The Blue Mile Read online

  ‘Yes, Ollie, the Merrick. Stop that face now. You’re almost nineteen. It’s about time you left this nonsense behind you. You’re as lovely as –’

  ‘You stop this nonsense.’ I put my hand up again: ‘I will not go, and I will not hear another word about it.’

  ‘Olivia Jane Greene, you –’ Mother is cross now too.

  Saved by the screech of the Jabours’ grille opening, I stomp out: ‘I’m too busy for nonsense today.’

  She doesn’t follow me. Good. I hide on the landing of the stairs for a few moments, staring into the lead lines of the stained-glass window there, staring right into the big fat white rose in the middle of it. I will not accept him. I will never accept him. I’m not going to give this another thought until after Christmas. He’s not ruining my Christmas. Steady my heart and my will as I go the rest of the way down: I have Fujis to choose.

  And Mr Jabour’s warm smile to meet me. ‘Olivia, my dear,’ he welcomes me into his Aladdin’s cave of silk; breathe in the sweet earthy smells of patchouli and sandalwood. ‘Gloria is dawdling this morning,’ he says with the sweet earthy warmth of his affection. ‘Late night, her cousin Sam announced his engagement to us at dinner, a great surprise.’

  A great disease. I try to match his smile: ‘Oh, how exciting.’

  He’s too shrewd. ‘Oh, but I see something is troubling you, child – what is it?’ he asks.

  ‘Mm, nothing,’ I reply, and I don’t have to feign distraction: I’ve spotted the candy stripes, waiting for me on the cutting table behind him. I want to fall into a cloud of it and I haven’t even touched it yet. I tell him, vaguely: ‘Mad mob down at the Quay just now was a bit troubling, I suppose, a whole load of poor chaps heading for the Labour Exchange.’

  Mr Jabour sighs: ‘It is a terrible shame.’

  ‘Yes.’ Oh, but I want to buy the lot: the lemon one especially – so pretty, citrony, on an almond meringue ground, that’s for Min Bromley’s kimono.

  ‘It is the Bank of England that should bear this shame, though.’ Mr Jabour clicks his tongue as he unfurls one of the bolts for me, the blue one – a heavenly, powdery, cloudy shade.

  ‘Hm? Shame . . .’ I’ve gone nebulous with it. Matching pyjamas?

  ‘Yes, my dear. The Bank of England is calling in their loans, and this whole country, as they say, is in hock to the eyeballs to them. But they are war loans.’ He clicks his tongue again. ‘They are calling in war loans, can you believe it? Sixty thousand boys we give to them and they are calling in the loans now – ninety days to pay or else. You would not do this to an enemy.’

  That prompts me to look at Mr Jabour and pay attention: his brother was one of the sixty thousand Australian boys who died for England, just like Mother’s Archie and Alex, and Australia had to borrow to send them over in the first place. I say: ‘That is shameful.’ Want to bite my tongue now with the shame of all of it, including mine, take back my childish shrieking at Mother. World doesn’t necessarily revolve around me, et cetera. ‘All the shops that are closing up,’ Mr Jabour shakes his head, ‘like flowers in the night – you should see Randwick, three businesses have closed along Belmore Road this week. You can be sure the department stores will do well out of it.’ He sighs again, smoothing the candy stripes. ‘And now we must do battle with cheap rayon, too.’ He laughs, such a jolly laugh he has and he always rubs his ample waistline when he releases it. ‘Promise me, Olivia, please promise me you will never buy rayon.’

  ‘That’s an easy promise to make,’ I do match his smile now. ‘May I have the whole bolt? This one, and the lemon, too? Please.’

  He shakes his head again, but there’s more mirth in it, as he reaches under the cutting table and pulls up another bolt. That makes me gasp: I’ve never seen anything like it. Fine stripes of navy and aquamarine on a ground of cerulean true blue. Stunning. Mine. Must be.

  Mr Jabour laughs again, a great booming one for my silly face, before leaning towards me with a conspiratorial whisper: ‘Just one bolt of this in all the world. Exquisite, no?’

  I nod, and as I do I glance at the great teak sideboard behind him, where the most fabulous of the trims are kept, and I nod at the antique brass bottle that sits atop it too. It’s rather the same shape as Mr Jabour, stoppered with a bulb of ruby and sapphire glass, and I no longer believe it’s merely an Oriental decoration: it’s where Mr Jabour keeps his genie.

  He winks: ‘But for you, Olivia dear, special price.’

  Special Arabian one – tall as the tale. But I’m as yet unable to reply with anything apart from an awestruck caress of the invisible weave, as the words from that song, ‘Little Alice Blue’, come to me in Mother’s sweet voice: The little silk worms that made silk for that gown, only made that much silk and then crawled in the ground . . .

  I’m in love. I don’t know what I’ll do with this piece, my bolt of blue heaven, but I do believe I’d pay with my life for it.

  Yo

  ‘That’s right, I’m afraid. You can’t register as unemployed without an address,’ this fella at the counter of the Labour Exchange is explaining. I look around behind me, as if I might check on Ag by doing so, but I can’t see her from here. She’s waiting for me outside, with a bag of grapes and a bun, behind the foyer door. Not that there’s many here to see her: the couple of hundred or so registered unemployed that were here when we arrived have gone on a march up to Parliament House, to tell the Premier what they reckon.

  I turn back to this fella at the counter. He’s looking sympathetic enough but there’s nothing he can do for me. Still, I have to say: ‘But I need a job so I can get an address.’

  ‘That’s a predicament for you,’ he nods; not his problem.

  ‘Can I just look at the noticeboards, then? See if there’s places I might try at?’ There’s three of these noticeboards all pinned with cards, fenced off along the side of the counter, I could almost touch the nearest of them.

  ‘Well, no, I’m afraid not,’ he says, and I hear the change of tune: he’d like to be clear of me now. ‘These jobs are for the registered unemployed, and I must say that with all of the listings here preference is given first to returned servicemen, and then married men, men with families to support.’

  He’s supposing I am neither, of course. But I do have a family to support, even if I can’t tell him that. Jesus, help me.

  I start begging: ‘Can you recommend anywhere I might start looking? Just doors to knock on?’

  I think he’s going to tell me to go to buggery, but he cocks his head for me to come nearer and listen, going to give me some under the counter advice. ‘You could go across to Surry Hills and Redfern, there are a few factories there that have been putting men on, textile workshops, one or two which have lately got contracts with some of the big city stores, long hours and working for Syrians, but good enough for some. You said you have machine work experience, so that might be the ticket for you.’

  Lebbo work. And it might well be the ticket for me if I could go back to the Neighbourhood. I can’t go back there; I can’t take Aggie back there. But I can’t say anything about it to this fella, either; I can only ask him: ‘There’s not anywhere else?’

  He rolls his eyes, thinking I’m some kind of bludger, too good for a Lebbo sweatshop. ‘There’s always farm work, for a fit young bloke. They’re crying out for hands at Windsor and Penrith, Blacktown, and further afield – cherry pickers are needed most urgently at Mudgee for the Christmas crop, if you really want to know. But that’s hard work, isn’t it?’

  Fuck you behind your high and mighty counter. I could grab him by the tie and smack his face into it. But I can’t do that, either. I can only turn away from him.

  And rip a card off one of the boards on my way out, just to tell him what I reckon.

  Then clear off quickly, grabbing Ag from behind the door on the way through.

  She says on my hip: ‘Did you get a job,
Yoey?’

  ‘Not yet,’ I tell her. I’ve got one voice in my head telling me to give this up, get myself to Redfern; while the other voice can’t speak at all for showing me Michael’s boots jumping on the kitchen table to the Devil’s beat. I tell Ag: ‘I’ll get a job soon. After we go and have that tram ride, yeah?’

  ‘Now, you mean?’ she says, throwing her arms around my neck: please.

  ‘Right now,’ I tell her. ‘We’ll go to one of them big city stores, get you some buckle shoes now too, yeah?’ Fuck this, let’s go shopping, why not?

  ‘Yeah.’ She kicks my backside to make me go faster back round to the Quay, and I’m praying again: please, Lord, I’m not asking for myself. Get me a job for Aggie.

  We get on the first tram we find, a Pitt Street one, which I’m supposing will take us past that biggest store, Hordern’s, at Brickfield Hill. We won’t be able to miss it: it’s that big it’s a whole block. Worth the price of the tram ticket already, though: when the bell goes ding as the tram moves off anyone’d think this was the best day of Agnes O’Keenan’s life.

  I’m still holding that card from the Labour Exchange in my hand as I set Ag down on a seat and I’m just about to scrunch it up into my pocket when I see what’s written on it:

  LABOURERS WANTED FOR SYDNEY HARBOUR BRIDGEWORKS. BOILERWORKER & IRONWORKER GANG ASSISTANTS. PERMANENT POSITIONS TO SUITABLE APPLICANTS. £4 /17/6 to £6/5/-. PER WEEK. APPLY IN PERSON AT PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT, PUBLIC ENTRANCE, BRIDGE STREET.

  I stare at it like it could well be £6/5/- there in my hand. Even less believable that it’s for labouring. Too good to be true, and you’d have to be registered to go for it, wouldn’t you, but I’ll have to see about that for myself, won’t I. After I’ve taken Ag to Hordern’s, and taken myself to a barber. I need a shave and a haircut before I apply in person for anything. I could do with a new shirt, too, if I can stretch our resources, wasn’t wearing my best when we set off yesterday evening: it’s grey, and not originally that colour, missing a button and starting to rip through at the elbows.

  I look out the window and past all the la-di-da arcades and restaurants I see the great shopping palace of Hordern’s coming up ahead at the next cross-street, and I grab Ag up again: ‘Here’s the stop for buckle shoes.’ And as we get near it I see there’s a sale banner strung on the corner verandah posts.

  ‘BARGAINS ALL DAY FRIDAY – UNTIL 9 PM. LAST CHANCE BEFORE CHRISTMAS!’ Ag reads it out, almost shouting with the excitement of it, and I say: ‘Isn’t that lucky for us, then?’

  As well as a good majority of the women of Sydney, I see. The place is swarming, and I stand at the doors for a moment, doubtful we can go in. Swarming with flowers: these women in their shiny shoes, their hats of every colour. They’re all just people, I tell myself, ordinary people, wives and mothers hunting for a bargain, but it looks like another world. It is another world. We can’t afford it here; this is not a place for us.

  ‘Yo-Yo, see,’ Ag is pointing at a sign inside the doors. ‘Children’s wear on the third floor.’ She’s a good girl with her reading, isn’t she? And that gets me through the doors, knowing that Sister Joe will be missing Ag today, this last day of school, missing out on never giving Ag a prize for her reading, the sour old bitch. Ag’s never going back to that shitful school. She’s getting buckle shoes instead.

  Up the escalators we go then, and I can say that I have never been so put off my stride in such a way as this in my life. The bright lights, and the noise, and all these women going everywhere, with all their perfumes enough to knock you about. Still, they are so busy at what they’re getting on with, they don’t seem to see us, the unshaven lout and the shoeless child. Who slept under a tree in a park last night. Please, don’t let that be where Aggie sleeps tonight.

  ‘Oh Yoey, look at the red ones! Can I get them? Please?’ she says and we’ve barely stepped off the escalator.

  ‘Near half price, those ones are, dear.’ A lady comes up beside us, an older lady, small and slight with round eyeglasses, and a keen eye for a customer.

  I say to her: ‘We want a pair of them then,’ and I hold her stare for second: Don’t you chuck us out.

  But she just smiles over them eyeglasses at us: ‘What an adorable imp you have there, look at those lush dark curls.’ Not clear if she’s meaning me or Ag, or both. We’re all the same to her anyway, I suppose, and by the time she’s finished with us, Ag’s got a pair of red buckle shoes, a dress with yellow flowers on it, a blue cardigan, and socks for a bob thrown in too. All for less than a pound and she looks something better than adorable. She’s looking down at the new buckle shoes on her feet as I pay for them: this is the best day of her life. I don’t care that we can’t afford it. She looks like one of them rosy-cheeked little girls on a billboard for Sunlight soap. And she’s not sleeping in a fucking park tonight.

  We leave Ag’s old clothes with the shop lady, and I hope she burns them too. ‘Merry Christmas, sir, and little miss,’ she says, and we say, ‘Merry Christmas to you.’

  Right. We’re off to this Public Works place now, and I’m going to get that job. I get a new shirt from the ground floor for eight bob, good-looking white one too, and barbering of my own woolly head for four – with directions to Bridge Street for free. ‘Public Works?’ the barber says. ‘It’s just around off Macquarie Street, big building, can’t miss it, across from the Gardens.’

  ‘The Botanic Gardens?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Right. And I’m smiling, because this must be my job, I must have dreamed it into our tomorrow last night.

  It must show in me, too, because not fifteen minutes later, past the crowd of the registered unemployed outside Parliament House shouting ‘WE WANT WORK’ against a line of unhappy cops, I’m being looked over by a fella at this Department of Public Works, and he’s saying: ‘Yes, there’s one vacancy left, needs filling urgently – can’t seem to keep a man at it. Ever done any heavy work?’

  And although the honest answer is no, not lately and not much, I have to say, ‘Yes, heavy work is my calling,’ and he doesn’t even ask me for references, never mind any registration. He looks busy; come out of an office somewhere beyond the counter and he just wants a man for the job so he can get back to his own. I am in the right place at the right time, thank you, Lord. Two pounds left in my pocket and saved in the nick.

  He says: ‘You look fit enough, I suppose. Get yourself to the loading dock by the Dorman Long workshops at the north arm tomorrow morning at seven-thirty – the wharves at the Milsons Point shops, right?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I nod; I’ll find them wherever they might be.

  He says: ‘Speak to Mr Matt Harrison at the office there, he’s the foreman in charge of the ironworker gangs and he’ll give you a go.’

  Give me a go at what I don’t know, and I don’t push my luck to ask. I’m that grateful, I could jump the counter to lick his boots. He gives me a piece of paper to give to this Mr Harrison, and I tell him: ‘You won’t be sorry you gave me a go, sir.’

  ‘No, I’m sure I won’t be sorry. You might be, though, lad. Six pound five a week and you’ll know you’ve earned every farthing.’ He’s already turned away from me.

  ‘Merry Christmas,’ I tell the back of him: and no, sir, I won’t be sorry, whatever this job might be. It’s six blessed pounds, five shillings a week for me. I’m going to rent us a little house somewhere good and we’ll live like kings.

  I pick Aggie up from where she’s waiting for me, picture of sunlight behind the foyer doors.

  ‘Did you get a job?’ She looks up at me with those big blue wondering eyes of hers.

  And I could cry for happiness and all the madness of hoping as I tell her: ‘Yes I did, Ag, I got a job.’

  She nods, pleased, then she asks me: ‘Can we have egg and chips for lunch, then?’

  I tell her: ‘You can have whatever you want.
’ I’ll be having a smoke next, whatever I do, and not thinking about an ale to chase it. Jesus, I will not have an ale while I am alive.

  My sister says: ‘Could you put me down, please, Yoey? You might crush my new frock.’

  And I reckon I could live for the next hundred years on that alone.

  Olivia

  Hm, what about a smart von Drécoll-ish coat-dress? I wonder as I drape my bolt of blue heaven over the back of the chaise. I’d ask Mother to come out and give me her opinion, but I’m still avoiding her. She’s in the stockroom, running up the kimono to my specifications, and I’m truly sorry about my shrieking tantrum but I still don’t want to face it: him. Marry him? Ludicrous. Dinner at the Merrick tomorrow night? No. Absolutely not. Can’t think about it. What about contrasting collar and cuffs, then: white, or perhaps a purple? That smart shade of heliotrope that’s everywhere in Milan at the minute? Or maybe just a simple Lanvin-ish shift instead – boat-neck? And then I decide no altogether – the fabric itself is too much for Min Bromley’s going-away frock, it would swamp her colouring and her tiny figure. I’m not even going to show it to her when she comes in at four this afternoon. It’s for someone else. Or perhaps not a frock at all . . .

  The shop bell dings and I’m happy for the interruption: more busyness to avoid Mother with. It’s been all hats this morning, my department, all middlings wanting a little something special for church, emphasis on the little, and fiddly, pernickety trims. I’ll be cross-eyed with horsehair froth and spider daisies – cheap but very effective. Might do something a bit special for Mrs Ebbert, though, of Ebbert’s Confectionary in the Royal – word is, they’re not doing well at all, badly positioned there on the first floor, too, and she’s such a pleasant lady. Like Mrs Wilton, of Wilton’s Ladies’ Tailor on the first floor here, middling of middlings, and she’s losing hers to Hordern’s House of Economy ready-made today. When I turn, though, it’s not a customer.