The Riders (11 page)

At the end of the bed, he unzipped her case and pulled out the small bald and one-legged koala that was her lasting vice. He held it to his face and smelled the life that he knew. He tucked it in beside her and went downstairs.

He set the iron kettle over the fire and sat at the table with his hands flat before him. My wife has sent my child on alone. No message, no note, no warning. Yet. It's Sunday, so no telegrams. There'll be a message tomorrow. It's no use panicking or getting bloody self-righteous about it. You're worried, you're disappointed, but just show a bit of grit here, Scully. Tomorrow Pete'll bring a telegram and we'll all laugh like mad bastards about this.

•  •  •

T
HE SUN WAS GONE BEFORE
four o'clock. Scully found himself out behind the barn in a strange cold stillness looking at the great pile of refuse he'd hauled out there on his first day. The rain had battered all Binchy's chattels down into a slag heap, a formless blotch here at his feet. In the spring, he decided, he'd dig up this bit of ground and plant leeks and cabbage, and make something of it. Oh, there were things to be done, alright. He just had to get through tonight and the rest of his life would proceed.

The light from his kitchen window ribboned out onto the field. Scully's nose ran and his chest ached. He told himself it
was just the cold, only the cold. A cow bawled down the hill in some miry shed somewhere, and Scully watched, marvelled, really, as his breath rose white and free on the calm evening air.

•  •  •

T
HAT NIGHT
S
CULLY KEPT A
vigil of sorts. It was doubly lonely sitting in the bothy knowing Billie slept upstairs remote from him in whatever dream it was that had hold of her. Poor little bastard, what must she be feeling?

He unpacked all her clothes and folded them carefully. Her little dresser smelled of the Baltic, of the wax of aunts and calm living. Downstairs he looked through her things, her Peter Pan colouring book, her labelled pencils, the Roald Dahl paperbacks. He put aside her tiny R.M. Williams boots and brushed some nugget into them. In the kitchen the sound of the polishing brush had the comfortless rhythm of a farm bore. On the table he opened her folder of documentation. Birth Certificate, 8 July 1980, Fremantle Hospital. Yes, the wee hours. He went home that morning with the sound of off-season diesels thrumming in the marina. Yellow vaccination folder. School reports, one in French, the other in Greek. A single swimming certificate. Three spare passport shots – the perky smile, the mad Scully curls. Taken in the chemist's on Market Street. A creased snapshot of her standing at the mouth of the whalers' tunnel at Bathers Beach with some kid whose name escaped him.

Scully went upstairs to watch her sleep. It was warmer up there now under the roof. It was late. His eyes burned but there was no question of sleeping, no chance. Not till this was over, till he knew Jennifer was alright. Carefully he lay beside Billie and held her outside the eiderdown, felt her hair and breath against his face. In the band of moonlight that grew on the far wall he
saw the flaws of his hurried limewash. The long, relentless unpeeling of the night went on.

Just before dawn, in the milled steel air, he filled buckets with coal in the barn by the light of the torch. The land was silent, the mud frozen. At the front door he paused a moment to look down at the castle but saw no lights. The stars were fading, the moon gone. He went in and built up the fire. For a moment he thought about their baby, whether this house would be warm and dry enough. And then he caught himself. God Almighty, where was she?

The day came slowly with the parsimonious light of the north, and Billie slept on. Scully resolved to list out all the possibilities on a sheet of paper, but all he got was her name three times like a cheesy mantra. He re-read all his mail, looked at each of the smudged telegrams. Nothing. It was only a month – what could happen in a month, or in an hour at Heathrow?

Late in the morning he put the leg of lamb into the oven. The smell filled the house but Billie slept on and the roast cooled on the bench, juices congealing beneath it. Scully ate a cold spud, made himself a cup of Earl Grey.

The mail van slewed along the lane sometime past noon. He heard it bumbling round in the valley and he went outside nearly falling in his haste, but it never came back his way. No mail. No telegram. Out on the thawed mud, Scully puked his cup of tea and his roast potato, and when he straightened to look back at his smoke-pouring house, wiping the acid from his chin, he saw Billie at the open door rumpled with sleep.

‘Rip van Winkle,' he said brightly, scuffing the soiled mud with his wellingtons.

Billie shivered, her legs squeezed together.

‘Need a pee?'

She nodded solemnly.

‘I'll show you. It's out in the barn.'

She gave him a doubtful look but let him carry her across the mud on the duckboard bridge to the barn, where, at the back the old Telefon booth stood in the corner. She looked at the
JOH GOES!
poster.

‘Great, eh?'

He put her down on the rotting straw and she pulled open the door dubiously, and then turned, waiting for him to leave.

‘Great dunny, what d'you reckon?' he said, retreating outside. The sun's shining, Scully, he thought; show a bit of steel, for Godsake and brighten up. She doesn't want you to hang over her on the bog.

He looked down the valley and saw the birds wrapping the castle keep and the low clouds motionless on the mountains. Light broke in sharp moments all across the fields. The trees stood bare and maplike with their knots of nests plain to see. It was a rare day.

He heard the flush.

‘What a toilet, eh?' he said as she emerged, blinking at the miry ground. She looked out at the empty fields, at the hedges and fences and sagging gates. For a long moment, she stared down at the castle keep.

‘No animals, huh? First thing I noticed,' he said. ‘They keep them indoors because of the cold. Imagine that. Every couple of days you see tractors hauling these big trailers that hurl poop all over the paddocks. What a scream. Come on, I'll get you something to eat. What d'you think of the house? Did I do a good job? Haven't painted it yet.'

Billie held his hand and walked with curling toes across the duckboards. It frightened him, this silence. They were so close,
the two of them, such mates. Nothing innocent, no small thing could close her up like this.

She drank Ovaltine by the fire and ate her bread. Scully warmed some fresh clothes on a chair by the hearth and poured hot water into the steel tub.

‘You can wash yourself while I make your bed. New Levi's, I see. A present from Gran?'

Billie chewed and looked at the coals.

‘I'll be upstairs.'

Wait, he told himself. Think and wait. The telegram will turn up. Hours left in the day yet. Upstairs he leaned against the warm patched chimney and prayed the Lord's Prayer like a good Salvo, the words piling up like his thoughts in the snug cap of the roof.

No telegram came.

Billie slept again. Scully napped and sweated. He prowled the stairs, listening for the sound of a car, the arrival of an end to this scary shit. But nothing came. In the wee hours he was mapping things out, thinking of London, of his friends there, of a simple explanation. Jesus, why didn't he get the phone on?

The night reeled on, lurching from hour to hour, from impasse to foggy hole with the world silent beyond.

•  •  •

N
EXT MORNING,
S
CULLY DROVE INTO
Roscrea with Billie, bubbling away cheerlessly like a jolly dad on the first day of the holidays. He could see it didn't wash for a minute because Billie stared mutely out at the countryside, bleak as the breaking sky. Not a thing. Not a word. Well, the waiting was over. He had to do something before it killed him.

He drew a blank at the Post Office. Pete was out on his
round. No telegram anyway. He cashed a bagful of change and made for a Telefon down the high street.

•  •  •

‘I
JUST NEED TO CHECK
whether she was on QF8 from Perth via Singapore the day before yesterday,' he said as evenly as he could manage to the voice in London. ‘This is the fifth . . . No, no there isn't a problem, really.' The phone booth fogged up with their breath. ‘I just wanted to make sure, you know – twelve thousand miles is a long way. I know what can happen with schedules . . . Yes, I understand.'

Billie passed him up some more coins from her squatting position in the booth.

‘Ah, terrific, so she was aboard then . . . out at Heathrow, great. And did she have an onward transfer from there?'

A truck from the meatworks heaved itself up the hill, shaking the glass beside his face,
MAURA SUCKS NIGGERS,
someone had written on the wall in felt pen. Absently, Scully began to scrape it out with the edge of a 20p coin. He noticed the beauty of the design on the coin. A horse, like a da Vinci study. Only the Irish. The voice turned nasty in London.

‘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?'