The Blue Mile by Kim Kelly

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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜Hm? Shame . . .’ I’ve gone nebulous with it. Matching pyjamas?
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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
    â€˜ T hat’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