Razorhurst (7 page)

Neal Darcy was a published writer. He was not the Hills’ only author. In the streets surrounding the Darcys’ home, there were novelists, playwrights, poets, and reporters, not to mention scribes of polemics, catalogues, advertising, and greeting cards. Writers being not well paid and Surry Hills being cheap, it was only natural the Hills had more than its fair share of scriveners.

Kelpie treasured the day Miss Lee led her to Neal Darcy. She’d known who he was. She knew about everyone on Belmore Lane because of Tommy. But she hadn’t known about his writing.

He is the most wonderful discovery of my life
, Miss Lee told Kelpie. Kelpie didn’t point out that Darcy was the most wonderful discovery of her
death
.

Neal Darcy was the oldest of the Darcy brood. The big gap to the next child was because Darcy’s father had been off shearing for a decade. Then the old man came back, and there were five in a row while he worked odd jobs, drank the proceeds, and didn’t gamble on the horses because that was how
his
old man had ruined the family. Each generation of Darcy men had to find a different way to blight their families. The youngest of the Darcy brood was barely four years old. Before she was born, the old man went bush again.

Miss Lee did not hold a high opinion of Darcy’s old man. Neither did Neal Darcy.

“G’day, little doggie,” Tommy’d said.

Kelpie’d smiled. He’d led her to a fresh-baked pound cake the day before. Kelpie had never tasted anything like it.

Miss Lee had ignored him as she walked through the Darcys’ fence. “Come on, Kelpie.”

“She’s not got you mooning over him too? Why watch ’im when you could listen to me? I’m a proper bloke! Don’t see me arseing around with some maggoty, girlish—”

Miss Lee was already in the Darcys’ kitchen. Kelpie snuck in through the loose board in the fence and peeked over the sill. Darcy was draped in a towel bashing away at something on a pile of newspaper, which was half covered with another towel.

He shook both towels off and yanked a piece of paper out of his
odd machine. The machine looked like a colony of metal spiders. The paper tore. “Lucy, you bitch!” Darcy yelled.

Kelpie wondered who Lucy was.

“Cork it!” someone screamed, setting off a round of yelling from the rest of the household.

Darcy swore again. Quieter this time. Then he straightened the piece of paper, turned it over, and put it back into the machine, then draped it and himself with the towels again.

“He’s a writer,” Miss Lee said, as proudly as if she had invented writing. “Writers express themselves colourfully, so don’t be alarmed.”

Kelpie grinned. Far as she could tell, everyone swore—other than Miss Lee. Besides, she liked the sound of Darcy’s voice, even when he was going off about his
bloody, fucking, bastard, no-good, bung-headed, sodded-up, so-called typewriter
.

Miss Lee leaned over to read from the page at the top of the stack.

Kelpie liked what Miss Lee read. It was the kind of story you’d hear from the old fellas in front of Castle’s, but funnier, less rambling. His story was about people like him, living in the Hills or out bush.

“So authentic!” Miss Lee breathed. “Oh, excellent word choice!
Aromatic
.” She continued to read aloud. “Oh, no,” she said a little later. “I hope he’s going to change that.
Strewth?
I know he’s writing about the Hills, but he doesn’t have to use such common vocabulary.”

Kelpie liked the word
strewth
and vowed to use it more. When Miss Lee wasn’t around.

“Oh no!
That
word’s even worse.” Miss Lee’s lips pressed together.

Kelpie wanted to ask what word, but she could tell Miss Lee would never say. Besides, Neal Darcy was barely two feet from where Kelpie was crouching. She peeked over the edge of the sill.

There was a patch of sweat in the middle of Darcy’s back. She found it strange that banging away at those metal spiders made him sweat. Like he was chopping wood, or shifting furniture, not making up stories in his head and writing them down.

The harder he pounded at the typewriter, the more he sweated and the more the towel on his head started to slide, until it fell to the ground and his hair fell forward into his eyes, so he had to push it back, sending droplets of sweat flying.

“Such passion!” Miss Lee said. “Once his face went purple, he was
so infuriated that the writing was not proceeding as he wished. He almost hurled his typewriter at the wall! He had it poised above his head. I would have held my breath if I had any to hold. But then he put it down, said, ‘Sorry, Lucy,’ and punched the wall. His knuckles bled, Kelpie. Can you imagine? I was most concerned.”

The stairs creaked and Kelpie ducked.

Miss Lee sighed. “The rest of the household is stirring. Mr. Darcy’s packing up. He must go to work in that dreadful brewery. Such a shame.”

Kelpie scrambled into the lane before any of the Darcys came out to use the dunny. Miss Lee appeared beside her.

Tommy was where he’d been. “Don’t know why you’d waste your time watching that ugly mick.”

Kelpie didn’t think Neal Darcy was ugly.

“Wish I could smoke,” Tommy said, watching old man Miller passing by, sucking on the last dregs of a cigarette. Miller’s cough was wet and echoed in his chest. “Only thing I really miss. Well, that and fucking.”

Kelpie pulled a face.

“Ignore him,” Miss Lee said. “Nothing he tells you is true. But it is
all
unpleasant. Let’s find you some food. Are you ready for your first reading lesson?”

Kelpie nodded.

Those precious minutes watching Darcy write, listening to his words, had made Kelpie want to know everything about letters and words and sentences. She wanted more of Darcy’s stories, more of any stories.

DYMPHNA

Dymphna felt her left leg trembling. Soon her right leg would shake too. Usually she could conceal it. Especially if she was sitting down.

She was in the Darcys’ kitchen, wedged against the back door. Kelpie by her side. Jimmy on the other. Her leg’s tremor causing the door, already loose on its hinges, to vibrate. Kelpie must know she was shaking. But surely Mrs. Darcy’s brood were gobbling their porridge too loudly to notice? Even though they were seated mere inches away. Even though the ones without their backs to her were staring at Dymphna, barely blinking.

She had to steady herself. If she wasn’t calm, she couldn’t plan her way out of this imbroglio.

“Why are you so pretty?” one of the little Darcys asked.

Dymphna smiled. “Thank you.”

The littlie goggled at her.

“’Cause she’s got money, silly,” an older one replied.

“Money don’t make you pretty,” the younger one protested. “You is or you ain’t.”

“It helps,” Dymphna could not resist replying. Money kept you clean and housed and eating well and wearing beautiful clothes and having your hair styled and your nails done by other people. She was quite sure she spent more on a jar of face cream than the Darcys spent on food in a month.

“How much did your hat cost?” another of the little Darcys asked.

Dymphna laughed, though her leg did not stop shaking.

“Mary!” Mrs. Darcy glared at the girl. “Ain’t polite to ask about money. Finish your breakfast, the lot of youse. Now.”

The police hadn’t asked after Dymphna by name. She could take comfort in that, couldn’t she? But their description fitted her. Well-dressed, blonde. Surely she wasn’t the only one in Surry Hills. There was that girl who worked at the florist’s on Taylor Square. Very pretty she was, blonde like Dymphna, and always smartly dressed.

What did the police know? She was sure she and Kelpie hadn’t been seen. If they had, surely they would already have been dragged from the Darcys’ yard and thrown in the lock-up. Or Dymphna
would be. They would hand Kelpie over to Child Welfare. Dymphna didn’t know which was worse.

Even if they knew nothing about what had happened last night, everyone knew Jimmy was her man. They would be coming by to question her. They always did.

Snowy Fullerton had killed Jimmy.

What if she’d arrived when Snowy was still there? Would he have killed her too? She didn’t think so. Snowy and she, they were friends. She could make a sly comment and he’d understand. Make a similar observation of his own. She liked Snowy.

Snowy did not pick fights, and he didn’t kill unless his boss told him to. Had his boss told him to kill Dymphna too? Was he looking for her now? If Snowy had to kill her, he would be sorry about it. She wasn’t sure what difference that made. She didn’t doubt he’d been sorry to kill Jimmy. That didn’t make Jimmy any less dead.

Or any less of a ghost railing at being dead.

His face was getting darker because Kelpie wasn’t answering any of his questions. When he was alive, his face would turn bright red when he was angry, when he laughed too hard, when they had sex.

Dymphna had thought Jimmy was smart enough to realise why Kelpie was ignoring him in a room full of the living. His adjustment to being dead was going to be slow. From what she’d seen, it was slow for most people. No one believed they were going to die, and once dead it was hard to let go of that disbelief.

At least Jimmy wasn’t trying to touch her or talk at her now.

He was focused on Kelpie. Poor Kelpie.

If Dymphna’s leg hadn’t been shaking, if her man weren’t dead, if she weren’t afraid that Mr. Davidson or Glory would find and kill her, she would have laughed. She was in a none-too-clean room full of Irish tykes, their overworked mother, handsome eldest brother, Kelpie, and the ghost of her dead man.

Kelpie and Jimmy Palmer in the same room.

Chance had thrown Dymphna and Kelpie together. Left to herself, she would have gone on waiting for the perfect moment to introduce herself to the girl. She was too nervous about frightening her off. Dymphna’s desire to win Kelpie over was too intense.

But here Kelpie was, and for the first time in Dymphna’s life, she was with someone who could hear every word the dead said.

It made Jimmy harder to ignore because she couldn’t help but
watch Kelpie interact with him, which led her gaze back to Jimmy, whom she could not look at without giving herself away.

Jimmy had been alive yesterday; Jimmy had been alive mere hours ago. Her leg shook harder.

Focus. Where had the lodger gone? To the police? The shakes were in her hands now. She put them behind her back.

“We should go,” Dymphna said. “Your lodger …”

“Miss Pattinson won’t say nothing to no one. She’s here to escape her husband. Ain’t even her real name. She won’t do nothing that’ll help him find her.”

“Her old man tried to dead her,” one of the smaller Darcys announced.

“With an axe,” another added breathlessly.

Dymphna breathed in sharply. Did it have to be an axe?

Kelpie turned to look at her and then away.

Dymphna shivered. She had to calm herself.

Sheep’s brains.

Dymphna’s mother used to make brains for her and her twin sisters when they were wee. Strained so that they became a delicate, tiny-bubbled sauce. They called it fluffy. It was the one savoury dish Mama always prepared, though Isla, their cook, made most of their food.

Mama had made it for them whenever they were upset. When the littlies, faces streaked with tears, begged, “Fluffy, please, Mama.” Or when Dymphna’s leg started shaking. She’d had these tell-tale tremors all her life. Set off by anxiety, by fear, by death.

Mrs. Darcy handed a half-full bowl of pale, grey mess to Dymphna. The uneven, muddy porridge was not fluffy. “You’ll have to share.”

Dymphna gave the sludge to Kelpie, who ate until she was scraping the spoon at nothing. Dymphna didn’t wonder at it. There was almost no meat on the girl’s bones.

Mrs. Darcy and Neal Darcy stared at Kelpie. The girl kept her eyes low.

“When’s the last time you ate, girl?” Mrs. Darcy asked. “It wasn’t when I gave you that scrap of bread, was it?”

“Her bones are sticking out,” one of the little Darcys said.

“Most everyone’s bones stick out round here,” an older Darcy said.