Razorhurst Read Online Free PDF

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 sawKelpie, patting her head while Kelpie resisted squirming. She did not like being touched as if she