The Blue Mile

by Kim Kelly

  My heart plummets. Crashes into the sea. I have a little sister. Sophia. Em sends love. Even at this distance I am cast off. Mother no longer. She is Em. Something inside me wails up from the centre of a storm. My storm. Some terrible loneliness I knew was there but didn’t see the shape of till now. Here, in this house with me.

  Oh, how this hurts. I want to run out to the cliff top and scream out how this hurts.

  But I reach for the Christmas cognac in the cupboard instead. I gulp down a sherry glass full of it. It burns and scratches me, and it’s precisely how I feel. So hurt. So unspeakably scaldingly angry, and scratched-up, smashed-up hurt. I gulp down another glass of this poison. And then I have to race to the kitchen basin gagging on it, but I refuse to throw it up. I gulp down a third, and I sit on the kitchen floor and sob.

  *

  And it only gets worse from here. In the morning, with my throbbing head and savaged throat, I’m barely back in the door of the salon, barely quarter past eight and the telephone screams at me until I croak into it: ‘Good morning, Olivia Couture.’

  ‘Oh Olivia,’ it’s Mrs Bloxom. Leona Bloxom. I think she’s going to gasp on at me about how I should start attending more functions, because didn’t I know so and so was at Government House for such and such, and I really should reconsider Warwick’s Oxford cut for a spot of lawn tennis la la la la la la la . . . but she’s not saying that. She’s asking me: ‘Are you all right, dear?’

  ‘Yes, why shouldn’t I be?’ I sound like I have a heavy cold.

  ‘You’ve not heard the news?’

  ‘Of . . . ?’

  ‘Your father . . .’

  ‘My father what?’

  ‘His mistress,’ Mrs Bloxom says, relishing the distaste. ‘That actress, Gigi whatever she is. She’s been found dead in a hotel room in Nairobi. Your father has been arrested. It’s in the paper – this morning – right here, under my nose.’

  I have no idea who my father is but he has just destroyed my world. Utterly. Splutteringly. Olivia Couture is finished. All my work . . . Oh dear God. A scandal of this kind . . . I am utterly finished.

  ‘He is innocent, of course,’ Mrs Bloxom is going on about it. Viscounts don’t murder Hollywood starlets in hotel rooms in Africa. Of course not.

  I wouldn’t know. But I do know he’s not innocent. Not to me. He should go to prison, for all that he has harmed me.

  But I keep my head, somehow amidst the crash-banging going round inside it, and say: ‘Thank you, Mrs Bloxom, thank you so much for warning me.’

  ‘Don’t worry about any of it, dear,’ she says, and so sincerely I almost believe her. Until she adds: ‘There are far more tawdry tales to entertain those who are after them at the moment. Have you heard about what the Fortescue and Bromley girls have been up to lately?’

  ‘No.’ And I don’t care, until the nasty streak in me makes me ask: ‘What have they been up to?’

  ‘The boyfriend, Denis Clifton . . .’ She pauses dramatically, and I think, here we have it, they’ve been found out for their cocaine smuggling, but she says: ‘He’s taken the blame for Cassie, but it was her at the wheel of the motor car.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ I can’t follow, and not only because Mrs Bloxom’s excitement is causing her to babble. The cognac is revisiting and I think I’m going to have to throw it up this time.

  ‘She hit a hobo – in the street – driving home from the Merrick. Drunk – out of her mind, so I’ve heard through the Shadfords.’

  ‘Was she?’ I don’t know how people drink, I really don’t. I am so ill. Oh, God help me. But Mrs Bloxom’s message is getting through all the same.

  ‘Yes. They left him there to die. In the street. Poor old swagman, he was. Warwick says they should go down for manslaughter, but they won’t. They’ll get away with it, he said. The Crown won’t appeal, no money to appeal against money these days,’ she snoots, as if her money is any different. ‘I don’t want Warwick associating at that Merrick Club ever again, and he won’t. I always thought it the most dreadful place. But enough of that, Olivia dear. You keep your chin up about the viscount’s spot of bother. The press do like to make a to-do of things like this. It will all be over in a few weeks, see if I’m wrong.’

  You are wrong, Mrs Bloxom. So wrong.

  Suddenly the whole world is wrong. The world is so wrong that the wealthy get away with things like this – with damn murder. Daddy’s on the Commonwealth Bank board, so it’s all right. Daddy is a top-ranking public servant, so it’s so all right it’s kept out of the papers. Whereas the Viscount Mosely, Lord Ashton Greene, well now, he’s a good salacious front-page story – but he’ll get off too.

  Whether my father has done it or not, he’s bloody done it as far as I’m concerned.

  And yet somehow I still manage to keep my head, such must be my training in absorbing the preposterous around me. I say good day to Mrs Bloxom and then I pen a note to place in the window of the salon door:

  Dear Customers

  Due to unforeseen circumstances, this salon is closed from today, 14 August, for one week, reopening next Thursday, the 21st. My apologies for any inconvenience.

  Olivia Greene

  One week. To take a very deep breath. To see out this storm. Wait it out. Sensibly. Wait to see what the upper circle makes of it. Wait for my many emotions to settle, if nothing else. Take a break. Need a holiday. Under a blanket. Wait to see if I am merely experiencing a moment of final-straw hysteria before deciding my life is over. Wait for cognac convulsions to abate – please. I hope one week is long enough.

  I go down to the Jabours and find Glor, who’s only just in herself, handbag on the cutting table. She smiles when she sees me in the mirror behind it: ‘Yes, Dad’s down at Customs now with the new Shantungs,’ then she sees how leached I am and turns. ‘Ollie! What’s wrong?’ she flies to me.

  ‘Could you please tell Coralie when she gets in to reschedule my appointments? I’ll be back on the twenty-first. Let her know I’ll pay her for the week, of course.’ I put the salon keys on the cutting table: ‘She can go in and play if she wants to.’

  ‘Ollie, what’s happened? Are you not well?’ Glor is worried I’m out of my mind.

  Because I might be. ‘Not well, no. Read the paper this morning. Mother’s had a girl, too – Sophia. Nice name, isn’t it?’ That makes no sense, but Glor will work it out. I add: ‘Lord Ashton Greene – Viscount Mosely – that’s my father,’ because she wouldn’t know. I’ve never told her. She’s not of that circle, lucky girl, wouldn’t have reached her good and kind ears. Oh God, I could throw up on my shoes right here. I turn to leave.

  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 f
or 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.