The Blue Mile (34 page)

Olivia

‘
T
he Governor has sent for him.' Glor's eyes are huge with the scandal and not a small amount of fear. One moment she's having afternoon tea with Paul at the Aristocrat downstairs, as they often do of a slow Friday afternoon, and the next she's raced up to the salon to tell me: ‘He's going to sack the Premier this time – he must do. And Paul's been sent over to Trades Hall – to explain to the unions that it's not against the law. Mr Lang can't have the Governor arrested in response. Or he can, but that would be revolutionary. My God, but the Governor sacking the Premier – that's revolutionary anyway, isn't it? Oh, Ollie . . . what's going to happen?'

Little Robbie holds out his hands to me from his mother's hip. He is, in fact, the prettiest baby that ever there was. I'm so going to miss watching him grow, seeing who he's most like. I cuddle him up and pretend to eat his left cheek and tell Glor: ‘It's Friday the thirteenth – anything could happen.'

‘Don't be so flip,' she snips. ‘Trades Hall is under barricade. What if –?'

‘I'm sure he'll be all right.' I hope. Paul plays football – he's had a black eye before – and Agnes and I couldn't be leaving Sydney too soon. Tuesday week we'll be away. On the waves. I look over at my poppet now: sorting buttons and bits at my table, just as she did that day . . . so long ago. How she's grown. Straight-backed, picking buttons for a blouse we'll make for her. She's not entirely thrilled at the idea of London, changing schools again, missing so many weeks of it too, including these school holidays now, but it's as good an adventure as any. It is what I will make it for us. She'll brighten up once we're on the ship. So will I – we're stopping at Suva, Pago Pago, Honolulu, San Francisco, Vancouver . . . It will not be possible to be too miserable, will it? I say to Glor, dragging her towards the stockroom, our Aladdin's rainbow bomb of never-ending sorting: ‘Come and see what bits you might want for yourself.'

‘Ol,' she blinks away tears, ‘I don't want anything. I don't want you to go.'

‘Have to, don't I?' I smile, blinking my own away, holding each one deep in my heart: ‘Must make way for the sewing school, mustn't we?' The genie is taking over the lease here and under Aunty Karma's supervision this will be Coralie's new world. I am happy about that: it warms that cold stone of regret that's sitting in the pit of my stomach. For London. Never been my number one choice of fabulous destinations, has it, but it's Piccadilly, it's a fresh start. In the stale Old Dart. But it's sensible. It's logical. It's Home, the land of my birth. I can make a fair fist of it and I shall. I have £350 of successful paternal extortion swelling my account and Mother is so thrilled I'm finally coming she is looking for a flat for me right now, said she quite understands a girl's need to bach these days. She'll do anything for me, to see me again. Can't wait to see her face go fifty-three shades of puce when she sees I shall be baching with a child. I smile: I'll get to meet my real little sister too. Two little girls in my world . . . .

‘But you don't want that teal Shantung for yourself, do you?' Glor sniffs, recovered enough to see something here for herself after all.

I shake my head: I have seventeen trunks of essential can't-bear-to-leaves going with me. I say, ‘There's almost eight yards there. I had something strapless with bolero planned for that – have Coralie magic it up for you.'

She sweeps her hand across the weave. ‘Things change, Ol,' she says, wishful, wanting. ‘Things change so quickly sometimes. If there's a revolution, you won't be able to get on the ship, will you?'

I frown and smile at the same time: ‘That's desperate logic, Glor.' She's already tried to convince her father to refuse to sign the papers for Agnes to be allowed to travel abroad. The adoption papers. And they're still unsigned, but not so that we won't be able to go. Mr Jabour won't sign them until the very last moment. Just in case. What? Eoghan turns up to unabandon his sister? It's not going to happen, but still none of us can conscience the signing of the papers, not until the eleventh hour. The terrible no-turning-back of it.

Glor smiles back at me, right into my soul: ‘I am desperate. But you never know, if the Governor does sack the Premier and
avoids
a revolution, perhaps Lady Game might even need you back to design her a special party dress?'

‘Oh, Glor.' I cuddle up her and Robbie both and for Agnes's ears I say: ‘You're just going to have to come and visit me in my London salon, aren't you? I'll be world famous most likely by then, too.'

‘Yes,' Glor smiles, her canny crooked smile, ‘you will be world famous, one day,' but the fear has returned to her eyes. She looks at her watch: ‘After five.'

‘God, is that the time already?'

‘Hm,' she says. ‘I told Paul I'd wait in town with Dad for him – till whenever he's back from Trades Hall. Wait with me, Ol?'

‘Of course I will.'

A chill shoots through me, swooping, tingling. I'm not sure why I should be, but I'm a little unnerved now too.

Yo

T
he clock on the Town Hall is striking seven as I'm tearing up George Street, tearing up through the city from Trades Hall to the Treasury building. I haven't been into the city for a while and it is a strange place tonight. I look up as I pass the Strand Arcade:
Friday night late shopping and all the lights are out there. Not a soul on the street round la-di-da town. Jesus, but this city will wake up in a minute. With Lang's next word, these streets will not be quiet.

I run faster. I run as if I might beat Lang there, to his office at the Treasury. He'd be there by now, back from Government House, with his pink slip. Dismissed. How can that be legal? The Governor – the King of England – can't sack a democratically elected leader of another country. But he can. He's just done it. If I was ever lacking in political motivation, I'm not now. I take that hill up Martin Place, past the fancy cars and cabs outside the Australia Hotel, and my chest is burning with it. I am giving away the smokes this day too; I've been three days off the grog completely and I'm still greasy in my guts from it like I've never known before: fucking arseholes, all of them: slave-driving, fascist, murdering arseholes.

Up into Macquarie Street and along the blackness of the Gardens, I am running through my life again, and every beating I've taken I will return with increasing interest. At the corner, this side of Bridge Street, the Department of Public Works looks at me with its blank stone face: my one good opportunity given to me and then taken away. Why? I am not a perfect man, but I am a decent man. Hardworking, honest man. Who has taken my life from me? The King of England: fuck you. This night, this black night, I will pay with whatever is left of me, I will do whatever needs to be done to fuck you as painfully as you have fucked me.

I look down Bridge Street, note the public telephone there – the one I will use to call on this war. There'd better not be a coin jammed in the box, for at my word hell will visit this city. The lights will go out from Bunnerong and White Bay; the wharves will shut down; the trains and trams will stop. The Governor will be arrested by the cops. It will be down to Lang: not some stiff-collared solicitor saying it's against the law. Whose law? The National Girl Guides will march out from the suburbs for us then, about twenty thousand of them, and only half that number again of Militia rifles. There are more than a hundred thousand of us: pistols and kerosene bombs enough to match, and ten times the heart. My blood is so hot for it, I want to call it on now.

Soon enough. There's cars lined up outside the Treasury: Lang's already inside. There's suits going everywhere up and down the steps on Macquarie Street, carrying boxes and files and all sorts of shit, in a hurry. Messengers darting off as I've just stopped.

At the bottom of the steps, I steady my breath and I'm unsure for a second: they look like they're clearing out, these busy fellas. What are they doing that for? Don't waste time wondering about it: I push in through the suits, and follow them round, to the Premier's office. He must be having to move somewhere. Safer. Where? La Perouse? Find out.

‘Empty those cabinets too,' a woman is pointing into a room full of them as I go down this hall; her voice is high and loud, directing bedlam. I'm supposing it's been called on already, the Governor's been caged and I'll be killing myself running back to the Haymarket in a second.

‘Who are you?' some fella goes to stop me getting any further down the hall.

‘Trades Hall messenger,' I say, pushing past him.

I see Lang now, half out a doorway built too small for him. He's putting on his coat. Putting on his hat. Going somewhere, briefcase in one hand and shaking some fella's hand with the other, saying: ‘Good. Thank you. I beg your pardon?'

He's smiling, looking sad about it, though, tired, bending his head to hear the fella repeat: ‘What happens now?'

‘I go home.' He straightens up again. He is fucking enormous, telling the whole hallway, the whole world, with a wave: ‘I am a free man tonight. I am sacked today and tomorrow we shall have an election campaign to be getting on with.'

‘What do you think your chances are?' the fella asks him.

Lang laughs at the question, a short laugh – ‘Ha' – is all he gives him, and he walks away, towards me.

He holds my stare for a second as he passes. He looks nothing like my father. He nods and smiles: ‘Good evening, lad.'

I don't know what to do with myself, what to make of this, as I watch him walk towards the main doors, shaking hands and having a few words with each as he goes. He's taking it on the chin? That's a big chin he's got, but . . .

The fella beside me, the one who tried to stop me, says: ‘Now
that
is a man.'

‘What?' Something crashes in my head, falls through my guts, through the boards beneath my boots. ‘He can't walk away.'

‘But he is,' the fella beside me laughs, shaking his head, in a wonder of his own. ‘The best of men always do. That's true nobility for you. Live to fight another day.'

I put my head in my hands, trying to make sense, understand: ‘It's over?'

‘No,' this fella says, and I look across at him. I've never seen him before. He doesn't look like anyone in particular; just another stiff-collared grey head, a public servant or a lawyer type. He says: ‘It's never over. But there will be no blood spilt in his name – no pride is worth that price. You go and tell that to Trades Hall now, lad – tell those who need to know, the police have already been informed and instructed. Go now.'

I can't move for a second. Stuck stupid as if I've just met with the Lord incarnate. And I have, haven't I. Being told here something I've somehow always known but let go of in all my anger and shame. The Lord is here with us: in every good man. And nothing, nothing is ever over. Not one bashing; not one knock-back; not one prayer for something better.

I start to run again, with the power of this revelation. I start to pray again, for the first time in what seems like forever. Lord, hear me, please, for the wretched pile of horseshit I am. Forgive me. No. Fuck that. Take me to Aggie. Take me and throw me at her feet so that I can beg for the only forgiveness that matters: hers. Let me be a free man tonight, too.

After I tell the fella on the end of the phone in Bridge Street: ‘Lang's called it off. It's definitely off. He's gone home. To Auburn. The cops –'

‘Yeah,' I hear; a voice I don't know, taking the piss: ‘The butler just phoned from Government House to tell us the same.'

He goes on about something, there's a feed on at the White Horse on Sussex, but I'm a lifetime past it already. I put the phone down and walk away. I'm heading to the Quay, to catch a ferry to Balmain.

Olivia

‘I
don't want to go to Hawaii, I don't think,' Agnes tells me as I tuck her into bed.

‘Why ever not?' I ask her, surprised as much by the particularity of her doubt as by her mentioning our impending journey at all. I take it as a good sign, of facing up to it, and tell her: ‘I'm looking forward to that bit. Don't you want to learn to hula-hula dance on Waikiki Beach with a flower necklace on? Grass skirt and all that?'

I wave my hands either side of her, hula-hula style, and she giggles.

And then she frowns, doubtful again: ‘That's where the cannibals speared Captain Cook in the side like Jesus. Then they cooked him up in a big pot and ate him.'

‘They did not!' I don't have to pretend to be shocked at the scandal of that. ‘Agnes, wherever do you find such stories?'

‘In the library . . . At school . . .' She looks into the lines of the venetians above her bed and I feel her real trepidation as she swallows hard against it: another new school, another new home, somewhere too far away to imagine.

I snuggle round and look into the blinds with her. Then I close my eyes and tell her, promise her: ‘The library at your new school will be twice the size, you know. It'll be ten times the size of North Sydney public library too.'

‘Really?'

‘Yes.' If it's not I'll somehow make it so. I tell her: ‘The libraries in London are so vast you have to have a great big long string tied round your finger before you go in, so that you can be found when you get lost.'

‘That's not true, Ollie,' Agnes says, squeezing my hand close to her heart with wanting it to be.

I squeeze the whole of her perfect little girlness back. I adore it that she calls me Ollie now. We are real sisters too, in every way that it is important. I whisper into her wild sprawling curls on the pillow: ‘It is so true.'

The ferry pushing off below us concurs:
toot tooooot.
All is quiet. It must be half-past eight at least; it was quarter to by the time Paul telephoned the Emporium with the news that civil war had been averted. Even weary revolutionaries must be tucked up in their beds now. All is right with the world. Our world. As right as it will ever be. Little ferries all, pushing out into the night, and a ukulele plucking out ‘Blue Heaven' . . .