Razorhurst (5 page)

Neal Darcy opened the back door. Kelpie kept low, skirting the dried-up veggie garden, the water pump, the tub, the line hung only with old pegs, and up the wooden steps. Dymphna slipped past her and inside first. Darcy shut the door behind them.

“Don’t say nothing,” Darcy said from outside. The door bowed inward under his weight. “Walls are thin.”

Kelpie leaned against their side of the door breathing through her nose. Quieter that way. Outside she heard men’s boots thudding on the lane, whistles and sirens, and so many raised voices they overlapped. Inside she heard Dymphna’s breaths, her heart pounding too. Though that could have been her own noisy beater ringing in her ears.

The curtains at the window were white and transparent. If they moved beyond the safety of the door, they’d be seen. She hoped Dymphna knew to stay still.

The big, tall ghost planted himself on Dymphna’s other side and yelled at her to stop ignoring him. Yelled at the world to tell him what was happening. Why was his skin wrong? Why did he feel wrong? Kelpie wished she could yell at him to shut his big, fat gob.

Dymphna gripped Kelpie’s hand again. Kelpie’d never felt such a soft hand. No calluses. No scars.

Outside: more yelling.

Kelpie would have to escape soon. She didn’t want to make trouble for Mrs. Darcy. Wouldn’t be long now before she would be up making breakfast.

She’d never been inside the Darcys’ home. She’d stood on the other side of the window watching Darcy bashing out his stories while Miss Lee leaned over his shoulder and read out the words. There’d been two faded ghosts in the kitchen when Miss Lee first led her to Neal Darcy. Now there was only one, so insubstantial Kelpie could see through it as it wafted from the front of the house to the kitchen door. She could barely feel the ghost as it drifted through her.

After Darcy’d caught her peering through the window, he’d invited her in. But Kelpie said no. It didn’t seem right. She’d said no again even after Mrs. Darcy had given her a piece of bread and asked her in for a cuppa. Kelpie didn’t belong with a family.

She liked being able to see the kitchen. It reminded her of Old Ma’s. A kitchen table took up most of the room. Stools and crates were shoved underneath. A stove, a gas meter, an icebox, and two rickety cupboards whose doors did not quite shut leaned against the wall. On the wall, hanging from hooks, were ladles and spoons and pots and sieves and graters and things Kelpie couldn’t identify because Old Ma hadn’t owned anything like them.

Through the mottled glass of the front door, Kelpie saw dark shapes moving out on the street. Lights shone through. Coppers searching, most like.

Kelpie’s stomach growled. It was the half-full glass of milk on the table that did it. She wished she could take a sip. But there was no way to get her hands on it without being seen.

Next to the milk, Darcy’s typewriter rested on a pile of newspapers. Beside it was an uneven stack of pages half covered by a towel. She wished she could touch those keys, that one day she could make the typewriter clatter and ding the way Darcy did. He’d promised to teach her.

Outside Darcy coughed, loud and sudden, and Dymphna flinched beside her.

“That you, Darcy?” someone called. Kelpie couldn’t be sure if it was from the lane or next door.

“What’s the barney, constable?” Darcy replied. The door shifted as he must have leaned forward.

Dymphna stilled. Kelpie breathed even quieter.

The gate creaked, so loud Kelpie wondered that the whole Darcy household didn’t wake.

“Bit of bother at Mrs. Stone’s. You seen anyone about who shouldn’t be, Darce?”

Kelpie thought of that poor bloke on the bed, who was now a ghost trying to make Dymphna see him. Bit more than a bother, wasn’t it?
That smell
. She’d heard some people wet themselves when they died. He’d done worse than that.

“Almost everyone at Mrs. Stone’s shouldn’t be about,” Darcy said. Kelpie heard him take a drag on his cigarette. The copper snorted.

“Seen any young women? Well dressed?”

“Well dressed? Around here?”

The copper laughed again. “This one’s known for hanging out with a rough crowd.”

Darcy didn’t say anything.

Kelpie wondered how they knew to look for Dymphna Campbell. Kelpie was going to get shot of her as soon as she could. Dymphna squeezed her hand, and Kelpie’s face felt hot. Dymphna was right-o. But Kelpie couldn’t afford to keep company with anyone the coppers was after.

“Let us know if you hear anything.”

“Will do, Boomer. Only you blokes so far,” Darcy said. “And those chooks and some screaming and breaking glass from the Kellers.”

“All as it should be then?”

Darcy gave a short laugh. The gate creaked again. “See ya later.”

The copper shouted something back that Kelpie didn’t hear.

“Too right!” Darcy called after him. “You owe me a drink, Boomer.”

The door bowed in again. “Imagine they’ll keep searching,” Darcy said quietly in between drags. “Best you two stay put a while longer. Don’t move. I’ll be in when I finish this.”

Dymphna made a little noise. “Does he want us to stop breathing?”

“That’d help,” Darcy said.

Kelpie tried not to worry about Darcy’s ma and his brothers and sisters and their lodger. The house was quiet, but with all that racket from the cops, they’d be up soon. Then what?

“Don’t think you should stay here, Dymph,” the scarred-cheeked ghost said. “It’s not safe.”

“You all right?” Dymphna whispered.

Kelpie nodded.

Darcy hissed at them to
shh
.

Kelpie pulled her hand from Dymphna’s and slid to the floor, letting her muscles relax. Like Old Ma had taught her: sleep when you can, never be tense unless you have to be. Only led to grief and headaches.

The kitchen ceiling was stained and bowed in as if a little more weight from above, and it’d come crashing down. It wouldn’t be the first. Before they’d torn down Frog Hollow, some of the houses had collapsed on their own.
All it took was breathing a little too heavy
, Old Ma had said.

Kelpie kept her breath quiet and slow, watched it make condensation in the air as if she were smoking like Darcy.

“Jimmy Palmer was a good bloke,” Dymphna said softly. “Kind. Probably why he didn’t last.”

Kelpie had heard that name before. One of Glory’s standovers. Did Dymphna mean the ghost? He didn’t look kind. He looked big and ropeable.

“Shh,” Darcy whispered. “Killing my cigarette now.”

“I’m
still
a good bloke,” the ghost said. He waved his hand in front of Dymphna’s eyes. She didn’t even blink. “I’ll always be a good bloke.”

But Kelpie could tell from the way he said it that Jimmy Palmer knew he was dead.

The door shifted, and the back step creaked as Darcy stood. “There’s a fair few eyeballs out on the lane. Duck down, then move below the windows.”

Kelpie slid right, Dymphna left.

“Opening the door now. Slowly.”

“Hey, young Neal,” Mrs. Keller shouted from next door. “What’s the barney? My chooks are going mental.”

Darcy stepped back out and shut the door. Kelpie flattened herself against the wall, pulling her knees to her chest and squeezing her eyes tight. She was even closer to the milk now.

“Morning, Mrs. Keller,” Darcy said. “There’s trouble at Mrs. Stone’s.”

“Oh, aye,” said Mrs. Keller with a loud exhale. She didn’t talk so much as boom. Tommy called her Old Bellow Lungs, but her husband was louder. “Well, there would be, wouldn’t there? Up at all hours. Doing God knows what. All of them scarred like, like, I don’t know what. It ain’t right.”

“No, it’s not, Mrs. Keller.”

“I don’t suppose them coppers are doing anything about it for all their running about and shouting,” she continued without pause. “It’s a wonder anyone’s still asleep. It’s not like that lot at Mrs. Stone’s didn’t already keep us up all night with their goings-on. Women laughing too loud! Bottles smashing! Automobiles driving up at all hours! Louder than a herd of elephants! Here it is almost five and soon time to be awake and off to the factories. It ain’t right at all.”

“Why don’t you bloody shut it then?” yelled a voice so loud and penetrating it could only be Mr. Keller. “Not like
you
work in a factory!”

“Don’t talk to me like that!”

“I need all my sleep, you stupid cow! Glory’s party’s tonight, or had you forgotten? Free beer and sausages! I’m not gunna miss it ’cause I can’t keep me bloody eyes open!”

“Free beer! Free entry to corruption and dissolution and the end of your natural days, more like!”

“Oh, shut your flapping mouth! You know what her party’s for,
don’t you, you silly sow? She’s shafted her own husband. I’da thought you’d be the first one to celebrate a woman doing wrong by her husband. Divorce! And her a Catholic. Well—”

“Divorce is the only thing that—”

“They’re off,” Darcy whispered. The door opened, and he slipped inside—straight through Jimmy Palmer, who snarled and tried to punch him. Kelpie slid in front of the door and stood up. Dymphna did the same. They were so close Kelpie could see the yellow stains on Darcy’s fingers.

“Thank you,” Dymphna said quietly.

Kelpie muttered the same. She doubted Darcy heard. He was staring at Dymphna, she was staring at him.

“I’m Dymphna.”

“Neal.”

They didn’t shake hands. They didn’t stop staring either.

Kelpie wondered why Darcy was pretending he didn’t know who Dymphna was. He’d written a story about her. He’d changed her name to Kitty Macintosh, and her eyes were green, not blue, but her hair was blonde like Dymphna’s—though in the story he called it “silvery.” Kitty ran with the same bruising men—that’s what Darcy called them in the story—as Dymphna. In the end, the man Kitty loved killed her.

“Do you think it’ll be safe if we slip out the front?” Dymphna asked.

Darcy shook his head. “Cops everywhere.”

“I’m supposed to be helping set up for Glory’s party,” Dymphna murmured.

Kelpie heard footsteps upstairs. A door slammed. Someone called out, “Ma!”

A woman replied softly. Kelpie couldn’t make out the words.

Dymphna and Darcy stared at each other.

The Kellers were still shouting. Kelpie heard the words
mongrel
,
proddie
, and
shiv
. Other voices screamed at them to bloody shut it. And that shouting from the lane—was that the police? Maybe the coppers were gone. Further away a whistle blasted from a freight train.

The stairs groaned loudly, one for each step, and then Mrs. Darcy stood at the bottom, her arms crossed tight. “Who are youse? What are you doing in my kitchen?”

“Friends, Ma,” Darcy said softly, turning to her, leaning over the kitchen table and kissing her cheek. “You remember Kelpie.”

Mrs. Darcy didn’t say anything, but she smiled when she saw
Kelpie, patting her head while Kelpie resisted squirming. She did not like being touched as if she was a littlie. She might be small, but she wasn’t a child.

Mrs. Darcy’s gaze hardened when she turned to Dymphna. Kelpie could tell she knew who she was and how she made her money. Kelpie could almost see the word
chromo
balanced on her lips.

“They’re in a spot of bother, Ma. We can give them breakfast, can’t we?”

“Kelpie’s welcome,” Mrs. Darcy began, “but—”

“There’s not enough time,” Dymphna said. “We have to be going.”

Jimmy Palmer looked agitated.

Outside the siren from a police motor-car sounded. Neal Darcy looked at Dymphna. “You won’t get far.”

More footsteps on the stairs.

“Who’s that then?” one of Darcy’s brothers asked. A little one. Snot dribbled from his left nostril to his mouth.

“Our guests,” Mrs. Darcy said, shooting her eldest son a dark look.

Darcy carefully wrapped the typewriter in towels and put it under one of the crates they used as chairs. All six Darcy kids and the lodger, a tall thin woman wearing a worn suit and a hat, crammed around the kitchen table. Mrs. Darcy moved to the stove to warm the porridge.

The ghost belligerently pushed his way through them, and not a one noticed. Palmer looked like he was ready to explode.

“We should leave,” Dymphna said, sounding even posher than Miss Lee.

The youngest Darcy girl was staring at her and making faces. Kelpie averted her eyes.

Someone banged so loud on the front door it rattled.

Kelpie and Dymphna looked at each other. Kelpie began to ease the back door open, readying herself to slide through and away.

“Cops, Ma,” Darcy said as the pounding on the door continued.

“Upstairs, you two,” Mrs. Darcy said. “Not a sound.”

Kelpie’s Theories of Ghosts