The Blue Mile (35 page)

Yo

G
et back to the Devil, you stinking sack of
. . .
some Ulster Gaelainn I don't quite catch. Mr Adams has the back of my neck in his iron grip. He has my face pressed into the bricks of the wall by his front door. I don't open my mouth for certainty that in doing so I will lose teeth.

He says, in English: ‘You derelict, verminous son of a –'

That is what I am.

‘You dare turn up here? You think I don't know where you've been? What you've been doing with them Commie mongrel sons of –'

‘Wal, leave him,' Mrs Adams comes out the door: ‘Leave the poor boy be.'

But he'll have his gobful out an inch from my ear: ‘To leave your sister for that – for fighting. For what?'

I can't disagree with him but I can't yet reply either: the grains of the brick are one with the skin of my face now.

‘Let him go, Wal,' Mrs Adams lowers her voice with some threat I've never heard from her before. ‘Let him go, unless by some mistake you were made a saint yourself today.'

He lets me go; for Mrs Adams is actually a saint.

I turn around. His pit-bull head stares back at me not with hatred now. Worse: disappointment.

He says: ‘You should have come to us.'

I know that. But I didn't. I couldn't. I had to work this out my own way. I don't know why. I can only say: ‘I'm here now.'

‘What do you want, then?' Mr Adams is not going to fatten the lamb for this prodigal. His iron-forged arms across his chest, still telling me to fuck off.

I say: ‘My sister. Can I see her?'

‘No, you cannot,' he says, ‘She's with the girl, Miss Greene – they're off abroad.'

‘What?' No. Jesus. Please. I never thought –
Olivia?
What are you doing to me now? Abroad? No, I don't believe what I just heard. That fella at the court said it was a family adopting her. The Adamses had to be adopting her. ‘You're saying Ag's not here?'

‘You don't deserve –'

‘Wal Adams, you are a cruel man when you've a mind to be.' Mrs Adams steps down beside him and says to me: ‘Aggie's only across the way, at Lavender Bay. They don't leave for another week.'

‘Leave for where?'

‘London.'

Horseshit she's leaving for London, I'm thinking, but Mrs Adams is saying it's true with all the kindness in her eyes. What I think is no longer applicable. I've lost Ag. I'm too late. From the first step I took running from her, too late.

But Mrs Adams is telling me now: ‘Go on then – go and speak with Olivia, sort it all out.'

‘Mum – Mummy!' Kenny is calling out inside. ‘My button is loose!'

‘In a moment, my love, we'll fix it,' she says to him over her shoulder and then she says to me: ‘Wait a second, Eoghan.' She steps back into her hall and then back out again, handing me something. ‘I kept your mail for you. I knew you'd be back. See?'

I look at the letters in my hand. Two of them. Won't be anything important; probably my eviction notice and termination of employ with Dorman Long, but Mrs Adams is telling me: ‘You're a good lad. Go and make things good.'

I could kneel at her feet for a few hours first but instead I just stand here, like the emptiest spoon that ever was, shoving the letters into my coat pockets, one in each fist, crushing them with my shame.

‘Good enough, lad,' Mr Adams gives me a shove. ‘Go on. Off you go.'

Olivia

I
'
m in a dream. I've left the window open and the venetians are knocking in the breeze. Cross with myself even through this sleep:
You left the window open onto the street?
I've never done such a reckless thing. But I am rather preoccupied at present, aren't I. I've fallen asleep in my clothes, too, I realise: I can feel my belt buckle twisted and digging into my side. Hundred things on my mind: counting trunks, on and off a thousand ships. I feel Agnes still there under my arm, dreaming on, and all is well. All right. I rouse and blink into the dark, feeling across her for the cord to lift the blind and –

Tap tap tap
. . .
It's not the blind.

It's . . .

‘Olivia – Olivia, are you there?' through the mail slot up the hall.

That can't be. I blink again.

‘It's me – Eoghan.'

No. It's not. But it is. Before I've sat up, a bolt of anger has flashed and smashed through me.

I straighten my blouse and my skirt; smooth the tempest of my hair.

I open the door. I only want to check.

It's him. In silhouette, with the light from the ferry steps behind, collar of his duffel coat turned up against the night, black on black. Damn shoulderline. Damn him.

I say: ‘Go away.' Cold as the air.

I shut the door; shut him away.

Slip back into bed beside Agnes: to check again. She is here, with me; there will be no upsetting our plans, our calm sea:
go away
. I breathe in the sweet scent of her hair . . . our camomile shampoo. Will they sell it in Piccadilly? It's the only one that doesn't crisp my –

‘Was that someone at the door?' she whispers.

‘No,' I whisper back. ‘It was just the wind.'

I lift the bottom of the blinds and see the toes of his boots; his knees: he's sitting on the front step. Oh dear God, it is Eoghan. Not a dream. He's come back. My heart swings through several breakneck revolutions of joy and fear. And crashes back into rage.

Damn you.

DAMN YOU.

He has no right to come back. No right at all.

My heart is hammering as I plummet now into relief, into the want of folding him into me and never letting him go again. I want to run to him and hold him safe from whatever harm kept him from us all this time.

I close my eyes, shut them tight, see him dangling by a thread against the sky:
You can stay out there for a good while yet.

Yo

I
don't beg, though it's that cold now, a man less warmed by his own disgrace might die here. On this damp stone step, must be four or five hours now or more. But I will sit here, I'll stay here until . . . Until I'm told to clear off. I stare out over the harbour, into the black. The lamps along the Bridge road are floating in the night like a string of ghosts: sad. A train goes across the span, and with the stillness that follows its clattering comes the full power of my shame.

I can't blame Olivia if she never wants to see me again. Who would want to? I only want to see Ag, before they leave. That's all I will ask and then I'll leave them be. I should know where they're going, too, so that in time I'll make myself worthy enough to follow, so that I can know my sister. That's all I want, Lord. Please. Let me remain in my sister's heart, in some small way. If you grant me this, I'll join the seminary. I'll be a priest. I'll be a good one, too. One that doesn't drink; one that bans the form guide from consecrated ground. A bargain that brings the Lord to speak to me directly now, for the first time in my life and unhappily:
No, you will not become a priest, O'Keenan – I don't want you darkening my door either.
No, I don't suppose you do. Apart from every other sin I've committed lately, I haven't been to Mass for more than six months.

Six months.

Six fucking months? What was I doing? How am I going to make it up? What penance? Any penance. Tell me. Whatever you want me to do, Lord, I will do.

He goes silent on me again and my hand goes to my pocket, to roll another smoke I don't want. Before I do I feel the letter there in that pocket and take it out; strike a match against it with the intention of burning it. I don't know why: mad. Cold. Fucking freezing. My hands are shaking and not only from the cold when I see in the light from the flame that this letter was addressed to Myrtle Street. Chippendale. It's been crossed out and found Fawcett Street via the presbytery at St Gus's. Now found me here, finally, on Olivia's doorstep. I don't ever remember getting a letter from anyone at all in Chippendale.

I'm just about to open it when the door opens behind me. Olivia.

‘Get inside,' she says. ‘You'll freeze to death.' The tone of her voice says there'd be a bother for her in having the body removed if I did.

I stand up and see her now, in the light coming through from the sitting room, though she won't look at me. She's tying a ribbon round her hair to take it from her face. Her hair has grown, the waves of it curling down to her shoulders, and it's more golden. She's more beautiful than ever and something else . . . her skirt is as crushed as the letter in my fist and her shoulders are hunched round, hunched away from me with worry. The worry of what I'm bringing her here. I resist saying anything at all.

She says: ‘I'll put the kettle on.'

I follow her out to the kitchen, where she points to the table: ‘Sit down.'

Then she turns to me, with the full power of Oonagh in a fury now: ‘Well? Speak.'

‘Olivia, I . . .' What else can I tell her but that: ‘I made a mistake.'

‘Indeed you did,' she says, slamming the tea caddy into the bench by the sink so I can feel how much that hurt her hand. She says: ‘I got you a job, you know – friend of Gloria's brother-in-law. At Tycoon Clothing – shirt-making machine thing.'

‘You did?' As if that's at the top of the list of reasons I shouldn't have gone off as I did.

‘Embarrass me, hurt – you. Horrible. What was I to –? Hateful. Stup– not to mention.'

For all that she can't get the words out, I nod at every one.

As Ag comes in through the sitting room in her nightgown, rubbing her eyes to see that it's true: ‘Yoey?'

She narrows her eyes when she sees that it is; then she turns her shoulder to me too:
You bastard.

Olivia

H
e falls to his knees from the kitchen chair. ‘Ag. I'm sorry,' he says, and in such a torment I see that however he's betrayed her, he's paying for it, and will continue to do so for a good while yet if Agnes's sustained glare of contempt is any indication. He's so pale, so thin; scooped out. He looks to me: ‘If you think it's best, I'll come back, later, in the day. It's –'

‘No! Don't go!' Agnes throws herself at him now, her arms clinched desperately around his neck, and the revolutions tumble round and round again in me, between alleluia and how bloody dare you. Look at you: filthy fingernails, trousers smeared with oily grime. And your coat stinks like some feral animal yet to be formally identified.

I rub my eyes and ask the back of my lids: ‘What now?' Our passage is booked. My life is half-packed. I can't remain in Sydney. Not
now
. Not even –

‘Now is whatever you want it be, Olivia,' Eoghan replies. ‘I've not come here to make claims on anyone. I know you've made your own plans. The Adamses said you were off to . . .'

I look at him through my fingers, through my weary delirium: his every breath is a claim on me, a claim on all my plans.

And now he smiles. I tumble into his left dimple. Good God, truly: what now?

Yo

‘
I
don't have any bread,' she says and she goes to step round me and Ag, as if she's going up the road for some now.

It's not quite five o'clock in the morning; but I say: ‘I'll go.'

‘No.' Ag doesn't want that, she holds me tighter, but I take her hands and tell her: ‘It's all right. I'll come back in a little while. You want some of that apple cake, if the baker's got some?'

My sister's eyes are telling me what I might best do with some apple cake if I walk out that door again. But I have to go. I have to let Olivia be for a bit. It's a shock. I shouldn't have turned up in the middle of the night like this. When is a good time to turn up like this? To make apology for the unforgivable.

I tell her too: ‘I'll be back, don't worry.' And I will apologise for the fact of it a thousand times – daily, if that's how it's to be, until you believe me. I will cut a thousand petticoat skirts if I have to, and enjoy it. I will go anywhere, sewing beads along the edges of the path you take. I will do anything.

She nods, but she's gone back to not looking at me again. I go out the door to wander round the streets for a while, down to the old workshops and up under the northern approach, to the new station there, all silent; dead with silence and empty but for my praying, into the water, into the black sky:
Please
.
Please, take me back.
I have never been so alone and wanting as this. Sober and alone. And hungry, aching with it. I haven't eaten anything since I had a fist full of chips sometime yesterday morning, some strange other life ago, fist full of hours ago. I wander back around the bay, back across to Blues Point Road, down to the corner where Dean's is. It's still not open yet, though the baker's at work, banging around in there. I sit on the high gutter's edge by the doorway, to wait for the bread. There's a lamp directly above, glaring down on me, showing me where I belong, for what I've done.

I reach in my pocket, to roll that smoke I don't want, and my hand goes straight to that letter again. I pull it out and open it, not so much to read it as to keep my thoughts well away from the idea that it might be better for all concerned if I keep walking north all the way to China.

Dear Yo,

Two pages of handwriting, I don't know who from. I turn over to the end and see the name.

And shout myself to my feet again with seeing it: ‘Saints alive!'

It's a letter from my brother Brendan. My little brother. Jesus. Sweet Jesus.

He says:

I hope my letter finds you well. I'm sorry now that I didn't say anything to you when I left but I didn't want to say anything then to anyone in the family. The circumstances were difficult. I hope you understand that.

I do. Jesus, but I hardly even know the kid writing to me now. When? Almost a year ago. The twenty-second of July 1931, it's dated. How old is he now? Twenty. When's his birthday? I can't exactly remember at this minute. August – sixteenth?

He's saying:

For all that I could never find a job in the Neighbourhood, as soon as I stepped foot out of it, I got one almost straightaway, as a boy on the first ship I saw at Darling Harbour, which was an American mail steamer. I ended up in San Francisco next, working in various jobs around the shipyards where I was fortunate to get in at the office of an engineering firm, as a messenger, that got me on to another job as a trainee wireless technician for the railways. It's a bit of a long story, but from there I've ended up in New York. I am now in partnership with a friend I made along the way. His name is Edwin T Figmore, and we're in the wireless business now. We have a company that sells and repairs radiograms – those wireless-phonograph combination pieces that are becoming all the fashion – and although we are only a small concern, we are doing well, our shop is in Manhattan, in a good part of the city. I'm no good at selling anything – I'm still as quiet as I always was. I just do the repairs and Ed does all the selling.

Getting out of our own bad neighbourhood was what I needed to get myself going, getting well away from those difficulties, so that I could see what was out there for me in the world, what I was good at. I found it and I have not looked back. But I have never stopped thinking of you and our sister Agnes. If there is anything I can do for you – anything at all – please write to me. You only need ask. Things are really very good in New York for me. Things are starting to look up for business generally and for work of all types, too. If you want to come to America, I would be happy to help you get a start somewhere if I can. Ed can sponsor you if necessary. Just say the word.

I've never forgotten how you looked after me when I was small, making sure I was all right at school, making my breakfast and tea from whatever you could find, and standing in the way of that devil's hand for me when it came, or our brother Michael's. You said we'd run away and join up with the Connaught Rangers pipe band one day. You'd shove some schoolbook at me and say, ‘Shut up and go and practise your reading or you'll get six from Sister Joe', while you took a dozen for me at home. Somewhere past that time, though, the bitterness got into me, the shamefulness at our poverty and our particular difficulties, and I shut up so well I didn't want to know even you – not any of my family. I am sorry for that now. I will never forget you, Yo. You were mother and father to me when we had neither.

Please give my love to our sister Agnes. She probably doesn't remember me. Maybe you don't either! But I wish you all the very best.

God bless you and keep you. You are in my prayers every day and will always be.

Your brother Brendan

And he gives the address, of his flat and his business. I forget about waiting for the bread. My feet are moving again before I've thought another thing, back round the corner, back to Olivia's. The dawn is cracking now, the sun coming up over the water, a golden road coming up under the Bridge for me, up through my feet, filling me with this golden light. My brother Brendan has written to me. Who? My brother has come back from the dead. He's a radiogram repairer. In New York. This is the word of the Lord.

And every good thing is possible again. No, not possible – it is mine to make happen, and it's happening this day.

Olivia opens the door to me. Olivia. This girl I will marry. She looks hardly less dismayed than she did when she first opened the door to me six or seven long hours ago. As well she should: I have no more to offer her than I did then either.

Apart from not wasting any more of her time; I ask her: ‘You wouldn't consider changing your plans, would you?'

‘Plans?' That tin whistle of hers singing high up to heaven. Frowning at me through it, too; disbelieving of whatever I'm going to say next.

But life is all chance, isn't it, Lord? Every blessed heartbeat of it. So I have to ask her: ‘Have you ever thought you might want to visit America?'

She straightens her back, stares down that fine, long nose, far too fine for me, and she says, disdaining: ‘What America?'