Common People

by Tony Birch

  Mahoney closed one eye and fixed on her with the other.

  ‘I was looking for one of your girls, Else Booth. She owes me money.’

  ‘Too bad. She hasn’t been here for weeks.’

  ‘When’s she due back?’

  Viola noticed that Des had stuck a foot in the doorway. She rested an open hand on the back of the door, in case she needed to slam it in his face. ‘She won’t be back. Else has moved on.’

  He shook his head, feigning disgust. ‘That’s no good to me. I got hold of some perfumes for her. French gear. She hasn’t paid me for ’em.’

  As far as Viola was concerned the perfume story stunk.

  ‘You’ve waited some time to collect, Des. Like I said, she’s not coming back. You’ll have to track her down yourself.’ She tried to close the door, jamming his boot.

  ‘I need the money,’ he snarled.

  ‘I don’t have time for this. I’m busy.’ She pushed her shoulder against the door, shutting it in his face.

  Viola went into her bedroom and opened the curtains on the sunny morning, feeling a little anxious about Des Mahoney. It wasn’t uncommon for a customer to knock at the brothel door after hours, and sending them on their way caused no drama. But Mahoney had unnerved her in a way Viola was not used to. She decided to calm herself by running a bath and was about to take off her dressing gown when she heard a creaking floorboard in the hallway.

  Des Mahoney pushed the door open. He was holding a knife in his hand and smiling at Viola, a mouthful of rotting teeth on display. Viola studied the knife. The blade was short, maybe only three inches long, but well sharpened, by the look of it. Without a weapon in his hand she wouldn’t have hesitated to take Mahoney on. Viola had battled many men over the years, and had the scars to show for her losses and occasional victories, but she wasn’t about to risk her neck.

  ‘You can’t be coming in here. I’ll call my manager, Johnny. He won’t put up with this.’

  ‘We both know your errand boy’s not here. I seen him leave earlier.’ Des waved the knife in the air. ‘I want what I’m fucken owed.’

  Viola remained calm. ‘All right, then. How much is it? Let me settle for Else.’

  ‘I’ll take whatever the house is holding, and,’ he lunged at her with the knife, nicking Viola on the cheek, just below an eye. ‘And I’ll take whatever else I fancy.’

  Gabriel had left the schoolyard immediately after first bell. He ran through the streets to Viola’s and picked up his lunchbox from the kitchen table. He was about to leave the house when he heard a shout from one of the front rooms. He walked through the kitchen, along the hallway, and stopped at Viola’s bedroom door. He hesitated before opening it. He saw Viola on her bed, laying on her stomach, with her face turned to the wall. Her dressing gown was hitched up around her shoulders, exposing her naked body. He saw a man standing by the bed with a knife in his hand. Gabriel turned to run and fell. The man leaped across the room and grabbed him by the neck before he could get to his feet. Gabriel was thrown across the room and slammed against the side of the bed. Mahoney bent forward to be sure Gabriel got a look at his knife.

  ‘And who are you, darling?’ he asked, in an almost gentle voice.

  Gabriel was too terrified to speak.

  Mahoney used the blade to lift Gabriel’s fringe from his face. He whistled, a low cat-call, and rested a hand on Gabriel’s thigh, lightly massaging it.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, quietly. ‘Don’t you be frightened, gorgeous. Viola and I are just talking.’

  Gabriel had no idea what the man wanted but knew that Viola was in trouble. He began to cry and squeezed his eyes together. Mahoney tapped the boy on the chin to get his attention. ‘I’m not here to hurt anyone, not today.’

  Mahoney reached across the bed to where Viola lay, patted her on the hip and drew her dressing gown down. He picked up a diamond bracelet sitting on the bedside table and held it to the light. ‘This will have to do for what Else owes me.’

  He put the bracelet in his pocket, looking over at Gabriel. ‘Hey, Viola. I’m coming back next week. Same time. You have one of your girls stay back for me. Unless you’re willing to step up yourself.’ He tousled Gabriel’s hair. ‘What a lovely looking thing. You do the right thing by me, Viola, if not I’ll have to get in touch with the old Welfare molls. They’ll fucking treasure this kid.’ He gently stroked Gabriel’s head. ‘Either them or someone else will.’

  The boy listened to the man’s heavy footsteps walking back along the hallway. He waited until he heard the side door close and jumped onto Viola’s bed. She reached out to him and started rocking him gently in her arms, kissing him on the forehead. She wiped the blood from her face and looked up at the ceiling.

  When Viola heard Johnny return to the house she called him into her room. It had taken her precious little time to realise what she had to do. Gabriel lay in her bed, sleeping peacefully. Johnny could see the bruise across one eye and the fine cut below the other.

  ‘Fuck! What’s happened to you, Vee.’

  ‘Nothing I’m about to talk to you about.’

  ‘You will so,’ he protested. ‘Someone’s hurt you. Who the fuck done this?’

  Viola took Johnny’s hand in hers, the only show of affection she’d provided him in twenty-five years.

  ‘Listen, Johnny. There’s something important I need you to do. You can’t afford to get it wrong.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘So, will you listen? Please?’

  Johnny wasn’t able to listen. He was full of rage. ‘Fuck this. You’ve been given a belt and I need to know who by.’

  She gripped his hand. ‘Shut up!’ She pointed to her bruised eye. ‘Do you reckon somebody would do this to me if they thought I had a hard man running the house with me? It’s not what you do, Johnny, and never has been.’

  Johnny dropped his head in shame.

  She squeezed his hand a second time. ‘Hey, it’s not your fault. I never employed you to be a heavy. You’re better than that. Police are supposed to look after me. I pay them enough, but they’ve grown fat and lazy on handouts. I need to be able to rely on you. Can I do that?’

  ‘Yes, Vee. Of course you can.’

  She reached into her dressing gown pocket and handed Johnny an envelope.

  ‘There’s more than enough cash there. Book a hotel room in the city for me. A couple of nights should be enough. The Australia Hotel. There’s no sticky noses or riff-raff. Then I want you to organise for my stuff – clothes, perfumes, anything personal – to be packed up in boxes.’

  Gabriel sighed and rolled from his side onto his stomach. Viola went over to the bed and sat with him.

  ‘The boy’s things as well.’

  ‘And what will I do with them?’ Johnny asked.

  ‘Telephone Bobby Featherstone, the removalist, and pay him to move the boxes. Have him hold them until I’ve resettled me and the boy. I’ll be in touch with you when the time comes to deliver everything.’

  ‘Resettled? Are you going somewhere?’

  Viola ignored the question and handed Johnny a bunch of keys. ‘These are for the doors, the money safe and the liquor cabinet.’

  ‘What am I supposed to do with them?’

  ‘Whatever you like. The house is yours, starting tomorrow. You can run it however you want to.’

  ‘I can’t run this place on my own.’

  ‘Of course you can. You’ve been here long enough, you know the business as well as I do. Even better than me when it comes to organisation. Besides, the girls love you, Johnny. You’ve never once laid a finger on any of them the whole time you’ve worked here. They trust you.’

  ‘But what about you? You’re running away from someone. I know it. I can’t believe you’d do that.’

  Viola sat back. She felt beaten and worn out. ‘Don’t you be judging me. I’ve had enough. I’m too old to take on an
other battle.’

  Gabriel moaned. Viola moved across the bed, held his body to hers and cradled him until the boy settled.

  ‘I need you to get him out of here tonight. Can you take him to your place until tomorrow morning and I’ll come by and pick him up?’

  ‘Sure. The wife will fall in love with him.’

  ‘Good. And there’s one last thing I need you to do.’

  ‘Whatever you ask, Vee.’

  ‘You find Frank Slim for me. Tell him I have a job that needs doing in a hurry.’

  Around midnight Viola walked through the backyard of a dingy boarding house and into the kitchen. An elderly man sat at a table reading a foreign language newspaper. Viola recognised his face, having occasionally seen the man coming out of one of the local gambling clubs.

  ‘Des Mahoney?’ she asked. ‘We need his room. Now.’

  The man pointed above his head. ‘Is here.’

  She climbed the stairs, walked to the door at the end of the landing and turned to the man accompanying her. She nodded. He stepped in front of her and opened the door. The room stunk of cigarette smoke and piss. A kerosene lamp was burning on a table under a window, and empty beer bottles lined the mantle above a blocked fireplace. One wall of the room was covered with pictures of naked women. They’d been torn from magazines. Another wall was papered with clothing catalogue images of girls, some teenagers, others much younger. Mahoney lay asleep on his bed, nursing an empty bottle. He was covered with a grubby sheet. Viola walked over to the bed and shook him.

  ‘It’s wake-up time, Desmond.’

  He didn’t move. She shook him more vigorously, stepped back and waited. Mahoney slowly opened one eye, then the other, and looked up. ‘What the fuck?’

  ‘I’ve come to introduce you to somebody, Des.’

  Frank Slim stepped out of Viola’s shadow. He wore a black suit and tie and sported a crew cut. His dark skin was lined with fine wrinkles, uncommon for a man who never seemed to worry. Des sat up. He was naked. Mahoney knew without having to ask that the man standing alongside Viola could only be Frank Slim. He swallowed the lump in his throat.

  ‘What do you want, Viola?’ His voice quivered.

  She answered by giving the slightest nod to Slim. He stepped forward and smashed Mahoney in the mouth with a closed fist, knocking his front teeth into his throat. A second punch broke his nose. Slim dragged Mahoney from the bed, knocked him to the floor and systematically kicked him on both sides of his rib cage, his back, arms and legs. Mahoney collapsed in front of the fireplace. Slim buried the heel of a boot into Mahoney’s collarbone, dislocating it. Mahoney spat a mouthful of blood and several teeth onto the floor.

  Viola raised a hand in the air and Slim stood back. She picked up the kerosene lamp. Mahoney’s nose had shifted across his face. He looked up at Viola, spitting more blood.

  ‘You fucking bitch. Cunts like you always need a man to do your dirty work.’

  ‘I thought you were an ignorant bastard, Des. But you’re so right. I do need a man,’ Viola winked. ‘What would you have a woman do after you’ve beaten her? Call the police? You know what I think, Des? If I were to get in touch with the coppers and tell them what you did to me, it might cost you as much as a round of drinks and a couple of cartons of cigarettes for them to forget the whole thing. Well, you can fuck that. What’s happening right now in this shithole is my dirty work, delivered by my hired help. And guess what Des? I wonder if you know who will be paying? I’ll give you a clue. It won’t be me.’

  ‘Get fucked, slut.’

  Frank Slim waited for Viola to lower her hand. He moved quickly. Neither Mahoney nor Viola saw the flick knife emerge from the sleeve of his suit pocket and slice a piece out of Mahoney’s left ear. Before Des could scream out in pain, Slim swung a leg back and kicked Mahoney between the legs, expelling the air from his body. He gasped as the pain shot into his throat. Mahoney vomited, pissed himself and passed out.

  Viola turned to Frank Slim. ‘Wait downstairs.’

  She sat down on a rickety wooden chair until Mahoney came to. When he eventually sat up his face was unrecognisable. Blood ran from his ear, down the side of his neck and onto his chest. Viola spoke calmly.

  ‘You’re not to go near my house again, Des. Not ever. You’re not to so much as brush by another woman in the street. You see one of my girls, any girl for that matter, out and about, you cross the road. You fail to do that and he’ll be back here to pay you a more intimate visit. You understand me?’

  Although Mahoney was in too much pain to reply, Viola was satisfied he’d got the message.

  ‘And, Des. My bracelet?’

  Mahoney pointed to his pants, lying on the floor. Viola went through the pockets and retrieved it. ‘Thank you, Des.’ She placed the bracelet around her wrist and admired it.

  ‘On second thoughts, if I were you, I’d invest in insurance. Like moving. Interstate would be my suggestion.’ She opened the door. ‘I won’t be seeing you again, Des. You take care of yourself and stay out of trouble.’

  She walked back downstairs into the kitchen. The old man looked up at her, anxiously. She knew there was no need to bribe or threaten him to ensure he’d keep his mouth shut. Viola liked the newly arrived migrants from Europe. They worked hard, were polite to her girls when they visited the brothel, and best of all, they had an inherent quality for minding their own business.

  ‘You married?’ she asked him.

  ‘No. My wife is dead. A daughter, I have.’

  Viola took the diamond bracelet from her wrist and handed it to him. ‘Be sure she gets this for her next birthday.’

  Frank Slim was standing in the laneway. Viola took two envelopes from her handbag and handed the first one to him.

  ‘That’s for the work tonight. Two as we agreed.’ She then handed him the second envelope. ‘There’s double in there. Four thousand. You hear of Mahoney misbehaving in future, pissing in the street, public littering, whatever it is, you be sure it’s the last sin he commits. You need any more than that, you contact me through Johnny Circio.’

  Frank took the envelope and felt its weight.

  ‘I do trust you,’ Viola added. ‘The men I know that have any integrity, I can count on one hand with a couple of fingers to spare. You’re one of them, Frank Slim.’

  She kissed him on the cheek and closed her handbag. ‘I’ve scraped the shit from these streets off my shoes for the last time. I’ve a child to take care of.’

  RAVEN AND SONS

  Sophie picked up the parcel and held it as delicately as if it were a piece of fine glass. It was about the size of a tub of butter and weighed as much. She turned the box over. The faded yellow paper was scuffed at the corners and the bow of string holding it in place was frayed at the ends. Sophie held the label attached to the bow between a finger and thumb. The name and date, written in longhand, was barely legible. P. Foley – 22 July 1958.

  Mr Carver coughed to get her attention.

  ‘When the family decided to sell the business following the death of Mrs Raven, the new company agreed to finance the restoration of remains wherever possible.’

  Sophie retuned the parcel to the shelf, where it took its place amongst forty or so others, similar in size and shape, the more recent ones encased in styrofoam boxes.

  ‘Some of these are almost fifty years old. How long are you required to keep them for?’ she asked.

  ‘By law, only one year, after which time we are able to dispose of them.’

  Sophie raised her eyebrows. ‘Only a year? Why are they still here?’

  Mr Carver straightened his silk tie and frowned, slightly insulted.

  ‘Because we are Raven and Sons. And we have been operating a funeral parlour from these premises for over a hundred years.’ He said nothing more, as if his brief history lesson was explanation enough for why the dead gathered on the s
toreroom shelf had not yet been disposed of.

  When Sophie had received an email asking her to take on the job of despatching burial ashes by tracking down the living relatives, she did wonder if one of her friends was playing a joke on her. The undertaker’s name, Raven and Sons, could have been conjured by Edgar Allan Poe himself. Before responding to the request Sophie had searched online and found that not only was the business legitimate, it announced itself as the oldest funeral parlour in the city, a claim reinforced by the décor of the premises with its dark velvet curtains, deep-grained timbers and gold embossed signage.

  Mr Carver, as Sophie would later discover from the gossiping receptionist, Miss Henson, had married into the business decades earlier.

  ‘Beyond any legal requirement this firm has always abided by a moral and spiritual obligation to the dead. We would not think of disposing of human remains in a manner that sits poorly with the family. Unfortunately, now that the business has been sold, the building and chattels, which includes these poor souls, will become the property of the new owners in six months’ time, unless we can reunite them with family.’

  Mr Carver led Sophie through the preparation theatre, where she felt an uneasy chill, and along a corridor into a small office. He offered Sophie a chair, before sitting at the desk opposite. He opened a ledger and turned it towards her.

  ‘This is only the first volume of many,’ he told Sophie, placing a fingertip under an entry and running it across the page. ‘We have the name of the deceased, the name and signature of the authority, most often a family member, their last known address and the cost of the funeral.’

  ‘That’s it?’ Sophie asked.

  ‘Yes. Is it enough?’

  Sophie, a trained genealogist, had a decade of experience, her work primarily compiling family trees for clients interested in tracing their ancestry. She ran an eye down the page. ‘Well, if the signatory is still at the address listed here, finding them will be no problem at all. But you said earlier that you’ve already written to people requesting that they collect the remains?’