door. He's sixteen, keen as, and wanting me to look at his book work before we go in, scared of Mr Simpson if he gets something wrong. I tell him, ‘Sorry, mate, I've got something in my eye. Mr Simpson won't kill you.' I can't see straight.

I don't know what goes on at Tech tonight. Some fella who runs some big motor import business comes in to give us a talk on chassis welding, and then Mr Simpson goes on about the importance of economy and record-keeping, a nail is not just a nail, it's a ha'penny for two dozen to the boss or some horseshit of common sense. I'm thinking about Miss Greene, with a desperation I've never known before. Saying her name to myself: Olivia. Olivia. Olivia. Is it possible? Ag's always right about everything else. She says Olivia is definitely a princess name, even better than Nina, and she's our princess to keep. Oh, oh, oh live eee ya! Could I ever hope to marry her? Olivia O'Keenan she'd be. Could she be? Could she love me back?

No. Why would she do that to herself?

When I go to pick up Ag from her house, there she is opening the door: ‘Oh, hello.' Half-smiling and half-frowning like she's considering the idiocy of that question herself. The dress she's wearing answers it well enough anyway: it's got lace going round the bottom of it and round the sleeves that's made of some silver type material, catching the light in the hall, electric light and silver lace, and as she's showing me in, she's telling me everything else I need to know about it: ‘We've had a terrible time as usual. I'm afraid I forced your poor sister to consume half a family box of chocolate creams. But I'm also afraid the usual is going to have to be not so usual, though. I'm going to have to suspend fun and games with Agnes for a few weeks – I've had some marvellous news, you see. The new Governor's wife, Lady Game, has made an appointment with me to book me up for the next hundred years – she's going to order just about a whole wardrobe from me, and I won't have time to sneeze. But unfortunately that means not a lot of time for fun and games.'

She can't look me in the eye.

The disappointment burns through me like hydrochloric acid, and comes right out my mouth as such. ‘Good news for you then, isn't it?' I tell this Olivia Greene. I'm already grabbing Ag's coat. ‘Come on, mischief. Miss Greene has things to be getting on with.'

Miss Greene blocks the way to the door: ‘No, I didn't mean, I – Oh.'

‘Thank you for looking after Agnes again,' I say. ‘Very kind of you. We must be getting on ourselves.'

‘Oh but, I didn't mean –'

I give her a look: I know what you mean. Get out of the way.

That shuts her up. She gets out of the way.

We won't be seeing Miss Greene again for her bit of fun and games with the poor folk.

On the steps down, Ag pulls my sleeve: ‘Miss Olivia said I could come over every month, on the first Wednesday.'

‘You're not going.'

‘I am. Miss Olivia said –'

‘You are not, Ag. Forget about Miss Olivia. If you mention her name again you'll not go to Gladdy's Saturday, right?'

She gives me a look under the lamp at the wharf: bastard. And that'll just have to be.

Olivia

‘
Y
es, how perfect.' Lady Game is poring over my portfolio drawings – each and every one of them I have here in the salon – and she's choosing everything I would choose for myself. Not the sports mistress I was half-expecting, though her beige suit is a little atrocious: far too dull for her. She's my living mannequin for the mature woman. Me in about twenty years' time. ‘Oh, but do you think I'd look like an old broomstick in that?'

I look at the sketch she's pointing to, ancient one, almost a year old now, my ‘Lily', a scoop-necked shift with an asymmetrical crossover skirt that drapes from the hip like an arum cup, almost trailing to the ground, and I say: ‘No, not at all. But imagine it in perhaps a pewter, of a light but cosy velveteen. Subtly metallic. Dress it up with multiple strands, perhaps pearls, or dress it down with a contrasting chiffon scarf, a good style for travelling, if ever you find there's no time to change entirely between afternoon and evening. Something like that might take you to a few Bridge parties too.'

Lady Game laughs: ‘Bridge parties! But you're all Bridge mad here, aren't you?' A sincere and happy laugh that astonishes me each time she lets it go. There are no pretensions about this Lady, either. Not one snoot of superiority – she even told me not to close the shop especially or draw the blinds for her. She laughed, too, at my little bob of a curtsy:
Please don't bother with that.
She's not that sort.

And I must agree with her now: ‘Yes, we are indeed – man, woman, child and dog – we're all mad for our Bridge.'

She laughs again. ‘Well, so shall I be, too, I dare say,' and then she stands, no nonsense: ‘Measure me up then, Miss Olivia Greene. Measure me up. I mustn't take up your entire morning.'

Do what you like! Mrs Harrington at ten-thirty won't mind a wait in this company, not one bit. So fabulous. I have this all sewn up, as a seamstress might say to herself when she's trying to stop her hands trembling long enough to fumble the tape out of the drawer. As soon as my frocks start appearing on the vice-regal mannequin, I will be
the
new Sydney designer to go to. God, I will have to get a girl to help me; must do that now. When am I going to find the time to interview girls, though? Oh God, oh God. How fabulously fabulous. Despite my planning this right down to the finest detail, now that Lady Game is here, in
my
salon, I can hardly believe –

‘Uncanny – you must have made that for me.' Lady Game is looking over her shoulder at the pea-style now draped over the back of the chaise.

She'll be taking that one with her today; thank you, Mother, for that suggestion. I smile as I rope her round the hips with the tape: ‘As I said, I made it for my winter window, Lady Game – and now I'll have to make another one, won't I?'

‘Yes,' she says. ‘That style will be popular, I'd predict. It would be well received in London, too, I think. Practical and just a little glamorous. That shade of yellow, so defiant of the season, and you wouldn't get run over in it crossing the road, would you?'

‘Ha ha ha ha ha . . .'
That shade of yellow
is not that bright and it's not yellow, it's gamboge. ‘Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha . . .' but I laugh now too, for my best client and my nicest, warmest one. ‘I should hope not, Lady Game.'

I'm sure she's as warm to everyone she meets, but she's just made me feel as if I am the only couturier of any note in the whole world, and now she's placing her finger on the ribbon for me as I package up her pea-coat, asking my advice on the best place for sturdy school things for her youngest, Rosemary. She even carries her own bag out of the salon, driver waiting for her down on Pitt Street. Just another ordinary well-to-do mother of three. Who happens to be married to the King's man.

‘Toodles!' I wave.

Did I just say toodles to the Governor's wife? I did. And she smiled under her hat. At me. When she's safely away, I shut myself in the stockroom for a moment and scream: ‘Oh my God!'

Then look at my watch: ten past ten. Time to scoot down to the Emporium to hunt and gather, and have a scream with Glor.

Only she's not there.

‘Surprise luncheon with the future mother-in-law,' Mr Jabour smiles when he sees me. ‘Will I do?'

‘Yes,' I say. ‘That pewter velveteen – do you still have a shift's worth?'

‘For Lady Game?' he laughs, already reaching for it.

‘Yes.' My grin must be a sight – it's stinging the tops of my cheeks.

‘Aha! Here it is, Olivia dear. Just the five yards left – I must have known.'

‘Must have . . .' I run my hand over the feathery nap. ‘Perfect.' But just as I do, the light from the lamp above the sideboard catches the silk, like a silvery sea, and as suddenly I slip from this high to plunge into it: splat goes my heart. Eoghan. I look over my shoulder at the brass bottle there, as if I might stopper every mad thought of him into it. One in particular: that rude look he gave me as he left, virtually pushing past me. Did I deserve that? It's no crime to have a life to be getting on –

‘Is something troubling you, Olivia?' Mr Jabour is frowning at me, concerned.

‘No.' I try to reclaim my grin but it's not much of a one. I say: ‘I've just realised how much I've bitten off, Mr Jabour. You don't happen to have a spare daughter or niece hiding somewhere I could have for an extra pair of hands, do you?'

‘Ahhh,' he pats his round belly. ‘Well, now that you mention it, my brother George has a friend whose daughter is just leaving scho–'

‘Oh, Mr Jabour – you truly are a genie, aren't you?'

But not even his genie laugh can quite lift me back up. I feel the slump of my shoulders. I can't see Eoghan again, nor Agnes. The gulf between us is too wide for any kind of relationship to ever be appropriate, and he knows it as well as I. Pushing past me, pushing me away. I must forget them, and yet I can't look at the Bridge without splatting into this sea. This regret. This disappointment every day our paths don't cross at the wharf. It'll stop one day, though. Won't it? Some dreams just aren't meant to be. No kismet for figment boy and me.

‘Are you sure you're quite well, Olivia?'

‘Of course I am.'

*

On top of this fabulous world, I am, and my new girl, Coralie Farr, is everything I could have hoped for if I'd had the time to think about what I needed. She's fifteen, neat, sweet and petite, with the exacting hand and eye of a Levantine draper's daughter. ‘Oh, Miss Greene, yes, indeed, wonderful,' she says, regardless of the task, be it sorting out the dark recesses of the stockroom, cleaning the lint brushes or cutting for me. She's from Cootamundra; she thinks everything is indeed wonderful, with the swooshy caress of her father's Arabic on the w –
whonderful
. By the end of the first week I don't know how I ever managed without her.

By the end of the month, I need two Coralies. After more than a dozen welcome luncheons, teas and dinners for the Games across June, I'm forced to break my one-off rule and allow exact copies of a couple of my designs – never the same fabric, of course, but demand for the Lily frock and another called Pearl is such that I simply cannot say no. The irregularly scalloped hem of the Pearl is blind-making in itself, though, and I don't have the waking hours or the unlimited imagination to come up with seventeen subtle variations on the theme anyway.

And then, one blustery, mizzling morning, bleary and yawning on the ferry, I squeeze in under cover inside and find myself pressed up against a newspaper to see my little wattle cloche immortalised in black and white on the vice-regal head. Lady Game has been snapped boarding a plane for a joy ride round the harbour, the last line of the article beneath the photograph proclaiming:
Lady Game favours local millinery, she says. Her hat of deep green cashmere today was designed by Strand Arcade costumière, Miss Olivia Greene.

One hundred wattle cloches swim past my eyes. So exciting, what an honour, thank you so very much, Lady Game. I would have preferred
couturier
but I'm not about to be pernickety here. Good God. My heart skips a beat – actually. Coralie won't get anything done for answering the telephone today, I know it. How will we manage with the deluge of work that's surely coming our way? Oh, I need some air, some space to think. To breathe. It's suddenly too warm and close, hemmed in on all sides amongst the steamy tobacco-stinking business suits, so I push my way back out into the drizzle.

Take a deep breath and, as I do, I look up from under my umbrella, and see him, as I do every day. Right up the top today, striding along a beam under the north-side crane. Any man, every man-shape I see up there, is him. Stubborn fantasies not stuffing as easily back in their bottle as I'd thought. Slipping out like the threads of ‘Blue Heaven' violins, making me look over my shoulder once or twice a day. Making me glad I'm too busy to think, and too stubborn myself to spend too long staring out the venetians at night following the fairy lights across that deep blue mile between us. Refusing to say his name to myself. If I were one of those girls with little to do, I'd have given in and somehow . . . done what? Chased him? I'd not do anything of the sort. This is only five minutes worth of a fading, shrinking dream. Ill-fitting, annoying. Like the scratch of an improperly finished seam between one's shoulders: impossible to reach; whip it off and snip it off in the fitting room.

That's all it is. An irritating squiggle. Reduced to nothing as the honking, clopping chaos of the Quay whirls me into life. This real life. My fabulous life. One day, very soon, I'll wake up and the Bridge will be complete. That chink in the sky between the arms will be closed, bolted fast with iron, and he simply won't be there for me to look up for at all.