The Riders

by Tim Winton

  ‘Yeah, but, I know, but I’m her husband, you see. Yes, but be reasonable about this . . . No, I don’t think I have to . . . oh, listen, I’m asking you a . . . well, fuck you!’

  He whacked the receiver down and coins spilled free. Billie sniffed blankly.

  ‘Scuse my French. Sorry.’

  Scully looked down the narrow, grey street and went back to scraping. So, she arrived in Heathrow, sent the kid on alone. Either she’s in London, or, or she’s gone on somewhere else. But why? Oh, never mind bloody why, Scully, where is the issue first up. Think, you dumb prick. Start at the least likely and work your way back. What are the possibilities? The house deal falling through? Some stock market economic glitch, some problem with the papers? Maybe she’s gone back to sort it out, save you worrying.

  He dialled the house in Fremantle. Evening in Australia. Summer. The Telecom message chirped – disconnected. Automatically he dialled his mother but hung up before it could ring. No.

  London. It made all the sense. She’d be at Alan and Annie’s. She was having a bleed. God, it was trouble with the baby and she was stuck in . . . but Alan and Annie, they were saints. They’d be looking after her. Yes, pain at the airport, a cab to Crouch End.

  He rang them, his fingers tangling in the stupid dial.

  ‘Alan?’

  ‘Sorry, he’s out with Ann.’

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘Well might I ask.’ Who was this snot with the Oxbridge lisp?

  ‘When will they be back?’

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Scully,’ he said. ‘A friend.’

  ‘The Australian.’

  ‘Listen, when will they be back?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  Scully hung up. It was Tuesday for Godsake. They worked at home – they never went anywhere on a Tuesday. He called back.

  ‘Listen, it’s me again. Have they had visitors this weekend?’

  The kid at the other end paused a moment. ‘Well, I’m not sure I like the way this conversation is going.’

  ‘Bloody hell. Son, listen to me. I want to know if a woman called Jennifer –’

  The kid hung up. Shit a brick. Who else could he call? They had friends all over Europe, but in London they had all their eggs in one basket. There was no one who knew them as well as Alan and Annie. The house was always full of waifs and strays. In London it was the only place she’d go. What could he do – call the embassy? Everyone else he knew from London was probably IRA. Sod that.

  He waited. He scraped. He dialled Fremantle again. Nothing. He dragged the little address book from his pocket and called the number Pete once gave him. Nothing. Twists of paint dropped into Billie’s hair. He began to shuffle on the spot. He made a fist, pressed it against the glass. She was losing the baby and he was in some frigging Irish abbatoir town, helpless.

  He dialled Alan’s again.

  ‘Scully?’

  ‘Alan, thank God!’

  Alan sounded startled, a little sharp even. Maybe he’d got an earful from young Jeremy Irons or whoever.

  ‘How’s Ireland?’

  ‘Ireland?’

  ‘We’re dying to come out and see the place. Maybe we can pretend to be Aussies. You know, improve our standing.’

  ‘Alan, listen, did Jennifer drop by yet?’

  ‘Jennifer? Are they back from Australia yet?’ Scully’s mind rolled again. He couldn’t pull it back. But Alan sounded odd.

  ‘Course she’s very welcome, they both are. Great about the house, eh?’

  ‘How, how d’you know about the house?’

  ‘Got a card. Is everything alright, Scully?’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, it’s fine.’ Tell him, he thought. Tell him.

  ‘Should I expect them, you think? We can make up a bed.’

  ‘You wouldn’t hide anything from me, would you, mate? I mean, she’s your friend as well.’

  ‘What’s happening, Scully?’

  Why can’t you tell him? What kind of stupid suspicious pride is it that -

  ‘Scully, are you alright?’

  Scully listened to the hiss of the Irish Sea in the wires.

  ‘I thought it might be the baby,’ he murmured.

  ‘What baby? No one told us about a baby. Annie! Annie, get the desk phone will –’

  Scully hung up. He couldn’t do it anymore. His mind was twisting. They were the only people in the world he could trust. It wasn’t London. Friggin hell, it wasn’t London.

  Coins jangled out onto the floor. Billie looked up at him knowingly. She knew. He could see it, but what could he do, beat it out of her?

  ‘Listen sweetheart,’ he said to Billie, dropping to her level, wedging himself like a cork at the bottom of the booth. He grabbed her by the hands and looked imploringly into her shutdown face. ‘You gotta help your dad. Please, please, you gotta help me. If you can’t talk I understand, but don’t . . . don’t not talk because you’re angry, don’t do it to get back at me. I’m worried too. I’m so worried . . . I’m . . . Tell me, was Mum sick or anything on the plane, at the airport? Did she seem sort of strange, different somehow? Did she say anything to you, when she’d be coming, where she was going to, did she tell you to say something to me?’

  Billie’s forehead creased. She clamped her eyes shut. Scully put his fingers gently on her eyelids. So tired, so frail and shell-shocked. This was a terrible thing, too terrible. He wanted to ask other things, worse things. Was there anyone else on the plane, in the airport? Had there been anyone else around these last weeks in Australia? But there were things that, once uttered, couldn’t be reigned back. He had the fear that saying more might bring some worse calamity down on his head. Once you stopped thinking of innocent possibilities, the poison seeped in, the way it was already leaching into him, the ghastly spectrum of foul maybes that got to him like the cold in the glass around him. Old Scully, who according to Jennifer, hadn’t the imagination to think the worst. Something she said once, as though neurosis was an artform. Said without bitterness, accepted with a shrug.

  Scully felt himself levelling off again, going back to the likely alternatives. Did she just have cold feet? Okay, she made a mistake, it wasn’t too late to change their minds about Ireland. Maybe the sight again of their old house in Fremantle after two years had brought all their plans down around her ears. Hell, it was a whimsical idea in the first place, and plainly hers. She was embarrassed, that’s all. It could be that simple. But why this? Why the silence? Being pregnant hadn’t made her strange before. Maybe more timid than usual. Could be that. But women didn’t suddenly lose their brains with a baby on board. Could be she was biding time for a while, trying to work up courage to tell him she couldn’t go through with Ireland. All this was manageable, they could ride it out. Only it just didn’t feel right to him, none of this did. He was dangling, just hanging, dammit! What was it? Was she trying to send a message about the marriage, expressing some dissatisfaction? She wouldn’t be that cruel, surely. And then he thought of those ugly Paris nights, the rage she had when cornered. His gut churned. She could have some surprise lined up. No. Today’s mail would tell. By one o’clock Pete-the-Post would be by. And there was still time for a telegram to arrive. Do the right thing and wait. Think of Billie.

  But if it wasn’t London and there was no telegram? The glass was cold against his cheek. A ragged convoy of Travellers’ vans ground slowly past with horses and donkeys in tow. He watched them all the way up the hill.

  ‘Let’s go to the travel agent, Bill. We’ll get you some nice brochures you can cut the pictures from.’

  He crashed the booth door open, free of the cupboard air, and felt some kind of resolution settling on him. Yes, he had to do something.

  • • •

  THE TRAVEL AGENCY DOWN BY the river was a modest affair. It catered mostly to locals’ trips to London and Lourdes and Rome, or packages to the Costa del Sol. Scully went in fired up with smiling charm, but the agent, a small woman with flaming pink cheeks, w
as nervous all the same.

  ‘I’m just looking for flight connections, you know, good connections from London.’

  ‘Er, when would that be for, sir?’ the woman said, smiling gratefully when someone else walked into the little shop.

  Scully was flushed and fidgety, his eye roving alarmingly in his woolly head.

  ‘Hm, today, yesterday, ah, about this time of year,’ he mumbled. ‘Listen, why don’t you serve this lady and toss me the book and I’ll flick through.’

  Billie sat in a cane chair looking at her feet. The travel agent looked at Scully uncertainly, and passed him the thick schedule book, transferring her attention to a tall tweedy woman with a fedora and a horsey Anglo accent.

  Scully sat back with Billie and lurched around the book. He found yesterday and his heart sank at the mass of information. He thought of Billie’s flight and arrival into Shannon. Okay, about an hour’s flying time, say a nine-thirty flight out of London. The Qantas flight in was a six a.m. arrival. Now . . . Did she put Billie on the Irish flight herself? He simply had to believe that a mother would do that, whatever her state. Then she was still at Heathrow till . . . there it is, Aer Lingus 46 . . . till 9.35. Now, where did she go from there? A cab into London, maybe, but if not?

  Scully found a list of flights out of London close to 9.35.

  Karachi, 9.40.

  Kuala Lumpur, no.

  Moscow – in December?

  Miami.

  New York.

  Rome.

  Paris. Maybe, yes, maybe. But why would she go back to the scene of her failure?

  Barcelona.

  Athens, 10.25. Yes. A Qantas flight, too. She was paranoid about air safety. Yes. Greece made sense. She knew it and loved it. The island would be a kind of sanctuary. Somewhere to sort herself out. If it hadn’t been for the pregnancy she’d have stayed on indefinitely, he knew. He felt more or less the same. If the shit hit the fan, where in Europe would he go to hole up? Greece. Yes. Yes.

  Scully looked back at the Paris flight. British Airways – she hated them and she wouldn’t fly with them or anyone American. Hmm, they were quite the world travellers now, weren’t they. No, it was only Qantas, Singapore, Thai or KLM. The Athens flight, then, it had to be. How bloody easy it was, plonking down the magical, scary credit card and moving from place to place. As long as the card didn’t melt and the magic didn’t evaporate. A trickle of poison seeped into his chest. Had she told no one? Not even Alan and Annie? Didn’t she know Scully would call them first? He had to believe they didn’t know. Leaving no message – it seemed crazy, but wasn’t leaving no message a signal in itself? Hell, he needed some sleep. But didn’t she know he would figure this out, that if it wasn’t London it had to be Greece? He knew how her mind worked. It was private, a thing between them, like the baby. God, it was a message. She needed to talk, to meet, but somewhere safe, somewhere good, familiar. Like the island, where things had been best.

  For a moment, it seemed, the fog of hurt and tiredness left him. He made a map in his head, a schedule. He did a bit of mental arithmetic and took out his American Express card. Even now he held it like a working-class man, as though it might go off in his hands at any second. He double-checked his figures. Yes, he had some credit left, maybe half a card’s worth. Enough anyway. He held his breath and placed the card carefully, almost reverently, on the counter. It was a relief, like a suddenly open window, the feeling of doing something, of making decisions and acting. Yes, it was a start.

  • • •

  SCULLY TRACKED PETER KENEALLY DOWN on the road from Roscrea. It had just finished raining and water stood in bronze sheets by the lane. He saw the little green van through a stand of bare ash and pulled over as far as he dared onto the soft shoulder until he saw the van reverse out onto the road.

  ‘He’s a friend of mine,’ said Scully, shaky with resolution. ‘See, he never looks in his mirrors, he’ll get skittled one day.’

  The postie pulled out and swivelled his head. His eyes widened in surprise.

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned to hell if it isn’t the Desert Irish himself!’ said Pete as Scully pulled up beside him. Pete’s cheeks were aglow, his uniform askew and his hat was capsized on the seat beside him. In his lap was a sorry nest of envelopes.

  ‘G’day, Pete.’

  ‘Well, go on, man, tell me how it all went. Aw, Jaysus, I see someone up there beside you. I wonder who this could be now? Good day to ye! She’s a grand lass, Scully.’

  ‘Billie, this is Peter.’

  Billie lowered her eyelids bleakly.

  ‘Aw, she’s shy, now. Look at that suntan on ye, looks like ye just came from Africa.’

  Scully saw her observing Pete’s ears. They were like baler shells – he’d become used to them.

  ‘We’ll be gone a few days, Pete. Would you mind keeping an eye on the place? I’ll leave a key in the booth in the barn.’

  Pete’s grin softened and disappeared. ‘Is everything alright?’

  ‘Just some business to sort out.’

  Pete’s mouth failed to complete several movements. You could see him straining good naturedly to mind his own business. Scully thought: I hope to God he doesn’t think I’m doing a runner and leaving him with the bill.

  ‘Couple of days, Pete. Listen, gimme your home number again, just in case.’

  Puzzled, Pete recited the number. Scully wrote it on the strap of Billie’s backpack, more as a show of stability than anything else. ‘Any mail for me?’ he said, feeling a last bubble of hope in the back of his throat. ‘A telegram?’

  ‘Not a thing.’

  Scully closed his eyes a moment.

  ‘You want help?’

  The postie licked his chapped lips, anxious now.

  ‘I’m fine, mate.’

  ‘You look shot and killed.’

  ‘See you in a coupla days.’

  Scully put the Transit in gear and lurched away.

  • • •

  IN THE COOLING BOTHY, Scully made lamb sandwiches and sat down with Billie to eat dutifully, mechanically, the way he ate those too-early fishermen’s breakfasts hours before dawn in another life, chewing for his own abstract good and without pleasure. From the china jug he poured glasses of milk. At the mantelpiece he took down the photo Dominique had taken and he cut it down to fit inside his wallet. The sound of the scissors was surgical. Three faces, a tilted Breton headstone.

  He laid their documents on the table, checked their visas, the state of their crowded passports. Map. Swiss army knife. Some aspirin. Cash. Into Billie’s tartan case he packed a change of clothes for each of them. He placed their documents in her fluorescent backpack with the Walkman, her Midnight Oil tapes, her comic and her colouring gear. She pulled the Darth Vader out and put it on the mantel.

  ‘Are you alright, love?’

  She sat down and drank. The milk left a moony glow on her upper lip. She shrugged.

  Scully found a brush on the sill and gently straightened her hair. It was so like his own. In a few years it would be exactly his, completely beyond redemption, the kind of clot you run your fingers through and shrug at.

  ‘I like this house,’ he murmured, packing a few toilet things. ‘Everything’ll be alright in this house, Bill. I promise you. Here, I polished your boots. You need a horse with boots like that. An Irish hunter. Yeah.’

  He stood, feeling the stillness of the place, the look in her eyes.

  A car heaved up the hill in low gear. Scully waited for it to pass, but it pulled in and he recognized it.

  ‘Scully,’ said Peter at the door.

  ‘Hi, Pete.’

  ‘You’re off then.’

  ‘To the train station, yeah.’

  ‘Dublin?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Let me drive you.’ Pete pressed his hands together and leant from boot to boot, averting his eyes.

  ‘You needn’t worry, mate. We’ve got a flight to Athens in the morning.’

  ‘Athens, Greece? If yo
u leave that van there at the station the friggin tinkers’ll have it up on blocks before dark. Let me take you.’

  Scully stood there with his hand in Billie’s hair watching the postie think.

  ‘Fair enough. Thanks.’

  ‘Athens. Can we have a drink?’

  ‘It’s just two days, Pete. Don’t look so worried.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not worry, son, it’s just fresh out today.’

  Smiling, Scully took the bottle of Bushmills off the mantel. ‘Here. Slainte.’

  ‘Slainte.’

  Then Scully took the bottle back and took a good hard slug, felt it bore down cruelly into his roiling gut. ‘You’re right,’ he said, laughing emptily. ‘It’s cold out.’

  • • •

  A LITTLE WAY DOWN THE road in the tiny green van, Pete slowed down and pulled up beside the frail tree in the middle of the road.

  ‘Can I have a loan of your handkerchief, Scully?’ he said, opening the door and stamping his feet on the glistening road.

  Scully dragged out his disgraceful face rag, expecting to see the postman lean over and throw up into the muddy grass. But Pete strode across to the wizened little tree and tied the handkerchief to a branch. He crossed himself twice and came gravely back to the van.

  ‘Don’t say a word, Scully. Not a blessed word.’

  • • •

  THE TRAIN PULLED INTO ROSCREA station, easing up onto the deep granite cutting to stop right before the three of them. Pete opened a carriage door and helped Billie up the step, doffing his cap comically like a doorman.

  ‘Don’t do anythin clumsy, Scully, ye hear me?’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘Just be back for Christmas.’

  ‘Are you kiddin? This is two days, Pete.’

  ‘I tell you, I don’t understand women or God.’

  Or men, thought Scully, who could think of nothing dignified or honest to answer him with, short of telling him everything, breaking down on the platform here and blurting out all his fears. He was a friend, wasn’t he, a frigging patron, even. He deserved to know, but some iron impulse told Scully to shut up and get on with it, to stop feeling and start acting. Doors slammed along the line. Scully hesitated, stepped up.