by Kim Kelly
‘Well, I might,’ she says, and she pulls me the rest of the way through the bathroom door. ‘Shhhh. It’ll be all right, so long as we don’t lie down together.’
‘What?’ I don’t know what she means by that for a second, then I realise she doesn’t know the first thing about what she’s doing. Not that I know much more than what you get from one of them filthy American magazines, but I do well know that it doesn’t matter if we lie down together or not. Jack and Mary would go round the back of Gibsons, two doors down from her house, to the low window ledge there, not a place for lying down.
I just say: ‘No. It won’t be all right.’
‘I only want to see you.’ She starts undoing my shirt. ‘I want to see your whole chest. I want to see all of you.’
‘No, you don’t. That’s not what will happen.’
‘I don’t care what happens.’
‘I do.’
‘But I love you.’ She unties the side of her dress, making it fall open, and somehow the sight of her petticoat is worse on me than having seen her all day in those bathers. She latches the bathroom door behind us and lights the boiler, turning on the taps.
I say: ‘No, Olivia, I –’
‘Yes.’ Her cheeks are pink as the tiles here, her eyes are wild.
The hot water is steaming up the room. I’ve never had a hot shower. I’ve never been in a house that had one. We don’t have a bathroom. We don’t have a bath. Ag has her tub by the stove Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, and I save coal with a flannel at the sink every day. While this shower is – Lord, you are making this hell for me. I don’t know if such sinning in love will send us into damnation, if such a thing could ever be called evil, all I know is that it’s wrong. Creating a child in sin is wrong. I’m not going to test the power of God or his grace, see if he might take away this love He’s given us if we break the rules. Take everything I’m hoping for. Everything I’m working for. Call that superstitious idiocy or cowardice, call that whatever you want. I am not taking this risk. No.
She pushes the shirt off my shoulders, laughing against my neck: ‘If you don’t kiss me now, I don’t want to see you again.’
She holds herself against me. Right against the part of me that has no mind to tell her no. Jesus, can she really be so blind to what’s going on here? The power she has over me?
Olivia
‘Be careful or you won’t see me again,’ he says and his voice is flat. Liltless. Threatening. Buttoning up his shirt.
‘No.’ Oh no. Oh dear. I say: ‘I didn’t really mean to say I wouldn’t see you again, I –’
‘Well, you did say it and it’s too far. What you want is not happening, right? Nothing is happening between us. I should get Ag home.’
‘No! Don’t go,’ I beg him. I only wanted to kiss, properly kiss, touch him as I want to, and . . . I don’t know. My mind and my thighs are swimming for want of him. Why is he so angry? ‘What do you mean nothing is happening between us?’
‘I mean now – this evening. This day is finished.’
‘Oh.’ Yes. I see. Humiliation number two for this day: a much more profound one. He truly is religious, he truly does mean what he says. No proper kissing before marriage, et cetera. I turn off the water and try to laugh but my voice is a quivery breath: ‘I’m sorry. I wish we could just elope and be done with it.’ And, bizarrely, I think I do mean that: some restitution for my own disastrous conception mindlessly achieved on the way to the Champs-Élysées, I’d elope to Chatswood with Eoghan to prove to him all I feel. That this is real.
He’s not having any of it; his voice is rough: ‘No priest I know would marry us – you’re not of age and you’re not Catholic. Pull your dress round, will you?’
Pull my dress round? Not a Catholic. How dare you. I pull my dress round and say with all the condescension I can muster: ‘There are other perfectly respectable ways to marry, you know.’
He looks as if that’s the most astonishingly stupid thing he’s ever heard. He says: ‘There is no other way. Not for me.’
How did we take this turn so suddenly? We’ve had such a beautiful day. I’m in a welter now.
I say: ‘Well, I’ll become a Catholic, I’ll convert.’ INSANE! Mother screams at me from the other side of the world.
Eoghan appears to agree with her; he says: ‘You can’t just become Catholic because you want to get married – it’s not that simple. You have to do lessons – on the liturgy, the sacraments, your Holy Communion. You have to go to confession first. As it is, I’ll have to miss Communion tomorrow because of this.’
‘What?’ I don’t know what he’s talking about. I never even went to Sunday school with any regularity, only to keep out of Mother’s hair when necessary, and just often enough to appear respectable.
He says: ‘You can’t just put on a pretty dress and have it done.’
That is insulting. Mightily. I say: ‘I am aware of the seriousness of marriage. I am also aware that religion is ridiculous.’
‘Perhaps to you, but not to me.’ Now I’ve insulted him.
But I keep going with it: ‘No less ridiculous than fairies in the garden and magic-carpet rides.’
‘Will you keep your voice down?’ he hisses at me, deep blues flashing some black anger. ‘You want Ag listening to this?’
‘No.’ But I can’t stop this train now either. ‘I think you’re the one who isn’t serious. You’re just toying with my heart.’ As Irish boys do. Every foolishness I’ve ever felt rages through me: ‘Religious objection? That sounds like backsliding to me. You don’t love me. You’re not genuine.’
‘Not genuine?’ He clenches his jaw, with some rage to match mine. He closes his eyes, taking a deep breath, and he opens them, calm again, his words deliberate: ‘Listen, I don’t expect you to share my faith, but I do expect you to be respectful of it. In four years, I will marry you. By then, I will have my journeyman’s ticket, and by then I’d hope you will come to see what my faith means to me. We are too young now. I want to do things the right way, morally, old-hat as that might sound, and I want to be able to provide for you.’
‘Provide for me?’ My words are shrill with my objection to seeing anything resembling his point of view now. ‘But you don’t need to provide for me. My business –’
‘That could go in a second,’ he stubbornly maintains his notions of practicality. ‘You’ve said so yourself. Anyway, how would we live, Olivia? How would you do your business when the babies come?’
‘Babies?’ Yes, babies: that word cuts through my infuriation. I have actually given this a good deal of thought: I’m not having the Catholic ten, that’s for certain. I will have two, or perhaps three, our little curly-topped ones gambolling about in our salon on the Left Bank of the Seine. There are methods of preventing more – my French is good enough to have gleaned that much from Mother’s old copies of L’Amour et la Mode. But, relentlessly stupid as I appear to be right now, I choose this moment to share with him the ultimate practicality of my own fantastical faith: ‘Go into business with me, Eoghan. We’ll do it together. Babies and business, all of it.’
He laughs at the idea. At me.
That crushes. That humiliates me more than anything. ‘What? Why not?’
‘Me? In the princess palace?’ he laughs again, and not happily. ‘Where will you hide me, Miss Greene? In your stockroom? What will you have me do there? Sewing beads on your frocks?’
‘Why not?’ I repeat, so hurt at this. ‘It’s good enough for me. It’s good enough for Jean Patou. Gustav Beer. Christoff von Drécoll. Caret. Bulloz. Lucien Lelong. The House of Worth – hundreds of them. Men sewing beads. What’s the difference between that and cutting and machining at Foulds Boots?’ as I know he’s done before this.
‘A big difference, and you know it.’ He says, flatly, intractably: ‘Foulds make work boots. Cutting and machining is not a proper trade. And se
wing beads is not for me. That’s ridiculous.’
‘That is not,’ I protest. ‘That is not ridiculous.’ I look at his tailor’s hands, those beautiful fingers, and I appeal to them: ‘You want to be a boilermaker?’
‘If that’s what I have to be to have a good and simple life.’ What is that in his eyes now? Sadness? Disappointment?
Disbelief in mine: ‘But I don’t want a good and simple life.’
‘Then you don’t want me.’ He turns away, unlatches the door.
‘Eoghan – don’t you turn your back to me. Please.’
He closes the door behind him. I hear him wake Agnes: ‘Come on, mischief. What you been eating today making you so heavy then – lead sandwiches?’ She mumbles something sleepily and they leave.
Leave me dirty. I am ugly and ashamed. More ugly than I have ever been.
But mostly angry, and mostly because he’s right. This isn’t going to work with us, is it. Our worlds are far too far apart. Pass me them crystal beads, will you? That’s never going to happen. No more than my taking up rosary beads. You can’t make a dream come true just by wanting.
Plain as the schnonk on my face, and as burned. Look at it. Horrible.
This is the most horrible, most painful degradation of my life.
Lead sandwiches, I’ll say.
Yo
The two cops coming down Darling Street take a good look at me as I head for the saloon doors of the Unity Hall Hotel. I’m still that fired up from yesterday I could almost stop and ask them if they want to cage me for it. A good thing that it’s Sunday and the taps are off.
I’m sure the publican doesn’t agree: the Unity is packed, the meeting brought inside from Loyalty Square by the rain. I see Tarzan’s square red head through the crowd, this side of the bar, over near a fella that’s already holding the floor. The meeting has started, I’m late, and I don’t care. ‘Hear hear,’ this metal trades mob goes and the fella speaking goes on, his voice that sharp and hard it’s carving his words into the walls.
‘While there is a pinched and starving belly in Balmain, not a penny – not a penny – should go to the bondholders of London.’ The fella smashes his fist into his palm to make that a promise. He’s a big fella. He looks like he must be standing on a box at first glance, but he’s not. ‘Lang is right!’ someone calls out and I see who this is: it’s the Big Fella. It’s Mr Lang. He does look a bit like my father, strangely. A fucking enormous likeness of Satan O’Keenan himself.
And there is a few pinched and starving among us here, not convinced of the Second Coming of this Big Fella Lang. ‘Talk is cheap – won’t fill no bellies,’ someone calls from over the other side of the bar, at the back. I see who it is: it’s a fella called Tommo, a blacksmith on the timber wharves, until recently. He’s also a Communist. A lot of shouting goes on now, from one side of the room to the other. I stare ahead; roll another smoke I don’t want. I don’t want to be here. This is horseshit. This is the Labour Movement, as I understand it: Jack Lang is the Labor Party, but everyone in it hates him, especially Federal Labor – they reckon he’s a dictator, and a Communist. But the Communists hate him more than anyone else, because he’s really a Capitalist. He’s an estate agent, of Lang & Dawes, with half of western Sydney owing money to him. And he hates the Communists back. Lang hates the unions too. And some wonder why I’m not too interested politics. They can’t even spell ‘labour’ the same way twice. Only one reason I’m here: to see the Nationalists put out of the job of running the place so that if I ever have to work for the dole, I will get the living wage for it. Or two reasons: Mr Adams told me to come. For numbers. To make a good show against the Communists, so they don’t upset the vote by scaring off those a bit less inclined to be kicking in the heads of their enemies. Jesus.
Lang is standing there talking to some fella next to him, not bothered in the least by the horseshit flying around. He doesn’t have to be bothered. When he opens his mouth again, he says: ‘Those in the Labor Party who know me best know that my word is my promise. It will be done. The bloodsucking bondholders will be denied.’
And everyone shuts up like schoolkids with the archbishop walked in. This Lang knows how to silence a mob even quicker than Mr Adams. He might well be a dictator.
‘Return to me the premiership of this state and I will see to it that the interference of British bankers in our affairs is stopped. The economic science of these Shylocks, and of the Nationalists who support them, is wrong. Their so-termed “sound” economy is crippling this state. You know this yourselves. But did you know, gentlemen, that the Bank of England has discounted its interest rates even to Austria – our enemy in the Great War – and yet no discount has been offered here? We must pay a full five percent while all other nations pay but three or four. No discount for a nation that has sacrificed sixty thousand of its youth and millions of pounds of its wealth to fight for the British cause. How can this be so?’
No one says a word. There are plenty here who have suffered the loss of a mate, a brother, a father. Even my own father went to Palestine, though I don’t remember it as anything but some different kind of crying in our mother. I was eleven when he came back, and I don’t know why he ever did. We’re all waiting for an answer here.
‘How, you might wonder, can the Nationalists not ask on your behalf for that discount? A discount of a mere one-quarter of a percent would provide the government with public money, which then can be used for the invigoration of our economy. The only invigoration the Nationalists are concerned with is that which lines their own pockets, as they force wages down ever lower, using this Depression as an excuse to increase their profits. But you know this also. My government, should you return me, will not be slave to Shylock, or to the mindless sheep of the Loan Council in Canberra, nor to the board of the Commonwealth Bank – cowards all of them. My government will put your needs, the needs of this great state of New South Wales, this great engine room of the Australian economy, above all other considerations.’
He leaves that to settle, and even I think I know what he’s saying here: he’ll go against the Federal Government if he has to, and the Federal Government isn’t run by Nationalists. He’ll go against his own party.
He goes on about what he’s going to do for us if we vote for him – return the forty-four-hour week and minimum wages, more powers to the Fair Rents Court and a moratorium on evictions, and building roads from here to billy-o to make jobs, Lots of jobs. ‘So that you – YOU, gentlemen – will be the invigorators of this state yourselves, as you and your families spend your well-earned wages in the many good businesses of your neighbourhoods. This, gentlemen, is sound economy. This is not a mere promise. This is common sense. And for it, a discount from the Bank of England will be and must be demanded!’
He smashes his fist into his palm again and the whole room goes up in calling for it to be true. It does seem to make sense, too, even to me. He’s going to rob the bank, this Jack Lang. He’s going to rob the Bank of England for us. Good on him.
A chant starts up: ‘Lang is right! Lang is right!’
Even Commie Tommo looks impressed by what’s gone on here. There might even be a moratorium on colliers and dockers kicking heads in tonight.
I see Mr Adams now too; he comes over to me through the crowd. He’s happy. ‘We will win,’ he says, and his fist is tight with that. It’s not just the Labor Party he wants to win, it’s fairness, common sense, with the minimum of head-kicking.
I nod: ‘Righto, then. I think I know who I’ll vote for now.’
Mr Adams smiles and taps me on the shoulder with that fist: ‘Don’t you even joke about it, boy.’
The chanting has got louder, and I look over at this Mr Lang: he’s smiling like a king amongst it. Putting on his hat, making himself half a foot taller again, getting ready to go. I see over the other side of the bar the Communist lot have already left out the Beattie Street doors. I shoul
d go too.
I tell Mr Adams: ‘I’ve got to get back. I don’t want to leave Ag alone too long with –’
But he’s already turned away, started talking to someone else. I leave them to it, and make it quick back down the hill home, through the spitting rain. I don’t want to leave Ag alone too long, it’s true – we’re expecting bailiffs at Number Four sometime today, actual bailiffs from the court, as the moratorium on rent defaulting will come too late for the Bardons that live there, and they’re not going to go quietly.
The street is quiet when I get down there, though, and when I get in the house Ag’s got something nice in the oven. Smells like a cake. I ask her: ‘What you got cooking?’
She says, so proud of herself she’s half a foot taller: ‘I’m making them biscuits, the ones Mrs Buddle gave me the recipe for. They look nearly as good as hers.’
‘Aren’t you clever,’ I tell her. She is, and newly every day.
She says: ‘If they taste as good, I’m going to make some more for Miss Olivia, for Wednesday.’
Horse fucking shit you will. I don’t want to have this discussion with my sister. I’ve avoided it through Mass and all the way afterwards with my head in the Historical, Theoretical and Practical Text-Book of Steam, busy not reading it, and then having somewhere else to be. But it has to be discussed now. I tell her: ‘You’re not going on Wednesday.’
‘What?’
‘Wednesdays are off, we’re not visiting Miss Olivia anymore.’
‘No, don’t say that. Yoey? Why?’ I’ve told her the sky has fallen in.
‘I’m sorry, Aggie, but that’s the way it is. There’s no more talking about it.’
‘No. But why?’ She’s not going to leave this alone, as if I ever thought she might. She whines: ‘But you love her.’
I do. I did. But it’s not possible to love her anymore. It’s not reasonable. Why? I stop myself short of telling Ag we will never be good enough and I keep it instead to what she might understand; I say: ‘Miss Olivia isn’t a Catholic.’