Razorhurst (26 page)

Before Kelpie learned to read, the outer limits of her world had been Centennial Park, Paddy’s Markets, Central Station, and Cleveland Street. A world of no more than a handful of square miles. She’d never seen the ocean, a desert, or inhaled mountain air. She hadn’t so much as crossed the Harbour Bridge. Kelpie had not known such experiences were a possibility. Then she learned to read, and the boundaries of her imagination, if not her actual world, slowly began to expand.

Miss Lee had revelled in Kelpie’s quick transition from illiterate to voracious reader.
Such a quick study you are!
she’d cry.
You are far and away my finest student, and you know I taught at the finest girls’ school in Surry Hills
.

Kelpie did know that. Miss Lee had often told her.

The school, Lady Cheltenham’s School for Young Ladies, had since moved further east. Surry Hills had become too dangerous for the sensibilities of innocent young ladies.

Miss Lee loved that Kelpie was now able to read anything.

But it did not follow that she thought Kelpie
should
read anything.

There was a pile of magazines in the living room at Old Man O’Reilly’s with titles like
Photo Bits
,
Spicy Adventures
, and
Modern Art for Men
. Miss Lee’s face changed when she saw them: lips thinned, nostrils flared, eyebrows raised. “These are not for reading. In fact, let’s avoid this room. On general principle, one should avoid reading magazines. There’s nothing in them to broaden the mind. But these are the worst kind of magazine there is.”

After that they stuck to Old Man O’Reilly’s library and attic. Kelpie didn’t mind. She loved the library.

Though there was one shelf Kelpie wasn’t allowed to touch. The books on it had interesting names such as
The Satyricon
,
The Decameron
,
The Kama Sutra
, and
Les Liaisons dangereuses
. Kelpie couldn’t find any of those words in the dictionary. A book called
Ulysses
was also on that shelf, which puzzled Kelpie, as he was a character in
Greek and Roman Myths & Legends
, which Miss Lee had encouraged her to read, despite the stories making no sense.

Some of the other titles made it clear why that shelf was forbidden
to her:
Sex-Love, and Its Place in a Free Society
,
A Bibliography of Sex Rites and Customs
,
The Marriage of Near Kin
,
La Prostitution
,
The Amatory Experiences of a Surgeon
(amatory was in the dictionary),
The Romance of Lust
,
The Sexual Side of Marriage
,
The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival
, and
Raped on the Railway: a True Story of a Lady who was First Ravished and then Flagellated on the Scotch Express
.

Then there were the books that sounded innocent and made Kelpie wonder why they weren’t:
The Colonel’s Daughter
,
The Life of Fanny Hill
,
The Butcher Shop
,
Capital Volume I
,
The Well of Loneliness
,
A Farewell to Arms
,
Dubliners
,
All Quiet on the Western Front
,
Woman’s Destiny and Birth Control
, and
The Diary of a Smut-Hound
.

That shelf had horrified Miss Lee even more than the magazines. She had yelled at Kelpie to get down from the stepladder. Gestured for her to sit down on the comfy leather couch.

“Not all books,” Miss Lee said, once her lecture face was in place, “are good for us. There are some that are shoddily written. Mysteries, penny dreadfuls, and the like. Books like those are not educational and are full of vulgar notions and expression. But they are unlikely to be harmful. At least not if read in moderation.

“However, there are other books, which, well. It would have been better if they were not written in the first place, and once written they most definitely should not have been published. They are deeply harmful. That shelf is full of such books. It is saddening to learn that Mr. O’Reilly is a degenerate.”

Kelpie had no idea what a degenerate was. She looked it up first chance she got. The description seemed to fit most of the men of the Hills. Very few of whom were fine examples of their species.

“You must promise never to read those books.”

Kelpie solemnly promised with her fingers crossed behind her back. She fully intended to look at each and every volume the second Miss Lee wasn’t around to see.

But then Miss Lee faded, and Kelpie did not have the heart to return to Old Man O’Reilly’s.

KELPIE

Kelpie didn’t know what to do with the knowledge that Dymphna Campbell was sixteen. The woollen hat Snowy had given her for her tenth birthday had long since fallen apart. Could it really have been six years ago?

But how could she and Dymphna be the same age? Sixteen was Maisy O’Keefe who haunted Devonshire Street below Crown and was skinny and loud and had hair in dirty blonde plaits and was not much taller than Kelpie. Maisy was always singing about her runaway lad whose name changed on a daily basis.
That
was sixteen. Not Dymphna Campbell.

Wasn’t Tommy sixteen? He didn’t look nearly as grown up as Dymphna. He had pimples, and his voice bounced up and down like the Adam’s apple in his throat.

Apples. Ugh.

Dymphna was much taller than she was. She had bosoms and the kind of arse all the men looked at. She talked and walked and looked like a lady. Like a fully grown woman.
Not
a sixteen-year-old.

Dymphna shoved the doctor’s door hard. It wouldn’t open. Bluey was snoring, asleep on the other side, his full weight against the door.

“Bluey?” Dymphna called out. “Bluey!”

Kelpie wondered if he was pretending. If this was his way of getting at them because Glory wouldn’t let him hurt them. The doctor roused himself to add his weight to the door. All three of them pushed. It budged but not enough for them to slip through. Now Kelpie was sure Bluey was pretending.

“Wake up, Bluey!” Dymphna cried.

“Whaa?” The door opened. Bluey stood blinking. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and eyed Dymphna slyly. He didn’t look like he’d just woken up.

Kelpie stayed behind Dymphna.

“Bye, Bluey,” the doctor said, closing the door as quickly as he could.

For a moment Kelpie wished she could hide in the doctor’s office. Even with her clothes off, which had been awful, it was better than being near Bluey. She wouldn’t put it past him to accidentally fall on her and break as many of her bones as he could.

Palmer had disappeared again. Though what he thought Bluey could do to him even if he could actually see him, Kelpie had no idea. Palmer was the only one who
wasn’t
in danger from him.

Bluey led the way through the shop without saying a word. Kelpie needed to pee but didn’t want to say so in front of him. The two boys were sensibly hidden. Kelpie wished she was too. There was a big bowl of peanuts on the bar. She’d been hoping to palm some, but no chance with Bluey marching them through this fast.

Bluey’s fists were clenched again. Kelpie wondered how long before he gave in to temptation and thumped her and Dymphna like he wanted to.

Once again, she considered running. She’d be safer in the Hills. Well, except that Glory knew about her now and would send someone to find her. Once she was found, would Glory still protect her? Or would she throw her in the harbour? Mr. Davidson probably knew about her too. He’d seen her with Dymphna. Maybe Kelpie wasn’t safe anywhere. The thought made her feel colder than Glory’s looking at her had.

Did Bluey hold a grudge? If she ran away, would he find her and break her into tiny pieces?

Bluey opened the front door, and Dymphna followed him out. Kelpie looked behind her to see if the boys would emerge from hiding. Maybe she could run back and sneak the peanuts now.

“Hurry up, Kelpie,” Dymphna called.

Kelpie saw someone moving in the abandoned house on the other side of the lane. The house was a roofless mess of fallen bricks and timber, with no doorway and a window that had neither glass nor frame.

Bluey leapt across the narrow lane and in through the window, fists flying. “I see ya! Ya fucking mongrel!”

Kelpie heard a dull smack that meant that Bluey’s fist had connected. Neal Darcy came tumbling backward out the same window, rolling over and onto his feet.

He grinned at Dymphna. “Shoulda ducked.”

Bluey climbed out after him. “Following us like a mangy fucking dog. Ya think I’m fucking blind or somethink?”

Darcy backed away, panting, his right cheekbone red and his fists raised.

“Leave him alone, Bluey. He’s harmless,” Dymphna said. “We’ve got to get back to Glory.”

“He was following youse. Glory said I could kill ’im.”

A window went up two houses down. “What’s the barney?” a large man called, leaning forward on his elbows. Then he saw Bluey. He ducked back in faster than a rat up a downpipe, slammed the window, and closed the curtains.

Bluey swung at Darcy again, who danced backward, nimbly jumping over a brick. Bluey had his fists high. He threw a cross, missing by a fraction of an inch.

Darcy ducked, then pivoted, scraping along a cottage wall and out of the way before Bluey could land a kick, but Darcy didn’t swing back at him.

Bluey was wide open. His chin was up. One punch to the throat would fix him. Then follow it up with a few blows to the head. This fight was Darcy’s. Kelpie bit her lip to keep the instructions she wanted to yell at him inside her.

Bluey threw a roundhouse, wild and off balance, missing Darcy and hitting the broken post of a crumbling house.

Bluey screamed, shook his hand. Kelpie saw blood. Bluey curled it into a fist again and threw a wild hook at Darcy’s head. Darcy was out of range before Bluey finished his wind-up. His knuckles slammed into a wall.

Darcy made Bluey look slow and old. Bluey was neither.

He threw another cross. Darcy swayed out of its path. He had plenty of time to return a blow of his own. Instead he danced backward, agilely avoiding colliding with the flowerpots in front of one of the intact homes.

Stuart O’Sullivan would have been appalled. Kelpie
was
appalled. She’d’ve liked to scream at Darcy to smash him one. O’Sullivan would’ve approved of Darcy’s footwork but would have wondered what the point of it was if the kid couldn’t bring himself to go for the kill.

If Darcy wasn’t going to fight Bluey, why didn’t he run?

Bluey jabbed and missed, hooked and missed. Sweat ran down his now-red face. “I’ll fuckin’ kill ya!”

“Run, Darcy!” Kelpie yelled, hoping Bluey was too ropeable to hear her.

Darcy tripped over one of the flowerpots, landed on his arse, picked up a broken shard, and rolled out of Bluey’s way.

Bluey flicked his razor open. It gleamed.

“Bluey!” Dymphna called. “Put it away! Glory said no trouble.”

Kelpie was pretty sure Bluey wasn’t listening.

“Run!” Dymphna screamed.

Why wasn’t Darcy running? He could outrun Bluey easy.

A whistle blew down the lane. Kelpie turned. A copper.

Dymphna said, “Shit.”

The copper had something dark and heavy in his hand. He ran towards them, yelling at Bluey not to move. His copper’s hat fell to the ground. He had a gun. He pulled up less than a foot from Darcy.

Kelpie had never seen a gun this close before. The metal was dull, not shiny like she’d imagined. Bluey’s razor shone more brightly. Even so, the gun looked dangerous. Kelpie shrank back.

Bluey slowed. He looked at the gun in the copper’s hands, the razor in his own, and at Darcy in the dirt between them. Bluey did not look afraid or even wary. Not like the copper or Darcy.

Or Kelpie.

“Don’t move, Bluey,” the copper repeated. He had more pimples than Tommy.

“They’re mates, Constable,” Dymphna said. “Bluey was putting the razor away, weren’t you, Bluey?”

Bluey nodded, but he didn’t close his razor.

Dymphna edged away from the men.