The Blue Mile

by Kim Kelly

  The breeze has a different plan, though, as it picks up now to a gust and has a more enthusiastic go at throwing me into the sea. Mother of God, all I can see is blue as the crate swings, the world seems to turn upside down. I drop the bucket, and a hammer that was in it slides out across the floor of the crate, Tarzan stopping it with his foot, and me by the scruff.

  ‘Hold on to the rail when it rolls, you crack-headed faggot,’ the Ulsterman is giving me a gobful over the hammering of my heart, repeating it in his own Irish that I have no issue with understanding here, no doubt informing me that I am as useful as a sack full of crack-headed faggot farts, an inch from my ear, in case I didn’t understand it in the English: ‘There are no accidents in my gang. None of any kind. Hold on to the rail or you go back down to the ground – now – go home. Fuck off. Is that clear?’

  I might nod; I don’t know. I’ve just been told off by the Devil and he’s from Dungannon. Who else would use that language outside the Neighbourhood? That’s almost as stupefying as being where I am.

  ‘Fair go,’ says Tarzan in my defence. ‘At least he didn’t spew.’

  I hold on to the rail as they all have a laugh, and I look down at my boots, and down through the cracks of the boards to the sea, and I pray, with all my faith: please Lord, if I am anything at all to you, let me just see out this day. I won’t think about the girl again. Let me just see out this day.

  Two

  Olivia

  ‘Miss Greene?’ Little Agnes squeezes my hand as we turn into the Strand and the answer is already yes. ‘Can we go in the lift?’ she asks.

  ‘Of course,’ I reply, and wave at Velma – Glor’s sister – rushing past the other way, no doubt on some errand between her father and her husband, Eddie Nasser, whose Tycoon Clothing factory in Redfern has gone absolutely hectic lately with orders from Gowings for business shirts and ties.

  ‘Hidee, Ol,’ she waves back, a querying eyebrow for the child at my side, but too rushed to stop, court heels echoing on the tiles through the pre-rush hush.

  I look down at Agnes as we step into the lift – she’s looking straight into Jabour’s Oriental Emporium, eyes wide with amazement at this cave of many colours, as if she’s never been inside a shopping arcade before, not to mention a fancy draper’s. Perhaps she hasn’t. What an awful thought, and a curious one. She’s impeccably turned out. New frock from Hordern’s – I checked for a label, the pin tucking at the bodice too precise for your average homemade. But there’s something about her that’s . . . not exactly of this world. Or my world, at least.

  She asks me as we judder slowly upwards: ‘Will we really go to the Christmas Tea Party today?’

  ‘Oh yes, we shall,’ I assure her. The children’s morning tea on at David Jones, at the new Elizabeth Street store – they always have one, and I’ve never been. I want to be amongst the tinsel snowflakes hanging from the ceiling and see the mechanical Santa display, too. I also want to abandon Mother to the five-minutes-to-Christmas Saturday morning super-rush for an hour or so, see how she likes that herself.

  She’s on the telephone when we arrive at the door of the salon. Frowning into it: ‘Oh, I see.’ And looks up with a frown for me, and the child: What is that thing you’ve brought in with you? ‘Of course, Mrs Bromley, I do understand. Absolute confidentiality and discretion, yes, you may rely upon it, and your kind offer of settling the account as agreed is most appreciated.’ Mother closes her eyes with concern: ‘Yes, Mrs Bromley, thank you. Goodbye.’

  She places the telephone back on the cradle, a pained expression; rare display of crow’s feet, wincing. For Mrs Bromley, Min Bromley’s mother, who’s telephoned to settle the account, at eight-fifteen Saturday morning, when it’s not due until Monday. Oh, no. I think the Bromleys have found out about Mother’s illicit liaisons with Bart Harley and withdrawn their custom. My world is in ruins. I demand to know: ‘What, Mother – what has happened?’

  ‘Poor Minerva; poor Bromleys,’ she sighs, and she looks tired about her eyes, too much concern, too late at night. ‘The groom must delay the wedding – Samuels have gone into voluntary liquidation.’

  Oh dear. Right. Samuels, wheat merchants and family company of Min’s fiancé, Bryden, have gone under. My first thought is an uncharitable one: good. Cousin of my Pymble Ladies tormentor Cassie Fortescue takes tumble from high horse. Serves her right for entangling her heart in a boy. But this is quickly followed by: good God, we’ve lost our best hope of entrée into the upper circle via Commonwealth Bank board of directors. Not ruin exactly, we’re clearly going to be paid, but our business has just taken a trousseau load of backwards. Min Bromley will not be wearing my bebe roses; going-away frock not going anywhere. All my work – mothballed.

  ‘Damn that,’ I say, and stomp my foot: damn them.

  And Mother chastises: ‘Swearing and stamping will not alter the situation.’ All her work mothballed too. That’s business. Live with it. She glances at Agnes and back to me: ‘What’s this? Lost child?’

  ‘Lost? Ah. No. Hm . . .’ I search the perfume cabinet for the answer. Why have I brought a child to the salon today? That’s right, the bottles of Number Five remind me: I am a fool sabotaging my own best interests. ‘I’m minding her today, a favour for an acquaintance.’

  ‘What acquaintance?’ Mother glowers. I don’t have any friends she doesn’t know of – indeed, as the Jabours don’t really count as people as such to her, I don’t have any friends at all.

  And, the situation having altered as it has, there is no triumph of preposterous payback in my announcement now: ‘A young man, the girl’s brother –’

  ‘What young man?’ Mother’s impatience is sharp as her pattern cutters.

  ‘A young man I met this morning. Ah. I went for a walk in the Gardens, and I . . . ah . . .’ I am shame-faced and resentful at once. ‘Well, he was desperate, he needed help, for someone to mind his sister today – hardly a criminal offence. And he’s a Bridge worker. I thought I would be kind, and –’

  ‘Kind?’ Mother’s not in the least convinced of that, nor sympathetic: ‘You met a workman this morning, in a public park, and you have brought his sister here. To mind her. What – all day?’ Her face is sculpted of cold alabaster contempt. ‘Of all the vindictive and wilfully infantile things you could do, at this time. I should telephone the Department of Child Welfare – and turn you in as delinquent.’

  And at that, little Agnes’s hand slips free of mine, and the whole of her tiny person slips right out the door.

  Yo

  Mother of God and every saint that ever drew breath, no, it’s not possible.

  ‘Don’t look down, look out, Pretty Boy,’ Tarzan is smiling at me from the scaffold he’s standing on. It’s suspended off the side of what they call top chord, the top line of the arch – and it’s the highest possible place you could be on earth, not including that fella sitting on top of the crane above us. Tarzan is trying to coax me off the Bridge construction itself and across a plank that’s attached to the scaffold. There’s a gap, though, only about a foot, but it’s the gaping chasm of death as far as I can see.

  ‘Come on, mate,’ this other fella, Clarkie, shouts from behind me, getting itchy at me. He’s the ‘cooker’, heating the rivets in the oven that’s suspended on its own scaffold on the curved upside of the chord, that’s not made of curves at all but straight lines, and each one of them called a chord, too, just to keep me from confusion. I try to keep my mind fixed on that to get me across: these are all straight lines, flat surfaces, not curves, firm, flat, straight, and this particular joint of the chord I’m standing on is the size of a tramcar. I hold my breath. It’s only a step to the plank, to the scaffold which is also the size of a tramcar. Hold on to the upright of the scaffold and look out across the blue at the Gardens and I do it for Ag. I take the step.

  ‘There you go,’ says Tarzan. ‘Now give yourself a minute, till your knees stop shakin
g.’

  He gives me about two seconds before he hands me back my bucket: ‘Don’t worry if you miss one – it’ll only hit a ferry.’

  That is a joke, I’m sure, and it does nothing to lift my confidence. I’m to catch the hot rivets with this bucket, which Tarzan will fix into the wall of holes in the chord here, with the contraption he’s holding, a gun he’s called it, which is attached to a hose that’s attached to . . . somewhere. I follow the hose with my eyes to see where it goes, but my eyes go down the great curve, and my guts go for another swim. This job is not possible. This Bridge is not possible. Defying the laws of nature. Straight lines or no, how does this curve not keep on curving to fall off the edge of the land and into the water from its own incredible weight? How can it be that I am standing on the side of it? I will not catch a single one of these rivets. I want to get down on my hands and knees on the bottom of the scaffold and stay there. And I would, too, if I could let go of the upright of the scaffold.

  ‘Aye-o,’ Clarkie shouts from above and I look up to see a rivet screaming down at me.

  It’s white hot, and the size and shape of a cock. If I don’t catch it, I will get it in the face.

  I find the power to let go of the scaffold and raise the bucket.

  And I catch the rivet.

  Jesus fucking Joseph and Mary, there it is. In the bucket.

  I’m looking for some congratulation from Tarzan, but he’s busy picking out the rivet with his tongs now. Then quick about ramming it into the wall with the gun, with another fella, one called Dolly, ramming it back from the other side with him, and I think my skull will split in two with the noise.

  Olivia

  ‘Agnes!’ I call out for her again, across the empty expanse of the second floor, my alarm ringing along the apex of the roofline, threatening the glass. I look over the railing, down through the void to the tiles on the ground floor, which will be teeming in a minute. She could be anywhere, the little rat. Three floors of arcade. Big city. I’ve lost her, and while the majority of my conscience says, That’s no good, is it, the small but insistent remainder of it is shouting: Oh my God, no!

  What am I going to say to that nice boy when he comes to collect his sister?

  What should I do? Call the police? What would I say to them? Erm, yes, that’s right, officer, I picked this urchin up off the street; no, no idea who she is. Pretty little thing, though.

  Oh, how could she have vanished so utterly two steps out the salon door?

  Damn. I peer hard into the window of Boston Shoes, as if she might have flown in there through the crack in the transom and hidden in a pair of satin pumps. Nothing’s open yet but I cast my eyes across the void again anyway: to the lace drapes of Madame Marjorie’s Hair and Beauty Art, the floating damasks of Loughton’s tableware, the banks of phonographs in the Challis showroom, and stacks of travel luggage at Blayney’s . . . all silent and soulless.

  I don’t know what to do, apart from return to the salon. To Mother. And her disgust. Oh, but I could have a jolly good turn at her for this, couldn’t I. This is Mother’s fault. That’s what I’ll tell the police: Mother frightened the poor girl away. Never to be seen or heard of again.

  I’m deep in planning the opening lines of my next tantrum as I see Mr Monty, the photographer from next door, querying over his spectacles at me on his way from the lift: ‘Morning, Miss Greene.’

  I smile: ‘Hello!’

  I am not a wanton loser of small children. Not me. Why indeed do I have a small child in my care to lose? Of all the vindictive and wilfully infantile things you could –

  I’ll go and check the stairwells – now. Oh God. Start with the Pitt Street end.

  I dash back past our shop, and don’t so much as glance at the window there as I do, nor at the permanently closed blinds of Mr Solomon’s, the optometrist, on the other side, but then, just before the stairwell, I do glance up – up the small flight of steps that lead to an office there, of an accountant, or it used to be, not sure it’s occupied anymore – and I just catch sight of the little white socks in their little Indian red mary-janes, right at the top, sticking out of the shadows.

  ‘Agnes?’

  She doesn’t move; so still, she must be holding her breath.

  ‘Agnes,’ I try again and some instinct tells me not to call her a naughty little rat as I might like to; instead, I gentle my tone: ‘It’s all right, you know. Mother was only cross with me. Please don’t run away – your brother would be sad if you did that, wouldn’t he?’

  Still she doesn’t move; but she might well race off again if I take the steps up to her, mightn’t she, so I stay put, try yet again and more firmly: ‘Agnes, please stop this nonsense and come down from there. Don’t you want to go to the tea party with me anymore?’

  At last she steps down, one step, into the light, but still she doesn’t speak, and her eyes are wide with fear. Not a skittish sort but a dread sort of fear – one that this situation doesn’t seem to call for. Mother wasn’t that horrible just now. But then, this little girl doesn’t know Mother, does she. Strange people, strange place; she must be terribly confused. I hold out my hand to her: ‘Poor little sweetie, I’m sure you just want to go home, don’t you?’

  But at that the fear in her eyes seems to deepen, and she shakes her head. If she could disappear back into the shadows, she would. Something calamitous has happened at home, I suppose, something to make them short for help, as her brother said. I should find out, shouldn’t I, see what’s the matter, so I ask her: ‘Where is your mother today?’

  She frowns, surprised and suspicious at once, and then she finally speaks: ‘Don’t you know?’

  ‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘Why should I know where your mother is?’

  She doesn’t answer that; she asks me, barely a whisper: ‘Do you know the Welfare people?’

  ‘No,’ I tell her, and I’d smile if she wasn’t so clearly afraid of them. The Department of Child Welfare: an old and empty throwaway threat of Mother’s I’ve heard a thousand times before; but perhaps not so empty for this little girl. Speculations race with the facts: the child is poor and Irish and something awful has happened to her mother, who must therefore be a criminal, a gangster’s moll, in childbirth with the thirteenth, or dead from TB. Alternatively, Agnes’s own mother’s threats of getting rid of her are merely much more convincing than my own mother’s. I hold out my hand to her again in comradeship against maternal cruelty: ‘I wouldn’t know a Welfare person if I tripped over one in the street.’

  She puts her hand in mine, but she doesn’t move from that step; she stares at me for the longest moment, searching, measuring me up perhaps, and then she fixes me with the clarity of those huge blue eyes, telling me: ‘My Yoey is the best brother that there ever was.’ A plain statement of fact. ‘Don’t let them take me off him, please, Miss Greene.’

  ‘I wouldn’t do that,’ I assure her, against another instinct shouting at me to telephone Child Welfare immediately. She squeezes my hand, as if to make me promise; but I can’t do that either. Something awful has happened. I ask her: ‘Where do you and Yoey live?’

  ‘Don’t you know?’ she frowns, doubtful, searching my face again.

  ‘No, I don’t know where you live, Agnes – you’ll have to tell me.’ And I’m supposing Surry Hills, Paddington, Glebe, some slum or other where the enunciation of individual words is not required: dontchaknow?

  But she tells me: ‘Under the fig trees,’ her rosebud lips curling into a smile. ‘In the Gardens.’

  ‘You live in the Botanic Gardens, do you?’ I don’t believe her, of course, and I do smile, with some relief: this is all just a childish nonsense, isn’t it. Look at her pin tucks and ringlets, her new shoes, her perfect peaches-and-cream complexion; she even comes complete with missing one and a half front teeth and a lisp. They probably live in a flat in Randwick, just moved in and truly caught short amid
the muddle of it, or something like that.

  She nods, of course it’s all a nonsense, and her eyes are bright with fun again: ‘Oh, it’s beautiful under them trees, miss.’

  ‘It is indeed,’ I nod in return. What an intriguing little girl you are. I won’t be telephoning Child Welfare, no, but I might be having a word with your Yoey, to find out exactly who and what you really are. I squeeze her hand in return: ‘Now, are you ready to come back to the salon for some hard labour before our morning tea? I’ve got a great big tin of buttons that need sorting – will you do that for me?’

  ‘I will,’ she nods again, bright and earnest. Thoroughly edible again. If this child is not ordinarily spoiled stupid I want to know why not.

  Drama of lost child thusly concluded, I’m searching for something suitably terse to throw at Mother about petrifying little girls, when I see, through the salon window, through the open door of the stockroom, her mannequin, and on it what’s become of my blue heaven.

  I am a small child stunned by injustice and disappointment, both of which cut deeper and deeper with every step I take towards it. If there is selfishness in me, I know where it comes from and I’m no match for the original. This gown Mother has made for herself, from my fabric, undoubtedly to wear to the Merrick this evening, is her most fabulous creation yet. Bias-cut to the hips so that the blues will swirl around her before she even steps onto the dancefloor and, when she does, the skirt, with the stripes set on the opposing diagonal, will flute out from three rows of clear crystal drop beads over panels of palest aqua chiffon. Ingenious. Now I see why she looks tired about the eyes – nothing a bit more powder won’t fix. Good God, but I hate her at times. Such as this time. I want to run and hide on the stairs.