The Riders (20 page)

Billie began to vomit. There was no way to direct it anywhere; he couldn't hang on and help her as well, so he took the steaming little gouts against his jacket as he hugged her to him. It slicked the seat and filled the cabin with a bitter stink. The poor little bugger. He felt her hands at the back of his neck and hated himself for his stupidity and clumsiness, for letting this happen to her, for being in this insane situation. What else could possibly happen to her? She was so strong, so resilient, but how much could a kid take? He thought maybe he should have stayed, but what use was he to her in jail on a Greek island? There was no telling what could happen with the business of Alex, how things might turn out. He might have gone to a pharmacy, got the doctor out to Arthur's, but the cops were too close and he simply couldn't risk it. And the sight of her mad with fear amongst all those screaming people, the nurses wrestling her down like an animal. No, he couldn't do it to her. He had to pray that she understood, that she knew him well enough to see that this was not normal, that this wasn't what he would ever do unless he had to. But it wasn't right, it shouldn't be like this, she shouldn't have to endure it and the enormity of it cut him to the blood. Some father, Scully, some father.

Meatballs turned, scowling.

‘Ermione no good! Hydra Beach we go! Hydra Beach!'

The boat rose out of a trough and hung bawling in the air so
long Scully could feel it moving laterally in the wind. When it hit water again, Billie's tartan suitcase burst open and flung underpants, razors, paper all over. He let it go and hung on.

‘There's nothing
at
Hydra Beach this time of year! I gave you two hundred bucks!'

‘Hydra Beach. Only this.'

Water sluiced back across the canopy and the bow buried momentarily. It was claustrophobic underwater. Strings of pearly bubbles pressed against the screen. The boat shuddered and ground up into the air again. They were an hour out already and Scully knew it could take a lot longer to get down the coast to Ermione. It might take half the night at this rate.

Billie stiffened. The wound in her scalp had begun to bleed again and she was too weak to even cling to him anymore. The deck slopped, and at his feet, half curled and blotted, lay Alex's sketch of the Rue de Seine, its buildings solid and angular, its pavements thick with people, dogs, cars, its high window perspective stupidly reassuring. He found himself staring at it, looking out through its window at the solid earth below.

‘Hydra Beach, Afstralia!'

Scully looked up at Nick Meatballs and saw him scared and greenfaced, all the macho bullshit gone. His lips were creamy with spit. Scully looked about for signs of lifejackets – none – and just then the bouzouki clamour fell silent, and the shouting voice of a man on the radio receiver was audible between clashes of static.

Imagine a breakdown in this shit, he thought. All those granite islets. The cliffs of Dokos.

They rolled heavily and crashed sideways into the water that pressed black against the glass.

Alex would be lying on a slab in Hydra harbour by now. The
cops ringing around. The wake being planned. Arthur passing the hat. Buried as an infidel, no doubt. No matter how long you stayed you were always a foreigner in or out of church, alive or dead. Was it me, Alex, because of me?

‘Afstralia?'

‘Okay, Hydra Beach.'

‘You smart boy!'

‘Tell me about it.'

He looked down at the smudging Rue de Seine and saw women on the pavement, their hips high with walking. He wanted to go there, to be inside that picture with its smells of Chanel and coffee and cake, to be inside the life of it, in its steady, perfect composition and lightness of touch, but the real world, the twisted nightmare around him had hold too tight. The sea sucked and grabbed and hissed and snatched and Billie's sweat glistened greenly. There was no going into the neatness of the imagination. He could only pray for her to forgive him, to take what was left of him, to strike him dead, to save him.

D
EEP IN SOME BIG, MAD
story, a Jonah story, a Sinbad story, a Jesus and the fishermen story, the kind that's too true to be strange, too dreamy to be made up, Billie hung onto Scully's jacket and heard the sea growl and saw the sky go underground with her. Sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry he was saying, like a ship's engine driving her along, pushing her across the waves of sickness and pain and pictures that wrenched her. In her head, too, she heard the song from the Up School floating across the wall.

Something, something, parakalo,

Something, something, parakalo . . .

Her head was too crowded, she was forgetting Greek. What was it they were asking for? For everything to be still? For everything to go back to the way it was? For it all to stop?

Billie saw the poor wet dog. The way its eye moved slowly. The big, pink inside of its mouth and the meaty smell of its breath. And all the people. Yelling at her. The gold in their teeth, the
blood stinging her eyes like Pears shampoo. All of them pushing and trying to take her away, twisting her arms, their hairy soft hands all over her. And Scully holding on, his face like a pumpkin, fat and bulgy with fright. She saw the newspaper in the lady's teeth, his hand on her hair, brushing her like a dog, saying words too soft for language. His big heart there in his shirt, the love in his neck. He didn't let go, he didn't let them. The fat cigar, the stink of Mister Arthur's cigar. Gentle fingers on her face. Every shot of pain the chime of an aeroplane toilet sign – ting, ting, ting. A white face in the cloud. Somewhere, too, a tin whistle pweeting. Another surge of people and glass doors peeling back like the sea for Moses and Scully's busted face on the other shore beneath the chiming, tolling, swinging bells. Him not letting go, their fingers making bloodknots and bimini twists and not slipping, tied properly, not giving an inch. The dog had no one now and she had Scully. She was the lucky one.

Something, something, parakalo,

Efkaristo poli . . .

Yes. She had Scully's heart whamming in her ear like a bell, like God singing.

S
CULLY FELT THE
V
OLVO BACKING
down and knew suddenly that he'd been asleep. The sea was different, the swells long and even. The canopy slid back and a burst of air rushed in. He stood and saw lights, the shapes of houses, a beacon, a mole. They hissed into lee water, throttling down and Scully saw it was Ermione after all.

Billie sat stunned and pale while he got down and shoved their things together. He snapped the case shut, and fitted the little backpack to Billie.

‘You know people here?' he said to Meatballs, unsure of whether the bloke had changed his mind or found the port by accident.

‘Neh,
some people,' Meatballs said as they slid in among moored boats.

‘Get me a taxi, then, a car. To Athens.'

They swung in against the slimy black fenders of the wharf and Meatballs killed the motor and leapt up to secure them. When Scully hoisted Billie to the dock, the Greek was gone.

The wind was cold and it had recently rained here too so the
air was bright and liquid as they stood between clunking boats. Scully brushed the girl's hair, careful to avoid her wounds. He dipped his handkerchief in the sea and wiped their clothes as best he could.

‘You okay?'

‘Yes.'

She looked terrible under the wharf lights.

She closed her eyes and her heavy curls bustled in the wind. ‘It hurts.'

Scully dug out some paracetamol. Was she too young for paracetamol? He found a tap and cupped her some water in his hands. She shuddered at the taste of the pills and held the crusty bowl of his hands. Drinking like a dog.

Out to sea the lights of Hydra showed faintly now and then.

‘Afstralia!'

Scully turned and saw the boatman's face in the flare of a cigarette lighter.

‘Taxi.'

‘Good.'

‘For Napflion.'

‘I want Athens.'

Meatballs shrugged.

‘Okay, what the hell.'

A battered Fiat stood at the end of the mole. A rotund little man got out buttoning a lumber jacket and opened the boot. Scully shook his head at the open boot and climbed in.

The car smelled of cigars and garlic. It was sweet and homely after the boat, it's motion smooth and straightforward. Never before had he thought of cars as such luxurious conveyances. Down sleepy streets they went, a numbness coming over him.

‘Napflion,
neh?'

‘Ochi,'
said Scully, ‘Athini.'

‘Athini?'

The driver pulled over beside a dim taverna and twisted around in his seat.

‘Neh; said Scully, ‘Athini.'

The driver put on the interior light and looked carefully at them. Clearly, he didn't like the look of things. There was blood all down Scully's denim jacket, and he was unshaven and looked like a crim. Billie's face was swollen and showing the first bruises. Her hairline was savaged and little pieces of sticking plaster hung off her. She reeked and looked stolen at worst, neglected at best.

‘Dog,' said Scully, showing him the wounds, making a set of jaws out of his hands. ‘Dog, dog, it bit her, see?'

‘Hydra?'

‘Ochi,
Spetsai. Happened on Spetsai, we came from there just now.'

Scully pulled out twenty thousand drachs and laid the fold across the seat between them.

‘Athini,
endakse?'

The man pursed his lips and sighed. Scully smiled raggedly and took out their passports, showed him the pictures.

‘Papa
the driver said to Billie, pointing at Scully.

‘Neh
,' said Billie, nodding wearily.

‘Postulena?'

‘Billie Ann Scully.'

He smiled at her and handed back the passports. But it was with a lingering look of concern that he took the money and turned out the light. They were well into the mountains before Scully felt sleep coming at him like a faint wind across water.

•  •  •

O
N A SLICK PALE SEA
with the rising sun behind him, Scully watches the rope in the winch and sees the cane pot break the surface of the water, bristling with feelers. It crashes onto the cradle at the gunwhale, smelling of salt and rotten bait and cabbage weed, alive with the cicada click of rock lobsters. The boat surges ahead and a mad school of silver trevally chases leftovers in the clear reef water. Two dolphins break ahead and the world is good, the sea lives, the sky goes blue forever.

•  •  •

B
ILLIE WOKE IN THE DRY
mountain air and saw nothing beyond the curving road. With his head back and his mouth open, Scully slept on. She watched him in the dark as the man in front sang quietly to himself, and the night throbbed on out there beyond her hurting face. She thought about that castle, the tower down the hill from Scully's little house. There were birds around it like a cloud. The whole world still except for birds. She wondered if you could love someone too much. If you could it wasn't fair. People didn't have a chance. Love was all you had in the end. It was like sleep, like clean water. When you fell off the world there was still love because love made the world. That's what she believed. That's how it was.

•  •  •

S
CULLY WOKE IN THE PARKED
taxi. He saw the empty driver's seat, the keys gone from the ignition, his daughter sleeping beside him, their belongings scattered in the dark at their feet. He saw the dimness of the park across the street, and with a spasm of dread, he registered the police station right beside him. Police. For several seconds he listened to the cooling tick of the motor, then he gathered up their things and shook Billie.

‘Let's go, let's go.'

The child came to quickly and got out beside him. Together they crossed the deserted street and slipped into the darkness of the park. The air was cool and damp and Scully's mind skittered. He led her to a clump of bushes that smelled like thyme and gave them some cover. Behind was the bus station. He painstakingly read the sign. Korinthos. Corinth. No sign of life there either. Scully squatted down to think. Was the driver in there reporting them as suspicious characters, a couple of strange looking
xeni?
A child looking battered and stolen, a man with desperado written all over him.

‘Scully?'

‘Shh.'

Scully saw the driver emerge from the police station with something in his hand. A piece of paper. He put his hand to the door of the Fiat and stopped. He hunched down to the back window and stood up to look around.

‘
Kyrios
?' he called faintly. ‘Mister?'

The town was so still his voice carried plainly across to them, little more than a whisper.

‘Scully?' Billie tugged at his sleeve.

Scully watched him carefully. He thought of the long wait till dawn and the first bus or train out of here.

‘Scully?' the kid murmured insistently.

The taxi driver pocketed the sheet of paper and walked around the car once, looking up and down the street. Scully thought of the cops on Hydra. They've sent out a warning to the mainland. Do they know in there? Then why did the driver come out alone, and what's on that piece of paper? He's stalling for time. They're waiting inside, for more men, for a call from Hydra to confirm. And where can you go, a couple of conspicuous foreigners in the
offseason before dawn in Corinth when the trains aren't running yet and the streets are bare?

Billie was halfway across the park before Scully could take it in. She walked forthrightly, as if determined, or angry, and she didn't look back. He gasped and stood up. The driver swivelled and grunted in delight. He threw up his hands and laughed. Scully saw him open the door, chattering and still looking about, and that's when Scully gave up, grabbed the gear, and stepped out into the open.