Mercy Street Read online

  Dedication

  To Terry,

  who has always believed in me

  Epigraph

  . . . mercy . . . is twice blessed.

  It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

  William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act IV; scene I

  Contents

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Reading Group Notes

  About the Author

  Praise

  Also by Tess Evans

  Copyright

  1

  ‘Another day . . .’ George speaks the words aloud before remembering that there will be no answering voice from the other side of the bed. ‘I know – another dollar.’ A silly joke, its origins long forgotten, but over time it had somehow become an intimate morning ritual. When they were younger, this was a signal for him to turn to her sleep-warm body, and often as not, they made love . . . Today he winces as he flexes his arthritic knees and makes his way to the bathroom. The tiles chill his bare feet.

  Still in his pyjamas, he heads for the kitchen, turns on the kettle and tips some cornflakes and milk into a bowl. His eyes narrow as he sniffs at the carton. Nose like a bloodhound, Pen used to say. He sniffs again. Could be a bit off. Putting on his glasses, he peers at the use-by date. Two days ago. With a fatalistic shrug, he pours the remainder of the milk into his tea and watches with a grim sort of satisfaction as suspicious white specks float to the surface. I knew it. Now not only are his cornflakes inedible, but his tea is undrinkable. He removes his glasses, looks around at the table, the chairs, the cupboards, as though he might find the answer (or, even more importantly, the question) inscribed on their surface. He passes a hand over his eyes, and his grip on the milk carton is suddenly precarious. Saved! George breathes out his relief. A near miss, though. He puts the milk back in the fridge before remembering that it’s sour and needs to be thrown out. Why has everything become so hard?

  George will have to go to the shops on an empty stomach. He could have had toast, but who wants toast without a nice cup of tea? As he opens the front door, his jaw trembles and he blinks behind his glasses. The milk was always fresh when Pen was alive. Walking down the path, he turns away from his garden and the spectacle of new-season roses. Their showy display assaults his senses.

  He heads towards Station Street, past the giant wooden dog that guards Fairfield station. He hated it at first, but it’s grown on him and now he says a silent G’day as though to a casual acquaintance. The coffee shop on the corner is not yet busy. Later in the morning, it will be full of young mothers with toddlers in strollers and babies in prams, and the occasional businesswoman or bloke with one of those mini-computers. There’ll be groups of older women, too, their careful grooming no match for the youthful vitality that surrounds them.

  It’s a bit early for the usual crowd and there are only three customers, two women gulping down their precommute coffees and a young man in a Save the Whales T-shirt, reading a newspaper. Pen and her friends had coffee here every Friday after she retired, but he’d always been a bit intimidated by the easy camaraderie and the overwhelming femaleness of the patrons. Today, however, hunger drives him in for tea and toast.

  Miserable and self-conscious, fidgeting at his table for one, he begins to regret this uncharacteristically rash decision. It’s the first time since he and Pen married that he has eaten alone in public. Probably the first time ever, now he comes to think about it. Not that he and Pen ate out much. They’d go to the local club with friends a couple of times a month and to a fancy restaurant on holidays or special occasions. Pen always looked the part at a restaurant. Dressing right. Knowing what to order. Dealing with the waiters. Socially, he was safe with Pen. She’ll be gone three years next May, and even after all that time, he wakes expecting to hear her silly, murmured response – I know, another dollar.

  The early-morning sun slants across the Formica table, and tiny gold specks twinkle and wink in its pale yellow light. But George rarely notices such things. He splays his square, tradesman’s hands, and checks for the telltale tremor that a few more years will surely bring. As he exhales, he becomes aware that he’s been holding his breath and relaxes when he sees that his hands are steady as a rock. He has no idea why he does this; just that it’s almost compulsive.

  He wills breakfast to arrive.

  The place is filling up and he experiences what it is to feel lonely in a crowd. It’s only eight-thirty and there’s a whole lot of day left to fill. When Pen was still with him, life had shape and purpose. Right now they’d be reading bits of the newspaper to each other.

  The young waitress sets down his breakfast. ‘Enjoy.’

  ‘Thanks, love.’ She reminds him a bit of Pen. Something about the way she moves.

  He looks at his watch again. Eight-forty-five. George bites into his toast, and not for the first time, wonders if the whole thing is worth it.

  When the whale-lover moves off, he leans over and snaffles the newspaper, grateful for something to look at, something to legitimise his place among strangers.

  Much later, when he thinks back over this day, he realises that everything – all the good and all the bad things that happened – depended upon a carton of sour milk, the milk that sent him out hungry, took him to the café where he read the abandoned newspaper for just long enough, sent him to the supermarket where he decided to shop earlier than usual and loaded his bags just heavily enough for him to take the shortcut to his house. Most days, he avoids the lane. His bloodhound nose is offended by the smell of rubbish bins and cat piss.

  At first he senses rather than sees them. Then he hears them – muffled footsteps that draw ever closer until he feels a short, soft exhalation on the back of his neck. The end of the lane recedes to a hazy distance. Paling fences, sagging, festooned with vines and covered with graffiti, crowd in on either side. Without turning, he speeds up as best he can, before his two plastic shopping bags break, their meagre contents tumbling out onto the cobblestones. Four cans of baked beans (Manager’s Special – four for two dollars), an apple, a banana, a pear, three potatoes and a bottle of soda water roll away out of reach. The milk carton trickles its contents onto the cobbles next to him. He is outraged to see two expensive-looking trainers stomping on his coffee scroll.

  ‘Hey. That’s my morning tea.’

  ‘Wanna make something of it?’

  Forget the coffee scroll. The boy has a knife and he’s shoving it at George’s belly. What George feels now is fear – a fear long ago embedded in the marrow of his bones. They (he, his mother and Shirl) had felt like this on many nights as they’d listened for the scrabble of the key, the heavy tread in the passageway. George’s dad had shouldered and flayed his way through their lives, sparing neither his children nor their mother.

  So frozen, unable to either call out or resist, George stands with his back to the wall and feels the shaming trickle, warm and pungent, as it spreads down his trouser legs.

  If only he could move his hand to his pocket. Give them his wallet. There’s little enough in it – a couple of twenties (he never carries much cash), his driver’s licen
ce, his credit card and his seniors card. Not much to lose. But the knife holds him in thrall, tightens his airways, as the familiar wheeze begins to rise, hacking and shredding each breath.

  The boy is young, but his eyes are empty and his voice flat. ‘Get it.’ This is addressed to an even younger boy, thirteen or fourteen at the most, who slips the wallet from George’s pocket in one expert swoop.

  ‘Got it.’

  The knife moves up to George’s throat, its pressure delicate and concentrated. ‘You can forget about the cops. They come after us – we come after you.’ Keeping the knife poised, he moves his face closer to George, who smells, of all things, toothpaste. What sort of hooligan cleans his teeth and then goes out to mug pensioners? His attacker indicates the wallet, now in his assistant’s hand. The minty-fresh mouth becomes a wet, snarling cavern. ‘We know where you live.’

  George’s knees sag with relief. They aren’t going to kill him. After three years of hoping for death, he is surprised to feel the flood of gratitude from knowing that he’s spared. He even wants to thank them for their latent compassion or common sense or whatever it is that sees the knife fold and disappear into the older boy’s jacket. But his voice is lost in the wheeze, and as he slides down the wall, he feels a volley of vicious kicks to his ribs.

  ‘Hey, you dickheads! He’s an old man – leave him alone!’ It’s a girl’s voice, screaming at them with shrill authority from the other end of the lane. At the sound of her voice, one of the boys plants a final, awkward kick before they both flee, calling the girl a name that shocks George. When pushed, he can swear with the best of them, but never in the presence of a woman.

  ‘Ya got a puffer?’

  George makes a feeble gesture at his breast pocket. Again he finds himself rifled by the hands of a stranger, but these are the practical hands of a young woman who puts the puffer to his lips. ‘Breathe. That’s right. Slow.’ She looks at him with satisfaction as the wheezing eases, then frowns as she peers down the lane. ‘Those shits got away with your wallet.’

  His breathing under control, George’s attention is taken in equal measure by the crackling pain in his side and the fact that his rescuer is female. She is kneeling beside him, so it’s hard to tell her height. Short, he guesses, and certainly overweight. Her hair, long at the back, sticks up on top in those spikes you see nowadays. And it’s red. Not the satiny copper that had attracted him to Pen all those years ago. No. This is an unnatural, solid scarlet – an ‘in your face’ sort of colour that goes with the multiple nose piercings. He has seen girls like this before, and they seem somehow to manage a perverse sort of elegance. But this one has a frayed look. And hers is not the pretty plumpness that some young women carry off so well. Tight clothing accentuates slovenly curves that spill over the waist of her jeans and settle in unbecoming rolls of flesh, where her T-shirt struggles to conceal them.

  All this George absorbs in an instant before a small attempt to sit up straighter causes him to cry out in pain. ‘Shit! – Sorry, love.’

  The girl smiles faintly. It’s quite a nice smile. ‘Heard worse. Can you stand up if you lean on me?’ She moves position to his uninjured side and drapes his arm over her shoulder. ‘One, two . . .’

  It’s no good. Those mongrels must have broken his ribs. Though the lane isn’t a popular thoroughfare, someone must have noticed them and called for help. Within minutes, a small crowd has gathered.

  A frizzy, grey sort of woman puts down her shopping bag, eyeing George’s rescuer with suspicion. ‘I’ll ring an ambulance,’ she informs the milling spectators who have been waiting for someone to take charge. ‘One of you call the police.’

  The girl looks alarmed. ‘No use calling the cops. They’ll never get them now.’

  George hasn’t forgotten the threat. ‘Didn’t see them,’ he says. God, even talking hurts. ‘Couldn’t describe them in a million years.’ He is a man happy in his own company, but has lived long enough to know that people who get excited by events soon lose interest if any real action is required. Sure enough, the murmuring is in support of an ambulance only. No police. They’ll want witness statements. Soon, all but the girl, the woman with the phone and a middle-aged man in overalls melt away.

  George is suddenly aware of the state of his pants. He tries to cover the wet patch with his hands and is grateful when the bloke in overalls offers his newspaper. ‘Could happen to anyone,’ the man says, before heading back up the lane to watch out for the ambulance.

  The girl clambers to her feet, brushing dirt from her already grimy jeans. ‘Looks like you’ll be okay, then.’

  George regards her with a mixture of gratitude and embarrassment. In the old days, he’d have had those young tearaways on toast. Despite his humiliation at being saved by a female, a word of thanks is the least he owes her. ‘Ta, love,’ he says.

  ‘’S’all right. Gotta go and pick me kid up from Bree’s.’

  Kid? She was only a kid herself. ‘Yeah. Well. Thanks.’ He hesitates. ‘M’name’s George. I live round the corner in Mercy Street – number seven. Blue fence. If you . . . if I can . . . Well. You know where I live.’

  She grins. Makes the world of difference, he thinks.

  ‘Next time kick ’em in the nuts.’

  The ambulance negotiates the narrow lane and George relaxes under the competent hands of the paramedics. ‘What’s your name?’ the young man asks. ‘Mine’s Sean.’

  George rouses himself at the question. Ambos always ask that. He’d had to call the ambulance for Pen several times, and one of the first things they did was ask her name.

  ‘Penny,’ she’d say.

  ‘Is that Penelope?’

  ‘Just Penny.’

  Nice to meet you, Just-Penny.

  That was his lame attempt at a joke the night they met at his cousin’s twenty-first. She was almost half a head taller than he was, and while the other girls wore pink or yellow or aqua blue, she wore something soft in a greyish green – the colour of a gumleaf, he thought at the time.

  Just-Penny folded herself into a chair with a fluid movement that he later realised was characteristic. That way of arranging her body. So natural. So – composed. After a polite smile at the joke she must have heard a hundred times, she explained that when she was born, her head was covered with bright-orange down. ‘Dad said I looked like a brand-new penny. So they called me Penny, and if anyone asked why not Penelope, they’d say, “We’re not Penelope sort of people”.’

  They weren’t Penelope sort of people. They were good, old-fashioned working-class people, happy to have their Penny courted by a newly minted boiler-maker; secretly relieved that she had escaped marriage to a man damaged by the war. It was a sore point with George, who had been too young to join up. Long after the war had ended, he always felt less of a man when in the company of ex-servicemen. But he got on well with Ma and Da – better than with his own parents, that’s for sure. He’d have tea there every Saturday night before taking Pen to the pictures or a dance at the town hall. She made her own clothes and was always twirling around in something new. How does this look? The simple fact was that to him she looked wonderful, and the new dresses were no more than a backdrop for her bright-copper hair. Long, with a natural wave, it bounced and swung and shone as though in delight at its own beauty. There had been prettier girls at the party, but Penny’s slim, supple body and new-penny hair – they were more than enough for George.

  They were much too much for his sister, Shirl. A few weeks after they’d met, when they were on their way out to a party, George turned the car. ‘Time you met my sister. She’s just around the corner.’

  Penny smoothed her hair. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘I’ve been dying to meet her.’

  A flustered Shirl answered the door, heavily pregnant under a voluminous smock. She carried a toddler on one hip and a spoon in her free hand.

  ‘Sis. How are you? This is Penny.’

  The dishevelled Shirl ran her eyes over Penny’s willowy figure, her glossy
grooming, her fashionable party dress. ‘Are you coming in?’ Shirl attempted to pull out one of her hair curlers but was defeated by the spoon. ‘It’s all a bit of a mess at the moment.’

  Despite the coolness of the invitation, George and Penny went in and the three of them endured fifteen minutes of self-conscious civility until George looked at his watch.

  ‘Gotta fly.’

  ‘Lovely to meet you,’ Penny said.

  ‘You, too,’ Shirl replied. ‘Nice dress,’ she said before closing the door as quickly as she reasonably could.

  Penny groaned. ‘We should’ve told her we were coming.’

  ‘Why would we do that?’

  ‘So she could tidy herself up a bit.’ Penny smoothed down her already smooth dress. ‘I hope I never get like that when I have children.’

  George never quite understood this. Even when his sister rang to berate him.

  ‘There I was, looking all lumpy and frumpy with rollers in my hair no less, and in you come with that glamourpuss. It’s not fair, George. It’s just not fair.’

  Women. George shook his head in disbelief. Still does, in fact.

  But that was a long while ago. Before Penny’s genuine kindness won Shirl over.

  At the hospital, the ambos wait with him until he is shown to a cubicle. The nurse makes him comfortable then takes down his details.

  ‘Name?’

  ‘George Johnson.’

  ‘Date of birth?’

  ‘First of March, 1929.’

  ‘So. That’d make you seventy . . .’

  ‘Six.’

  ‘Six. Right. Next of kin?’

  ‘Penny . . . No. My sister – Shirley Adams.’

  A young doctor (when did doctors get to be so young?) checks his vital signs and feels his ribs. ‘Does this hurt?’

  Bloody oath, it hurts. He swallows hard. ‘Just a bit.’

  An X-ray reveals that his ribs are not broken. ‘Just badly bruised,’ the young doctor says cheerfully. ‘Lucky kids wear trainers nowadays.’ But they didn’t feel like trainers to George. Steel-capped trainers, he thinks with grim humour. He’d worn steel-capped boots all his working life and if you were kicked with steel-capped boots, you knew all about it.