A Prayer for Blue Delaney

by Kirsty Murray

  Colm shrugged. ‘I shouldn’t think so, but then it’s hard to tell with Blue. I still haven’t worked her out.’

  ‘I’ll be in trouble,’ said Keith. ‘I should have been helping at my uncle’s restaurant in Little Bourke Street. They’re really busy, planning all the menus for the Olympics. My uncle Li is going to be one of the cooks out at the Olympic Village and he reckons he’ll take me out there and show me around. The athletes are going to start arriving soon. If he still lets me go, do you want to come?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Colm.

  ‘Maybe? Geez,’ swore Keith, ‘were you even listening to me? This is the Olympic Games I’m talking about! Everyone wants to be part of it. We can get autographs. Then we can flog ‘em at school. Anything to do with the games is worth a fortune. Someone sold John Landy’s autograph for two bob. Two bob!’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Colm.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Keith, jigging from foot to foot to warm up. ‘I thought you might want to come because - because, you know, you’re like me.’

  ‘What do you mean, like you?’

  ‘Well, you and me, we’re different. We’re not like all the other boys at St Finian’s. We don’t fit in the way they do.’

  ‘You’re not an orphan.’

  ‘I know, but I’m the wrong colour on the outside so . . . I don’t know. Forget it. You wouldn’t understand. You look like everyone else.’

  ‘I might look like everyone else, but I feel different inside. Everyone else has brothers or sisters and families.’

  ‘Well, you’ve got friends,’ said Keith, grinning.

  Colm laughed and blew a long breath of mist into the night air.

  Blue was already home by the time Colm got back to the flat. She was sitting in her dressing-gown at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and the radio on loudly.

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Nowhere,’ said Colm.

  ‘Nowhere’s not good enough. I’ve been worried sick.’

  ‘I was with my friend Keith.’

  ‘So this is what I’ve got to look forward to? You turning into one of these modern teenagers. I suppose next thing you’re going to tell me is you’ve been off to see this Rock Around the Clock rubbish at the pictures.’

  Colm couldn’t help but smile. That was the trouble with Blue. One minute she blew hot, the next cold. She’d talk about how he should be in a boarding school, and the next moment she was acting as if he’d live with her for ever.

  ‘When are you going to take me to visit Grandad?’ he asked, emboldened by her fussing.

  Blue shook out her newspaper and held it up as if she hadn’t heard him, so Colm repeated his question.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘Grandad. You keep promising,’ Colm said quietly.

  ‘Soon,’ said Blue, keeping her gaze fixed on the newspaper. There was something forbidding about her expression. Colm tossed up whether it was worth pushing the argument. What if she sent him to boarding school? Or handed him over to an orphanage? He hated that arguing with her felt so dangerous.

  Later that night, Colm lay on the brown couch with his eyes shut, listening to the radio. He’d been playing his harmonica for hours, and now his lips felt numb. But the songs on the radio only seemed to echo his predicament. ‘Don’t Forbid Me’ and ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ resounded in his head and kept him from sleep.

  Blue had left early in the evening to sing at a dance somewhere in the city. Colm was meant to be asleep by the time she came home, but he was restless and angry. Why had she broken her promise? Why wouldn’t she take him to see Bill? When he heard footsteps on the stairs, he only just had time to lie down again, throw a blanket over himself and pretend he was asleep.

  Blue and Joe tiptoed into the flat. Colm kept his eyes shut tight as they passed the couch and pushed aside the beaded curtain to the kitchen. He heard the sound of Blue lighting the gas and setting the kettle to boil. When he opened his eyes, he could see the two of them sitting at the pink laminex table. Joe’s saxophone case was sitting on the floor beside him and Blue had kicked off her shoes and tucked her feet under her. She cupped her hands around her tea.

  ‘Sorry about having to keep it quiet,’ said Blue in a loud whisper. ‘Won’t be for much longer. I’ve written to the old woman asking her to fix it so he can go to boarding school.’

  ‘I thought you liked him,’ said Joe.

  ‘Sure, I like him. He’s not a bad kid. It’s just I’m not cut out for this. The boy needs a proper family.’

  ‘And he’ll find this in a boarding school?’ asked Joe.

  Blue grew agitated, hardly bothering to keep her voice lowered any longer.

  ‘He’ll be better off there than he is here. I’m thirty-three years old, Joe. I’ve missed the boat with this playing happy families business. Colm doesn’t want to live with a ratbaggy old maid like me.’

  ‘Is this what he thinks?’ said Joe.

  ‘Christ, Joe, stop baiting me. I don’t have any idea what he thinks. He’s like a little shadow - wouldn’t say boo to a goose. The only thing he ever says to me is “When can I see Grandad?”’ She mimicked Colm’s voice as she said it, and Colm cringed.

  Joe lit a cigarette and drew back on it thoughtfully. ‘Isn’t that good? That he wants to see the old man?’

  Blue sighed. ‘I’ve promised the kid I’ll take him soon, but I don’t reckon I can face it.’

  ‘But he’s your father, Brigida,’ said Joe.

  ‘We hadn’t spoken in years. He can barely stand the sight of me.’

  Colm couldn’t bear to listen any more. He threw off the blankets and stormed into the kitchen. Joe and Blue looked up at him, startled.

  ‘It’s not true,’ he shouted at Blue. ‘He wanted to come to Melbourne just to be near you. He wanted to make it up to you, and you won’t let him!’

  Blue’s face distorted with rage. She picked up her teacup and hurled it at Colm. He ducked just in time. Joe grabbed hold of Blue’s wrists and she burst into tears.

  ‘Grandad needs us, Blue,’ said Colm, pleading. ‘He needs us now!’

  Colm didn’t know what Joe said to Blue but whatever it was, it worked. The next day Blue took Colm to visit Bill. It wasn’t easy getting him past the nurse on the desk. Children weren’t allowed in the ward. Trying to look nonchalant, Colm stood by the stairwell studying the information board, his hands behind his back as if he was patiently waiting. The moment he was sure the desk nurse wasn’t watching, he slipped through the door and followed Blue up the stairs.

  Bill was sitting up in bed. His face was pale and he looked thinner and smaller than Colm remembered.

  ‘Hello there, young cobber!’ said Bill.

  ‘Grandad,’ said Colm, feeling the word choke in his throat.

  Awkwardly, Bill reached across the sheets. Colm could see it was an effort for him to move so he stepped forward and clasped Bill’s hands quickly between his own.

  ‘I’ve been waiting for you, mate,’ said Bill. ‘It’s good to see you.’

  Colm glanced nervously over his shoulder at Blue, who stood by the door, looking as if she wanted to leave already. Bill glanced in Blue’s direction too and then shut his eyes.

  Blue coughed. ‘I’m just nipping out for a cigarette,’ she said. Tt doesn’t look like you two need me around while you’re catching up.’

  Bill opened one eye and watched Blue leave.

  ‘So you settled in with that Blue of mine and she’s treating you all right?’

  Colm nodded. How could he explain about life with Blue? ‘She’s pretty busy with meetings and rehearsals and things,’ he said.

  ‘She’s not still racketing around with that pack of pinkos in the New Theatre, is she?’ asked Bill crossly.

  Colm didn’t want to reply. ‘I’m learning the piano. Properly,’ he said.

  Bill laughed. ‘You haven’t changed. Still trying to head me off at the pass, aren’t you? I hear that tricky old Annie Mahoney has you all signed
up at St Finian’s.’

  Colm was surprised to hear himself say, ‘I like it there.’ He told Bill about how he was allowed to play the piano in the music room at lunchtime, about lessons with Brother Julian, going to the movies with Keith, and how he’d been winning races in sport. ‘They even reckon I’ll be on the track and field team soon.’

  ‘I tell you, they’re a bossy lot, those Catholics. You watch your back. They’ve been trying to set the priest on me ever since I opened my eyes in this joint, but I keep telling them, “Keep the old trickster away from me”. May as well send in the bloody Grim Reaper himself.’

  ‘He probably only wants to pray for you, Grandad,’ said Colm. ‘I pray for you every day.’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ said Bill, shaking his head. ‘They beat you within an inch of your life back in WA and here you are as keen as mustard to say your prayers.’

  ‘Everyone has to believe in something. Besides, my prayers have worked sometimes. Like when Rusty was poisoned, and when I thought I was never going to meet Blue, but now I have.’

  ‘Well, you keep praying for me, mate. If there is a God, your prayers are gonna do me a lot more good than any tired old black fly buzzing around me like I’m already a slab of dead meat.’

  Colm winced and Bill patted his hand. ‘Here, matey-o, don’t you fret. You got enough troubles of your own without worrying about your old grandad. That Blue of mine will be giving you a run for your money.’

  ‘She wants me to go to boarding school.’

  Bill let out a small groan. ‘You call that girl back in here.’

  ‘Please don’t talk to her about it.’

  ‘Call her, Colm.’

  When Blue came back into the room, it felt as though the air all of a sudden grew heavy. Colm wished he hadn’t said anything. Any moment now, he was going to be caught in the firing line between Bill and Blue. He tried not to listen.

  ‘Is it too much to ask that you bring the boy to see me? Too much to ask that you show him a little bit of kindness? Or is it the fashion that discarded fathers can expect no duty from their own flesh and blood?’

  Suddenly, Blue stood up. ‘Don’t talk to me about duty, Dad. I don’t want to hear it.’ She snorted indignantly. ‘Where were you when Mum was dying?’

  ‘Don’t start with that, Blue,’ said Bill.

  ‘I’m not "starting",’ she said. ‘This is unfinished business.’

  Bill grew quiet. ‘I didn’t know, Blue. You only wrote to me when she was already gone. I would have come back, if I’d known.’

  ‘But you were always away! You were never around when we needed you.’

  ‘Your mother knew what I was like when she married me. She knew I’d never be able to settle down in one place for long. Besides, she was a big star, she didn’t need me opening doors for her.’

  ‘But I needed you! Do you know what it was like, growing up in Mum’s shadow without you there? Without you and Clancy? You’d sweep into town and then you’d be gone again. You took Clancy but you didn’t take me. You never thought about how it was for me!’

  ‘The open road is no place for a little girl,’ said Bill, shutting his eyes and sinking back into the pillows. ‘I never meant to sow the bloody wind.’

  Colm could almost feel the pain reverberating through the old man. ‘Stop it!’ he shouted, stepping between Blue and her father before she could say another word. ‘Leave him alone!’

  There was a noise in the corridor and suddenly a matron in a white uniform was standing in the doorway.

  ‘What is going on in here?’ she said angrily. ‘This isn’t visiting hour, and even if it were, children are not allowed in the ward.’

  She looked at Blue disapprovingly, pursing her lips. ‘The old gentleman needs his rest. His wounds will never heal if you badger him with visits. He needs to be left in peace.’

  Colm looked from the old man to Blue. In a way, she looked as wounded as Bill. Bill lay still and pale on the pillows, all the colour drained from his face. Colm suspected he needed something much more powerful than rest if he was ever to find peace.

  32

  Faith, hope and glory

  Despite the fact that the cranky matron complained, Blue arranged for Colm to visit Bill twice a week from then on. Colm had to catch two trams and a train and they wouldn’t let him inside the hospital, but they would allow Bill to be wrapped up in blankets, placed in a wheelchair and then taken out onto the front porch.

  Colm had exactly half an hour to tell Bill all his news. Every visit, Bill asked after Blue. Colm would try to think of everything she’d been up to, but Bill always looked sad when he heard about her, even though he had asked in the first place.

  ‘Isn’t she visiting you, Grandad?’

  ‘If you can call standing in a corner of my room and scowling for five minutes a visit, I guess I see her once a fortnight,’ he said morosely.

  Colm quickly tried to change the subject.

  As the weeks went by, Colm started to feel that each time he went to see Bill, there was a little less of him there, as if the old man was fading away, his spirit disappearing into some dark unfathomable place. Sometimes Bill was too unwell to be brought out onto the porch and other times the visit had to be cut short because Bill would start to cough, speckling his handkerchief with little flecks of blood. Slowly, Colm began to realise that Billy Dare was dying.

  One Sunday, Colm got up before Blue and headed out into the bright, cold morning. A wind was blowing off the sea and the air smelt sharp with brine.

  When he reached the Presbyterian church, people were milling around the doorway of the huge bluestone building and a crowd of children in their Sunday best were waiting outside the hall beside it. Colm recognised some of them from around the streets. The girls wore clean white gloves and the boys’ shirts were crisply ironed. Colm felt self-conscious in his wrinkled checked shirt and dungarees. Blue didn’t believe in ironing, at least not in ironing Colm’s clothes. A woman in a pink floral dress and a hat like a squashed marshmallow asked him if he was new, and Colm nodded. ‘Are your parents at the service?’ she asked, looking dubiously at Colm.

  ‘Not today,’ he said evasively.

  Colm wanted to join the adults in the church, but the lady in pink herded him into the church hall along with the other children. The Sunday School kids were all made to sit on long wooden benches in the church hall and listen to a Bible story. Then they were given jam tins full of crayons and worksheets with questions. It wasn’t at all what Colm was after. In a quiet moment when the teacher was busy explaining something to one of the little kids, Colm slipped out the door and ran down the street to the Catholic church. Mass started half an hour later than the Presbyterian’s service. He knelt in a pew in the old bluestone church and prayed with all the fierce concentration he could muster. Next, he tried the Anglican church, the Methodists, the Baptists and even the Salvation Army.

  When he’d finished, he walked down to the Strand to meet up with Keith.

  ‘You went to how many churches?’ asked Keith as they walked along the waterfront and Colm told him about his morning.

  ‘That girl I told you about, Lily, she was a Catholic but something else as well. So I thought, maybe she’s on to something? I have to try to help Bill and I don’t know what else I can do. I mean, if I pray in that many churches, then maybe God has to listen to me. Blue certainly won’t.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Keith, dubiously. ‘Sounds kind of kooky to me.’

  In the afternoon, Colm and Keith drove over to Heidelberg with Keith’s uncle. Everything in the Olympic Village looked so fresh and new that Williamstown seemed grubby in comparison. Crowds of athletes of all different nationalities strolled along the footpaths. Keith and Colm had to wear special badges to show they were with Keith’s uncle’s catering firm, because everyone needed permission to be in the village.

  The Chinese athletes were about to arrive and Keith and Colm stood together watching the bus pull up. There was a
flurry of activity as one of the officials brought the flag out in honour of their arrival. Keith gasped. ‘Uh-oh. Someone’s in big trouble,’ he whispered.

  ‘What is it?’ said Colm.

  ‘That’s the flag of the People’s Republic of China. The Communists. They’re not coming. These blokes are from Formosa.’

  ‘Formosa?’ asked Colm.

  ‘It’s an island, but it’s where the real Chinese government comes from. Take my word for it, that flag is a big insult.’

  Colm could see that Keith wasn’t the only one to recognise the mistake. The flag was hastily brought down and another raised in its place.

  After the welcome ceremony at the village, Colm and Keith walked down to the banks of the Darebin Creek, where the athletes were training.

  ‘We should be collecting autographs,’ said Keith. Colm thrust his hands deeper into his pockets and hummed softly, his gaze fixed on the flashing legs of the African runners as they sprinted along the track.

  A kookaburra sounded from the banks of the creek and suddenly, as if the thought had leapt from somewhere deep inside him, Colm thought of the first Christmas that he had shared with Bill out in the bush. He had to work out some way to make things better for Bill, to make Blue see how much Bill needed her. But she was so stubborn. It made Colm feel restless and distracted just thinking about it.

  He began to jog around the track, keeping pace with a group of athletes. Like playing the piano, as long as he was running, he could keep the dark thoughts at bay. It was only when Keith stepped into his path, his arms spread wide, that Colm realised he had overtaken the sprinting Olympic athletes.

  ‘You little ripper. You gotta get on the track and field team, mate,’ said Keith. ‘You’ll be the best thing that ever hit St Finian’s sports team. Forget the music lessons. You should be a sports star.’

  Colm stood beside the track, panting, as the athletes overtook him. ‘I don’t think those runners were really trying and I don’t know if I’m going to stay on at St Finian’s. Blue probably doesn’t want me with her next year. She wrote to Mrs Mahoney about me going to boarding school.’