Sisters Of Mercy

By Neill Bartlett

A journey that takes place across the vast desert terrain of Outback Australia and the harsh inner city streets of Sydney, through the eyes and lives of four women who are cast into the product of their conception. Four women, living the lifestyle that brought them into this world, each unbeknownst to each other are all trudging through their daily routines. In a turn of events, what one twist of fate could bring each of these four women to the same point? The “World’s Oldest Profession” and adoption have always been two of society’s biggest stigmas ... find out what happens when the two collide!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Neill Bartlett
• Release date: Nov 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370148417

Neill Bartlett

Australian born Neill Bartlett is a writer and photographer living in America. Originally a self-published children’s author, Sisters Of Mercy is Neill’s first novel. Inspired by his own adoption and curiosity to the plight of the “real working class”, Neill combined two years of researching the two ideas and Sisters Of Mercy was born.

Book preview

Sisters Of Mercy

Neill Bartlett

Copyright 2017 Neill Bartlett

Published by Neill Bartlett at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Acknowledgements

This book is dedicated to

Christi and our three daughters – ‘the three sisters’

Danielle, Morgan and Hannah.

In memory of my father Sid Bartlett, who thankfully got to read this book before he left this earth.

This journey began in 1999, when I decided to write this novel with two subjects in mind, prostitution and adoption, the latter is a subject that is very near and dear to my heart. Many told me I could never do it, naturally there were many very special people in my life who knew I would … this book is for you, and I thank you!

To Christi, thank you for your never-ending support and belief, and for seeing 3am with me on more than one occasion.

To the three divas, my daughters, Hannah, Danielle,and Morgan, you all possess your own very special talents, always ‘reach for the stars’ my girls! And Hannah, yes, you can read Daddy’s novel when you turn 18!

To my parents who raised me, Lil and Sid Bartlett, who loved me unconditionally and taught a very small boy to ‘always’ be proud of being adopted.

To my parents who gave me ‘life’, Laura and John Davis, whose courage and selflessness many years ago, was a true gift.

To Nicole and Gary ‘Chucky’ Davis and John and Haley Davis, I love and miss you guys … we’re only an ocean away, but brothers and sisters for life!

To Jake, Tom, Max, Ella, Miller, Lola, Stephen and Christopher, you make an Uncle proud!

To my grandkids, Caden and Willow, you’ll definitely have to wait until you’re 18 to read Poppa’s book!

In Loving Memory of my ‘Aunty’ Margaret Davis, who was there before it all began.

To Louise and Eric Piazza, we have seen many funny times in the outback, even some dangerous ones, thank you for introducing me to this very special part of the world, which inspired so much of my story!

To Glenn and Linda Shaw, true friends for life, who never questioned I can do anything, no matter how bizarre it may have been (and often was).

To Marie Shaw, words spoken many years ago, not only stick with me still today, but inspire me to keep writing.

To Adam Thompson, one of the best rock n roll talents I have ever seen, thank you for keeping your love song for this project, and for your never ending patience.

To Gavin Wood, not only the most recognizable voice in Australia, but a good mate. Your support came at the right time. If there is anyone I truly share the six degrees of separation with, it’s you my friend.

To all the authors, who have taken their time to inspire and encourage me, you have my respect and gratitude. In memory of one of the greatest ever, Bryce Courtenay, your letter many years ago is still one of my most treasured possessions.

To Wanda Presley-Hays for your support.

And to Rachel Lewis for legs that would make ZZ Top blush!!!

And to the working girls, for always being real!

What Others are Saying about Sisters Of Mercy:

It’s not very often in my busy media world that I get to read a book and usually I read a chapter and put it down until I have time to read more. Sisters Of Mercy compelled me to read the book cover to cover straight through and when I got to ‘The End’ it was 4 o’clock in the morning. Thanks Neill. What a joy to read and the story of sisters interwoven is remarkable. I see from the depth of his first novel that Neill Bartlett will be a major writer. I am looking forward to the next novel from Neill."

-- Gavin Wood - Former Announcer for Countdown, Australia

This book is so powerful that I can’t even bare to look at it for fear I will pick it up and read it all over again. Neill has left no stone unturned, it will touch women of all ages, your emotions will reach highs and lows that maybe you had forgotten. Very clever writing from Neill - once you think you know what is going to happen, a twist or a turn of the page assures you to expect what you least expected.

-- Tina Batras. Melbourne, Australia

This book would make a great movie - I could see it in my head while I was reading it - just like a movie screen on my forehead

-- Justyne Kelty, Melbourne, Australia

Chapter One

Notoriety is dealt to many in life, but not just to an array of people. In a big city, there is always a street somewhere in a suburb that achieves this. In the case of Sydney, Australia there is none more notorious than Darlinghurst Road in Kings Cross. Ironically its location is just minutes from the city’s proudest icons, the Opera House and Harbour Bridge, and is the lifeline to the city’s drug and prostitution industry. Dark streets caked in sleaze and syringes and a constant parade of cars, both day and night. And then there are the girls, always a girl somewhere on a street corner, or in a doorway to a club that never shuts its doors.

And then there is Jules, one of those girls. Jules is a working girl, a lady of the night, a scarlet woman, a hooker, a sex worker - a prostitute. She’s a very attractive lady who is starting to show the scars from a life on the streets. A lady just on the other side of 30, who is doing what she promised herself she wouldn’t be doing when she hit two years prior.

Tonight was particularly colder than the previous ones. She hoped for an early client, one that would take her to a warmer work environment and maybe one day away from all this shit. Perhaps with the arrival of a dark blue car with its headlights dipped, this would become a reality in a world deprived of normality. The window was already half way down. This was a sign of someone very guarded, most probably nervous, maybe a first timer. Jules was greeted by a smartly dressed middle aged man in a suit, the type you see in a big city park on his lunch break with a cut lunch and piece of fruit, packed lovingly by his loyal and devoted wife. The same wife who at this moment thinks her husband is working back late whilst doing his secretary on his desk. Close. Jules knew this type only too well.

When he spoke to Jules, it was to ask the question that had been asked to many a working girl a thousand times or more - how much? Other questions soon followed like how long and of course where? For this was his first time with this type of lady, in fact this was the first time with another woman for over 15 years. Hell, he was a married man with a family.

Jules answered all of his questions as gently as he asked her his, but he did not take in her words, her answers, just the sound of the wipers as they slowly dragged across the windshield and the sound of the cold raindrops falling acting as natures lubricant.

He wasn’t sure whether it was the soft way she answered his questions or the overwhelming smell of her sweet perfume screaming out at him that did it. He was distracted, yet excited and confused at the same time. His head was a rush of emotion, just like a little boy who is about to be caught doing what he knows he is not supposed to, or a big boy?

This experience until now was nothing like he thought it would be. This probably would not be the night either.

There was no use prolonging the embarrassing situation he found himself in any longer. He thanked Jules for her time, started the car and wasted little more of the same in making his escape, home to his wife.

No sooner had the screech of tires on the wet and slippery road disappeared, than another car had pulled up.

This time it was every working girls worst approach. A carload of young jerks all looking for action and none of them with a sense of anything, especially reality. There has never been a girl on the streets that has given it out for free, nor many stupid enough to do a group deal. Jules tried to humor them, until one young guy, who if she was not mistaken was making out with a long neck bottle of beer, asks, How much for all of us, slut, followed quickly with, Do you take Visa? There is laughter all round, as the exchange with Jules was for his friend’s entertainment, not a halfhearted business proposition that she has become used to. It was now time for Jules to flip these guys off, she had wasted far too long with them and no regular clients would wait in line for her to become available with them sitting there.

It would take you boys collectively 24 hours to do what one real man could do to me in a one hour session, Jules fires, pulling no punches. There is a lot of laughter from the carload of juvenile hormones. This laughter and a predictable reply are only interrupted by the vision of a patrol car on its rounds. Not enough to scare Jules from her location, but enough to put the fear of a solicitation charge right up the boys. They find first gear and the nearest side street.

Jules hardly has enough time to strike a match down the side of the box and light the cigarette wedged between her rich red lips, when another car pulls up very slowly beside her. The vision of a young mid-twenty’s type guy with dark hair and nice shadows falling across his tight white T-shirt sits before her. She greets him seductively, smiling, showing him just what those lips can do. He smiles confidently. She knows he has done this before. He asks her only one question, How much for the full service? He definitely has been here before. She informs him with the same air of confidence he showed her that the charge is $150 for the hour. He smiles and reaches across to unlatch the door handle for Jules to enter the car. The negotiation is over almost as quick as it started.

No drive to the location, where the service will take place, is ever long; after all, there is business to be done. Jules, like many girls working on the streets, has her own apartment where she services her clients. The fear of an untimely invasion of privacy far overrules the often-nasty situation of being trapped in a client’s own house or motel. She has been there and done that before.

The apartment doesn’t reflect the money that Jules makes in her job. The façade is as old and tired as many of its residents. The stairwell has a charm of yesteryear mixed with the structure of a demolition yard and the audio effects of a thousand mice singing opera. Jules’ door is the first on the right, at the top of the stairs. Her key slides in just as easily as her clients do. She shows him to the bed in the middle of the room. He can’t help but give the room a quick once over. Surely there must be other rooms, her bedroom, he thought to himself, maybe a living room somewhere else?

There is a brief exchange of money and pleasantries, after all this is nothing more than a business transaction. As Jules places the neatly folded notes in her bedside table, her client reaches down and pulls the T-shirt from his body. He throws the T-shirt onto the faded wicker chair on the other side of the bed, while Jules reaches into the same drawer that she placed the money in and pulls out two standard factory packed condoms. One of them is an extra, just in case. As her client removes his tight denim jeans, Jules removes her revealing black, almost see-through top. There is no bra to be removed. Her client has paused slightly to let Jules catch up. She obliges by removing an equally revealing matching tight black mini skirt. As she slides her suspenders down, first her left leg, then her right, he slides down a colorful, yet fun pair of boxer shorts. In the dim lit room, Jules can’t quite make out whether it’s Mickey Mouse or Scooby Doo on them. Sometimes, it really is the little things that break the monotony.

Both standing naked in the shadows caused by a streetlight directly outside Jules slightly opened window, she takes control and walks over to the bed and places her body on the sheets. He follows and lies beside her. Jules immediately reaches her hand across and guides it down her client’s chest, not stopping until she reaches a tower of erect flesh. There is more than one moan of appreciation. Jules places the condom on her client. There’s no need to use her hands. This is one talent a working girl learns early in her profession. The client responds by getting on top of Jules. For the rest of his allotted hour he proceeds to penetrate Jules over and over. Many things go through her head while she is with a client, like her daily shopping and her next holiday. But with this client, she couldn’t help but wonder why a good looking guy who knows how to move between the sheets is paying to be with her? I guess there are never any answers that make sense in this profession though.

By the time these thoughts have passed, Jules realizes her client has finished. In fact it was the force of his pleasure that brought her back from those thoughts. She removes the used condom for her client and disposes of it as quickly as she rolled it on. They both dress with the usual accompanying uneasiness that always follows. There is never a need for small talk at this time.

Jules walks her client to the door, stops and gives him a gentle kiss on his cheek, almost to thank him for being kind and not beating her up or the likes.

She locks the door, and then heads straight to the shower to clean up. The sooner she is back on the street, the better the chance she won’t lose her next client to one of her competition.

On a good night, Jules will probably relive the last hour of her life at least another six times. Then again, another three will pay all her bills for the week.

The night is busy for Jules and before long the first rays of light beginning a new day in Sydney start to peek through the old buildings where Jules stands. It is this light that removes the mystique and excitement that the night before brings to the streets, as if a 500-watt light against the soft flame of a burning candle.

Jules checks her watch; it is just past 6 a.m. and time to call it a night. As she turns the corner into Darlinghurst Road, she passes the Electric Kitty Club. Ray is a regular feature in the doorway there, day and night. He is paid poorly to keep out any undesirables that have had far too much to drink, and let any undesirables in that can persuade him they are drunk enough to at least find their money and not physically hassle the girls that work there.

Hey Ray baby, Jules says sweetly in her cutest voice. She has had a soft spot for Ray ever since he started working at the club four years ago.

Hey, right back at you my Jules, Ray replies while trying to hide the large amount of bubble gum he has stuffed in his mouth.

Free for breakfast this morning? asks Jules, which seemed pointless to everyone else within earshot, as the two of them have breakfast together religiously every single morning.

I think it should be fine baby, answers Ray. I’ll meet you there - start without me, I shouldn’t be long.

Jules nods, winks and continues on down Darlinghurst Road to the Triple X Café. She waves at all the guys who work there as she enters the café and takes her usual table right down the back.

Just the usual, thanks Gino, and the usual for Ray, Jules says without looking up again. She lights a cigarette and puts the used match beside the ‘No Smoking’ sign just above the laminated covered table against the wall.

Ray slumps into the seat opposite Jules and asks how the night was for her. He asks this same question every morning. Jules usually has a different answer each morning though. It doesn’t matter whether the answer by Jules is favorable or not, Ray’s reaction is always the same.

Why don’t you come and work the rooms, baby? he asks. You know it’s a lot safer - I can look after you, he says with his usual cheeky raised smile.

I like my freedom Ray, is Jules’ standard answer.

Before she can continue, Ray acknowledges with his standard, I know, I know.

They both sugar their cappuccinos and wait for breakfast to be served.

Chapter Two

700 miles southwest of Sydney, an interstate coach makes its way to the city terminal and sixty-two waiting passengers. It is sunrise and a warm morning in Adelaide. Standing on the platform is a young, innocent looking girl with long golden blonde hair. However, looks can be deceiving. As the coach pulls into the terminal, Jessie walks up to the kiosk and purchases a chocolate bar. The unshaven man behind the counter hands her the candy and she mumbles, Ta, as she drops coins into his outstretched hand.

Jessie walks back across the platform, puts the chocolate bar into her bag, lights up a cigarette and then checks her ticket.

As she stands waiting for her boarding call, she looks across the softly lit Adelaide skyline and cannot help looking straight at the flashing neon sign of Candi’s Strip Club, her former place of employment.

Her thoughts are broken with the boarding call; All passengers on the 6.30 a.m. service to Perth via Kalgoorlie please board now.

Hell, she thought to herself, I’m going to the other side of Australia for two weeks work. Maybe she thought she was a little crazy, maybe she had nothing to lose.

Two years of working strip clubs and yet another shattered romance with a guy who was initially turned on by dating a stripper, then consumed with jealousy and obsessed at the thought of men ogling and fondling his girlfriend. The very same thing he did that first night they got together. Shit, sometimes all this crap is just too damn hard, Jessie often told herself.

Jessie walks across to the baggage compartment of the coach and hands the coach captain her suitcase. She boards the coach and looks for her seat - 5A.

She finds her seat by the window. As she sits down, an old lady already seated beside her asks, What are you going to Perth for love?

Jessie kindly smiles and says, My stop is actually Kalgoorlie.

The old lady smiles reminiscently and places her hand on Jessie’s, tapping a couple of times before saying, Going to entertain the miners, right? How sweet, I did that myself many years ago.

You could say that, Jessie replied slightly uncomfortable and hoping that the conversation would end there. If this sweet old lady only knew that she was going to perform as a ‘skimpy’, an outback version of a bar tending stripper, Jessie thought to herself she would probably have a coronary there and then.

The coach pulls out from the terminal and the announcement through the speaker welcomes everyone on the 2500-mile trip across Australia to Perth.

Jessie loses her attention in the initial formalities of the trip, only to stare out of the window and wonder what is in store for her in the next couple of weeks. She is a young lady of just 19-years, but as she has been working as a stripper for the last two of them, she has seen a lot more than most girls her age.

The constant work environment of sleazy smoke filled strip clubs, being groped and felt up every night by disgusting men, often her father’s age or even worse - her grandfather’s age - all thinking they have a chance at taking her home for the night. Yeah, right!

Then there’s the fear that someone you know or someone your family knows will walk into the club and blow your cover.

After all, at work Jessie is ‘Star,’ the best damn stripper Adelaide has to offer, that’s what she tells herself - that’s what she believes!

It was at Candi’s one night, only a matter of a few weeks ago, Jessie was bitching to one of the other girls about her whole life, her mere existence. …Sick and tired of all this shit every night, is how it went. Jessie needed some excitement, but where and how?

It was Simone who told her about a two-week work stint a friend of hers does every 3 months. She travels to the outback of Western Australia to a mining town full of men. The town is Kalgoorlie, 450 miles east of Perth.

The pay is great, all you have to do is bar work, wear some skimpy negligee and show ‘em ya tits every now and then. Everything is thrown in at the hotel you work at, except for your accommodation, Simone had boasted too convincingly.

They’re not even allowed to touch you, informed Simone, always the perfect sales person. The deal was done right there and then. Jessie knew she could do that!

It was that very conversation over a Bundy and Coke and a cigarette that led Jessie to be on this coach streaming at 80 miles an hour past kangaroos and the yellow and black road signs in the shape of triangles, depicting the native animals, at this moment in time.

Four hours later the coach pulls off the highway into its first meal stop, a desolate outback roadhouse and gas station. Apart from the melting bitumen two-lane highway, there was a treeless barren landscape and a sky so hot, with a striking lighter shade of white than blue. The only dominant feature to the eyes, when you alight off the coach, is four large white satellite dishes pointing on a skyward path direct to Jupiter.

The best cuisine that these weary travelers will be offered is an array of fried delicacies that defy identification to the naked eye, and it’s anybody’s guess when they were actually cooked and on what day? One consolation is that they are all served in the best silver bain-marie you have ever seen.

Jessie opted for a more necessary call of nature. Once in the cubicle and positioned still fully clothed with her legs up on a closed seat, she removes a rough old looking pack of cigarettes. These were not the same one she smoked from on the platform in Adelaide. She pulls out what is clearly a hand rolled joint, filled with the best marijuana that Adelaide had to offer.

Jessie is by no means a stripper with a prohibited addiction, but rather a young lady in the pursuit of a burning relaxant. And, after nearly five hours confined on the coach, she was really feeling like a bird in a cage that was ready to fly.

The more she smoked, the deeper her thoughts ran. The enormity of traveling this land is unparalleled. It makes the biggest of the human species feel very small indeed. It puts us all into perspective; it humbles us and commands of us the greatest respect for this compulsive and always beautiful land. After all, it is definitely our elder.

Jessie had almost finished