by Kim Kelly
Poor silly girl. That slides down my spine like a bead of ice. Never mind, there’ll be another along soon. More importantly, his Lordship’s drama has blown over, within the week, too. How convenient. Ignore it. Finish the tacking and pack up my troubles in my carpet couture bag, it’s time to reopen the salon.
Time to flick through a newspaper, too, et voilà I find one left on the ferry on my way to the Quay now telling me that the Viscount Mosely, Lord Ashton Greene, is upon his release from questioning reportedly heartbroken by the untimely loss of Gigi McAllister. He says: The light has been extinguished from my world.
God, how I hate him.
I look up at the Bridge, for Eoghan, for he is there. This dream is solid steel, crisp and clear, and I will have it all. I will be loved. I will be fabulous. Damn Lord Ashton Greene. I will never let him near my thoughts again; I will never let any stupid fears shake me from my path again.
My steps have never been surer. These Pitt Street shop windows are the galleries that line my way to happiness, this bright jostling of colour, of life, weaving round the verandah poles. Real life. Ned tosses me an apple from his barrow as I pass: ‘For that smile of yours this morning, miss.’
I blow him a kiss. One for Glor, too, across the cutting table of the Emporium as I swing round the banister and fly up the staircase. To my salon. I snatch the note from the window of the door. I’m back in business this minute, and picking up the telephone, calling Government House, for Lady Game. I get Miss Crowdy on the line first, of course: ‘Yes, who is it?’ she says in her no-time-wasters way. On any other day I might have to fight myself not to stumble at it, but not today.
I say in my own no-time-wasters way: ‘It’s Olivia Greene. As promised, I have Lady Game’s outfit for the District Nursing Association event ready for a fitting. When might that be convenient?’
‘It is not at all convenient for Lady Game to break from her schedule at present,’ Miss Crowdy almost barks. Impatient. Aha, I think. Here’s my top client, putting the phone down on the end of our relationship. Too much of a scandal risk, that Olivia Greene. Bloody well damn you. Damn the lot of you – I’m ready to snarl.
But Miss Crowdy barks again: ‘You’ll have to come here, girl. Four-thirty and half an hour only – that’s all you’ve got.’
‘This afternoon?’
‘Yes, of course,’ she sighs: I’m such a waste of time, I am.
I say: ‘I’ll be there.’
*
Humble servant that I am. Lady Game is very much the Lady this afternoon: distracted. Busy. Cool. ‘Oh yes. Lovely print,’ she says of the georgette: whatever. No private wardrobe secretary intimacy for me today. I’m on my knees, repinning the hem to bring it down half an inch, when Lady Game says, as if she’s returned to the warmth of herself: ‘I’m sorry to put you out like this, Olivia, calling you over here in your business hours. You must’ve had an interesting week?’
I take a deep breath in through the pins before responding to that. I’ve had a very interesting week, and let’s put the best of it at the top of this breath to steady it: I’ve fallen dreadfully and irrevocably in love with the man I’m going to spend the rest of my life with. There. Let that secret warm me against the other. The other is hardly secret anyway. Lady Game would know of my father. She would know of the scandal. But I’m unsure if she knows as yet of my relation to it – she wouldn’t know I’m his daughter unless someone told her, would she? Which means she probably knows.
I take the pins out of my mouth: ‘Yes, it’s been an interesting week.’ Say nothing more; if Lady Game wishes to pry, let her.
She says, with that distracted air again: ‘I went to school with your aunt – well, your father’s sister, who would have been your aunt. Poor dear Phoebe. Do you know of her?’
She asks that last so gently I sit back on my heels and look up at her, like the small, wanting child I am. ‘No, I don’t.’ I barely know anything about the Ashton Greenes at all, ancient family pile in Cambridgeshire that Mother certainly never saw.
‘Well, I’m not surprised at that,’ Lady Game smiles as gently, and with some sadness. ‘You’d never have met Phoebe; she died before you were born. The seventeenth of January, 1910, it was – strange how I remember the date. But perhaps not strange: it was such a terrible thing, a shock to everyone. She was so . . .’ She looks out of this upper storey dressing-room window, across the crenellations of the balcony and the tops of the figs beyond. ‘Vibrant, Phoebe was. Then one rainy afternoon, she slipped getting out of a cab, hit her head on the pavement, and she was gone. Terrible, terrible thing. Made no sense, she was only fifteen. I don’t think Shelby ever quite recovered from it. He adored her so. I think it hit him even harder than the war. I think it caused him to make certain errors of judgment. And now this awful business in Kenya, with that young woman . . .’
I think Lady Game is trying to tell me something about forgiveness, but my heart only hardens further. I don’t care about his reasons. Everyone has reasons for their personal atrocities. But there can be no excuse for his rejection of me. None. I was only a child. Cast off. He deserves every blow that comes his way. I return my attention to the hemline and give Lady Game as much honesty as decorum will allow: ‘I don’t know my father.’
‘No. I imagine you don’t,’ Lady Game says, softer still. ‘And I want you to know, Olivia, that whatever happens in that realm will have no bearing on my regard for you – none whatsoever. Indeed, quite the opposite.’
I bow my head at that. I have to, at the kindness. I see why she’s favoured me now: she’s known who I am all along. So very kind, so discreet, and I am humbled: ‘Thank you.’
‘Excuse me, Lady Game,’ Miss Crowdy knocks and enters at the same time. ‘It is now after five. We must attend to the details for the women’s hockey afternoon party.’
Lady Game sweeps quite another smile over me. Perhaps she’s a little intimidated by her secretary too, or perhaps it’s just a fond smile for me. Whatever it is, I should come to my senses at this exchange, be dissuaded now from my reckless path, my determination to have my Irish Catholic tradesman. But I am not.
When I get home, there’s a postcard come through the mail slot for me, a print of the Bridge. A view from the top, looking down the arch to the south, over the city. On the reverse is written in a hand of plain straight lines:
One day you will stand with me up here, Olivia.
By some other miracle I made it through this day without falling. All the same I fell a thousand times – for you.
Yo
Giddy. And sleepy. Oh dear God I could swallow the sky with this yawn. I fall onto my bed and I fall asleep. I sleep like a cat stretched out languorous in the sun.
Yo
I hear her singing as I get to the top of the ferry steps, coming out through the open window of her house and across the night. She can sing, all right, better than my best imaginings of it. So sweet and so high, I don’t want to knock on the door to interrupt her.
‘Just Aggie and me, and a cossie makes three . . .’
And Ag and her start laughing, having fun in there. How good is that? How good is all this? It’s been five weeks of these Wednesday evenings and with each one I’m more convinced, if that could be possible.
I knock at the door, and she’s not two seconds from opening it. ‘Hello there!’ Her smile, always looking a bit surprised I’m here again, before she pulls me in by the elbow and a quick sly kiss that only I can see. And feel. Jesus, I wish she wouldn’t do it; but I can’t imagine her not. I can’t imagine not having this quick sly Wednesday kiss from her. Less than a second’s worth, for all it might take all week to recover from it. It’s just a kiss; that’s all it is.
With Ag as sweet and high jumping around her Miss Olivia and this night jumping up and down behind her on her bed in some funny fancy-dress made of scarves and flowers all in her hair, and asking me: ‘
Yoey, can we go, please?’
‘Go where?’ I ask her. You can go anywhere you want.
‘To the baths – the Fairy Bower baths,’ she says. ‘On Saturday.’
‘Ahhh.’ Baths for swimming? I don’t know about that idea. ‘What’s Fairy Bower?’ It could well not actually exist.
‘Up between Manly and Shelly Beach – there are baths there,’ Olivia says to me. ‘At the rock pool, pretty spot. I thought we’d picnic – you can come out for a frolic Saturdays now, can’t you?’
That’s true. I’ve no dog shift to go to Saturdays anymore. Now we’re on the deck, it’s Monday to Friday, with the corresponding cut to our pay, again, and up until last week, unpaid Saturday mornings in the shops, for me, welding, for my Tech practicals, hanging out for my fifteen shilling increase for second year that I’ve just found out I won’t get until March. And be thankful for it, too: another fifty were let go from the heavy shop yesterday. Don’t know what we pay union fees for. We’ve got a political meeting about it coming up on the weekend – You’re to be there, no apologies accepted, or the Devil take you, Mr Adams said to us all this morning – and that’s not a way out of this swimming, either: the meeting is on Sunday afternoon. Shit, but I can’t afford to go anywhere. I can’t afford a picnic. I can hardly afford to buy Ag an ice-cream at the moment. I’ve never even been to Manly – doesn’t everything cost twice as much there?
‘Please, Yoey. We’ve never been swimming, ever,’ Ag says, with that whine getting in her voice.
For a second I could say to them both, don’t ask me how my day went first, will you; don’t ask me how Tech went tonight. I’m getting the first year prize, I just found out. I’ll get the certificate Friday week. Or some such horseshit thing fairies couldn’t care less about between their la-di-da French magazines and eating too many lollies.
‘But only if it’s warm enough, Agnes,’ Olivia says to her.
It’ll be warm enough, though. It’s only the end of September but it’s been that hot it seems that summer is here already.
‘What do you say?’ Olivia looks at me: Go on, say yes – what’s wrong with you?
I look at Ag. I should be ashamed that she’s never been swimming. I am. I’m ashamed I can’t swim, too. I don’t want Olivia to know I can’t. I can’t afford whatever it is to hire bathers there, never mind drowning in front of her. I say: ‘We’ll see what the weather’s like, won’t we?’
‘Yay!’ Ag says, jumping up and down on the bed again.
As Olivia leans in to me: ‘Wait till you see me flapping about in the water. I’m not much of a swimmer – you could die laughing.’
I doubt it. I will be looking at Olivia Greene in a bathing suit as I drown. Not all bad, I suppose. Except that we could all drown. No. I can’t go swimming. In public. In a bathing suit myself. Jesus, no.
‘I’ve already asked Coralie to man the salon for the morning,’ she leans into me some more. ‘I need a day of fun and sun, I must say. I’ve been yearning for it. A day with you – a whole day. I’ve already bought half the treats.’ Please, her voice is saying to me: don’t say no. That turns me round again: Olivia works hard, as hard as me, just differently, and with money left over at the end of the week, money for treats. I won’t always be this hard up.
‘Yay!’ Ag yells, still jumping, and throwing her scarves around: ‘Treats and sunshine! And my new pink cossies! Look, Yoey, look what we made tonight!’
It’s a pink bathing costume, you wouldn’t miss her in a crowd, and she’s that thrilled about it. How can I say no?
‘It’ll be a great day.’ Olivia works her hand into mine behind my back.
‘Yeah.’ I try for a smile. If we survive it.
*
Depth of water 2 feet 6 inches, says the sign this end of the baths. We’ll survive. And the only public here to watch me make an arse of myself is kids. About a hundred of them, running around all over the rocks and diving in the deeper end of the pool. I step out of the dressing sheds with the word MANLY stamped across my chest on this cossie hired for tuppence and legs I never knew were this hairy. What could go wrong?
Ag is waving me over to where she’s waiting by the steps of the pool, and I wouldn’t have missed this day for a bucket of gold as I see Olivia there beside her. Her bathers are striped black and white and her hat is matching. Who else brings two hats on an outing to be sure they match her outfit? What else has she got in her bag of tricks? The brim of this hat is so big it falls right over her face. She lifts it up and pins it back and waves too. Then she dips her toe in the water, and there’s something about the way she does that, something about the grace of her long arms and her even longer legs that has me wondering if she’s altogether human again. She is made of hazel wands.
And now in she jumps, up to her knees. ‘Oh!’ she says with the shock of it and then she moves towards the centre of the pool, swimming with those long arms out ahead of her, no flapping about to it at all, until she stops and turns and calls back to Ag: ‘Come on, Miss Fish, I’ll catch you!’
Aggie runs up the side of the pool and jumps – right into Olivia’s arms. Screaming. Safe. Having the time of her life. This means everything to me. I just stand where I am for a minute, listening to the kids screaming and the gulls screaming above them looking for chips to pinch, with the waves washing on the rocks and all the kids washing through the waves in this ocean pool and Olivia laughing at something Ag has said, and for the first time ever I believe I’m in a family. That’s how it seems. Like our new life is completed. The past is behind me. I’m just a man at the seaside, like any other man here, watching out for his kid. Entitled to a future: a good one.
And then Olivia screams: ‘Oh God! Oh my God!’
A terrified scream. Flapping about. And I can’t see Ag in all the splashing.
Olivia screams again: ‘Help!’
Olivia
‘Oh my God. Help me!’
There’s something caught around my foot. Dragging at me.
I shove Agnes back towards the wall. ‘Oh God, hold on.’
The horror in her eyes is the horror in my heart. It’s some creature from the deep. No, it’s not. It’s a shark. I haven’t had a nice day’s outing anywhere for how long? Years. And now I’m being attacked by a shark. I’m certain it’s a shark. Eating my leg. Oh my God.
‘Oh God, Eoghan – help me!’
Yo
I don’t reckon anyone has taken to the water faster.
‘My leg!’ she’s screaming. ‘My leg!’
I don’t know what I’m doing but diving down into this water to find what devil of a thing it is that’s got her. I find her ankle. Then the other. Then something the likes of which I’ve never felt before. Slimy; weird; something waving through the water. Heavy. I pull it up to the surface, and somehow even I know what it is.
It’s seaweed. A great big slippery mess of seaweed.
‘Oh! No!’ Olivia screams again when she sees it, but now she’s laughing. Covering her eyes and laughing and saying, ‘Oh God, how embarrassing,’ and grabbing Ag from the side of the pool and kissing her head and telling her: ‘I must have scared you half to death. Oh Agnes – look. It was only a silly lump of seaweed.’
‘Yuck.’ Ag screws up her face and then she tells me: ‘Put it back in the sea, Yoey.’
I push it over the side and into the waves and only now I realise I just swam about ten yards. How did I do that?
‘Our hero,’ Olivia says and she gives me a kiss, on the cheek, here, in this public pool, with Ag on her hip and kids everywhere.
Just for a second I feel like a hero too. ‘I fight seaweed monsters wherever I go,’ I say, and I sink back in the water, to see if it’s true that I can swim. I can float, for sure. Miraculous, and not at all. Of course I can float. I don’t know what I was so worried about. I float on my back with my face to the sun and I listen to Ag and O
livia go off on some other story, about the pine fairies that live around here off the rocks.
Then we have something to eat, then we have another swim, then we eat again and all day none of us can look at each other without laughing ourselves to tears about the seaweed monster. This is the best day of my life.
We’re packing up to go, packing up the half a house of tins and towels and hats Olivia brought with us, when she says to me: ‘Thank you. I’ve never been so happy. So free.’
‘Neither have I. Thank you.’
By the time we’ve got the ferry back to Lavender Bay, it’s almost dark and Ag is half-asleep as I carry her up the steps. ‘Ooh, it’s chilly now,’ Olivia says, ‘I’m all sunburn shivery,’ and when we get in she tucks a blanket round Ag on the sofa and she is asleep, and Olivia is pulling me out through the kitchen: ‘Come on, you need some cream on those seaweed-monster-slaying shoulders. You can have some of my Ponds – you’ll be a lobster under that shirt.’ She starts laughing again, at the seaweed monster and my own Ponds beauty regimen I had to admit to her the other week.
I know I am sunburned, too; I can feel it against my shirt already. But I’m not laughing now. There’s a look in her eyes, even before she’s pulling me into the bathroom and saying: ‘You can have a shower too, if you like – a hot one.’
I’m not sure what she’s meant by it but I’m sure of its effect on me. I want to say, Stop right there, you don’t want to be leading me along, not now. I say: ‘I don’t want a shower, thanks anyway.’