The Thief

- a story by Darcy Moore

(from "Little Criminals", a collections of related stories set in a small Australian town)

"Yes Gracie, what can I do for you?" Herbert Manifold winked at his young female shop assistant. She smiled because she had to, as she had to ignore his bum pinching and presses in the storeroom; half her Senior high school class were unemployed fourteen months after the bravado of their break up. Free at last. Thank God I'm free at last, to be pawed by Herbert Manifold.
       'Perilous' Grace Hopper looked sourly at him, as if she knew. Nobody knew who first christened her, but it fitted inversely and so it stuck. Grace was cautious, whether driving, walking, speaking or shoplifting. The nightwear hung in one corner of the store, and Perilous Grace half slid, half hobbled to it, testing the floor. She sighed as she ran her hand down a garment, then another. She waited, as if contemplating. When the shop assistant found work to do out back, she half tilted her head, as if giving serious consideration to a purchase. When Mr Manifold called out, "Be back in a few minutes Janice, just going to powder my nose" she tensed, pulled a garment off its hanger and looked sharply towards the rear door. In an action defying her arthritic condition she gathered it into a ball and forced it into a side pocket of her generous slack pants. Taking a breath she turned and edged back across the floor.
       "Nothing today then Mrs Hopper?"
       Perilous Grace slowly turned her head to acknowledge the polite young girl. "Oh, no dearie. I'm slow to make up my mind. Never mind."
       "We'll see you next week then, Mrs Hopper?"
       "Yes, yes." She had lost interest and was thinking of the trip to the car, through so many obstacles. At each shop front she paused, on the lookout, especially for children. These she eyed with trepidation. Only when they were safely held by parents, on the floor or tangled in merchandise did she cross.
        Herbert Manifold waited around the corner of the dress shop and appeared to be using his calculator. It accompanied him everywhere, like a pair of trousers. He regularly lifted his head, so as not to seem too stern and preoccupied. He smiled, a trifle obsequeously in the manner of some shopkeepers, at many passers-by. Faces he matched with their last purchase in his store - a coat, a pair of jeans, a T-shirt.
       Instinctively he knew when it was time. With conviction and presence he stepped around the corner and strode quickly past 'Arts and Crafts', 'Nestle Inn' coffee shop 'Grunewald's Optimetrists'. He saw Perilous Grace approaching 'McAvoy's Toys', the last shop before the exit.
       With almost a fatherly pride, that grew incestuous the longer he stared at the pull of her knickers under the white skirt, he noted that Janice worked her way through the lingerie rack, checking against the inventory. She learnt quickly.
       "Found it yet Janice?".
       "Oh, yes. Here it is Mr Manifold." (Janice refused to call him Herbie. She told her best friend Annie Schumann it was like keeping your bra on when you got raped: you kept a bit of dignity.)
       "Well? Well?"
       "A black lace chemise. You had it down for $48.95."
       "Not bad. That number's been hanging around for quite a while. I was thinking of giving it to you Janice, when I got to know you a bit better." He winked at her and wore his cheap lopsided grin. Janice had daydreams of putting super glue on his eyelids. "But never knock back a sale. Wonder what the old bag does with them all. Might have an old boy friend at "Eventide". Might be working her way through there by moonlight." He spoke with admiration, then became businesslike again. "You know what to do. Make out the account and send it to Conrad Hopper. Make it out for $68.95."
       Janice balked. "That's not right Mr Manifold. Everyone knows about Grace and Mr Hopper can't help it. And he always pays."
       "Business is bad Janice, and I've got to pay wages out of it," he said darkly. "I'm entitled to it, letting her come in and carry on that way. She should be committed and if I complained she would be. There's enough people to back me up." He was bluffing. The local police had known about her for years, and he was not at all certain other retailers would support him. There was also the backlash of sympathy.
       Janice, who did not yet know how closely she mirrored the community's better nature and had seen one set of grandparents grow listless and die in an institution, felt she had jeopardised the life of the old lady. She walked to the counter, shoulders slack, and withdrew the invoice book. Then she remembered her employer was a coward. "You might get into trouble Mr Manifold ... if someone found out."
       "And how would they find out Janice." He spoke coldly. "Hopper won't so much as bleat. It would be too embarrassing. Someone else would have to tell them, and there's only you and me."
       At the automatic doors Perilous Grace struck out with the fatalism of a soldier going over the top, expecting to be sandwiched as they slid closed. The logic of it didn't impress her, they were predatory and that was that.
       Her son was so difficult about it all. "I'll do your shopping Mum. Or I'll get someone to do it for you. Anything you want. Please!" She didn't like the way he whined and repeated himself week after week, and he didn't understand. "How did you get elected Connie" (he hated that). "Who in their right mind would vote for you? You were always such a sook."
       Having survived the automatic doors she shuffled along the bare outer brick wall of the Centre, straining fiercely into the January sun. Perilous Grace had battled the worst of nature as a farmer's wife and for it she had no fear. Sun, frost, tempest were predictable foes compared to people. They could not sustain their ferocity, and she had vanquished them many times with a new crop, a new shed, a bore, by getting up each morning. Each day, each exposure was another victory. She would not become effete, white skinned, thin chested and feeble-mouthed like her son whom she had never forgiven for leaving his father heirless. But it was an odyssey to her car. Instead of using the Centre car park she patronised the outside street, although it meant another road to cross: the tight bays, and the constant jiggling of people and vehicles frightened her. Sometimes, like today, she got help.
       "Here, I'll take your bag and clear the way Gracie!"
       She looked at the young man - a shaggy basin cut, and four studs in one ear. He looked ridiculous but she admired his boldness. "I don't know you!" she growled.
       "No Gracie. Dan Paulson." He smiled.
       "Well, go on, go on. I'm in a hurry." She flicked her wrist forwards.
       With the authority vested in him he worked the pavement like a traffic policeman. He even stopped the traffic on the street. Gracie loved the spectacle. He would probably make something of himself. At the car he politely asked for the keys, packed away her shopping, wound down the window and shut her door.
       She prodded the clip on her purse and felt for a $2 coin, smaller and fatter than 5c.
       "No Gracie. It's on the house. I used to be in boy scouts!" He took a step back and waited while she started the car. "What'd you nick today, Gracie?" She flushed and started to swear at him, but he was walking across the road, with a swagger. She giggled. Yes, he would go far.
       She waited until the street cleared of moving vehicles, both way; no one coming out of the Centre car park, no drivers getting in doors. Only then did she ease on to the road, building slowly to 25 km per hour and scanning front, side and rear (with her 3 rear mirrors) suspiciously.
       Perilous Grace didn't think much of heaven. The rationale, when she was young enough to consider it, defied her. Life was precious to her but she knew what a burden it gave to many others. She could never picture them content in heaven, at any stage of their lives. And she saw nothing of divinity in the melodrama of existence. She had loved a thousand animals and seen their thousand deaths on the farm - by bullet, knife, hammer, dog, dingo, their own kind, sickness, starvation. Many others, anticipated with a mother's passion, died at birth. It seemed to her humans had no more moral authority and no more significance than a crow, and much less dignity. Three generations of faces and voices had faded and fogged in her brain, their doubtful integrity preserved only by soil and casket.
       Death was mostly mundane, but often humorous and bizarre. The wildest young men became the least protesting, the most mundane, gutted by disease and collapsing in darkened hallways on their way to the toilet, or unknowingly in beds stale with old passions. Quiet women left confessional notes for their oppressors, and died of vague conditions, known only to tight-lipped country coroners. Bill O'Brien died falling off a horse over Turnbull's bluff the night after he watched "The Man from Snowy River," Sandy Arnold slipped into the tray of his new chaff cutter, Merle Hinchcliffe choked on a pea with a dozen people there one Christmas dinner, young Lily Parson didn't see the car from the sideroad on the way home from her cousin's funeral. Whenever Grace drove past the old graveyard on the town's outskirts she pulled over to the side, shook a fist at the angel meant to carry Albert Schinkel skywards, and shouted words disgraceful for an 85 year old matriarch who was mother to the Shire Chairman. It was the closest she came to religious ecstasy since Bernard Hopper had his first stroke. The stolen garments added both insult and piquancy.

Do you want to read more Kaspar Stories? Click on a link below.

The Lover (Cuppa)

The Heretic (Shirley)

The Mistress (Alison)