The Blue Mile (29 page)

Yo

‘
L
ang is Right! Lang is Right!' You couldn't shout against it if you were monkey-nutted enough to try. This crowd in the Domain is a thousand strong, at least, and most of them have left their women at home. I've counted at least thirty cops, and Lang's not even here today. If he was there'd be ten thousand turned up and I wouldn't have.

I look at Mr Adams beside me: I'm giving up my Sunday afternoon to this? What for? A fight? The Labor Party can do that without my contribution, fighting itself three ways now, over this Lang Plan: New South Wales Bank Robbery Labor is breaking from Federal Labor, which is fucking itself up backwards on its way out of Canberra, and now there's this other new lot breaking off the main party and joined with the Nationalists, calling itself the United Australia Party. There's nothing united about Australia. And I'm just shitful about it. They're letting the Nationalists win, by whatever name they call themselves, and that means I'm not going to get a living wage if I get lucky enough to work for the dole when I lose my job. When, not if. But Mr Adams doesn't look at me. He's full of faith, pumping his fist in the air with the rest of them: ‘Lang is Right! Lang is Right!'

The fella on the podium is waving for everyone to shut up for two minutes to let him go on. He's something do to with the Federal ALP lot, though he's a Bank Robbery supporter; I don't care who he is, going on again now: ‘It is wrong to denounce the Lang Plan as too drastic. It is too mild by far. The time has arrived for Australia to demand the entire cancellation of all war debts in conjunction with other Allied Powers. The –'

‘Lang is Right! Lang is Right!'

Righto. I'm having an epiphany: I see how it is the rich get rich now. They don't stand around in parks pointlessly shouting slogans on Sunday afternoons. When there are smarter things to do, such as studying for a Mechanical Principles examination that might become completely irrelevant to me when I lose my apprenticeship anyway. Another two minutes and we get another sentence: ‘The war debts are discreditable and sordid obligations which should never have existed!'

‘Lang is Right! Lang is Right!'

Or I could be at Olivia's. She's making Ag's costume for the school play today. Ag's going to be a girl called Elsie in something called
Make-Believe.
She gets to say:
What a lovely princess,
and wear a petticoat skirt. Olivia had me cutting the bits of material for it before I left them this morning, saving her some time.
I want to keep you in the sideboard and have you cutting for me always,
she said.
You've got a tailor's hand, I tell you – true and sure.
And a lot easier than cutting boot leather as I've done a thousand times before. I'd rather be at Balmain on my own today, though, finishing off the present I'm making her for her birthday, next Thursday, the sixteenth of April: I'm making her a shoe rack from pipe offcuts. Olivia has thirty-four pairs of shoes. I've done a pattern of flowers and leaves in tin up the sides, so it'll be her shoe garden. It's tall as a baker's stand, don't know how I'll get it across on the ferry. Don't know how it is she can be only twenty. That's almost as amazing as the fact of anyone having thirty-four pair of shoes. When we met, she only had two good pairs, she told me; now she's keeping the shoe shop in the arcade afloat. Things turn around, don't they; you just have to work hard and hang on. You can't let it eat you. You can't let the bastards have you. Listen to Mrs Buddle telling Olivia every Sunday she sees her what a lucky girl she is to have found me. Is she? How am I going to stay afloat? I got my fifteen shilling raise I was due, and it's taken the pressure off a bit. But for how long? I could just walk off forever for the wonder of that. I know my hours will get cut down again soon and then cut altogether. What am I going to do if I can't find another job? How am I going to pay my debts then? The gas bill, my credit up at the grocers, the milko . . . What will I do? Cut out petticoat skirts inside Olivia's sideboard? Not in this life.

The fella on the podium has his voice cracking with it: ‘Is it just or even reasonable that our grandchildren and great-grandchildren should be condemned to perpetual servitude in attempts to pay millions annually to the chief beneficiaries of the war? Are Australian citizens truly expected to tamely and indefinitely tolerate preferential treatment to every country but Australia? These bankers are confidence men. Tricksters and highway bandits! Bankrupt of all morality! Support the Lang Plan!'

‘Lang is Right! Lang is Right!'

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

‘Come on,' I say under my breath. I want to get going so I don't lose the whole of the afternoon to this. I want to get to Olivia's to get the roast on, too. She's always late getting it in the oven if we have it over there and it's the only meat me and Ag get all week,
Don't tell Olivia that, Ag – she'd be ‘appalled', wouldn't she?
The cops are looking to be of the same mind, after their dinner. But Mr Adams is still pumping the air. I look around the crowd again. Tarzan and Clarkie aren't here; neither's Dolly: because they don't do every last little thing Mr Adams tells them to.

‘Lang is Right! Lang is Right!'

We've all got the idea, and the Governor's heard you now, too.

‘Greater than Lenin! Lang is Right! Greater than Lenin! Lang is Right!'

For fuck's sake. I'm just reaching over to touch Mr Adams on the shoulder to tell him I'll be off when they stop anyway and he decides: ‘Good enough, lads.' Shaking some hands, saying some words about nipping United Australia in the bud, and saying to me: ‘Well, let's not hang about then.'

No, let's not. We walk up across the lawns of the Domain and we're almost up behind the big library, across from the gates to the Gardens there. I can't see them gates without thinking of that first night Ag and I spent there –
those
gates. Ag's started correcting my manner of speech, as if I don't know the right way to say things.

I'm wondering if that old bent paling in the fence might still be up there when I see this fella step in our path now, saying something that sounds like: ‘You don't like paying your debts, eh?'

‘What did you say?' I ask him innocently, because I don't know that I heard him right.

‘Keep walking,' says Mr Adams to me, and I see it's not just one fella – it's half-a-dozen.

Another of them comes up beside the first one, saying: ‘An honourable man would consider welshing on a debt to the King as treason.' He's got an educated manner of speaking, but his shirt collar is greasy and his suit has seen better times. He's maybe thirty and a big bastard, broader than Tarz even.

Twice my age and twice my size, he steps in front of me: ‘Are you an honourable man?'

Mr Adams puts a hand up in peace, between us: ‘No trouble here. Good day to you.'

I look behind me. Jesus. A minute ago we were a thousand. Now we are two. Against six – no, seven, as another steps out from behind the nearest fig.

‘But you are making trouble,' the first one says, ‘Irishman.'

‘No. No trouble,' Mr Adams tells him plainly. ‘But I can make some, if you'd like.' He looks the big bastard over, making a point of looking hard at some badge pinned on his coat, and he says to him in particular: ‘I've learned a thing or two about trouble, most of it in the Connaught Rangers.'

I'm more surprised at that than the standovers in front of us. The Connaught Rangers? That's a military regiment, legendary, the only one I've ever known of: otherwise called the Devil's Own, ask Father Madigan why and you'll be told they're all saints and martyrs to Erin for their mutiny against the Imperialists. The pit-bull stare Mr Adams is giving these fellas back is enough to say it's true: have a go and I'll rip your faces off.

While the rest of his own face is smiling: ‘I don't know,' he says, so steady and plain it's a threat in itself, ‘it might have escaped your attention that we have our own parliament in Australia these days. We have our own laws and none of them say it's treason not to bend over and let the Bank of England give it to you up the arse.' He looks at the big one again, talking to that badge on his coat: ‘Maybe you like it that way, ay?' he asks him, just as steady and plain: ‘You like it up the arse?'

So one of the fellas behind can't stop himself from laughing. Then they're all put off.

‘Watch yourself,' the first one says as we start walking. ‘We'll be watching you.'

When we're a good distance off, I breathe out: ‘Who the fuck was that?'

‘I don't know,' says Mr Adams, but he'll find out. ‘That bloke, the big one – he's ex-army. AIF pin on his coat.'

That doesn't mean much to me. I say, still in awe: ‘That was a skilful performance.'

Mr Adams laughs with a big breath out too: ‘Performance is right.'

I ask him: ‘Connaught Rangers?' Can't be true; can it? When I was a kid, I'd have got on a ship to India to join them: Irish heroes. I dreamed I'd be a drummer in their pipe band. Got the job stacking bottles at Quirks instead, and I believe the Rangers changed their stripes for the IRA soon after.

Mr Adams shakes his potato head and waves it off: ‘Mistake of my life, that one, and a summer in France I'll never get back.' Holding up his hand to the sun in peace: ‘But we all do some arse-brained things along the way to learning, don't we?'

Olivia

‘
Y
ou're so good with that sort of thing – matching and knowing what goes,' Mrs Bloxom is imploring. Scheming: her gloved thumb pressed to the back of my hand: ‘Warwick would be so grateful, dear.'

Warwick has just purchased an apartment at Point Piper, above Seven Shillings Beach. I'm gratified to know that it cost almost two thousand pounds: real estate prices are not suffering from close Bridge views. But I am not going to decorate Warwick's apartment for him. Because this is not about decorating Warwick's apartment. It's about Mrs Bloxom's pursuit of me for her son. It has turned from mildly and amusingly relentless to vaguely threatening now: the pressure of her thumb on my hand is making my skin prickle all the way up my arm.

I tell the fox trim at her gauntlet, and firmly: ‘Interior design is not my sort of thing, Mrs Bloxom – I can't bear wallpaper, I'm afraid.'

‘Oh?' she's sceptical, fingernails pinch through the heavy cocoa charmeuse with the squeeze. ‘I'd be mindful not to pretend I was too far above anything if I were you,
dear.
' She almost meows it.

‘Oh?' I reply. My poker face is set but my heart is racing. She knows something. My first fear is Eoghan. She's found out. How? Someone has seen us. It had to happen. It's all right; I straighten my back. I won't deny it. My heart lies with a Catholic tradesman, not your flop-fringed fop. Oh but dear God this heart is racing, Phar Lap in full gallop, thundering with panic. I haven't even told Glor of our engagement. Why haven't I? Because Glor is expecting her first baby in December and I don't want to overexcite her. What rubbish. It's now late October and I haven't told anyone because – Because we agreed we'd wait to see Father O'Reagan in December, making it a year, before making our intentions official. What rubbish. I've been keeping this secret so close to my chest, as if it were made of antique glass. Stand beside him? I've done whatever it takes to wrap him in tissue and box him in the stockroom. So careful, I haven't even had Agnes here at the salon after school. Too busy, I've said; too dangerous to be wandering around town in the evenings. Rubbish. Too dangerous for whom? Me. Because –

‘Nothing lasts forever.' The fox trim sweeps up theatrically, releasing my hand, and Mrs Bloxom's gaze is cold on me as she declares: ‘Don't be surprised if the Games are recalled to London any day, Olivia.'

‘What?' I say, and I almost etherise with relief. ‘Ha!' but it explodes from me. Mrs Bloxom is only being a catty old B about the Games: Sydney's favourite new sport – that is, if you're a Nationalist or whatever the conservatives call themselves these days. Mrs Bloxom is their chief mastermind – of course it's all Lady Game's fault that her husband won't dismiss that treacherous Mr Lang in the name of the King – and as well, she's still not forgiven me for breaking that appointment with her last April: she presumes I was running off to Government House, as I occasionally must do, but I was actually malingering: day after my birthday and I stayed at home that Friday to play with my shoe garden. So happy. I smile at Mrs Bloxom and her silly presumptions now, give her the full blast of almost a year's worth of mostly wonderful Sundays and sweet blue miles of dreams.

Mrs Bloxom snips: ‘Not a laughing matter, dear.'

And I turn as quickly: ‘No, indeed it's not a laughing matter.' I give her my imperious best, which is less than the Fickle Witches of Upper Sydney deserve. These women, Mrs Bloxom at their vanguard, who are obsequious sycophants one moment and snubbing Lady Game en masse the next. Lady Game almost let a tear fall telling me what happened at the art gallery function in June: every woman turned her back when she entered the room, and when she got home she'd found she'd been uninvited to some event or other with the Country Women's Band of Bigots. I say exactly what Lady Game told me that day: ‘It's not the Governor's business to dismiss an elected premier, Mrs Bloxom. We live in a democracy – one that even the King cares to uphold.'

‘Here we are.' Coralie emerges from the stockroom now, beribboned parcel in hand: the bottle of Lelong's N which Mrs Bloxom has come in for.

Not here for any of that now. Mrs Bloxom narrows her already narrow eyes at me. Her top lip quivers with her bile: ‘You little upstart.'

‘No.' I stand straighter than I ever have, and decency stands beside me as I let go of decorum, let go entirely at this nasty, grasping dowager of moral decay: ‘You are the upstart, Mrs Bloxom. You criticise Lady Game? When was the last time
you
had the homeless of the Domain line up for leftovers at your back door? When was the last time
you
went down to the Happy Valley shanties to have tea and cake with barefoot children at La Perouse? Hm? When did
you
last visit a women's prison to see what might be done to help and heal? For this is what Lady Game does for this city as a matter of course – these are the entries in her diary. If the likes of you shun her back to London, I shall go with her.'

That last was perhaps a bridge too far, but the rest of it I heartily mean. Mrs Bloxom is lost to her outrage and I will not step away from this. Gwendolen Game is the closest thing we have to a saint in this city. An exemplary Lady, ceaselessly at work and concerned for others. Ceaselessly damn well impressive. While it's her husband's job merely to put on his feathered hat and ceremonial sword and appear at official openings, be the subject of hooray bunting and otherwise stroll the Domain with his dog saying good afternoon to the hoboes his wife fed earlier in the day. What must Lady Game think of our egalitarianism now? That we are all equally cruel and stupid and mean? She is too polite to say. I shall say it for her. ‘Alternatively, Mrs Bloxom, if you don't like the way this nation is run, then you could always go Home yourself, couldn't you?'

That's a skewering right to the bone for Mrs Bloxom: she doesn't have any such thing as a home in London, and she well knows it. That's the only reason she's ever been after me for Warwick, so that she can pretend she's connected. To Mother England. To a viscount. Any damn scrap of aristocratic flotsam will do. She has the senator husband with the knighthood, the son who will be PM, and she wants the Honourable daughter-in-law to make up the trifecta of confected self-importance. I seethe, most honourably: I hear the air suck in through my teeth and I am a breath away from demanding she leave my salon before I throw her out, and I don't care if she takes every fat overpowdered witch in this city with her. Oh, but if I were a different girl I'd tell her the Hardys and all of Mosman think her Warwick is a confirmed bachelor, because rumour has it on good authority he's a little more theatrical than a barrister ought to be, behind closed chambers doors – nudgy nudge, wink wink, have a banana.

Mrs Bloxom points her finger at me, head witch that she is, and she warns: ‘The Premier will be dismissed. You mark my words, he will be dismissed.'

I snort as she turns: as if Mrs Bloxom has any power to do any such thing. Parliament isn't the Merrick Jazz Room: you can't squeeze it out of business because it's not to your taste. But my righteousness is already fading into fear. Damn. There goes Olivia Couture. I want to say: You'll be sorry. Dowdy lump you were before I came along. I gave you your calf-length hem, those fox trims and sling-backs. If it weren't for me you'd still be wearing Bourjois' Ashes of Roses and a crepe chaff bag, like the common pile of phlergh you truly are.

And she will never appreciate it, ch
é
rie. Let her go back to Bourjois.

‘Oh, Ollie,' Coralie touches my hand, consoling, and I turn to her. She's sixteen now, plumpness giving way to some gorgeous angles at her cheeks and jaw but the child remaining says we're just two little girls here, playing dress-ups. Rolling Arabian eyes: ‘Who needs her?'

‘We do.' I take the parcel of perfume from her and unwrap it. But I don't put the bottle of N back in the cabinet. I unplink the stopper and dab a spot on my wrist, and inhale, to force the calm back into myself. It's a crisp, dry scent, Lelong's N: jasmine, magnolia and a hint of freshly chopped firewood. Forthright. I should grow up and grow out of Coty's lolly-water Lily and start wearing N myself. Indeed from this moment I think I shall. So long as I can afford it.

Stop that thought: Mrs Bloxom has no more say over what goes in my business than the Nationalists do in the business of the King. I say what goes.

I say to Coralie: ‘Let's start on the pattern for Liz Hardy's engagement, hm?'

‘Yes, let's.' Coralie is all for that – it's mostly her design, a little fishtail kick, a little Hollywood diamante sprinkle, and Liz will adore it. The Mosman set will adore it: must.

‘Clear the decks then and I'll go down and get that Fuji for it now.' Lush bolt of champagne that came in yesterday; we'll need at least ten yards.

Down to the Emporium I scoot against fears, and my footsteps clatter round the stairwell, echoing through the empty arcade. It's three o'clock on a Thursday afternoon, and although it's October and this month is always a little bit quiet, it's too quiet. Even the grocery shop that's taken over where Duke's Men & Boys used to be looks empty. Even Mr Jabour is down on ordering and he's sticking more with plains and standards. Something must be done to put money in the till, and urgently. Belt-tightening is not working; everything is only getting skinnier, except for the department stores, as Mr Jabour predicted. The state is broke; public servants unpaid. Are they meant to work for free? How can spending less on government solve that? Sack Mr Lang, and sack all the public servants, and then what? Have them work for the dole? Take the Child Endowment away and let babies starve? How will that generate money? How will that keep Eoghan in a job?

How can the Fickle Witches of this world not see all this happening? Too busy closing their eyes on the lift down, counting their savings on the ever-diminishing cost of hired help.
Never had so many servants, Deirdre, half a pound of peanuts each.
And they call Premier Lang evil. He's only asking for a reduction in the interest rate of some fraction of a percent, isn't he? Peanuts. America has asked Britain for the same sort of consideration, and got it. Because it's merely simple business sense, isn't it? How is that wrong? Questions jumbling over questions. Why can't the British bondholders damn well wait for their money? They can
afford
to. Why do so many in our government think paying this debt is more important than feeding a child? Don't they care that people are suffering? Where is the compassion? Gone up in a puff of Commonwealth Bank cigar smoke, or rather trapped in the ruins of the Bank of New South Wales:
Terribly sorry, Madam, your life savings appear to have been permanently misplaced
. But what would I know about any of this myself? What's the difference between the Gold Standard and the Goods Standard to me? Ten yards of your finest lamé. What is money anyway but an utterly fabricated squiggly wisp of magic-carpet fluff?

Of which I know the basic principles well enough. No money in the till: no business. No nerve to stick to your guns: no business. Too much nerve: no business as you've just shot yourself in the head. Oh dear God. What have I done letting fly at Mrs Bloxom? Mother will be so pleased to hear of the salon's demise: she might well exert parental rights and put me on a ship. I haven't even told her about the grocery shop moving in here: she'd be appalled. Raise wrist to schnonk: smell the N, Olivia: be calm. After this coming April, Mother can't do anything at all. I'll be twenty-one and free. Utterly. To fall on my face as I see fit.

I'm going to ask Mr Jabour what he thinks of all this mess, get myself a good dose of Levantine business wisdom. It's time I asked him about work for Eoghan, too. Beyond time. The road through the arch is all but complete, and Eoghan's been looking for a place, to no avail. Everyone he knows, at the workshops, and at the technical college, is keeping an eye out for him, and there's just nothing out there. The unemployment figure is creeping ever further up to thirty percent, for God's sake. But there
must
be something for Eoghan. If he can't find something suitable in the metal trades, he can't keep on with his apprenticeship, and if he can't finish that, I can't have him. There's a basic principle. And another: he won't work for me; that's just a silly stitching dream in denial of masculine pride. He won't even let me measure him for a new coat. But Mr Jabour, on the other hand – he has his genie fingers in all sorts of pies. Mr Jabour is going to be terribly shocked when I unplink this news of boy. Barrister or boilermaker. Hm . . . I don't know what it's like to have a father that cares about such things. I think I'm about to find out. And I shall: stand beside my man, whatever the future brings, beginning now. This minute.

But Mr Jabour isn't here.

‘Hidee, Ol.' Velma smiles and turns when she sees me in the sideboard mirror. So quiet in here she's taken to spring-cleaning. She waves, dust cloth in one hand, stopper of the brass bottle in the other. The glass rubies and sapphires twinkle under the overhead chandelier but there's no genie laughter. Only silence today.