The Blue Mile (8 page)

Yo

M
other of God and every saint that ever drew breath, no, it's not possible.

‘Don't look down, look out, Pretty Boy,' Tarzan is smiling at me from the scaffold he's standing on. It's suspended off the side of what they call top chord, the top line of the arch – and it's the highest possible place you could be on earth, not including that fella sitting on top of the crane above us. Tarzan is trying to coax me off the Bridge construction itself and across a plank that's attached to the scaffold. There's a gap, though, only about a foot, but it's the gaping chasm of death as far as I can see.

‘Come on, mate,' this other fella, Clarkie, shouts from behind me, getting itchy at me. He's the ‘cooker', heating the rivets in the oven that's suspended on its own scaffold on the curved upside of the chord, that's not made of curves at all but straight lines, and each one of them called a chord, too, just to keep me from confusion. I try to keep my mind fixed on that to get me across: these are all straight lines, flat surfaces, not curves, firm, flat, straight, and this particular joint of the chord I'm standing on is the size of a tramcar. I hold my breath. It's only a step to the plank, to the scaffold which is also the size of a tramcar. Hold on to the upright of the scaffold and look out across the blue at the Gardens and I do it for Ag. I take the step.

‘There you go,' says Tarzan. ‘Now give yourself a minute, till your knees stop shaking.'

He gives me about two seconds before he hands me back my bucket: ‘Don't worry if you miss one – it'll only hit a ferry.'

That is a joke, I'm sure, and it does nothing to lift my confidence. I'm to catch the hot rivets with this bucket, which Tarzan will fix into the wall of holes in the chord here, with the contraption he's holding, a gun he's called it, which is attached to a hose that's attached to . . . somewhere. I follow the hose with my eyes to see where it goes, but my eyes go down the great curve, and my guts go for another swim. This job is not possible. This Bridge is not possible. Defying the laws of nature. Straight lines or no, how does this curve not keep on curving to fall off the edge of the land and into the water from its own incredible weight? How can it be that I am standing on the side of it? I will not catch a single one of these rivets. I want to get down on my hands and knees on the bottom of the scaffold and stay there. And I would, too, if I could let go of the upright of the scaffold.

‘Aye-o,' Clarkie shouts from above and I look up to see a rivet screaming down at me.

It's white hot, and the size and shape of a cock. If I don't catch it, I will get it in the face.

I find the power to let go of the scaffold and raise the bucket.

And I catch the rivet.

Jesus fucking Joseph and Mary, there it is. In the bucket.

I'm looking for some congratulation from Tarzan, but he's busy picking out the rivet with his tongs now. Then quick about ramming it into the wall with the gun, with another fella, one called Dolly, ramming it back from the other side with him, and I think my skull will split in two with the noise.

Olivia

‘
A
gnes!' I call out for her again, across the empty expanse of the second floor, my alarm ringing along the apex of the roofline, threatening the glass. I look over the railing, down through the void to the tiles on the ground floor, which will be teeming in a minute. She could be anywhere, the little rat. Three floors of arcade. Big city. I've lost her, and while the majority of my conscience says,
That's no good, is it,
the small but insistent remainder of it is shouting:
Oh my God, no!

What am I going to say to that nice boy when he comes to collect his sister?

What should I do? Call the police? What would I say to
them
?
Erm, yes, that's right, officer, I picked this urchin up off the street; no, no idea who she is. Pretty little thing, though.

Oh, how could she have vanished so utterly two steps out the salon door?

Damn. I peer hard into the window of Boston Shoes, as if she might have flown in there through the crack in the transom and hidden in a pair of satin pumps. Nothing's open yet but I cast my eyes across the void again anyway: to the lace drapes of Madame Marjorie's Hair and Beauty Art, the floating damasks of Loughton's tableware, the banks of phonographs in the Challis showroom, and stacks of travel luggage at Blayney's . . . all silent and soulless.

I don't know what to do, apart from return to the salon. To Mother. And her disgust. Oh, but I could have a jolly good turn at her for this, couldn't I. This is Mother's fault. That's what I'll tell the police: Mother frightened the poor girl away. Never to be seen or heard of again.

I'm deep in planning the opening lines of my next tantrum as I see Mr Monty, the photographer from next door, querying over his spectacles at me on his way from the lift: ‘Morning, Miss Greene.'

I smile: ‘Hello!'

I am not a wanton loser of small children. Not me. Why indeed do I have a small child in my care to lose?
Of all the vindictive and wilfully infantile things you could –

I'll go and check the stairwells – now. Oh God. Start with the Pitt Street end.

I dash back past our shop, and don't so much as glance at the window there as I do, nor at the permanently closed blinds of Mr Solomon's, the optometrist, on the other side, but then, just before the stairwell, I do glance up – up the small flight of steps that lead to an office there, of an accountant, or it used to be, not sure it's occupied anymore – and I just catch sight of the little white socks in their little Indian red mary-janes, right at the top, sticking out of the shadows.

‘Agnes?'

She doesn't move; so still, she must be holding her breath.

‘Agnes,' I try again and some instinct tells me not to call her a naughty little rat as I might like to; instead, I gentle my tone: ‘It's all right, you know. Mother was only cross with me. Please don't run away – your brother would be sad if you did that, wouldn't he?'

Still she doesn't move; but she might well race off again if I take the steps up to her, mightn't she, so I stay put, try yet again and more firmly: ‘Agnes, please stop this nonsense and come down from there. Don't you want to go to the tea party with me anymore?'

At last she steps down, one step, into the light, but still she doesn't speak, and her eyes are wide with fear. Not a skittish sort but a dread sort of fear – one that this situation doesn't seem to call for. Mother wasn't
that
horrible just now. But then, this little girl doesn't know Mother, does she. Strange people, strange place; she must be terribly confused. I hold out my hand to her: ‘Poor little sweetie, I'm sure you just want to go home, don't you?'

But at that the fear in her eyes seems to deepen, and she shakes her head. If she could disappear back into the shadows, she would. Something calamitous has happened at home, I suppose, something to make them
short for help,
as her brother said. I should find out, shouldn't I, see what's the matter, so I ask her: ‘Where is your mother today?'

She frowns, surprised and suspicious at once, and then she finally speaks: ‘Don't you know?'

‘No.' I shake my head. ‘Why should I know where your mother is?'

She doesn't answer that; she asks me, barely a whisper: ‘Do you know the Welfare people?'

‘No,' I tell her, and I'd smile if she wasn't so clearly afraid of them. The Department of Child Welfare: an old and empty throwaway threat of Mother's I've heard a thousand times before; but perhaps not so empty for this little girl. Speculations race with the facts: the child is poor and Irish and something awful has happened to her mother, who must therefore be a criminal, a gangster's moll, in childbirth with the thirteenth, or dead from TB. Alternatively, Agnes's own mother's threats of getting rid of her are merely much more convincing than my own mother's. I hold out my hand to her again in comradeship against maternal cruelty: ‘I wouldn't know a Welfare person if I tripped over one in the street.'

She puts her hand in mine, but she doesn't move from that step; she stares at me for the longest moment, searching, measuring me up perhaps, and then she fixes me with the clarity of those huge blue eyes, telling me: ‘My Yoey is the best brother that there ever was.' A plain statement of fact. ‘Don't let them take me off him, please, Miss Greene.'

‘I wouldn't do that,' I assure her, against another instinct shouting at me to telephone Child Welfare immediately. She squeezes my hand, as if to make me promise; but I can't do that either. Something awful
has
happened. I ask her: ‘Where do you and Yoey live?'

‘Don't you know?' she frowns, doubtful, searching my face again.

‘No, I don't know where you live, Agnes – you'll have to tell me.' And I'm supposing Surry Hills, Paddington, Glebe, some slum or other where the enunciation of individual words is not required:
dontchaknow?

But she tells me: ‘Under the fig trees,' her rosebud lips curling into a smile. ‘In the Gardens.'

‘You live in the Botanic Gardens, do you?' I don't believe her, of course, and I do smile, with some relief: this is all just a childish nonsense, isn't it. Look at her pin tucks and ringlets, her new shoes, her perfect peaches-and-cream complexion; she even comes complete with missing one and a half front teeth and a lisp. They probably live in a flat in Randwick, just moved in and truly caught short amid the muddle of it, or something like that.

She nods, of course it's all a nonsense, and her eyes are bright with fun again: ‘Oh, it's beautiful under them trees, miss.'

‘It is indeed,' I nod in return. What an intriguing little girl you are. I won't be telephoning Child Welfare, no, but I might be having a word with your Yoey, to find out exactly who and what you really are. I squeeze her hand in return: ‘Now, are you ready to come back to the salon for some hard labour before our morning tea? I've got a great big tin of buttons that need sorting – will you do that for me?'

‘I will,' she nods again, bright and earnest. Thoroughly edible again. If this child is not ordinarily spoiled stupid I want to know why not.

Drama of lost child thusly concluded, I'm searching for something suitably terse to throw at Mother about petrifying little girls, when I see, through the salon window, through the open door of the stockroom, her mannequin, and on it what's become of my blue heaven.

I am a small child stunned by injustice and disappointment, both of which cut deeper and deeper with every step I take towards it. If there is selfishness in me, I know where it comes from and I'm no match for the original. This gown Mother has made for herself, from
my
fabric, undoubtedly to wear to the Merrick this evening, is her most fabulous creation yet. Bias-cut to the hips so that the blues will swirl around her before she even steps onto the dancefloor and, when she does, the skirt, with the stripes set on the opposing diagonal, will flute out from three rows of clear crystal drop beads over panels of palest aqua chiffon. Ingenious. Now I see why she looks tired about the eyes – nothing a bit more powder won't fix. Good God, but I hate her at times. Such as this time. I want to run and hide on the stairs.

Agnes won't be joining me: she's stunned with wonder, but for a reverent: ‘Ohhhhhh.'

Mother smiles up at me from where she's snipping the last of the squiggles from the chiffon hems and asks, smugly and rhetorically: ‘Don't you like it?'

‘Like is not the word.' I am terse as I say it, but terse with my own tiredness. Defeated. Mother will do what Mother will do; I shouldn't try to fight it, any of it.
But that was my fabric,
the little girl inside me protests. Her voice is so small, though, so irrelevant, no one can hear her.

Mother hasn't noticed my dejection, or she's not bothering to acknowledge it. She's going to marry a barrister; the magistrate's hammer descends and smashes my Mexican chocolate shell, smashes the whole sideboard to smithereens, and blows up the house and the business too, as she gets blithely up and goes over to the jewellery cabinet. ‘The crystal choker should set it off perfectly, don't you think?' She picks it out from the top shelf and holds it above the gown. ‘See? These blues, so fabulous, the crystal could be genuine against them – Viennese. Luscious and yet so simple. No other embellishment required.'

No. Are all people who are born both beautiful and clever so stupid to others' pain? I know I've been petulant, but I don't deserve this.

‘Nothing except this.' She steps over to me and removes my hat, scrabbling her fingers through my hair: ‘Good God, Ollie, what a bird's nest.'

That makes me feel so much better, Mother. She makes a side part with a fingernail, scraping along my scalp, and pins a clasp into my hair; one from the cabinet, one of my favourites, a line of baguette diamantes on a silver slide. That makes me feel utterly ridiculous.

And
now
she notices my dejection: ‘Olivia Jane Greene, you must stop this silly game this instant.'

And
now
I retort: ‘How about you stop sticking silly pins in bird's nests?'

‘Oh Ollie,' she sighs, annoyed. ‘Yes, it might look a little more stylish when we've got some warm oil into your curls. I've made you an appointment with Marjorie for three-thirty – she's got some jasmine-scented in that's just gorgeous.' She detaches Agnes's hand from mine, no more than an object to be removed, and she shoves me in front of the cheval in the fitting room. ‘Now I need you to try it on, see if the neckline is sitting well.'

‘Try what on?'

‘The
gown,
Ollie.'

Oh. Cross purposes uncross and at last I see: ‘You made this gown for
me
?'

‘Yes.' Mother's exasperation turns to amazement: ‘What did you think you were going to wear this evening – a chaff bag?'

I can't answer her. Mother made this gown for
me
? She's been up all night going blind with diagonals and crystal drops for me. This is too lovely by far, but the hairs stand up on the back of my neck, anguish clashing against any joy. I'm not going to the Merrick in it. I'm not going to the Merrick at all.

‘You truly don't like it?' Mother is aghast at the thought; she is hurt.

‘I like it, Mother. I do,' I say, turning away, stepping between her and the fitting-room drapes.

‘Ollie . . . ?'

I step round her again, step round the gown on the mannequin and into the stockroom, all these conflicting emotions whirling, surging through me so that, if I were that light globe hanging up there from the ceiling, I might explode. I can't explode. There's a little girl watching me from the end of the chaise. Why is there a little girl in the salon? That's right: because I'm not going to the Merrick tonight. Don't look at the gown. I reach up for the biscuit tin of odd buttons on the middle shelf above Mother's machine table, and almost bring down one of my old hat blocks on my head with it. What am I doing with this button biscuit tin? That's right: stepping back round past Mother to place the tin at my work table for the child; she'll be a picture in the window today, won't she, making rainbow trays of buttons for me. Don't look at the gown.

‘Come and sit here, Agnes,' I say and she climbs up onto my chair.

And when I bend across her to take out the first tray of buttons, she places her little hand on my wrist and whispers, conspiratorially: ‘See, I knew you were a fairy princess. But I won't tell no one.'

Remind me again, why is there a little girl in the salon? That's right: because I'm lost in a dream. There's no little girl, no boy in the park, no gown of blue heaven, no salon, no mothballed trousseaux, no buttons but imaginary ones. The alarm hasn't even gone off yet. Has it? I'm still in my bed. Either that or my nerves have gone full pitch and I'm delirious.

And the little girl is a persistent illusion; she lisps as she pats my hand: ‘Your secret is safe with me.'