The Riders (21 page)

•  •  •

W
HEN THE TAXI PULLED AWAY
with the driver still telling him how be became lost in the wide, squat city with the
xeni
asleep in the back and how he stopped by the police station for directions, Scully had already decided not to go to Athens at all. Athens was the airport and the airport meant deciding where to go immediately, and he just didn't know where to head for right now. For the past ten hours or so he'd just been moving, going blindly. Hydra was becoming a series of migraine flashes. But he knew Athens was wrong and he had to rest and think, decide with all his mind, not just the white hot bit that ran when everything else shut down.

He was working up the Greek words in his mind to break it to the chattering driver, when he noticed that they'd slipped onto the new expressway heading west instead of east. He saw the sign for Patras and heard the driver gasp.

‘Patra!'

‘Patra is okay,' said Scully, ‘Patra
endakse.'

‘Patra?'

‘Yes, keep going.'

A blaring semi blasted past and the driver snatched his worry
beads from the rearview mirror. They drove on as the great barren scape of the expressway unfolded. The air smelled of monoxide and pine resin. Billie slept again and Scully held his hands between his knees for the hour it took for the port city to come into view in the wan light before dawn.

S
CULLY WOKE IN THE CHALKY
light of afternoon. He lay still. On the bed beside him, with her back to the scabrous wall, Billie scratched in pencil on a sheet of Olympic Airways paper. Her face was taut with concentration, so like the beleaguered intensity she was born with – that expression which implied that only willpower and doggedness had gotten her out into the noise and light of the world. But now her brow was grey and green with contusions. He wanted to touch her but he daren't. He listened to her shallow breathing, the scrape of her pencil, and after a minute or two she looked down. Her mouth moved hesitantly. She went back to her sheet of paper.

‘Drawing?' he murmured.

She held it up. A house. A tree. A bird. The bird's nest was huge as a sun in the branches of the tree.

‘Ireland?'

‘Heaven,' she breathed.

He saw that her tee-shirt was on backwards. The Ripcurl tag flapped beneath her throat. He hadn't noticed, not last night, nor
all yesterday. Today it was the pharmacy – first thing. There was no excuse today.

Billie picked up another sheet of paper, the ruin of Alex's pen- and-ink of the Rue de Seine.

‘When is a dream . . . kind of not a dream?'

Scully turned on his hip. He savoured the husky tone of her voice. ‘When it's real, I guess.'

She nodded.

‘I'm sorry about all this,' he said. ‘I had to do it. Go looking for her.'

Her face closed over like a moving sky. She went back to her sketch and he lay there flattened against his pillow.

After a long time he got up and ran her a bath. It had cost an extra ten thousand drachs not to have to share the shower down the hall. He was low on cash, but there was no question of not having a bath, not the way his mind was working at dawn. He emptied the case and found some spare dressings and some swabs. Billie ignored him. The water bored into the big enamel tub. He unbuckled his heavy diver's watch and took it over to her.

‘Here, you can wear this in the bath.'

Billie held her arm out and he strapped it on. It ran round her wrist like a hoop. The last hole on the strap might have fitted her ankle. She twirled the dive dial. A ratcheting sound from another life.

In the bath she let him swab her wounds. She clung to the lip of the tub. Scully felt the floor cold on his knees. Her puckered gouges seemed clean, if firm. Maybe he could get an antiseptic ointment here in Patras. He had to keep the wounds closed to minimize scarring, but clean, always clean. He needed more gear. And what about tetanus? She had shots at five. He took her himself. He recalled how damned stoical she was about it. How
long did a tetanus shot last? Ten years? Five? Five, surely five. And the dog. He couldn't help worrying about the bloody dog's papers. Were they fake? Kufos swore black and blue. Arthur said they were for real. Geez, the idea of a series of rabies shots. That would be the end of her. No, she was safe there.

He held her head cradled in his hand the way you bath a baby. She let him tilt her back into the water, her eyes trusting. He couldn't help but think of his mother bathing his head like this the day he hitched back to the city delirious with his face smashed and bloated, the poison purple in him, the way she held his head and dabbed at his holes.

Billie lay back with the water over her ears, her hair waving like seaweed. He didn't know why she trusted him. Maybe she knew him better than he could have imagined. Maybe she didn't trust him at all. He washed her hair gingerly and let her soak till the water went cold. He tidied up their things and soaked stains from their clothes. He scrubbed them with soap, rinsed them several times and rolled them in towels to speed their drying.

‘We'll get you a hat today,' he said brightly. ‘Till your hair grows out at the front. A Greek captain's hat, what d'you think?'

She lay on the bed, head tilted back, mouthing the words of a song he didn't know. He hung their clothes in the open window and stood watching her a long time.

•  •  •

T
HE SUN WAS FIRMLY ON
their backs as they climbed the wide steps to the
kastro
above the town, Billie with her new hat covering the worst patches, Scully impassive behind his sunglasses. The walls of the old town were heavy and worn, reverberating with the sound of mopeds as young people darted through the narrow streets.

They sat and ate
tsipoures
at a small place with the sun on their legs and the sea below. Neither said much. The fish was good and Scully had a half-bottle of the same brand of rosé he'd drunk with Alex. The taverna terrace was all but empty.

A woman alone at the next table smiled at Billie and made a face. Billie looked at her plate for a moment, but looked up again and poked her tongue out. Scully put down his glass.

‘What happened to your face, darling?' the woman asked in English.

Billie pulled the hat lower. Scully looked at the stranger a moment and saw a straw hat, mirror glasses, black bobbed hair and a sleeveless dress the colour of watermelon. There was an ouzo on her table, a jug of water and a manila envelope.

‘I got bit by a dog,' said Billie.

‘Oh my God, you poor lamb.'

Scully smiled perfunctorily and went back to his fish. A tiny germ of pique lit up in him.

‘Let me see,' said the woman.

Billie tilted back her hat and exposed the swellings, the shaved patches and blue-yellow bruises.

The woman clucked and lit a cigarette. Her skin was white and Scully saw immediately the bruising on her upper arm and wrist. She smiled as if in acknowledgement, in collusion somehow. It made him want to leave.

‘And what became of the dog?'

‘Beg your pardon?'

‘What happened to the dog, darling?'

‘It got killed.'

‘Very good.'

‘Beaten to death with a bottle of brandy,' said Scully without warmth.

‘Bravo.'

‘Poor dog,' said Billie.'

‘Oh, no, your father did well.'

‘Her father didn't do it,' said Scully.

‘You are not the father?'

‘I didn't kill the dog.'

Scully saw himself – mouth open – in her sunglasses. It wasn't a happy sight. Pale. Hostile. Guilty. Blinking. Below his reflection was her too-wide mouth, a smear of lipstick on her teeth and a cigarette.

‘Eat up, Billie,' he said, turning to his meal.

There were ships leaving the harbour now, blowing columns on the breeze. The Adriatic was the colour of chrome.

‘I'm sorry,' said the woman. ‘I've forgotten my manners since the church this morning. They have Saint Andrew's head there. It disturbed me. He was the one who first signed an X for a kiss, did you know? At the bottom of letters. How many times I have done that. They crucified him on an X. Especially. It upset me.'

‘Well, X marks the spot,' said Scully.

‘The boat for Brindisi doesn't leave till ten tonight.'

‘Must be hard for you,' said Scully, motioning to a waiter and forking out some drachs. The big-handed Greek took his money gruffly and bade them goodbye. Billie looked back at the woman as they left, but Scully went ahead as though she had never been there.

•  •  •

F
OR AN HOUR AFTER THE
pantomime at the pharmacy, Scully sat on the long harbour mole watching boats come and go: trawlers, caiques, ferries, the occasional liner, all peeling rust and pouring diesel smoke, their horns bleating, decks smelling of fruit,
fish, flowers, wine, cigarette smoke. The wharf was scattered with mangy backpackers and the well-dressed middle class of Patras promenading with their black-eyed children, their Mercedes keys a-swing. The briney stink of the sea washed over Billie and Scully as they shared a bag of pistachios, wincing as their thumbnails became sore. They spat the shells into their laps and swung their legs.

‘Everywhere,' he murmured, ‘all over the world people are going places. Ever think of that?'

Billie looked at him guardedly.

‘Every single day.'

She nodded.

‘To be a real traveller you've got to not care much, just enjoy the trip, you know. The going. That's why I'm not much of a traveller. I just want to get there. Like “Star Trek”. Zap – that's how I wanna get there.'

Billie nodded again, and smiled. But it felt like charity. He watched her as she got up in a tinkling shower of nutshells and walked over to the water's edge where gulls hung like bunches of scrap paper in the updraught on the mole. There she was, all his life amounted to, apart from a couple of good buildings and some memories. Wasn't she enough? The sea butted its head against the wall and he watched, wondering.

•  •  •

I
N THE HOTEL STAIRWELL
, Scully shoved stupid amounts of coin into the phone to get an international connection. Billie sat on the stairs with her backpack on and the tartan case at her feet. Pete's phone rang out. He'd be down the pub, no doubt. The coins cascaded out and he went through the performance again, dialling Alan and Annie.

‘Hello?' A crackly, subterranean line.

‘Alan?'

‘Scully!'

‘The very same.'

‘What's happening? You put the wind up me the other day.'

‘Tell me straight – have you seen her?'

‘Jennifer? Where are you, Scully?'

‘Can I trust you?'

‘Scully, it's
me
for Godsake.'

‘Swear to God.'

‘Swear what?'

‘That you haven't seen her.'

‘I swear it. Where's Billie. Scully, where's Billie?'

‘With me.'

‘Where are you? Lemme come and get you. Where?'

Scully pressed the tips of his boots against the wall. It was tempting, no joke. Let Alan come, let friends come. Let someone come and fix this whole business. But he couldn't wait that long. Just the thought of Jennifer out there somewhere. Sick. Confused. Injured somehow. Or sweating on some disaster with the mail – waiting somewhere obvious without any way to contact him. Such a jumble of prospects and counter-thoughts. For a moment here he thought he might have chucked it in for the taste of the quiet moment, like this hour on the wharf without anxiety – the sound of the sea and birds and the sight of Billie – but the cold gnawing of not knowing was like a rip dragging on him. Not London. Not Hydra. He couldn't stay here like this.

‘Scully? Please, where are you?'

‘Mate,' he said. ‘I'm all over the place, believe me.'

He hung up and caught his change. Billie got resignedly to her feet.

On Grafton Street in November

We tripped lightly along the ledge

Of a deep ravine where can be seen

The world of passions pledged

The Queen of Hearts still baking tarts

And I not making hay . . .

‘Raglan Road'

T
HE JADED LIGHTS OF
P
ATRAS
silvered the water a long way behind them now, and a train of phosphorescence dragged along in the chunky night water of their wake. The decks of the Adriatica ferry were littered with rucksacks and suitcases, skis and tennis racquets, sleeping bags and drunken Finns. The breeze was fresh and the swell was long and steady before them, more comforting than unsettling. Billie lay back on the bench, her head in Scully's lap, and they looked out at the stars that hung like lint on a black sheet. She thought about those olden days, when it was all for one and one for all. Just the three of them in it together, like Scully said.

Maybe to him it seemed good and that's why he didn't like now. He wanted then, but when she remembered then she saw how hard he tried to be happy, specially in Paris where no one liked them and the sun would never go down at night. She remembered the fights with him outside that rotten school. That school where words came out of people's mouths like noise from machines, right at the beginning when she didn't know about languages. Lady teachers with cold smiles and their hair pulled
back like elastic. Their shining foreheads. Every morning they waited for her and nearly every morning there was a fight. She saw Scully cry once, he was so mad. The two of them in the cobbled museum street grabbing and pushing like wrestlers. Scully pleading. Sometimes, when she won the fight over school, she went to work with him and saw how he bent up at the top of his ladder, scraping ceilings, how bits stuck in his hair like snow. The apartments were big and full of things she wasn't allowed to touch. She sat in a corner and played trucks or looked at picture books. Those days she could write names but she couldn't read. It was him who taught her to read. Afternoons in the café near Notre Dame with books about Spot the Dog. Baby stuff. Reading was like swimming. You can't do it, you just can't do it and then one day, like magic, you can. No, in Paris he wasn't happy. He walked her through the streets and told her about buildings, things she forgot straightaway except the way he said them. He liked buildings. He drew them on envelopes. He was an excellent drawer. But he didn't remember so great. All for one and one for all. It wasn't something they said for fun, it was to stop one of them crying, usually Billie. The three of us in it together. It wasn't such a great idea, it just meant they were all lonely. In Greece it wasn't so bad; you didn't get so lonely with the water, and anyway the people were nice. The island people. The kids hurt animals, but they were okay really. But Paris, no, all three of them in Paris were just scared.