by Tim Winton
‘Just a driver’s licence, Mr Scully, and a signature. All unaccompanied child passengers need –’
‘What did you say?’
He lifted Billie and saw the Junior Flyer badge. He put the child down and took the proffered clipboard as though it was a bloodied weapon. Unaccompanied Child Passenger B. Scully, female, seven years old. Scully held the little pen in his hand and let it shake above the paper and then looked back at the Aer Lingus woman.
‘Right there where it’s marked, sir.’
Scully signed, and his name was barely recognizable. The arrival doors closed now. There was no one else coming. He looked back at the form. London Heathrow-Shannon, December 13. Jennifer’s signature.
‘The ID, sir?’ The woman’s smile had begun to fade.
Scully looked down at his daughter. She was white, stiff as a monument.
‘What’s happening? Weren’t there enough seats? Is she bringing the bags on the next flight, then? You probably left the note in your pocket, eh, Bill?’
Billie stared at him with the gaze of a sleepwalker. Christ, he suddenly needed to shit.
‘Mr Scully, please –’
He dug in his back pocket for the thin wallet, flicked it open without even looking at her. His International Driver’s Licence, the American Express card, an old photograph of the three of them on the beach. The woman scribbled down details and snapped her clipboard shut.
‘Goodbye, Billie,’ she murmured, and left.
Billie looked at people passing.
‘What the hell’s going on, love? Why isn’t she here? Where’s all our stuff? She shouldn’t have made you come ahead on your own.’
He stooped and went through the many pockets of Billie’s denim jacket. Wrappers, a packet of raspberry gum, a plastic Darth Vader, ten English pounds, but no note from Jennifer. Right there on the floor he unzipped her little tartan case, and to the great amusement of the next shift of meeters and greeters, he went through it with unmistakeable desperation. Gay coloured clothes, an ancient comic book, toiletries, a folder full of documents, for Godsake, and some photographs. Toys, more clothes. His mouth went gluey. His bowels turned. He glanced up at the monitor. The next flight from London was a British Airways in twenty minutes, and there was another Aer Lingus at noon, a Ryanair in the middle of the afternoon and nothing much else till six.
‘Come sit over here a minute, mate,’ he said shakily, ‘I have to go to the toilet.’
He got her to a vinyl bench, put her suitcase beside her.
‘Now don’t move, okay? Don’t talk to anyone, just stay there. And while I’m gone,’ he said, trying to get his voice down from panic pitch, ‘think hard so you can tell me what happened at London, orright?’
Billie blinked. He just couldn’t stay.
In the bright, horrid cubicle he shook. He was shitting battery acid. His toes curled in his boots. What? What? What? She’s too responsible to break a plan. She’s too solid, too bloody Public Service to deviate without a hell of a reason. His mind boiled. Qantas to Heathrow, Lingus to Shannon. Any delay and she’d telegram and wait, keep everything together. Sunday, Scully, no telegrams. Okay, but she’s a bureaucrat, for Godsake, she knows about order and the evils of surprise. She’d think of something. She’d send a message with Billie. No, something’s happened. Call the cops, Scully. Which bloody cops? No, no, just slow down, you’re panicking. Just settle down and get it clear and straight. Clear and straight – Jesus.
• • •
SCULLY PUT THE BUCKET OF chips and the orange juice in front of his daughter and tried to think calmly. She’d said not a word since arriving and it compounded his anxiety. They sat across the white laminex table from one another, and to strangers they looked equally pasty and stunned. Billie ate her chips without expression.
‘Can you tell me?’
Billie looked at the buffet bar, the procession of travellers with red plastic trays in hand.
‘Billie, I’ve got a big problem. I don’t know what’s happening. I expected two people and only one came.’
Billie chewed, her eyes meeting his for a moment before she looked down at her juice.
‘Did Mum get hurt or sick or something at the airport in London?’
Billie chewed.
‘Was there a problem with the bags?’
Shit, he thought, maybe it was Customs . . . but she didn’t carry anything silly, unless there was some mistake, some mix-up. And would she go through Customs in London, or would she just have been in transit there? Scully held his head.
‘Was she on the plane with you from Perth? She must have been. She had to be. Billie, you gotta help me. Can you help me?’
Scully looked at her and knew that whatever it was, it wasn’t small, not when you saw the terrible stillness of her face. She was a chatterbox, you couldn’t shut her up usually, and she could handle a small hitch, ride out a bit of a complication with some showy bravery, but this.
‘Tell me when you can, eh?’
Billie’s eyes glazed a moment, as though she might cry, but she did not cry. He held her hand, touched her hair, saw his hands shaking.
• • •
AT THE BRITISH AIRWAYS COUNTER, Scully tried to cajole Jennifer’s name from the passenger list, but the suits were having none of it.
‘I’m afraid it contravenes security regulations, sir.’
‘I’m her husband, and this is her daughter. What security?’
‘I don’t make the rules, sir. It lands in a moment. Then you’ll see for yourself.’
‘Thanks for shit.’
Scully dragged Billie over to the Aer Lingus counter where he moved into lower gear and hoisted the child onto his hip.
‘I know it’s agin the rules and all, mate,’ he said to a soft-faced fellow with sad eyes, ‘but we’ve been waiting for our mum, haven’t we, love, and she wasn’t on the flight a while ago from London and . . .’
‘Aw, sir, it’s awful for you, I know, but they’s the rules.’
‘Well, I’m just thinking should I wait here all day, or what d’you think? The little girl’s just put in twenty hours from Australia and you can see how tired she is. I just drove all the way in from County Offaly, and if I go back and my wife arrives . . . and the little girl’s so keen to see her mother . . . I mean, what harm could it do to know if she’s coming or not?’
Scully saw the genuine apology in the first reluctant shake of the head and pounced.
‘Listen, why don’t I give you her name? If she’s not there you just turn away. Any sign of Mrs J. Scully on a BA flight to Ireland today, orright?’
The Aer Lingus man sighed. Oh, thank God for the hearts of the Irish, Scully thought. The keys on the console rattled. Scully clung to Billie, sweating again.
‘No.’
‘You don’t even have to say anything, just nod or shake your head.’
‘No, I mean she’s not listed, today, yesterday or tomorrow. I’m sorry sir.’
Scully felt it go down like a swallowed ice cube, shrivelling his guts. ‘Thanks anyway, mate. Is there a Qantas office in Ireland?’
‘Doubt it, sir. They don’t fly here.’
‘Of course.’
‘Goodbye now, sir.’
• • •
SCULLY WAITED TILL THE LAST exhausted bugger staggered off the British flight and the last trolley heaved into the hall before gathering Billie’s case and leading her towards the exit. That was it.
‘D’you want to go to the toilet first, love?’
Billie let go his hand and veered for the Ladies’. Scully stood there as the door swung shut. He held the tartan case and faced the wall. He could smell Jennifer on the bag and even on his neck, and how it hurt to smell it. One of his legs began to shake independently of the rest of his body. He stood alone in the milling crowd, staring at the door that said Ladies, until the panic crept on him like a spasm of nausea. His little girl was in there alone, in an airport in a foreign country. Her mother was lost and he was s
tanding out here trustingly like an eejit. He all but knocked down the shrieking women as he barged through the door and went madly among the cubicles calling her name.
Fourteen
ALL THE WAY BACK UP the Dublin road, though the rain had stopped and the wind had eased, the land looked flattened and every human monument grey as bathwater. It was a litany of ditches and slurry-smears, wracks and failures. The men he saw in the streets of grimy towns were coarse-faced idiots and the sky above them a smothering blanket about to fall. Scully clawed the wheel. He tried to think of things he could say, reassuring things, but it was all he could do not to break out screaming and plough them both deep into the fields of the Republic. The small girl sat with her feet not touching the floor, saying nothing for miles, until, mercifully, she went to sleep.
• • •
SCULLY POURED COAL INTO THE grate and heard it tumble and hiss. The bothy was warm and momentarily heartening. He went out into the afternoon chill to bring Billie in from the Transit. She was tilted back awkwardly, mouth agape, and she merely stirred when he murmured in her ear and touched her, so he unbuckled her belt, took her in his arms and carried her upstairs to her new room. It was cool up there, but the stones of the chimney kept it from being cold. As she lay on her bed he unlaced her boots and slipped them off. He eased her from her jacket and slid her in under the covers, where, on the pillow, she seemed to find new ease and the faintest beginning of a smile came briefly to her face.
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.
• • •
THE 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.
• • •
THAT NIGHT SCULLY 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?’
&
nbsp; 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.
• • •
NEXT MORNING, SCULLY 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.