The Blue Mile (23 page)

Glor follows: ‘Where are you going?'

‘I'm going to bed,' I say.

‘Do you want me to help? I can come with you.' Glor is quite frightened for me now. ‘Coralie could help Dad. Just wait until –'

‘No, please. I'd like to be alone. But thanks.'

‘But Ollie –'

‘Please, Glor. It's all right.'

It's so not all right I'm sobbing all the way back down Pitt under my brim and I don't really care if anyone sees. No one would care anyway. A thousand sob stories on this street as it is.

MONSTER SALE!

CLOSING DOWN BARGAINS!

RIDICULOUS PRICES!

The bookshop by the Tulip Restaurant on the corner of Hunter Street has been gobbled up by newsprint entirely, the windows papered over, up to the awnings in grim black and white, while a murder of barristers flap away up the hill to the courts.

What is this world I live in? What am I doing making hats and frocks for the rich? Are they all criminals umming and ahhing over whether they'll have the moss, the taupe or the tan for their wattle cloche, while they step disdainfully over the khaki swags of those less fortunate? Those not in the club. I know there's one rule for the rich and another for the rest, I was raised to learn that lesson well – to be thoroughly frightened of failing at it, too. But murder? Murderers aren't only bred among the razor gang thugs and brothel madams from Paddington that heroic Bart Harleys throw in prison, are they? Just as thieves aren't all Irishmen. Murderers and thieves: I rub shoulders with them every day, up in the gods at the Strand. Murderers and thieves: all cold-blooded creatures who don't care.

What good, then, are all my beautiful things?

A spider is still a spider, in guipure-edged lamé or coarse marocain.

But what am I?

*

Apart from confused and overwrought, I am one who is indeed suffering from a heavy cold. Phlergh upon phlergh, I start sneezing and shivering like there's no tomorrow soon as I'm back home behind my damp and draughty stone walls. It's fortunate then that Glor is kind enough to refuse my request that I be allowed to wallow in my own black horribleness here. She doesn't last the day, knocking on the door at three: ‘Ollie, let me in – Mum and Aunty Karma will come too if you don't behave yourself.'

So I let her in. She marches up the hall. ‘Right. This Viscount Whatsit, whoever he is. Tell me every last dreadful thing.' She's read the newsprint, evidently. She marches straight out to the kitchen, bag full of groceries for meatball soup, and before my stomach can even think that is beyond kindness, she's attacking an onion by the basin, saying: ‘Come on – out with it. Who is he?'

‘I don't know.' I quietly begin my unravelling at the kitchen table. ‘I don't know who he is. He's just some man my mother married – once.'

‘I thought you said your father was dead.' Chop, chop, chop.

‘No – lost in the war. There's a subtle difference.'

‘Right.' A flash of something in her dark eyes as she glances over her shoulder at me: anger at my deception.

So I must confess: ‘He was quite well lost before it, actually – never mine to have. He's just the man who paid my school fees and once a month sends an insultingly inadequate allowance to forget I exist. Mother wasn't so astute at gold-digging in those days.' My voice is as small with hurt as my knuckles are white with clenching, with hatred of him. Strange flashes of memories shudder through me: the hook of his nose, the man smell of him, and his putrid cigars, the swinging hem of a damp tan coat, Mother laughing at his jokes, the popping of corks, and her silence otherwise. Mother forever looking out the window at Grosvenor Place, across the Palace Gardens:
Shush, darling, I'm thinking.

‘He was never faithful to her, Glor,' I say, shame whispering and burning through me. ‘He never had any intention of being a husband or a father, an utterly dishonourable man. I don't know why he married her at all, just another perverse whim of his. But Mother thought it was a good idea to let the Bloxoms know of my pedigree before she left for London with Mr Number Two, and now everyone knows precisely who and what I am.'

‘
I
didn't know.' The flash of anger again, and then a sigh: ‘Oh, Ol, I'm so sorry. That's a nasty lot of shemozzle, all right, and that poor actress –
dead
at twenty-three? Too dreadful.'

‘He's ruined me.'
God, why?
I wail inside.

‘Ruined you?' Glor waves the chopping knife dismissively over her shoulder. ‘No he hasn't. No one who matters cares about people like him. Blood might be thicker than water but we're all more water than we are blood.' She lops the top off the carrot on the board and then opens the cupboard behind her, poking about for something. ‘Lock him up, lock him out of your life and throw away the key – but you are
not
ruined, my friend. Far from it. I remain concerned, though . . . Pepper? Where is your pepper?'

‘I don't know – somewhere . . .'

‘Ollie,' she sighs again, ‘I'm far more concerned about the way you live. Alone like this. It's not good for you – it's not good for anyone. How can you not know if you have pepper in your larder?'

‘I know, I'm a mad old spinster. I really should get the telephone man in,' I say absently. ‘I'll go up to North Sydney tomor–'

‘That won't do. That's not what I mean,' Glor chides me. Fondly. ‘A telephone won't put proper food in your cupboards. I mean couldn't you ever see yourself settling down? Forget the rotters, darling Ol. There are so many
nice
boys out there. You've broken two hearts already that I know of – it's a brave man that asks you to dance. Hoddy Delmont's the type that might even let you keep your business, too, you know.'

Might
– not good enough for me. I snort at Glor, as if a good marriage really is the answer to everything, and then I sniff: ‘I've only met one nice boy I like – and he doesn't exist.'

‘What do you mean?'

And so I unravel all that too: ‘Remember that little girl you saw me with that day . . . ?'

Gloria Jabour's Arabian eyes grow wider as my tale about this nice brave rivet-catching Irish boy on the Bridge grows taller and taller. ‘Dirt poor, of course,' I say. ‘They live in Balmain,' and she drops the knife on the floor: ‘No.'

‘Yes.' I think she's appalled. Appalled at the mere idea that I visited Balmain. At night. As well she should be.

Until she squeals: ‘That's the most gorgeous,
gorgeous
thing I've ever heard of, Ollie Greene.' Then she puts her hand to her breast, scandalised again: ‘Don't worry, I won't tell Mum.'

*

Don't tell mine, either, that I'm wandering round to the other side of the bay just after dawn, along the reserve by the railway tracks to the Dorman Long workshops at Milsons Point. Telling myself that I'm only going over to walk under the arch, as half of Sydney is anyway. To see that the arms have kissed. Are kissing. Forever. Magnificent. The pin locked them together sometime around midnight last night, the milko told me just now and I've never ensembled myself quicker. There's no discernible wattle bobble atop the great curve, though, not that I can see, just as there will be no figment boy, either. I only want to join the crowds, don't I, to share this moment in history, and to celebrate my personal resurrection: after four days' moping, and a medicinal amount of confectionery consumed, my cold has lifted. Whoop. Hurrah.

A glorious winter's day it is for it too, this day, the twentieth of August. The early sun is splashing gold all through the water and the Bridge zigzags are bold black against the golden sky. If you're not cheered to see this, you must be dead. Indeed, I am much more than cheered. I am this moment deciding that my father can go to hell, and that my mother is quite possibly a saint deserving of every heavenly happiness for having survived him. Must write her a congratulatory note one of these days, mustn't I, something with a little more affection in it than my last effort in which I implicitly detailed how much I don't miss or need her by the number and variety of shoes I purchased across July. But what else should you expect from one of my breeding? The daughter of a starlet-murdering lord and a wild colonial seamstress. And if any of this matters to Lady Game or anyone else, I'll pack up right now and go direct to Paris. I have enough in the bank, enough of a portfolio and a refugee's story for Madame Chanel's entertainment – the French got rid of their aristocracy some time ago, didn't they.

If I fail, I'll come home and set up a hats-and-frocks in Homebush, or rather Chatswood – that's a suburb set to do well from this Bridge and the highway traffic they say it will bring north. Or perhaps I could work for the Jabours – travel the Orient buying for the Emporium. I have options. I have excellent friends; they may be few and all named Jabour, but they share my taste in chocolate, sending great big red boxes of Mr Hillier's finest and Aunty Karma's orange and date slice with it. Hardly a tragedy. Quality that counts.

La la la la la la l–

Oh good God, but there he is. That's him. That black hair. Hands in pockets. Standing beyond the path, on the rocks, right by the water. His back is to me, but it's him. I know it's him.

Crisp white shirt: I'd know that shoulderline anywhere.

Before I can stop it, before I can think, I am running towards him and calling his out his name.

‘Eoghan!'

Yo

I
go to turn around, thinking I've heard someone call out my name, but no one calls me Eoghan here, apart from Mr Adams, and he's standing right by me. It must have been a ferry whistling or something.

‘Will you look at her!' Mr Adams shouts as if he's seeing her, for the first time, shouting over the workshop siren going off now, all the crane whistles going off in answer too, to signal to the city that it's done. The two halves are a whole. Up there on the jibs the blue flag of Australia is unfurling and the Union flag with it, and here we are. Seven o'clock, come in to be told we've been given an hour and a half off this morning and she's letting everyone know about it.

Mr Adams grabs my shoulder with something more than relief. He says: ‘
Buiochas le Dia
,' closing his eyes, no blaspheming in his wonder.
Praise you, Lord.
What a miracle this is. Thirty-nine thousand tons of steel holding itself up since about four o'clock yesterday evening, and she's staying up. That is fucking amazing. There are a couple of more-than-relieved engineers around here today as well, no doubt about it. Smacked as much as anyone that it's done. That they got their calculations and the timing right, to stop it coming together with too great a power, and no easy thing with the expanding of the steel in the heat of the sun. Look at her, all right. The heaviest bridge in the world, holding herself up. We'll be back up there soon enough, going along the joins of the bottom chord, by the centre pin, we'll be up there for a month yet, at least, before we start hanging the deck, but I want to get up there now. Shout out the miracle of it.

‘Yeah!' I shout out where I'm standing anyway.

We did it, and I was a part of its making. This Sydney Harbour Bridge. I've never been so proud and happy in all my life.

Every man and his dog is going off along the foreshore round the shops, dancing, waving, fooling around. The ferries and punts all across the water are pulling their whistles too, with a big ship coming under the arch now, flying streamers and blowing its stack, all making such a noise, such a sight of pride and happiness.

In all this, I catch the high whistle of ‘Oops!' behind me and turn just in time to catch a girl by the elbow before she slips off the rocks.

I laugh: ‘I've got you.'

Half-hanging over the wash, she looks up at me: ‘Indeed you do.'

That smile. Oh Jesus, I have died and you didn't care to tell me.

‘Miss Greene?' I test the reality.

She says, straightening herself up: ‘Please don't call me Miss Greene. Not today. Not any day. Call me Olivia. Just Olivia, from now on.'

‘Now on?'

‘Yes. From now on.'

Olivia

H
e doesn't let go of my arm, and I don't want him to.

The stocky older man in the grey flannel shirt beside him says: ‘I'd better be off to rope in Tarzan, and don't you forget yourself either, Eoghan – eight-thirty back here and in the cradle.'

Figment boy looks at him as I'm sure I do: with complete incomprehension. Tarzan, cradle, untuneful Irish growl.

When the man is gone we look at each other again, with no less incomprehension, and still he doesn't let go of my arm.

He says, finally: ‘Olivia.'

‘Yes?'

He says: ‘I would like to kiss you, if I may.'

I might nod; I'm not sure. My mind has gone to water, slipped into the sea at our feet, while my heart has flown away, zooming and looping the Bridge overhead. Kiss me: yes. Eoghan. Etherise me utterly. Here. Now.

But he only smiles. Only? Those dimples – I will slip into the sea.

His hand slips into mine. ‘Come on,' he says, and he watches my step up the rocks. We start walking, back towards the path that runs along the head of the bay, through the thickening tide of Bridge wonderers. ‘And here's the other half of the city,' he says, smiling into them, so many workmen and so many suits pouring down the escalator from the tram and out from the station, all coming to have a look on their way to work. I can't reply. I can barely breathe. Eoghan. He is holding my hand. The essence of my being is singing between our palms, with some other sensation altogether: a raindrop sizzling on an ember. I can barely see. But I do understand now how it is that a girl might find herself in a faint from this sort of thing.

Oh God.

We keep walking, away from the crowds, and he leads me in under the railway viaduct up from the baths, but every housewife in North Sydney is trotting down this way for a look too, coming down through the reserve beyond with an army of small children, all jumping about to the madly tooting ferries on the harbour.

I look up through the scribble of trees towards the top of the reserve. My house is not two minutes down that way. I want him to come into my house. I want to be his odalisque there. In my room, in my sheets, with the sun streaming through the venetians. I want things I've never dreamed of.

I whisper: ‘My house . . .'

He squeezes my hand: ‘No.' But he pulls me along up the steps here and towards my house anyway as though he knows the kinks in these streets as his own, and by the time Bay View twists up into East Crescent I should have well and truly reconsidered what I am about to do. We walk right past my house, and as we do Great Grandfather Weathercroft's 1847 glowers at me from the lintel with the rattle of convict chains:
You will not kiss this boy.
But I can't hear that. An ocean-going ship gives out a great big bellowing toot and I find it on the water, strung all over with hooray festoonery, tooting again, tooting up through my toes. What is this city going to do when the Bridge is actually completed? What am I going to do?

‘Blues Point,' he says. ‘There'll be no one around there.'

I may whisper, ‘Yes,' but I don't know. I am a whisper, slipping round under the cliff face, past the queue of punts at the vehicular wharf and the rust-bucket council depot stores, and into the reserve beyond that. There is no one here. It's always lonely here.

He squeezes my hand again, up the steps to the old colonial lookout on top of the point. He pulls me into the little stone gun turret there that smells of salt and sandstone and some windswept childhood laughter curling around the edges of now.

He takes my face in his hands. So close I breathe the smell of his skin as he does, that salty musky smell of a man somehow made new to me now, thrilling me now. He smells
real.
He says: ‘You are the most beautiful girl in the world.'

And as his lips meet mine, I am. Beautiful. I believe it. I believe I am. I am the most beautiful girl in the world.

I am the only girl in the world. At last.