Treading Air

by Ariella Van Luyn

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

In 1920s Queensland, Lizzie O’Dea wants to get away from her dad and the memories of her mum that haunt her. At the races she meets attractive, war-scarred Joe and sees her chance to escape. But life with Joe isn’t what she dreamt it would be.Finding herself on the fringes of society, Lizzie discovers a new sense of independence and sexuality, love and friendship. It’s a precarious life, though, always on the edge of collapse.Two decades later, Lizzie is sick and worn out. Lying in a Brisbane lock hospital, she thinks about Joe, who’s been lost to her for many years. But she’s a survivor. There’s hope yet.Set between Brisbane and Townsville, and based on real events that the author uncovered from historical archives, Treading Air is the remarkably vivid tale of a young Australian working-class rebel who clashed with the expectations of her world.

Release date: July 1, 2016

Publisher: Affirm Press

Print pages: 320

Sample

Brisbane, 1945

In the lock hospital, a woman is on the lookout for metal. Lizzie, lying on her side, watches her lean over in bed to tell poor Marge. The woman’s voice reminds Lizzie of something, but she can’t get a hold on what – a mosquito maybe, hovering right in her ear. The voice sounds familiar enough for Lizzie to stare hard at the woman’s face, but her eyesight is shot, everything smeared at the edges. Sulphathiazole slides through her insides like a lump of concrete and messes around with thoughts in the back of her head. Bloody Yank gave her the clap. By now he’s probably sent half a dozen women like her to the lock hospital, to be held off the streets until they’re clean. Lizzie nurses her gritted eyes, her lids half-closed.

The woman’s telling Marge that she wants one of the metal coathangers at the end of the ward. Their arms have been crocheted with frills that fan out like coral, probably by a charitable sort from the Temperance Union, but there’s sharp metal underneath, and the threads will unpick easily enough. Marge says nothing. She complained to Lizzie earlier that she’s queasy from drugs they gave her for the syphilis.

Lizzie has Marge down as a good-time gal, an amateur who’s doing the old girls like her out of business, sleeping around with the troops for free. Marge hasn’t accepted the hospital: the foul smells, the rashes, the liquids that come out of you. The shock and humiliation of it because you’re the one who carries the disease and gets locked up – not him, who wanted you so badly he was willing to pay. Girls like Marge make Lizzie think this place is going to the dogs. Old days, Lizzie would meet some of the top girls in here, knew what they were doing. Learnt a few tricks herself on plying the trade. She’d needed all the help she could get, that time of her life, on her own for the first time.

Marge is silent, and the woman after the coathanger lies back down and runs her fingers over hands so lumped with insect bites that even Lizzie’s bad eyes can see they’re swollen twice their normal size. What does this woman want a coathanger for? Lizzie will have to keep an eye on her or she’ll end up stabbed in a rusty trundle bed. Though, if that’s the woman’s plan, Lizzie doesn’t reckon she’d be so liberal in talking about the hanger. More likely, Lizzie will wake up to see the woman with a pool of blood between her legs.

Lizzie shifts on her hollow mattress frame, feeling the dip of broken springs. Her mind returns to Joe. He’s getting out of gaol soon. That thought loops around her head, the old longing for him returned. She’s been so used to feeling this way for him, seems she can’t get out of the habit; there’s channels in her body that this flow of feeling has carved into her.

She’d found out about Joe’s release by accident, from the magistrate at her trial, Mr Wilson. She was hauled into court after her boss at the laundry grassed on her. Her Yank soldier friend had offered her a deal with ten tins of bully beef and some US Army blankets, if she could sneak them out of the wash. When the boss caught her stuffing the grey blankets behind one of the tubs, he sent the coppers round to her rooms at the boarding house. All cops in town know her, a working girl, so they ordered an inspection. And that was it, doctor said she had the clap.

At first, in the police court, surrounded by dark wood, she couldn’t make sense of what Mr Wilson was saying about Joe. In a wig that hung down his cheeks, he looked at her medical report and decided to be generous: only six weeks in the lock hospital to recover. He said when Joe got out a few days after she had, they could start a new life together. ‘We’ll try it for an experiment,’ Wilson said, and Lizzie wanted to stick her fingers in his eyeballs. She isn’t a bloody lab rat.

Can’t help herself, though. For the first time in years, she’s imagining her and Joe together again. Wilson said he felt sorry for Lizzie, her directionlessness. Like she’s a boat that needs steering. God forbid Joe be at the helm. But the thought’s in her head now, and maybe they’d both be better this time round. It’s been twenty years since he was out.

Brisbane, 1922

Lizzie leans against the white fence line, hat in hand. The grandstand’s roof curves away behind her, a bank of bodies flowing from it. Horses circle the yard, round the weighing scales, jockeys coiled in their saddles. Sentinel trots out, sweating. Lizzie knows her dad has been at him. When she was a little girl she could watch him jab the needle into their flanks. Now she can’t stand it. Sometime while she was growing up, she started feeling the pain of the needle in her own leg. Sentinel stumbles. She turns away.

The crowd behind her thickens. A woman breaks the cluster of her friends, caught up in a story she’s telling, and Lizzie twists to avoid her. The woman flings her arms around. The glass she’s holding slops, booze hitting Lizzie’s blouse. A flare of anger, but she makes a joke of it and swipes at the stain. Sighs loudly. The woman doesn’t notice. Lizzie catches the eye of a man in the crowd who’s grinning, and she figures he’s seen what happened. She notes, with a lurch of desire, the black curve of his fringe, the direct look. She wants to keep his attention on her, so she exaggerates her gestures. The woman cottons on, gives her a look, a bit scared, and steps into the fold of the group clumped around her. Lizzie doesn’t mind because now she’s noticed how wide the man’s shoulders are.

He makes his way over, and she flicks her eyes down, feels another spike. When she looks up, he’s right next to her. ‘Room for me?’ He points to the fence.

Lizzie nods, turns back to the track and tucks her elbows in so he can fit. He puts his hand on the railing and squeezes beside her. Someone pushes in next to them, and the cloth of the man’s shirt brushes her arm. She smiles.

‘Joe O’Dea.’ He holds out his hand. She has to look up into his face, he’s that tall.

‘Lizzie Boyle.’ His fingers are warm.

‘You a betting girl?’ he asks. The whistle of an Irish brogue.

She shows him her ticket where the bookmaker has scrawled the horse’s name, Coronation, and the odds. Can’t bring herself to look at Joe again. With her dad’s finger in the works, it’s a pretty sure thing that Coronation will place; her dad calls the winnings her pocket money. But she doesn’t want to gip this bloke. ‘You?’

‘Took a flutter earlier. Beautiful horse, placed second. Still looking for the coot bookmaker who owes me. I’ll take another then.’ Joe pulls a pair of binoculars from his pocket and grips the scopes between his fingers. ‘Like to know a horse before I bet on her, go round the stables, have a look. You see the right one, you get this feeling.’ He holds the binoculars out to Lizzie. ‘Want to watch your horse?’

She takes them from him quickly, before he changes his mind. Her dad is always offering things to her and then snatching them away. She holds the glasses to her eyes. The racetrack sharpens. She steps back a bit – she’s never seen it like this. When she pulls the glasses away from her face, the world blurs. Halos shroud faces and forms that are too far off. She grins up at Joe. ‘These expensive?’

‘Sure. I’m trusting you not to break ’em.’

‘’Course not.’ She turns a little to the side and gives him another smile to show how trustworthy she is.

She looks back through the glasses, enjoying the way they give weight and definition to the swell of the track, the curved belly of the mare jittering on the sidelines. The jockey blowing kisses at his horse, sucking in his cheeks. She can see as far as the other side, where horses line up at the starting gate. She picks out Sentinel immediately. He flings his head, moving his body sideways against the gates. The handler pulls him back, rights him, and the jockey holds himself lightly on the saddle. The handler leads Sentinel to the gate, nice and easy. You’d think the horse was going to slip in, but at the last minute he refuses the gate. The jockey lunges, brings his whip down. The horse stumbles.

Lizzie pulls the glasses away. It’s not supposed to be this obvious.

Joe shakes his head. ‘Ah, no point in losing your temper with a horse. Won’t get him in now.’

A prickle at Lizzie’s neck and armpits. Her head is full of curses at her dad. She holds the glasses up again. The handler flicks the reins, says something sharp to the jockey, who leans over Sentinel’s neck. It’ll be sweaty. The jockey turns his head away from the racetrack; he’s lost already. Lizzie’s aware of Joe’s body next to her, his hand on the railing. Sentinel gives up and jolts into the starting gates, flinging his head around as though he doesn’t know how he got there. The gun goes off, and the gates open. She can’t hear the horses yet – the empty dam between her and them scoops up the noise. Joe leans over to get a better look, remembers her, leans back and apologises for blocking her view. She thanks him.

The horses swell around the corner. Their hooves drum the turf, the jockeys belting their flanks. Coronation and a dappled mare jostle for the front. Lizzie’s fingers tingle where they almost touch Joe’s. A tremor of hooves right in front of them. Muscles bunched and released. Joe’s face, his eyes on the track, shifts to her for a second and back again. Noise ripples through the crowd on Lizzie’s right, and the horses clustered behind the leaders shiver. Sentinel’s head disappears from the fray. He plunges forward, feet tangled under him. The jockey is flung over his head, and the horse turns on his back, legs in the air, tucked up as he tries to right himself.

‘Bloody hell.’ Joe is still.

A woman next to Lizzie keeps repeating, ‘A sorry sight, a sorry sight.’ A doctor jogs out to the jockey, who’s sitting on the sidelines, head in his hands. The trainer leans over the horse, still now. The doctor helps the jockey to his feet, and they both look at Sentinel. The doctor puts his hand on the jockey’s arm, and Lizzie, through the binoculars, sees him shake his head.

Joe says, ‘Reckon he’ll be put down.’

Lizzie turns her back to the track, pushes through the crowd. She can’t stand to be next to Joe. Under a group of men in white hats, the sun glowing through the brims, she’s like a creature in a pond beneath lily pads, breathless, the surface far away. Behind the grandstand she sits on a wooden bench and watches the tote whorl, counting up the bets. A man shouts out the tally while another turns the wheel, clicks it into place. A child stands underneath the tote and spins with her arms out, gazes up at the turning of the machine, spins again. She must imagine herself a cog.

When they first put the board up, Lizzie’s dad worried because he didn’t know how it worked. He drank too much, told her he could see his whole future and he didn’t want to be there for most of it. He’s taken to hanging around the edge of the racetrack, where crowds gather at the crack in the fence so they can watch without having to pay. Lizzie can get in the paddock cheaper than the men, so she coughed up.

Now she needs a drink. She makes her way to the ladies’ lounge, picks out a high-backed armchair and traces its floral pattern under her fingers while she orders a shandy. She shifts restlessly waiting for the drink. The death of the horse dampens her. Even now, if she wants another drink, she’ll have to go and collect the winnings from Coronation. She doesn’t want to touch them. Sentinel wasn’t supposed to die. The horse moves again in Lizzie’s mind, turning right on its back, a child’s jack flipped over as if it didn’t weigh nine hundred pounds.

The shandy, when it arrives, calms her. She leans into the armchair and lets its curves cradle her neck.

‘Fancy another?’

Lizzie looks up. Joe. A flickering in her chest. She smiles – no effort on her part and he’s appeared again. ‘Please,’ she says. ‘Shandy.’

He brings her the sweaty drink, the foam on the surface cupped with bubbles.

‘Cheers.’ She raises her glass, and her hand shakes. She puts the drink down and wonders if Joe noticed, if he’s aware of his effect on her. He looks at her over the rim of his glass. Level with him, she registers his blue eyes, the line of dark hair across his eyebrow. ‘Did well getting through that crowd,’ she says, gesturing with her drink to the bodies washed up around the bar out front.

He grins, mimics pushing men aside with his elbows. ‘All in the flick.’

‘Handy.’ Lizzie’s steady enough to pick up her shandy again. Sips it, waits for the little kick, gets nothing, takes another sip, feels it this time. She notices Joe has a fleck of silver at his temple and wonders about his age. She can’t think of anything to say.

He catches her watching him and smiles. ‘You from around here?’ he asks.

‘Spring Hill.’ She waves her hand loosely southwards, lost in the lounge with the too-high windows.

‘Know anyone with a spare room?’

Lizzie shakes her head. ‘You just arrived?’

‘From down south.’ He gestures in that direction. They’re orientating themselves in relation to each other, tracing their movements like lines on a map, figuring how they came to meet here, at this point on the grid.

‘What were you doing down there?’

Joe shrugs. ‘Worked in a munitions factory, boss was a coot, left that. Travelled around. Spent a couple months living in a tent in the rainforest, cutting out red cedar through Mann River and Dorrigo. Reckon you’d like it there. Bloody beautiful area.’

Lizzie is strangely alright with him suggesting that he knows what she likes. She often finds herself aimless – triangulated between the known places of house, city and racetrack – and wonders what it would be like to have someone else directing her, able to take her out of the familiar treads. She holds his gaze, watches the movement of his pale eyes, until he turns his head away.

‘I’ll take you there sometime,’ he says.

She looks to the wooden floorboards, the fringe of a Persian rug brushing the toe of his boot. Flecks of grass on the leather. He’s taking a risk saying this to her, someone he hardly knows. She puts her hand out to reassure him, but holds back, doesn’t quite touch his elbow. ‘I’d like that.’ An effort to say it. She’s no good at asking for things, accepting compliments. This conversation is moving too fast. She pulls it back. ‘And before?’

‘The war,’ says Joe.

‘Where’d you fight?’

‘Lone Pine. For a bit.’

Lizzie doesn’t push for more. Most men she’s met have got their story down to an easy brag, one or two polished moments that can be brought out at dinner or with drinks. But Joe’s tone is tight, as if he doesn’t want to be forced to pick the words out. Maybe he can’t. She looks him over for wounds and can’t see anything visible. Freckles strung out along his hairline.

‘It’s coming up to two,’ Joe says. ‘Want to watch?’

‘Better find me dad.’ Sentinel surfaces in her mind, the angle of his hooves. She pushes it away.

‘Your dad’ll be alright,’ Joe says. He downs his drink.

They walk out of the lounge, and he finds them a seat on the grandstand. Lizzie likes his resourcefulness. He wipes at the dusty seat with his big hand.

‘Please don’t worry.’ She’s aware of people watching him.

Joe keeps wiping. ‘Not every day I’ve a beautiful girl sitting next to me.’

This silences her. Pathetic that she can be flattered so easily; she tries not to let it show. She might be led astray. Like her mother.

Lizzie settles next to Joe, becoming aware of the chatter around her. She sees her dad at the bottom of the grandstand, surrounded by men. Their faces are tight.

Joe looks down too. ‘Here, that’s the fella owes me money.’

Lizzie doesn’t have to look to know Joe’s pointing at her dad. ‘Oh struth.’ She shifts in her seat, turns her whole body away from Joe. He’s half-standing, sizing up the crowd around the man. Lizzie thinks of Joe’s weight, his heaviness. Fuck the old man, ruining things for her. She crosses her arms. Let her dad take whatever Joe’s gonna hand out. Can’t say the old man doesn’t deserve it.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ Joe asks.

Lizzie stares at him over her shoulder. He’s sitting down again.

‘Found me dad.’ She nods in his direction.

‘That crook’s your daddy?’ Joe laughs. ‘Peach, you don’t stand a chance in this world.’

‘I do alright.’

‘Righto.’

‘How much?’

‘Five shillings.’

Lizzie’s cheeks burn. How badly can her dad muck up in one day? First the horse, and now he’s ripping off the only decent man she’s met in this city. She pulls the money out of her purse and hands it to Joe. She’ll get it back from her dad later. ‘Call it even?’

Part of her hopes Joe will refuse, but he takes the money and pockets it. He pats his trousers. ‘Thanks,’ he says. ‘Bring me luck. Help me pick one?’

She wants to be pulled into this game. She did the right thing giving him that money – he’ll look after it and still take her along. They push past the trimmed hedges that screen the stables. The horses stand underneath the corrugated iron roof, separated by strips of metal. The trainers sit in front of the horses on metal chairs, smoking. A man walks by leading a brown mare, her coat silver where the light hits the curve of muscles. She wears blinkers with a star on the forehead.

‘Her,’ Lizzie says. ‘Number eighteen.’

Joe nods, and Lizzie keeps her head down while he places the bet on the mare, Lady Crier. She doesn’t think the bookies will recognise her – they know her dad, but.

The bookies stand in a line under the pavilion, their jackets thrown off somewhere, holding boxes strapped over their shoulders. One wears a bow tie, jodhpurs, and a hat high and pushed up at the back; the other, a sawn-off tie that finishes before his navel.

‘I’ll give you the winnings,’ Joe says. He leads her back to the track. She stands on her toes to see above the crowd, and he puts his hand out to steady her when she teeters. She doesn’t even realise the race has started until the horses are almost on them. Hears her name, ignores it as the horses rush past.

Lady Crier surges ahead of the others, overtaking another horse that Lizzie recognises, Lumpy Bill.

‘She’s gonna place.’ Joe has his hand on her elbow. She leans into him.

‘Liz –’ Her dad.

She spins around, making sure he’s ruined the end of the race for her. ‘What?’

Joe looks round too. The race is over, and Lizzie’s pretty sure that Lady Crier placed second.

‘Sorry you had to see the other,’ her dad says. ‘I know how you get sentimental about the horses.’

She looks away. She doesn’t want Joe to know about this, hates her dad for bringing it up while he’s standing there. Hates the idea of her being sentimental, which makes her seem small. Her dad touches her shoulder, leaves his hand there, and she stops herself shaking him off. ‘This is Joe,’ she says.

Her dad puts his hand out, notices who Joe is, hesitates slightly.

‘Your daughter’s already paid up,’ Joe says, taking his hand.

Her dad glances at her. ‘Has she? Usually can’t prise a shillin’ out of ’er.’

‘She’s a good girl,’ Joe says.

Lizzie resents these two statements, equally untrue. Her dad’s surely not convinced by Joe’s description either. She’s not an innocent, doesn’t want Joe to think she wouldn’t know how to kiss him if he wanted it. She’s generous too, just not with her dad, who doesn’t deserve a thing. She’d like Joe to know her without her dad’s gaze making her into something else.

‘Pulled the wool over your eyes,’ her dad says to Joe.

‘Thanks, Dad. Appreciated, I’m sure.’

‘Tell you what,’ he says, now speaking to her, ‘I’ll make it up to you. Let you invite your friends to me party tomorrow.’

Lizzie looks straight away to Joe. ‘Want to come?’

He hesitates. She holds herself still, waiting for his answer.

‘Alright,’ he says.

Her dad shrugs, squeezes her shoulder. ‘Cheer up.’

She hates that he thinks it’s solved that easily, that she can be bought off with the promise of a party.

‘You coming home with me?’ he asks.

She nods, tells Joe the address and says goodbye. He says he’s off to collect the winnings from Lady Crier. As soon as she and her dad leave the hum of the racetrack, silence opens up between them – nothing unusual in that. Joe’s in her mind. He said he’d come.

Her dad makes a deal with the laundress down the road and gets Lizzie a dress for the party. He finds himself an outfit as well: a double-breasted suit, too loose at the hips. The clothes smell of their owners.

Lizzie gets dressed too early. She parades up and down in front of the mirror wearing the black crepe dress, her neck poking out of a wide lace collar, frills tumbling from the waist. The dress doesn’t suit her, too tight at the waist and across the thighs. The collar belongs on an elegant lady; around Lizzie’s neck the lace is foreign and crumpled. She lies on the bed with her back to the mirror, in a cloud of another woman’s perfume – oranges with a whiff of body odour at the armpits – and watches the river. She rolls down her stockings, her legs prickling from the afternoon sun, until the silk circles her feet like those belled anklets she’s seen in pictures of Indian dancers.

She always feels as if she’s floating in her room, because their house spreads from the side of the hill. After Lizzie’s mum left them, her dad decided to get out of the wharves in South Brisbane. ‘We need to elevate ourselves, Liz. That place was no good for her, no good for you either. I don’t want you getting yourself so low. It’s why the wealthy build their houses on the high points of a city. To catch the breezes.’

He could never afford the big ones at the top. But he took her, holding her hand, and stood outside the gates of the highest. They stared in at the painted lattice that hemmed the verandahs. A man without a hat came into the garden and stared back at them. Lizzie pulled on her dad’s hand and whinged. She was frightened of being taken away in those days. Now she longs for it.

Her dad chose a house as close as he could get to the hilltop, high enough that men had hauled its timber up with ropes. Lizzie’s room and the verandah balance on poles that plunge to the bottom of the hill. Even when they bought it, the house was teetering. The floorboards shook under their feet. They got it cheap.

Lizzie wakes up, groggy and crumpled on her bedcovers, when the first of the blokes arrive carrying longnecks and bottles of whisky. When she comes out, she sees a cluster of people around her dad. A man in suspenders with the collar turned down; a big woman with a tennis shade over her eyes and a tweed jacket. No Joe.

Her dad pours her a beer. ‘You look nice,’ he says, and she’s surprised into smiling. Her earlier dissatisfaction dissolves. If she’s nice-looking now, her life will turn out. This is the sort of reasoning she goes through sometimes.. . .