The Riders (23 page)

W
HEN
S
CULLY WOKE
the pair of them were playing Uno in the light of the portal. There was a clanging somewhere below.

‘Sleepyhead still in bed,' said Irma, smiling.

‘You snored,' said Billie.

Scully lay still. Billie's hair was brushed and she wore a clean shirt. A pair of her knickers hung damp and wrung out from the knob of the toilet door.

‘Morning,' he murmured uncertainly.

‘Irma's a loser at Uno.'

‘She's probably letting you win. Some people are like that.'

‘No. I can tell.'

‘She's like you, Scully.'

‘No, she's her own girl.'

‘You want to go to breakfast?'

‘Gimme a minute.'

Scully nursed his morning hard-on till the card game reached a big enough peak of concentration to allow him to slip out of bed and crib across to the toilet.

‘Morning glory, my favourite flower,' said Irma.

‘Uno!' said Billie.

Irma winked and Billie saw how rosy and soft her lips were. She kind of liked Irma. She could reach her own nose with the tip of her tongue and do rolls with it and fifty funny faces. All the time Scully slept there all twisted on the bunk, Irma and her whispered and giggled. Billie remembered her from the taverna, remembered the dress and those mirror sunglasses. Without the sunnies she didn't look so grown up, and now that she thought of it, listening to Scully trying to pee quietly down the side of the toilet bowl in there, Irma wasn't really grown up at all. The way she played cards in her greedy way. She never gave you breaks like an old person. Her tongue stuck out and her giggle was a naughty girl's giggle. And she asked questions, so many questions – why, why, why – like a kid, so many you didn't bother to answer. She was fun, Billie could see, but you couldn't tell about her heart.

Billie asked some questions of her own, to see if Irma knew the planets of the solar system and the names of the main dinosaurs (just the basic ones) and who Bob Hawke was. She didn't have a clue, as if she never went to school or read books at all. She didn't know about convicts or fish or knots, and she laughed in an embarrassed way, as if she'd been caught out.

‘I don't know much,' said Irma. ‘I guess I feel things.'

Billie thought about this. ‘Do you think someone can love too much?'

Irma just went back to her cards with a sad little smile and said nothing.

•  •  •

S
CULLY FLUSHED THE TOILET
, pulled the lid down and sat on it. Six hours till Brindisi. Out there he could hear them tittering.
Jennifer would never let herself get into a corner like this. She crossed all her T's and dotted all her I's. She was organized and he was a fool. Last night this woman had his wallet open and this morning she was dressing his kid. She's moving in on you, mate, and you're like a stunned mullet. What is she, a travelling hooker, a rich adventurer, a dipso nutcase? She murdered half a bottle of Jack Daniels last night and this morning she's giggling, for Chrissake. Still, you had to admit she's better sober. In the light of day she's human. But it ate at him, the sound of his daughter chirruping away all of a sudden. After all the sullen quiet. The ache of waiting. Gabbing to a fucking stranger. This Irma. Scully put his elbows on his knees and realized that he was afraid of her and didn't know why.

•  •  •

O
UT ON THE DECK
after their pre-digested breakfast, as Billie ran up and down between hungover Germans, Scully let Irma talk. The woman was bursting with a need to share information he didn't want to hear.

‘He left me in Athens,' she said.

‘No explaining people sometimes,' he said, his irritation not quite concealed. The sea fell by in the soft light and around them bleary backpackers sipped their industrial-blend Nescafé.

‘You never really know them,' he added as one backpacker began to blurt and gasp foully at the rail. Scully turned his back to the puker and looked unhappily at Irma's bruises. She had them on her upper arms and around her neck and didn't mind his noticing them.

‘I met him in Bangkok. He works there in some kind of security thing, I don't know. Used to be in the Green Berets. Had scars all over him. He's one of those vets who never came back
from Asia. He's not quite crazy, but, well he is a Texan. Not beautiful, but hard, you know? I liked him. This was last year. I just walked into a bar and there he was, just like in the movies. The best fuck of my life, and free! We stayed together a week.'

Scully half listened to Irma and watched Billie skipping across the aft deck. Her face was blackening now with her own bruises. She looked like a kid with leukemia.

‘So we arranged to meet in Amsterdam, last month. Had a wild time there, really, and then we sort of travelled, you know. Under the influence of various, well, substances as the Americans call them. Had a spree. My God, what a pair we were! Ended up in Athens. He left me at the Intercontinental. I was having a shit, can you believe. He packed his stuff and went. At least he paid the bill.'

‘A gentleman,' said Scully, hearing the awful priggish note in his voice.

‘That's where I saw her.'

‘Who?'

‘I got a shock when I saw your wallet. I mean, it was a surprise. Funny, isn't it, that we'd all been staying together without knowing it.'

Scully looked at her. She was flushed now and nervous. She wore a quilted vest and jeans. Her eyes were hidden by sunglasses and she fingered her bruised throat absently.

‘Saw who? What are you talking about?'

‘The woman in your photograph. Your wife.'

‘You saw
her?'

‘At the Intercontinental.'

Scully ran a hand through his hair, looked about momentarily. ‘My wife?'

‘The one in your wallet.'

‘You're sure?'

‘I could be wrong.'

Scully licked his lips.

‘Was she alone?'

Irma sank back a little, looking shaky now. ‘I . . . I don't remember. It might have been a woman she was with.'

He looked at her and felt like spitting in her face. She's making this up. She's lonely, she wants a bit of mutual misery.

‘So, you and your Green Beret, blasted out of your minds, bumped into them in the lift. And you remember it clearly.'

‘In the reception, the lobby. I didn't see you. I would have remembered you.'

‘I wasn't there. I've never stayed in an Intercontinental in my life.'

Irma smiled crookedly.

‘You sound proud of it, Scully.'

‘Could be I am.'

‘The working-class hero.'

‘How would you know what class I'm from?'

‘Look at your hands, for God's sake, and that face. You're a brawler, Scully.'

He backed off a little, breaking into an angry sweat.

‘A man could drive a truck down your nasty streak, Irma.'

‘And back again, darling. Listen – we sound like the movies.'

Scully turned away and looked at the sea.

‘You never saw her. She was never there, and you probably weren't either. Is this what you do, attach yourself to people? For a living?'

‘You're frightened, Scully, thinking of all the possibilities.'

He knew now that he had to get free of her. She was like a foul wind, the whispering breath of nightmares.

‘Billie and I are going for a walk.'

‘Your things are in my cabin.'

‘You want them out.'

‘No. Just reminding you. You can't ignore me, Scully.'

‘My friend Irma.'

She sighed. ‘Jerry Lewis, I know. You're such a ground- breaker.'

He went over to where Billie shouted gaily down a ventilator and took her by the hand. He was shaking – he felt it show. The bloody woman was poison. She'd summed him up like a professional, hustling him. For what? Money? Company? A ticket home? She's sick. Jennifer never even went to Greece, he knew that for a fact. Well, an educated guess. As far as he could tell. Jesus.

•  •  •

B
UT UP IN THE BOW
where the air was freshest and the passengers weakest in their illness, Scully stood at the rail and thought of what it could mean if Irma was telling the truth. Jennifer in some flash hotel room with a mini bar and a big view of the Akropolis, a terry-cloth robe and people he didn't know about. Maybe old Pete-the-Post was right – you never really knew anybody, not even those you loved. People have shadows, secrets. Could be it's a jaunt with a mate, a few days blowing money and ordering up room service. She's just sold off a whole previous life back there in Fremantle, a scary thing to do, unnerving, upsetting. Maybe she just needs to blow it out of her system. Wasn't it the sort of thing men did all the time, going off on a spree and
coming home sheepish and headsore? His own father would find a bottle of Stone's Green Ginger Wine and go off up Bluey's Knob for a night. Feelin black, he called it. He'd come down and fess up to Mum and they'd get the Bible out and have a howl and make up. That was as rugged as it got at the Scully place, a guilty suck on the Stone's Green Ginger and a contrite heart in the morning.

Alright. A jaunt then, say it's true and she has a spree. So who's the woman? He felt his fresh fortress of certainties crumbling again. A couple of days ago he was certain that Greece was a false start. And a couple before that he felt in his blood she was there. Now he didn't know what think.

‘Scully?'

Billie tugged at him by the rail and he came back to the salt air, the sea forging and reaching beneath him.

‘Yes, mate? You cold?'

‘Irma wants to be my friend.'

‘Yeah? How d'you know?'

‘She said. She likes our hair. Yours and mine.'

‘You tell her about your mum?' Scully's throat constricted as he uttered it. He could not stomach the idea that a stranger might have Billie's secret before
him
– he was churning at the thought.

‘Nup.'

‘Nothing at all?'

She shook her head. God, how he wished he could ask her again, know what had happened at Heathrow. But he couldn't push her now.

‘You're a good girl.'

‘What was here before the sea?'

He looked out over the Adriatic whose curved grey rim held the sky off and drew the eye beyond it.

‘Nothing, love. There was nothing before the sea. Why?'

‘I just thought of it. Irma said –'

‘Bloody Irma.'

‘She said nothing lasts forever. But I said the sea.'

‘That fixed her. C'mon.'

•  •  •

I
RMA HAD A
H
EINEKEN
and a shot before her on the table when they found her in the lounge at noon. The sea was up a little and it was airless and mostly deserted down there. Most people were up on deck taking in a bit of mild sun, but Irma had settled in.

‘What a pair you are,' said Irma.

‘Billie, go get yourself a Pepsi.' Scully gave the kid some drachs and some lire and watched her saunter to the bar and tackle the stool.

‘Tell me about the Intercontinental,' said Scully.

‘Say please.'

‘You're going to be ugly about it?'

‘I am the good, the bad
and
the ugly.'

‘You should stay off the piss for a while,' he said as kindly as he could. ‘You'll hurt yourself.'

‘Say please,' she said, tipping the bottle to her lips, eyes on him all the time.

‘Please.'

She smiled around the bottle and he looked down at his meaty hands.

‘You don't care for me, do you Scully?'

‘Only known you twelve hours, and for most of that I was asleep.'

‘Puritan, that's the word that comes to mind.'

‘You wouldn't be the first whose mind it popped into. I was just asking about my wife. You claimed to have seen her.'

‘Claim? You don't believe me, but you want more.'

Scully looked over at Billie who was using sign language with the big birthmarked barman. She had a Pepsi in front of her and he was showing his broken teeth in a smile.

‘I thought you might tell me what you could.'

‘I wonder.'

‘What?'

Irma sat back, her chin up, neck stretched, some cleavage showing.

‘How much you really want to know. What you'll do to get it.'

Scully stared at her. She flushed again and emptied the glass of bourbon with a grimace which became a smile. He wanted to grab that neck in both hands and wring it like a towel.

‘You want money.'

‘I prefer adventure.'

He pressed his fingernails together. ‘This other woman she was with, what did she look like?'

‘We haven't made a deal yet, Scully.'

‘What deal, what do you want, for Godsake?'

‘Come to the cabin.'

‘Tell me here.'

‘Come to the cabin.'

‘What for? You can say it here.'

‘I want to see if you have any guts.'

‘Something must have happened to you once.'

‘You look as though you just trod in shit.'

Got it in one, love, he thought.

‘Let's go to the cabin.'

‘Oh, goody.'

‘Quick.'

He led her into the corridor and tried to think his way clear, but she came up so close behind him she literally trod on his heels.

‘Scully, you –'

‘Shut up. Where's the key?'

When the cabin door opened, Scully shoved her inside and she fell giggling to the floor. He grabbed his case and the backpack and looked at Irma sprawled on the floor, legs apart, hair in her eyes.

‘What a fucking disappointment you are,' she said.

He reached across to grab Billie's knickers from the toilet door but she beat him to it.