by Kim Kelly
‘No. I’ll go up now, will I?’ He is ready to dash at my word.
‘No,’ I stop him. ‘We’ll all go now.’ I don’t want to let him out of my sight again, not ever again, or at least not for a good while. I turn around and shove the letter into the hall stand drawer – this flimsy slip of the truth, mine, ours – and as I do I call, ‘Agnes?’
But she is already here. Her little face peering round the bedroom door by my hip, she sends him a scalding final notice: ‘It’s going to take me a long time to forgive you.’
He nods: ‘I know it is, Ag.’
We start walking and she slips her hand into his, as he slips his hand into mine, and as the warmth of it swoops softly through me, he says: ‘This is the best thing I will ever do, the best thing my hands will ever do – just to be holding yours.’
Oh God, I am not going to forgive you that easily, either, Eoghan O’Keenan. Trust is too precious a commodity. Why are you really here now? Trouble with the law? So eager to skip town? To New York? I ask him: ‘What’s this getting into fights business all about, then? Hm? What did you do?’
‘Oh,’ he tells the road with something of a shudder, ‘you don’t want to know too much about that.’
‘Yes, I think I do. Actually.’
‘Ah . . . er . . .’ He kicks a stone and I eye the state of his sandshoes – he’s been working hard at a hole in the left toe, that is evident. ‘It was just some scrapping with them fascist fellas, you know – that New Guard lot?’
‘The New Guard? Oh really?’ What? I look at him, all of him, shabby and unshaven. ‘Political brawling?’
‘Yeah,’ he winces under a glance, shaking his head at himself, at the road. ‘I sort of fell in with this Communist lot, dossing out at this place near La Perouse, and one thing led to another and . . .’
Something about Waterside Workers and Unemployed Unionists, and being too ashamed and angry to see what he was doing until he met the grace of Mr Lang last night, but I’m no longer listening. Whatever he did, it was heroically awful. And I know I will forgive him everything, filthy fingernails and all. I might even smile at him in a minute.
*
‘New York?’ Glor groans, as she’s groaned a thousand times across this last week and now over her cheesecake, here at the Pav Cafe at the Quay, for our second-last goodbye. ‘London was bad enough. But New York? I’m so racked with jealousy, Ol, I don’t know what to do with it all. Manhattan? That’s what you call haute romance, isn’t it? I bet you go ice-skating in Central Park this Christmas just to make me crazy.’
‘Well, yes, my darling, ghastly job but someone simply has to do it, don’t they?’ I pretend worldly ennui. ‘Who else will educate these Americans against their fondness for frills? It’s my duty to go, and you know it is. Must stamp out overflouncing wherever I go.’ And I’m only half-joking at this: even Madame Chanel has given way to this present international festival of Chantilly blancmange. ‘Sacré phlergh,’ I add, but Glor has glanced away out the window, towards the ship.
Our ship, a great black bow and red funnels, towering over the ferries below. So small they seem, my ferries. Little black and white blobs . . .
I pull my brim down against the midmorning sun, my eyes stinging with its brightness, and yet it is near impossible to look away. Today, this last day in Sydney. The water beyond the wharves is an unfurled bolt of wild bespangled magic and the thrill of untold adventure swoops and zooms through my own heart again. I reach for Glor’s hand across the table: ‘Oh but I want to take this harbour with me, in sequinned chiffon – plunging backline with diamante straps.’
‘God, yes,’ Glor whispers, reverently, seeing so exactly what I see.
God, I’m going to miss my wonderful friend.
I bite my bottom lip, stop the damn thing quivering.
‘But what if he doesn’t show up, Ol?’ Glor clasps my hand in her mocha doe-skin vice grip. ‘You won’t go to New York then, will you? You couldn’t go without him. What’s the time?’ she looks at her watch. ‘It’s ten-thirty, just after. He’s late.’
‘Nice try, Gloria Gallagher, but he’s coming. Don’t you worry about that.’
At seventy-eight pounds’ worth of last-minute cabin class extortion, I’ll have him hunted down and hanged if he’s not here by eleven.
Yo
‘And another thing, lad,’ Mr Adams is not letting me go at his front gate, his fist round my elbow, and I’m listening as I’m counting the minutes down to the next ferry. But he’s not saying anything. He’s just stopped, here at the gate, Mrs Adams and Kenny behind him at the door, smiling me some sunshine to send me on my way, only I’m not going anywhere just yet.
‘Yeah?’ I ask Mr Adams. Come on, hurry up with it. Among all the advice he’s bucketed on me throughout these past seven days, he’s said at least a hundred times Never make her wait for you again, lad – don’t make her wait for you to tie your bootlaces, don’t make her wait for anything at all. Well . . . ? I really don’t want to miss this 10.43 to the Quay. Please. But I’m not moving, for all that I owe him. Taking me into his home all this week, taking me back into his heart, and with not another word about arse-brained exploits undertaken on the way to learning my particular lessons. ‘What is it, Mr Adams?’
He clears his throat, bastard pit-bull eye on me: ‘You’ll write, won’t you?’ Not a suggestion but an expectation with consequences for failure attached. ‘Mrs Adams, she likes a letter. Right?’
‘Right. Of course I’ll write.’ I had every intention anyway. There’s a lot I want to write about: what I’ve seen, and all I will see. I might be writing down more than letters about it once I get going. I tell him. ‘I won’t ever disappoint you again.’
He nods: ‘And you’ll call me Wal.’
‘I will.’ Jesus, he’s going to weld his hand to my arm if he doesn’t let go.
But then he lets go and I’m wishing he didn’t, and then he’s crushing the breath out of me one last time, telling me: ‘Good enough, son, good enough. Better than good.’
It might take me another minute to find my legs to leave at that: to be called son by him. To be someone’s son, however borrowed.
‘Best wishes, dear boy! Our hopes go along with you always,’ Mrs Adams waves another kiss over with her handkerchief. ‘Good luck!’
‘Good luck, cheery cheerio lucky Yo,’ Kenny waves too.
‘Cheerio,’ I tell him, and I wish I could bring him over to the dock with me to see the ship, but Kenny doesn’t do well in a crowd. It has to be goodbye here at the gate, but I can’t say it. I tell all of them: ‘I’ll write – every week. I won’t miss a week, I promise.’
‘Right.’ Wal Adams turns away. ‘Go on then, slán.’ Get lost.
That’s one thing I will never be again: lost. But I am running again. I am tearing down Darling Street, past Mrs Buddle’s geraniums for the last time, hearing her call after me: ‘God bless you, Eoghan O’Keenan!’
And I am the wealthiest man alive. Shillings jangling in my pocket, making me laugh as I go. Parting gift from Dorman, Long and Company, they are – for the underpayment of a total of £9/7/6. That’s what that other letter waiting for me was, a request that I go into Public Works to pick it up and accept their apologies for the inconvenience of the miscalculation of my wages. Most convenient, Olivia said of it. At least you can buy your own suit.
I did. I am a man in a suit, starched collar and a blue silk tie, running for the ferry in new shoes.
Running for my life.
Olivia
Agnes skips along outside the windows of the cafe, a wisp of fairy dreams come true, skipping beside Mr Jabour, coming back from seeing our luggage onto the ship. Chattering on to our genie as she skips, she is so high with excitement, she might flutter up and away if he wasn’t keeping hold of her hand.
‘Ollie!’ she shouts into the china-clinking interior of the
Pav when she sees me, the sound of my name zinging round and round all the mahogany and glass. ‘Guess what?’
‘What?’ Glor and I reply together, exchanging smirks at snooty stares.
‘The man at the ship said we had too much luggage, and he was going to make us get a – get a, what was that thing, Mr Jabour?’
‘An export certificate,’ he chuckles beside her.
‘Yes, an export certificate,’ Agnes chirps, bouncing about from toe to toe with the fun of it. ‘The man said he was going to send it all to Customs House – he wouldn’t believe it was only your wardrobe. But Mr Jabour talked him around, didn’t you?’
She beams up at him and genie laughter booms as he tells me over a job-done belly rub: ‘Indeed I did, my dear. Fellow insisted on opening one of the trunks there and then – one full of hats – and he said, “What’s all this, a sale on at Hordern’s?’’’
‘Hordern’s? How dare he!’ I snort and grimace under my brim, for I might well have to sell off a few creations once we get to the other end. Only just over one hundred and eighty pounds of ill-gotten Lordship-avoiding patrimony left and New York is notoriously expensive. We don’t even know where we will live, much less set out my shingle. How will we live? Will it all shrink and warp to rags? Fear catches at the edges of adventure. Am I really forgoing a window in Piccadilly prime position with ready-made Hyde Park Corner clients for . . . ? Insane. Mother will be waking up to the telegram sometime in the next few hours, I suppose, screaming: WHAT? NEW YORK? She’ll storm across the Atlantic for me soon enough, soon as we do have an address. And she will be horrified rigid at my choice of husband. An irresponsible, possibly alcoholic low-class nobody? I imagine she will shriek. And I am already retorting, Takes one to know one, before I smother her in kisses, and my baby sister too. Squealing my happiness: Mother, look at me. I am everything you wanted me to be. Happy.
Happily terrified.
And then something else altogether when I see Eoghan dashing along the back of the wharves through the ferry throng, dashing through the door of the Pav Cafe. Our future, there in his long stride. And that beautiful suit – black on taupe pinstripe, mid-weight worsted, simply gorgeous. Eddie Nasser’s cousin Danny Karam is a tailor of undoubtedly magical skill. But it’s not just the suit. It’s the man. If there is no man, there is no suit, is there?
Mais non, chérie. You were right. I must admit, he does scrub up quite well.
And there is no thrill like this: the tips of his perfectly manicured fingers touching my wrist as he bends to kiss me on the cheek: ‘I’m so sorry I’m late, I –’
‘Late? You’re right on time. I make it two minutes to.’
My flame-caped dreams coming true: somewhere in Manhattan . . . our salon is waiting for us. A real salon, where I will style and he will cut for me, filling up my sketches with his dancing words, and we will attract the most fabulous clientele to our famous circle toastie soirees. Artists, movie stars, fortune makers. He wants to meet them all; he wants to go back to school too, to learn about politics, to change the world. I want to clothe it. I can see our salon already. Bright daffodil Shantung drapes thrown open to the day. Our day. Whatever it might bring. Beginning this second. God, who’s a little bit excited? What am I going to be like when I get him into that white tux? Outrageous, that’s what I’ll be, swathed in midnight velvet chiffon.
‘I want to go now.’ Agnes is dragging on his coat sleeve before he can sit down to join us.
‘What? Now?’ he teases her. ‘Can’t I have a cup of tea and a scone?’
‘Noooo.’ She’s pointing out at the ship: ‘Look – the engines have started going. See the steam coming up?’ As if it might leave without us; not due out for another hour yet.
‘What ship?’ he says.
‘Yoey, don’t,’ she continues to tug and he relents, letting her pull him back towards the door. ‘Our ship, our RMS Aorangi – see? Over there. The RMS. Stands for Royal Mail Service, and Aorangi means cloud – in Maori. One of the sailors said so. We’re going to float across the ocean like little clouds.’ She twirls ahead of him, waving Hawaiian hands and flitting out into the sun, imploring us all: ‘Come on.’
‘Well, shall we?’ Mr Jabour offers an arm each to Glor and me and we ramble after them around the Quay, as a brass band strikes up behind the far wharf to McMahons. What’s that knee-stiffening tune they’re playing? Good God, it’s ‘God Save the King’.
‘Save us,’ Mr Jabour says under his breath as we pass them and it is a bit much for an otherwise ordinary Saturday morning, their thrumming blasts not letting anyone forget this latest British victory in the colonies: the Bank of England will get their interest payments now that Mr Lang is gone. Hooray. The Games received a ten-minute standing ovation for it at their attendance of Tosca at His Majesty’s on Thursday night, and the Federal Parliament has opened the national till to the new United Australia Premier – with a blank cheque, so that Mr Lang can’t possibly be returned at the election. Mr Jabour dabs his brow with his handkerchief: quite furious, in his way. There is nothing to celebrate here in the King’s name or anyone else’s: unemployment has climbed over thirty percent, the shanties of Happy Valley creep almost three miles up towards the city now, and still the Bank of England maintains that it will continue to charge Australia its highest rates. That is truly and unfathomably outrageous.
Still, I clutch my handbag tighter to me as we walk, tighter round my own hypocrisy: round the letter in there, arrived Wednesday afternoon, hand-delivered. From Government House. An open letter of introduction from Lady Game herself, one which refers to me by my actual name, too: the Honourable Miss Olivia Ashton Greene. Curious eleventh-hour timing – to seal my silence at her esteem for the Langs, or to acknowledge my service to her? I’ll never know and I don’t much care. I won’t betray her anyway. That’s not my way. I’m far too well bred, aren’t I. And I will use her introduction until the paper crumbles to dust.
I look over my shoulder, to the point beyond the Quay, where the Gardens meet the water. Where the teal meets the green, the horizon shimmering aquamarine, the colours of my city. Something catches at me again, at this leaving. How can I be leaving? But then, I imagine a conga line of Sydney Witches making their way along the seawall to Government House to have their names hastily reinstated in the visitors’ book, and it can only be toodles and farewell from me. To this big bulging city, one of the biggest in the world, but one with a small mind.
As we can all too often be, and this catches like a claw at my hem, so that I’m suddenly exclaiming: ‘Oh – I’ve forgotten to –’
Slip away back to the kiosk.
‘To what?’ Glor calls after me.
‘Don’t worry,’ I wave. ‘I’ll catch you up.’
I have to tip the contents of my coin purse into the blind digger’s cup.
‘Ho, ho! Thank you, miss,’ he says as they plink and spin. ‘You’re a lovely one!’ he grins as if he might know me, as if he might see. ‘Have yourself a good day, won’t you.’ He winks.
Winks? He does see? The rogue. He smells of stale wine and sun-crisped damp, and I tell him: ‘I shall. I’ll have an especially good day every day, just for you.’
‘You do that, sweetheart!’ he crows as I hurry off again, with once last glance up Pitt: goodbye, old friend, adieu.
By the time I’ve caught up with the others they are stepping into the shadow of the bow, Mr Jabour with his hand on Eoghan’s shoulder now, something vaguely threatening in the gesture. Though he’s probably only saying, ‘You make sure you look after my girls,’ for the thousandth time, there is a warning growl beneath his every word to Eoghan that tells him the international Lebanese drapers association will track him down and turn him into meatball soup if he so much as looks at a pub again. That makes me smile. Never mind that he’ll have a hard time finding a pub in prohibitionist New York, he won’t want one. I am more sure of this
than anything. Besides, he’ll be far too busy with . . . other activities I have planned. We’ll be married tonight, at the captain’s pleasure, somewhere between here and Auckland – surprise! All arranged by Mr Jabour, too, including the tux, and an entire masculine travel trousseau containing the most sublime Fuji pyjamas ever made – fine charcoal paisley on an ivory ground. Oh God, oh God, oh God, I can hardly wait. I can hardly breathe with thinking about it.
‘Ah, there you are.’ Mr Jabour turns to find me now, chuckling as if he might have heard my thoughts. I blush, lavishly. And then here I am; this is it. The keeper of my kismet is giving me away, at the steps up to our Aorangi Cloud.
‘Photo!’ Gloria is reaching into her handbag for the Kodak Petite Paul bought her for her birthday, so that she might document every move Robbie makes. Oh Robbie, little Robbie, who is distracting his grandmother and Aunty Karma this morning so that half of Beirut wouldn’t turn up to say goodbye. My heart flies round the globe and back once more: when will I see you again, little one?
‘Dad, you get in the picture too,’ Gloria is bossing, squeezing us all together by the stair rail. I straighten the clasp of my cape, and Glor is reaching into her bag again, to throw handfuls of confetti at us. ‘Say peas and cheesy beans, please!’ We do – about seventeen times, until Gloria decides, ‘Dad, come back here,’ pushing us up the steps demanding: ‘Up you go, up to the top, and I when I say kiss, I mean it. A proper kiss.’
We clatter up the steps after Agnes, laughing shoulder to shoulder, step for step, so together, Eoghan and I. In a few short hours, this shoulderline: mine forever. And I will be Olivia O’Keenan – initials OO’K. How fabulous will that look on a label? My black on white. I look up into the sky, sending my schemes straight through the zigzags of the Bridge, this great length of gun metal rickrack arcing up from the Rocks against this blue, blue –
