The Riders

by Tim Winton

  As soon as his hands thawed and the pan was on the fire, he found pencil and paper and began to plan the septic system. What had Binchy and his family done all those years? Generations of them squatting out in the rain, the mud, the snow, in the barn itself, judging by the uneven sod floor. The trials of defecation alone might have driven the poor buggers to drink.

  He was digging in the partly thawed field late in the morning when a black car drew by, hissing slow and quiet down the long hill with a train of other cars in its wake. He leaned on his shovel to watch the procession snake through the hedges, fifty cars and more making the turn to Birr with the sky the colour of dishwater above. Scully stood there, the minutes it took to pass, while the fields faded from their lustrous green, and when the last car was gone, the air was heavy, and the world suddenly becalmed.

  • • •

  PETE-THE-POST FOUND HIM waist-deep in the earth a little after midday. The ground was littered with the stones, bones and pieces of metal he’d heaved up past the mound of chocolate soil at the hole’s rim. It was unpleasant in the ground which smelled too rich for a man grown up in sand. It was too soft, too spongy underfoot and he was relieved to see the postie come smirking across the field, mail flapping.

  ‘Didn’t you hear, they’ve dug all the gold out of Ireland, Scully.’

  ‘I’m not withdrawing,’ said Scully, heaving up a spadeful. ‘I’m depositing. This is the septic. There will always be a corner of some foreign field that will be forever Scully.’

  ‘Aw, you witty bastard. Depositin, now, is it.’

  ‘How you been? Haven’t seen you for days.’

  ‘Bit of family business.’

  Scully leaned against the wall of dirt and wiped his brow. The earth smelled burnt and rotten like the inside of that castle.

  ‘Everythin alright?’ he said.

  ‘Grand, grand. Some mail for you.’

  ‘Can you leave it inside? I’m filthy, Pete.’

  Pete looked down into the hole and then along the pegs marking the trench uphill to the barn. The fall was good, the distance was good. ‘Puttin the lavvy in the barn, are we?’

  ‘No room in the house. Back home I’d stick it outside, but here no way. I don’t wanna leave the skin of me bum on the toilet seat of a morning.’

  Pete laughed and his ears glowed. ‘I’ll have you a pipe and a liner by four. You don’t mind them pre-loved, as the Americans would say? I’ve even got a pan, pink and all.’

  ‘Mate, pink is my colour and pre-loved is my destiny.’

  ‘Rightso. Um, what about water, Scully?’

  Scully looked up and gripped his shovel. ‘Gawd! I forgot that.’

  ‘Even if the pan is Teflon-coated I think you might have some problems without water.’

  ‘Smartarse. Can we run it off the pump, you reckon? Hand pump the cistern full?’

  ‘Jaysus, you’re goin basic here, Scully. I presume you had it better at home.’

  ‘A damn sight better,’ Scully muttered.

  ‘You need an electric pump off your well and full plumbin.’

  ‘Well.’

  ‘I know, I know. I’ll see you at four. Sign this. Ah, you dirty booger. Wash your hands.’

  • • •

  SCULLY READ HIS MAIL BY the fire with a mug of tea steaming beside him. There was a card from his mother with a hurt, distant tone to it. The picture showed the Swan River at dusk with the lights of Perth budding against a purple sky. A query from the Australian Taxation Office about why he had not filed for the past two years. This had been forwarded by Jennifer, it seemed, along with a card from the wife of a mate from his fishing days. Judging from the incoherent message she was drunk. The card showed a koala bear surfing, GREETINGS FROM GERALDTON. In a fat envelope was a news-stand poster from the Daily News, sent by a mate from the tackle shop, JOH GOES! Bjelke-Petersen, the doddery despot had finally quit politics. Thank God. In the registered envelope were all the documents relating to the sale of the Fremantle house ready for signing, and under separate cover, a cheque from Jennifer for two thousand dollars. The cheque was in her name from an account he didn’t recognize, a bank neither of them had accounts with. There was no note. The writing and the signature were hers, the envelope postmarked Fremantle a few days ago. Why didn’t she just transfer money into the account here with Allied Irish? It must be something specific. Maybe just enough to tide him over, clear the debt on the credit card. Money, it always made him nervous. He turned to the final item, a card from Billie. On the face of it was a photograph of the Round House, the old convict prison on the beach at Fremantle. Its octagonal limestone walls softened by sunset, rendered scandalously picturesque. It was somewhere they went often, him and her. Jennifer would be at work and the two of them would wander through town to the beach, talking about buildings, about what had been. He was grateful for those years, to have been the one who had her most days. She listened so carefully, you could see her hungry mind working. It was the reason he didn’t have so many friends anymore, as if the kid was suddenly and unexpectedly enough for him.

  Today I went to Bathers Beach with Granma and now I am thinking about the convicts. They must of thought God forgot them. Like they fell off the world. When we went to London I was five. I felt like a convict, like it was too different for me. But I was only a kid. Granma says the tailer are good now. I can tie a blood knot, so there. Don’t fall off the world, Scully. Do not forget about me, that is BILLIE ANN SCULLY.

  (all for one!)

  And one for all, thought Scully. The house was quiet but for the mild expirations of the turf fire. Scully looked at the postmark and felt raw and unsettled. What a kid. She put the wind up him, sometimes.

  He could see her now, the way she was the day they bought this place. Reading that old comic. She had all his old Classics Illustrated in a cracked gladstone bag from the farm. She had them all. Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, The Count of Monte Cristo. Yes, he saw her lolling back in that shitheap rented VW with her absolute favourite, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, with its gaudy pictures and forests of exclamation marks. Her lips moving as she snuffled at a bag of Tato chips, humming some Paul Simon song. Her hair bouncing, wide mouth rimmed with salt. The laces of her shoes undone.

  On that strange day, when Jennifer got out and looked at the bothy, they exchanged looks, him and Billie, and he couldn’t tell what it meant. Mutual doubt, perhaps. And even when he’d been won over by Jennifer’s pleading, her infectious excitement and happiness, Billie remained doubtful. He remembered that now. That and how resistant she was at the airport. Crying at the departure gate, tugged down the hall by her mother who looked simply serene. That was the only word for it – serene. Being pregnant maybe, or being decided. The afterglow. Black hair glossing out behind her. Arms swinging like a woman content and on course at last, relaxed the way she had never been before. Yes, her features serene but indistinct even now. And Billie like a sea anchor, dragging all the way to the plane.

  • • •

  BY THE END OF THE next day, Scully had himself a connected, waterless toilet. On the barn wall beside it he had taped his poster: JOH GOES! He filled the cistern with a bucket and flushed it, hearing the water run away downhill. He laid planks on blocks between house and barn for a bridge across the mud. Pete stood by with a wry grin.

  ‘Pumpin out the bilges, it’ll be.’

  ‘Come in and have a drink, you cheeky bastard.’

  The north wind rattled the panes of the Donegal windows at their backs and the chimney snored beside them as they drank their pints of Harp. The room was warm and humid with simmering stew.

  ‘You think your gals’ll take to this place, Scully?’

  ‘Well, I don’t think Jennifer’ll need convincing.’

  ‘How old is that little one?’

  ‘Billie? Seven, seven and a half.’

  ‘A grand life for her here. You can bring her into Birr to play with Con’s.’

  The very mention of Conor Keneally caused
Scully to go stiff with irritation.

  ‘And there’s a school bus by here to Coolderry. Nice little school.’

  ‘She’s not a Catholic you know.’

  ‘Aw, they don’t give a toss. And anyway, she might just become one. A little bit of civilization never hurt.’

  Scully laughed. The thought of them trying to ‘civilize’ Billie! But they’d learn, and they’d like her. The Irish and her, they’d get on. They liked a bit of spirit, didn’t they?

  It was dark outside now and rain fell, light at first and then in roaring sheets. The fire hissed.

  ‘You’re a lucky man to have a child,’ said Pete staring into the fire.

  ‘Yes,’ he said with his whole being. ‘Yes. It’s a surprise, you know, nothing prepares you for it. Nothing better ever happened to me. Funny, you know, but I’m so bloody grateful for it. To Jennifer, to God.’ He laughed self consciously. ‘You see, this stuff used to be automatic, you know, natural. Women aren’t so keen to have them anymore, not where I come from, anyway. They’ve got other fish to fry, which is fair enough. But they don’t realize, sometimes, what they’re missing, or what they’re withholding, you know? The power they have. I don’t know if Billie was an accident or not. I thought she was. It’s hard to tell, you see, with people. So I’m grateful, that’s the truth of it.’ Scully blushed. Yes. That was why he dressed her so meticulously when she was small, why he worried too much about seatbelts, why he infuriated the kid with lectures about tooth decay. It wasn’t like him, but she wasn’t to know. It was her, the fact of her. And when she fell from a bike or a tree she came running to him. It shamed him in front of Jennifer, the way Billie ran to him first. Did Jennifer feel what his own father must have felt, being the second parent? Maybe he just took it all too seriously. Perhaps other people didn’t feel these things.

  ‘You want some of your own, someday, then?’

  ‘Oh, I could imagine it,’ said Pete, refilling his glass and resting his boot on the hearth. ‘There’s just the little problem of matrimony, Scully. You know, if I wanted trouble, I’d move to Ulster. I like comin and goin as I fancy. And I have Con’s own when the urge hits me.’

  Pete watched as Scully got up and lit his three candles at the sill. Both of them stared at the twitching candle-flame and the reflection it threw along the panes.

  ‘Did you ever come close?’ Scully asked. ‘To marriage.’

  ‘Aw, once. But I was young. There’s no point goin back on it. All the adventures are ahead of you, not behind. You got to go and find em. And I might say,’ he said with a mischievous cast in his eyes, ‘I believe in deliverin em now and then, too. You’ve been godly patient with my brother.’

  ‘Pete, we don’t –’

  ‘No, no, I thank ye for your understandin on this.’

  ‘Look –’

  ‘Can you meet me in Birr tomorrow mornin early, say seven-thirty?’

  ‘Sure. Why?’

  ‘Power corrupts, you know, but without it, you can neither cook toast nor take a shit. Seven-thirty.’

  • • •

  THE STREETS OF BIRR WERE almost light at seven-thirty next morning and its houses, shoulder to shoulder in the misty square, were grey and stirring with the shriek of kettles and the scuffle of dogs. Scully saw the van in the rain-slick high street and pulled in beside it as Pete climbed out grimly waving.

  Pete led them to the little green doorway at the side of a shopfront. Pete knocked and blew on his hands.

  A jaded and fearful woman let them in wordlessly.

  ‘Mornin, Maeve.’

  ‘He’ll not be up for hours, Peter. Don’t even bother yourself.’

  ‘This is Fred Scully from out at the Leap.’

  ‘Oh, yes, the Australian,’ she smiled wanly.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Scully, smelling boiled cabbage, cigarette smoke, turf and bacon fat.

  ‘Peter talks about you all day.’

  ‘Oh. I hope it’s not all bad,’ he said limply.

  ‘Ready, Scully?’

  ‘Ready for what?’ said Maeve Keneally.

  Scully felt faint from the stuffiness and desperation of this house. It seemed no window had been opened here for generations.

  ‘Just keep the front door open, Maeve.’

  Scully followed the postman through the gloomy house and into a foetid bedroom where Conor Keneally slept in his boots, and they took him by those boots, and dragged him off the bed, down the corridor with its greenish pictures of the Pope and the saints and Charlie Haughey, through the front door and out into the drizzling street where, finally awake, he began to struggle.

  ‘Watha fook! Geroffa me!’

  ‘We’ve got a job for you to do, so you can get in the van, Con.’ Pete hauled at his brother but the man slid back onto the lumpy pavement.

  ‘I’m in the fookin wet street in me jammies, you bastard eejit!’

  ‘Aw, Conor Keneally, you slept in your duds as ever. Get in your van.’

  Conor struggled to his feet. He was bigger than his brother and redfisted. His sideburns were like flames down his cheeks as he braced himself against the Toyota van, copping a bit of PVC pipe in the back of the head as he staggered.

  ‘No one tells me.’

  ‘Shut up and get in the van,’ said Pete trying to smile.

  ‘Who’s gonna make me, gobshite?’ The big man straightened, smelling of the hop fields of the Republic. ‘You, Mr Post?’

  ‘No,’ Pete said, pointing at Scully. ‘Him.’

  Conor struggled to focus on the scarred and wonk-eyed face of the Australian, who quite simply looked mealy enough to be up to it. It was no postman face.

  ‘Now, Conor, this is one of Mylie Doolin’s London boys and he needs a job done.’

  The electrician slumped and held a great meaty hand to his head in horror.

  ‘Aw! Awww, fook me now! Jaysus, what’re you doin Peter Keneally, you eejit!’

  ‘Don’t be askin stupid questions. Get a meter box and all the guff.’

  ‘There’s one in there,’ Conor said, sickly dipping his head to the van. ‘I was after comin from Tullamore –’

  ‘Let’s go, then,’ interrupted Pete gruffly. ‘Our man will follow in the Transit.’

  Conor covered his face with both hands now. ‘Holy Mother, Peter. Mylie Doolin.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Peter winking over his brother’s shoulder at Scully, ‘Mylie himself.’

  He watched them climb into the Toyota with a jug of sloe poteen. A dog barked. The rain fell.

  • • •

  SCULLY STAYED CLEAR OF THE bothy all morning, keeping to the draughty barn to sand down and varnish an old mahogany chair he found in the loft. Now and then he heard shouts from the house: anger, exasperation, hangover, fear. It was funny alright, but he felt sorry for poor Conor, labouring in there with an imaginary gun at his head and a very real hangover inside it. Scully worked away in the giddy fumes grateful to Mylie once more.

  Just before noon when he could stand the cold no longer he went inside and heard a transistor playing fiddle music in the kitchen.

  Conor was at the table shakily filling out some paperwork, and Pete was throwing turf on the fire.

  ‘Power to the people, Scully.’

  ‘Don’t suck up, brother.’

  Scully just grinned. Conor held out the sheets of paper to Scully who took them without speaking.

  ‘Now that electric drill will work, Scully, me boy,’ said Pete. ‘Bit of kneecappin, no?’

  Conor paled.

  ‘C’mon, Pete,’ said Scully, speaking in Conor’s presence for the first time that day. ‘Give the bloke a break.’

  ‘This fooker’s not Irish!’

  ‘Australian,’ said Scully.

  ‘Desert Irish, you might say.’

  The table crashed forward and Conor was reaching for his brother’s throat when the noon Angelus suddenly sounded on the radio. Without hesitation, both Irishmen went slack, and adopted the prayerful hunch, snor
ting and trembling, as the church bell rang clear. Wind pressed against the panes. The fire sank on itself, and the bell tolled on and on into the false calm. Scully watched the fallen forelocks of the Keneallys and fought the fiendish giggle that rose in his neck. And then the last peal rang off into silence. The men crossed themselves and Conor Keneally noticed how upright Scully was, how his hands stayed in his pockets.

  ‘Good Christ, he’s not even Catholic, let alone Irish!’

  ‘And that’s not all,’ said Peter, chuckling and preparing to be pummelled. ‘He thought Mylie was in gaol for the VAT.’

  Conor looked at Scully with a sudden mildness on his face – pity. ‘Jaysus, man, where did you go to school?’

  ‘Elsewhere, you might say.’

  ‘You bastards.’ Conor slapped his cloth cap against his knees. ‘You fookers had me banjanxed. He’s not with the Provos at all, is he.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Scully.

  Pete tipped his head back and laughed, and he didn’t stop for a moment as Conor dragged him outside and rammed him into the door of the Toyota, and he kept it up as his roaring brother beat his head against the roof, holding his ginger forelock and slamming down once, twice until the big man let go and stood back and began to weep.

  ‘Oh, God, my life.’

  From the door of his house which poured music and the smell of burning soil, Scully watched as Pete grabbed his brother and held him fiercely in the wind. The big man sobbed and dripped tears and snot. His roadmap face glowed with shame and despair and a kind of impotence Scully had never seen before. Peter’s hands were in his brother’s ginger curls and he wept too, his eyes averted, his head high in the wind.

  Scully went inside and stood by the fire, hung the kettle on the crane, threw on some more turf. The radio played a ballad, and a woman’s mournful voice filled the cottage. He went back to the front door and offered the Keneallys a cup of tea. They straightened up, accepted with dignity and kicked the mud from their boots.

  Ten

  ON THE ELEVENTH OF DECEMBER, a Friday with sunlight and sharp, clean air, Scully stood at a sink full of hot water and sang in his broken, growly voice, an old song he had heard Van Morrison bawling yesterday on the radio.