Razorhurst (25 page)

Stuart O’Sullivan had tatters for ears and a nose that had been broken three times. He made sure Kelpie knew that it had
only
been three times.
Number of fights I had? Three broken noses is nothing. Most boxers had their noses smeared across their ugly mugs a million times more than that
.

Stuart O’Sullivan was prone to exaggeration.

He haunted the cinema on Crown that was once the gymnasium where he’d trained and had almost become the best fighter the country had ever seen.
Almost
, because he’d been beaten down in Frog Hollow by five jumped-up pedlars who’d decided to switch to being outright criminals, starting with robbing him.
Before the war, that was. Five of them and they still didn’t do the job right. Took me a week to die. Bastards
.

He was a small, wiry man who’d started as a flyweight and ended a bantam because of a growth spurt in his twenties.
Oh, the growing pains. Swear I could feel me bones moving. Kept me up nights for months. Then me coordination was all out of whack. That’s when me nose got broke second and third times
.

At first he’d thought she was a boy. When Kelpie corrected his misapprehension, he said he would no longer teach her “the fine art of pugilism.” He didn’t approve of a girl learning. Women were built too delicately and lacked the endurance for such a rigorous, manly sport. But he loved to teach, and in all his many years of ghosting, he had never come across another live one who could see and hear him well enough for lessons.

He taught wee lass Kelpie because there was no one else.

Most of the dead weren’t interested in learning. Those that were had no interest in learning anything physical. What was the point? They could feel nothing. Touch nothing. They were zephyrs unable to deliver a knock-out punch to a gnat.

He taught Kelpie whenever she visited him, which was not as often as O’Sullivan would like. He was a yeller, and Kelpie did not enjoy being yelled at. Each time she’d storm off, and he’d promise not to yell again, but the second she did something wrong, there he was yelling again. He couldn’t help himself.

Miss Lee never yelled.

When Kelpie was with Miss Lee, she did not visit O’Sullivan. She hadn’t been back since Miss Lee faded, but she remembered what he’d taught. Not just the fine pugilistic art, but the much more useful sneaky fighting tailored for someone small and quick: like O’Sullivan had been and like Kelpie was.

Most of it below the belt.

Kelpie practised because you never knew when running away wouldn’t be enough.

DYMPHNA

“How old are you, girl?”

The doctor peered at Kelpie’s face as if she were deaf. Dymphna half expected him to knock on the girl’s skull and ask if anyone was home. She had a mind to tell him off if he did. After everything that had happened that day, Dymphna was more than ready to start yelling.

Kelpie said nothing.

“She doesn’t know how old she is. I was hoping you’d be able to tell.”

“You don’t know how old your niece is?”

“Things fall apart, Doc. I’ve a younger brother I’ve never seen. I don’t know how old he is either.”

“Well, she doesn’t look much over eleven or twelve. Is that how old you are, girl?”

Kelpie looked past the doctor to the wooden crates.

“She doesn’t talk much,” Dymphna told him.

“Does she talk at all? Could she be dumb?”

“She talks.”

“Right then. Let’s get her shoes off and measure her. Against the wall.”

Kelpie looked warily at the doctor then removed her shoes. Dymphna led her to the only clear bit of the room, which was the back of the door.

On the other side of the door, Bluey made a sharp barking noise. They all three startled.

“He was next on my list,” Jimmy said. “Doing for Bluey was going to be such a pleasure. Now the most I can hope for is to lead him off a fucking cliff.”

The doctor made a mark above Kelpie’s head, then pushed her onto the scale, sliding the weights until they balanced.

“Four feet nine inches, weighing a smidge under five stone. Round here that’s about average for a ten- or eleven-year-old. Are you eleven, girl?”

Kelpie didn’t even blink at him.

“Sit down.”

Kelpie sat. The doctor bent over her.

“She’s not as clean as she could be.”

Dymphna was indignant. Mrs. Darcy had washed her. She’d been in a bubble bath. Dymphna doubted Kelpie’d been this clean in years.

“When’s the last time
you
had a wash?” Dymphna asked, eyeing his crumpled suit. The tie was barely four inches long and had a half-moon stain below the knot. Even so it was cleaner than his face. Dymphna did not want to think about his teeth.

A loud, vibrating snore came from the other side of the door. Then another. Bluey was asleep. Glory would be pleased he was so vigilant in his guard duties.

The doctor held a stethoscope to Kelpie’s chest. “Nothing wrong with her heart.” He shifted it to her lungs. “Breathe in deep.” Kelpie did. “And again.” She did.

“Surprisingly clear,” he told Dymphna, “for someone living on the streets. Stick your tongue out.”

Kelpie did. The doctor grunted.

He shone a light in her eyes, had her sit so he could hit her knees with a tiny hammer. “All better than it has any right to be,” he said. “Let’s get her clothes off then.”

Kelpie looked at Dymphna. Dymphna squeezed her hand. “He’s a doctor and I’m right here. But he has to check you.”

Kelpie shook her head.

Dymphna bent to put herself level with Kelpie’s eyes. “If you don’t do what Doc says, he’ll tell Glory, and then she’ll have Bluey make you do what he says. Neither one of us is going to enjoy that.”

“Orright.”

Kelpie took off her clothes. Politely Dymphna stared at a notch in the wood of a crate of quality liquor several inches above Kelpie’s head.

“She’s brown as a nut. You sure she’s your niece?” Doc looked from Kelpie to Dymphna’s pale skin.

“Her dad was foreign and she’s been living on the streets. What did you expect?”

“Her mammary glands are coming in.”

“Her what?” Dymphna asked for Kelpie’s benefit.

“Tits,” the doctor said, pointing. “Her tits are starting to grow.”

Kelpie put her arms across them.

The doctor shot a triumphant look at Dymphna. “She might be dumb, but she can understand.”

“She’s not dumb. I told you, Doc. She can talk.”

“Lift up your arms.”

Kelpie did, glaring at the doctor. Dymphna couldn’t help thinking that Glory was right: Kelpie had a fearsome glare.

“There’s the beginnings of adolescent hair growth. On her pudenda and underarms. You got your monthlies yet, girl?”

Kelpie didn’t respond. Dymphna wondered if she knew what that meant.

“Probably too undernourished. Look at those ribs. She has to be at least twelve to have breasts and pubic hair growth.”

Dymphna didn’t correct him. She’d had hers by the time she was ten.

“But the malnourishment has probably stunted her growth. I’d say she’s probably older. Could be as much as sixteen.”

“She can’t be,” Dymphna said in shock. This little girl? Sixteen? She didn’t come up to Dymphna’s collarbone. Kelpie looked and sounded like a child. “
I’m
sixteen. How on earth could she be sixteen too?”

“You’re not!” The doctor was staring at her.

“Shit,” Dymphna said. She hadn’t meant to say it out loud. But she’d been shocked. Kelpie could
not
be the same age as her. “You can’t tell anyone, Doc. No one knows but Glory.”

“Sixteen?” Jimmy shouted. “You could be me own kid!”

She could not be his child. Jimmy wasn’t thirty yet—
hadn’t been
thirty yet.

Kelpie was staring at her too. Directly. It unnerved Dymphna. The little girl was usually careful not to meet anyone’s eyes.

“You look like a lady,” Kelpie said, her gaze still on Dymphna. She hugged herself tighter as if to fend off that piece of information. “You
can’t
be sixteen. You’re not a kid.”

Doc was still staring too. “How many dead boyfriends you got? You’re the Angel of Death, and you’re telling me you’re only
sixteen
?”

“Don’t call me that! They weren’t
all
my boyfriends. People exaggerate. Not that it’s any business of yours. You can’t tell anyone how old I am!”

“
Sixteen
.” Doc’s face drooped. “You can still get out of this life, you know, love. You’ve got time. Keep at it and you’ll be old beyond your years. Older beyond your years. Right now you look twenty—all well and good—but soon you’ll be looking fifty. I ain’t even thirty-five yet and look at me.”

Almost the same age as Jimmy Palmer. But he looked like he could be Jimmy’s dad. Doc was a wreck. But that had nothing to do with Dymphna. She didn’t drink every minute she was awake. She ate right, looked after herself. She was careful.

“Shall I tell Glory you’re encouraging her best girl to leave her?” Dymphna stared at the doctor so hard he backed up a step. “I pull in fifty pounds a night
after
she’s taken her cut. What are you making?”

The doctor closed his mouth, swallowed. “Forget I said anything.”

“Do you promise not to tell?”

“Not a soul. On my word.”

“Because I will find out, Doc, and I will make you pay.”

Now Doc looked more tired than afraid. She felt a moment of resentment that he was more afraid of Glory than of her.

“I won’t tell anyone,” he said. “I stay out of trouble. You know that.”

Dymphna did. “You neither, Kelpie.”

Kelpie nodded but did not stop staring at her. Dymphna had to hope that Bluey hadn’t heard. That he really was asleep. Though if Glory or Davidson had her killed, it wouldn’t matter if she was ninety. Shit.

The doctor turned to Kelpie. “How often do you eat?”

Kelpie didn’t answer.

Dymphna suspected Kelpie ate more than Doc did. The way the cheekbones stuck out on his face, it was a safe bet she’d be able to count his ribs too.

He pulled out his bottle of cod-liver oil and measured out a dose. Kelpie eyed the doc and then the slimy liquid on the spoon. Dymphna almost laughed. Kelpie looked like she’d rather eat her own foot.

“Open up,” the doc said.

“Bluey,” Dymphna reminded her.

Kelpie’s eyes narrowed, but she opened her mouth and swallowed.

“Paint the abrasions and rashes with gentian violet. Dose her with cod-liver oil once a day. Makes sure she bathes at least two or three times a week and brushes her teeth daily. You’ll have to take her to a dentist. Make her eat apples too. Good for the digestion and the teeth. Also red meat.”

“Don’t want no apples.” Kelpie started pulling her clothes back on.

“She’ll eat apples,” Dymphna said, smiling at Kelpie. “I’ll make you an apple cake.”

“If you want her to eat them without any nutritional value, go right ahead.”

Dymphna didn’t ask what
nutritional value
was.

The doctor sat down again and put his feet back up on the desk.

“That’s it?” Dymphna asked.

“She’s not going into the life? Then that’s all needs checking.”

Dymphna thought about objecting but then grabbed Kelpie’s arm and led her to the door.

“Doctors. I could have worked most of that out for myself,” she muttered. Well, not that Kelpie could be the same age as her. She still couldn’t believe that was true.

“I’ll see you at Glory’s party tonight,” Doc said, closing his eyes. “Should be a bosker.”

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