Free The Blue Mile by Kim Kelly

in sight.
    Just the water, and me.
    And this colour – this gold-shot teal. And that’s exactly it. I see it now: Min Bromley’s going-away dress. Shantung and organza, in magic-carpet teal. Of course.

Yo
    â€˜ I ’m sorry, lad, but there’s no room at the inn, as they say,’ this woman at the Paragon says, and this is the fifth hotel we’ve asked at round the Quay. She’s all pity for us, leaning over the counter at her private entrance window, with no reason not to believe our story, which is a sad and simple one, and true enough: that I’ve come into Sydney from out west for work on the Bridge, with my child who’s lately lost her mother. The woman shakes her head: ‘You could go round to the Loo but, love, always vacancies there, and then there’s always them places a bit further afield towards Paddington, though I wouldn’t take the little girl there, you know what I mean.’
    I do, and I understand the warning. I wouldn’t take Aggie into the filthy knocking shop that is Paddo all the way to Darlinghurst if paradise lay in the very centre of it; I’m not taking her round to Woolloomooloo either, for the entertainment of sailors bawling and brawling all night long. Not that they’d be likely to wake her. She’s asleep, and heavy with it now, long past caring about me making creases in her frock, or failing her again, as I am.
    I look at the woman for a second in want of pleading with her: what in Jesus’ name is a homeless man with a child supposed to do? But I know the answer: go back to the Gardens, for tonight. Blessed be our merciful Lord it isn’t raining. And know that we are not alone in our plight; we can’t be: from all the enquiries I’ve made this evening, it seems it’s near impossible to find decent, cheap accommodation in the city even with a good job, unless you’re after a room at the Australia Hotel – that big one on Martin Place we passed just last night, as it turns out. The rates there are very reasonable, apparently, only you have to own a dinner suit to get in the door.
    â€˜If you ask me,’ the woman taps the counter with her finger, thinking, really wanting to help us, ‘Balmain’s not a bad place to look, lad – it might be a bit rough around the edges but they’re good people, working people. Try for a boarding house over that way, you’ll be right.’
    â€˜Thanks.’ I nod. Balmain. That’s the second time I’ve received that advice, but it’ll have to wait till tomorrow now. The clock on the wall behind the woman’s head says it’s five after nine. It’s too late to be going off somewhere I don’t know. Balmain’s not far – it’s where those timber and colliery’s wharves are, and that big electric power station, further down the harbour to the west, you can see it across the water from Pyrmont – but it might as well be another country. I’ve never been there.
    I’m about to turn away when the woman says: ‘Hang on a sec, there.’
    I think she might be going to see what she can do for us by way of accommodation, but she comes back with a paper bag. ‘Couple of pork pies for you, love. My Maurie makes them himself, they’re very good.’
    â€˜Thanks,’ I say to her again. ‘That’s very kind of you, I appreciate it.’ And I do. Goodness. There is plenty of that about if you need it, isn’t there. Just no room at the inn. Not tonight.
    I hold Ag tight to me as we walk back into the street, don’t look back at the great Tooths billboard lit up above the pub, calling all souls in for SYDNEY BITTER, wouldn’t want to stay there anyway, would we. I walk back round towards the Gardens. Back through this empty city. You wouldn’t know there were any homeless people about, not in the night, it’s so quiet once you get up to Macquarie Street. Not even a