Razorhurst (29 page)

Dymphna and Darcy and Snowy followed her into the wreck of a house as Kelpie’d hoped they would. She felt more at ease than she had since … well, since before climbing the window into Mrs. Stone’s. This was her world.

She knew those smells: dust, mildew, rot, rat dung, pigeon droppings. Spider webs everywhere. But no piles of newspaper. No signs anyone had slept there recently. Probably because the floor had too many holes in it to support the weight of a sleeping body.

The roof was gone, and wind swept through the gaps between the boards. There were no rooms anymore, not much to distinguish outside from inside. The house had subsided so much the gap between boards and dirt underneath was negligible. The glass in the windows, the wooden frames, the pipes, door-handles—everything that could be salvaged—had long since been carted away. Nothing left worth stealing.

Kelpie’d have bet anything there was a demolition order stuck to what remained of the front door. Probably the whole block had an order. Houses this bad they almost always tore down. Eventually. Like Frog Hollow.

Though this wreck looked ready to fall on its own.

Snowy stepped past her. A floorboard cracked under his weight, almost as loud as a gunshot.

They froze.

She could hear shouting but not what was being said or who was saying it. Further away, the humming clangour of traffic. Closer to them a dog barked. Someone yelled to shush it. If the coppers were chasing them, there was no point in standing still. Even if the cops didn’t hear them, they might be able to see them though the gaps in the walls.

Kelpie tapped Snowy on the back, stepping quietly into a hole connecting to the next cottage. The holes were solid ground. She stepped from that hole to the next, hoping he was smart enough to follow her and that the holes were big enough for his feet.

Snowy followed quietly, Dymphna and Darcy behind him. Kelpie
could hear their breathing, the sounds their shoes made flicking the edges of the floorboards. She worried they were loud enough to be heard outside.

“You’d think,” Palmer said beside her, “neither of them ever had to get away quiet-like before.”

Kelpie heard yelling, male voices, but she couldn’t tell how far away. She heard no fences crashing in.

“That’s the cops, if you were wondering,” Palmer said.

Kelpie quickened her pace, bouncing from hole to hole.

“Like a bloody rabbit you are, they’re more like donkeys.”

She paused, touching the sawn edges of the hole in the wall. Someone had created a path through. She’d been in abandoned houses like these before.

This cottage hadn’t sunk into its foundations, and remnants of the ceiling remained. Like the first house it had been stripped of everything valuable, but there were fewer holes in the floor and the walls, and there was a wall between the front and back rooms. They couldn’t be seen from outside in this one.

The only cobwebs were on the ceiling. Two swags were rolled up in the far corner with no dust on them. People lived here. From the smell they were using the back room as a dunny.

On the other side was another neatly sawn hole leading to another cottage. Kelpie led the way, carefully picking out the least noisy path, avoiding planks with obvious signs of rot, nails that had worked partway out. Only Snowy matched her step for step.

The next cottage had subsided so much they had to drop down into it. What remained of the floorboards kissed the earth.

This one was almost as decayed as the first, but less porous; it reeked of alcohol. The floor was littered with broken bottles, kicked aside to clear a path to the next cottage.

A floorboard cracked loud enough to make her ears ring.

Darcy let out a half-yelp as his jaws snapped shut. She turned. He’d stepped through a rotten board and dropped an inch.

They all froze.

“Bloody moron,” Palmer said. “The pretty ones are always stupid.”

Kelpie could hear Darcy and Dymphna breathing. Herself too. A couple walked by outside. They were arguing. But she couldn’t hear about what. Further away the traffic was punctuated by a tram bell. But no sirens. No sounds of the police. She wished she could ask Palmer what he heard.

A door slammed. Dymphna startled. Kelpie looked at Palmer.

“Not here,” he told her.

Darcy started to pull his leg up. The floorboard made a cracking sound. Snowy put his finger over his lips and moved lightly to Darcy, testing each board before he put his weight on it.
That was how you did it
, Kelpie thought,
not galumphing like an elephant
.

Snowy bent down and slowly pulled Darcy’s trouser leg up. The trouser was torn but the skin underneath wasn’t. Snowy held the edge of the broken floorboard up and Darcy eased his foot out. The shoe was half off. He bent to put it back on and lace it more firmly. He half smiled at Dymphna to let her know he wasn’t hurt. Palmer rolled his eyes and Kelpie itched to smack him. Darcy wasn’t stupid and it wasn’t his fault he didn’t know how to move around properly in an abandoned house. He had a mum and a job. He shouldn’t have to.

In the fifth house Snowy whispered in Kelpie’s ear, “You think this one’s safe?”

“People.” Kelpie pointed to the swag barely visible under a broken floorboard in the corner of the room.

“They’re not here now.”

Kelpie turned to stare at Snowy. “It’s theirs.” She would never encroach on anyone else’s kipping place. It wasn’t right.

“Could’ve been there awhile. Maybe they’re not coming back.”

Kelpie shook her head. There was no dust on the swags.

Snowy shrugged. “When there’s one that’ll work let me know.”

Dymphna and Darcy caught up. Both panting.

Kelpie pushed through to the next house. From cottage to broken cottage they crept. Kelpie in front, Snowy in rear. Dymphna and Darcy were being more careful, but still did not test their weight as often nor tread as lightly as they could. They stopped half a dozen times because of too loud a creak, Darcy sneezing, Dymphna leaning on a wall that threatened to collapse.

Kelpie could have strangled them both.

She went as fast as she could without leaving them behind.

Part of her wanted to. But she didn’t even know where they were. Darlinghurst, she thought Dymphna had said, or Palmer, but she wasn’t sure.

The only place she knew to run to was the Hills, Glory’s domain.

Snowy Fullerton and Old Ma

Snowy was an orphan. Raised in Frog Hollow by Old Ma.

As if he were her own son. Old Ma was generous that way, though she’d never admit it.

When Snowy was fourteen, he brought a girl to Old Ma because he’d got her in trouble. He should have known better than that. Old Ma had taught him better than that.

Old Ma looked after the girl while she lived, which wasn’t long, and the baby after she died. That baby girl received almost every ounce of Old Ma’s love. The love that had been Snowy’s. Her heart had broke when Snowy became a standover man.

She understood why. Weren’t a whole lot of other options for the likes of Snowy. No one wanted him for an apprentice. They’d heard that black boys didn’t work hard. Old Ma’d never seen a boy work harder than Snowy, but no one would listen to her, he kept running away from the public school, and she couldn’t afford to send him to St. Patrick’s. Snowy was thieving when he was little, threatening when he was big. He was under Mr. Davidson’s wing by the time he was fifteen and already more than six foot tall.

Old Ma wept. But she understood. Snowy gave Old Ma a big chunk of his money and visited when he could.

He was in gaol the first time when he was sixteen. At first he didn’t mind. He was the biggest, strongest bloke in there. They left him alone, and the chaplain decided to teach him. The chaplain tried to teach all the boys, with many more failures than successes. Snowy was a quick learner, which made the chaplain believe he was a good teacher.

Snowy learned to read, and that was useful. But it was the numbers he loved. Under the chaplain’s tutelage, he went from basic arithmetic to percentages and fractions and even the wonder of algebra.

Gaol was good to Snowy. As good as it could be, which was not very good.

Getting out was a lot better. Meant he saw Old Ma a few more times before she died, tried to look out for Kelpie as best he could. He went looking for licit work, but there wasn’t any for a black man just out of prison with a scar on his face and fists bigger than
some people’s heads. Legitimate fighting was out ’cause white fellas wouldn’t step into the ring with him.

He went back to work for Mr. Davidson. But he was stronger and smarter now. Mr. Davidson gave him more responsibilities and more money. Snowy took the work, not because he wanted it but because he couldn’t find any other way of living. Passed as much of the money as he could on to Old Ma. He didn’t see as much of her or Kelpie as he wanted. Mr. Davidson liked to have Snowy close at hand, called him his bodyguard, his right-hand man. Other businessmen—legit and not so legit—found Snowy bowel loosening.

He didn’t want to go back to gaol. Working for Davidson meant he would definitely go back to gaol. He went back to gaol. In and out. More years in than out.

A week after Old Ma died, he bleached his hair. It was his own tribute. He kept it that way to remember that he’d failed the only mother he’d ever had, that he’d failed Kelpie too.

DYMPHNA

Dymphna had lost count of how many dirty, broken hovels they’d picked their way through. She was cold and tired and wishing she’d gone straight to Gloriana when she’d had the chance.

Cockroaches skittered away as Snowy ushered them past a torn old curtain into a back room.

Kelpie was staring up at what remained of the ceiling. Sunlight dappled her face through the holes in the roof. She was almost pretty. Dymphna didn’t believe for a second that the doctor was right about her and Kelpie being the same age.

“He wants you to hide in the middle of a fucking thieves-and-hobos thoroughfare?” Jimmy asked Kelpie. “Genius plan, that is.”

Dymphna had assumed they were exiting through the back door. It looked solid but had no handle or lock. Snowy was making no attempt to get it open.