by Tim Winton
‘You know, it’s very flattering, really. I haven’t had a scene like this for ten years.’
Scully opened his hands and closed them.
‘You see it has an ugly irony, this scene, even without a child present,’ he murmured with his neck bent meekly. ‘Because you see, Scully . . . well, it’s just plain bloody funny, really.’ Alex laid his almost transparent hand along the parapet. His nails were yellow, he smiled his saurian kiss-arse smile. ‘Because I’m, I’m not up to it, any more. I’m fucking impotent. Hah, now there’s a phrase!’
‘Alex –’
‘Why don’t you stay for dinner?’ the old man said, clapping his hands together feebly.
Scully laughed. ‘Oh, my God!’
Alex laughed a long time with him but his guffaws grew into sobs that bent him in half, and Scully stood there a while, watching the poor wretched bastard cry, before going across and putting a hand on his back.
‘It’s alright, mate.’
Alex straightened and clutched at him.
Scully felt the other man’s head against his chest, his breath hot on him. He glanced at Billie who had already looked away. The afternoon died around him, the six o’clock hydrofoil came and went and night came on quickly.
• • •
AFTER SCULLY GOT THE FIRE going with olive twigs and chunks of almond wood, he went through Alex’s sorry kitchen and found sheep’s yoghurt, garlic, a cucumber and a few things in cans that he went to work on while Alex played the tin whistle to Billie. On the table stood a bottle of rosé from Patras and a litre of Cretan red. Billie stroked the cat and smiled weakly now and then during Alex’s shaky rendition of ‘The Wild Colonial Boy’. With all the lamps lit, and some tired old pasta boiling on the stove, Scully cleaned the place up a bit.
‘You’re spoiling me,’ said Alex.
‘Well.’ Scully smiled, couldn’t help himself. ‘You’re used to it, aren’t you? Let’s face it, Alex, you’ve been pampered all your life.’
The old man assented grandly with a flutter of eyelids.
‘How long has she been gone?’
‘Two days,’ said Scully. ‘I went to the airport to collect them and only Billie got off the plane. Hasn’t said a word since.’
‘What about the police?’
‘Maybe after I’ve tried everything else.’
‘My God, we’re both in the wars,’ said Alex pouring himself a glass of rosé and emptying it in one gulp.
‘Things are bad for you too, then,’ Scully said, looking at his own empty glass.
‘I came up here to work. Dear Arthur suggested it. Trying to save my life and talent, he fancies.’
‘Not working.’
‘No, I’m lost, my boy. You know they used once to take their old people up to the cliffs in baskets, on this island. When they had become a burden. In harsher times. Used to throw them off, you know. Gives a new twist to the old fogey’s sport of basket- weaving, don’t you think? Or being a basket case.’
Scully watched him drain another glass, and finally just poured himself one.
‘I used to be a painter, Scully, and then something of a cocks- man and a scoundrel, excuse me, dear, and nowadays I’m lucky if I qualify as a scoundrel.’
‘Oh, you’d scrape in,’ said Scully, watching the old bugger hammering the wine again.
‘You think so?’ said Alex brightening.
Scully brought tzatziki to the table with some wrinkled olives, three boiled eggs and some fettucine in garlic and kalamata oil.
‘Poor man’s fare tonight,’ he said sitting down. ‘Billie, come and eat something, mate.’
The three of them sat with the fire snapping peaceably behind them. Outside the wind pressed about in the silence. Scully watched Alex chewing tentatively, as though his teeth were sore. He sucked down more rosé. He looked like a greedy little boy.
‘Don’t waste your life, Scully. Or hers,’ he said, motioning with his head at Billie.
‘I don’t plan to.’
‘She’s a nice girl, Jennifer.’
‘Yeah. I always thought so.’
‘But no artistic instincts whatsoever.’
‘What?’
‘Well, besides sensibly deserting domestic bliss.’
Scully poured himself the last of the rosé to ease his discomfort. ‘She wants to be something creative,’ he murmured.
‘It’s not something to want. It’s something you have. It’s a curse. One she doesn’t have.’
‘You weren’t saying that to either of us when we were paying you to teach her. Sitting out on the terrace with the easels up and all that.’
‘My dear boy, I needed the money and it was no ordeal. She has the most delectable pair of legs.’
‘You are a bloody scoundrel,’ said Scully just managing a friendly tone.
‘Well, all is not lost.’
Billie finished picking at her food and slid off her chair to return to the cat. Scully thought he’d better finish up and go.
‘I think Jennifer missed something she wants to get back, that’s all,’ said Alex with grease down his chin. ‘She’s something of a snob, a dilettante. She wants recognition. She wants to be more interesting.’
‘Yes.’
‘And she has wonderful legs.’
‘Is she on the island?’
‘I’ve been here for weeks and see no one but old Athena who looks out for me down there at the chapel. I couldn’t say.’
‘You’ve got no idea? No one you think she might . . . be with.’
‘The expats? No.’
‘Rory?’
‘Good God, no, give her some credit. Rory’s a reptile.’
‘I think he’s modelled himself on you.’
‘Badly, badly.’
‘No one?’
‘One of the islanders? No, they couldn’t keep a secret longer than a nanosecond, though plenty would have had hopes, I dare say. A summer fling that stuck, perhaps?’
‘Hadn’t thought of that,’ said Scully. ‘A tourist, you mean?’
Alex shrugged. Scully thought of it. It meant she probably hadn’t come back here at all necessarily. And the baby? Oh, why did there have to be the baby? But he still knew nothing. There might have been no fling, no other man. She might have arrived in Ireland by now, having expected Billie to pass on some message. God, his head was fit to burst.
‘I’m sorry for all the money,’ said Alex without much conviction.
‘She’ll slit your throat in your sleep when she finds out.’
‘I’d have thought she’d be rather flattered. Tell her about the legs part.’
‘Alex, she’s serious. I don’t think it’s a fad. She really wants to be something more.’
‘You’re too soft on people, my boy. You think the best of them. She just wants to be noticed.’
‘What happened to you, Alex?’
‘Me? Oh, the opposite. I became too interesting. To myself and others. I became a sodding entertainment. I stayed too long.’
‘Why don’t you just leave, get off the island?’
The old man laughed. ‘In a basket perhaps. I don’t know how to live in the world anymore. Thirty years is a long time.’
Alex sighed, opened the litre of Cretan red and poured himself a glass, leaving Scully’s empty again.
Scully reached for the wine and poured a long glass. It tasted as dark as it looked.
‘I suppose you’ll go back to town and tell them I’m up here with nothing to show for the great retreat. I can see the gloating tradesman’s look on your face even now.’
‘Have an olive, Alex.’
The old man pressed his fingers into his eyes and sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Scully. I’m a pig.’
‘Scoundrel is the polite term, I believe.’
Alex laughed, his eyes tearing up again.
‘You can’t paint?’
‘Your wife and I have that in common now. So, what will you do? Now that you’re a deserted husband.’
&nb
sp; Scully drank off his wine, poured himself another, and looked at his scarred hands. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Don’t follow them, it’s undignified.’
‘I don’t care about dignified. I’ll follow. Anyway, I have to think about it a bit. What about you?’
‘I’m going to put myself out of my misery. Cheers!’ Alex gulped at his wine and closed his eyes with pleasure.
‘I’ve gotta go.’
‘Yes, there’s a child to consider. You could stay here,’ he said hopefully.
‘Thanks, but we’ll hoof it.’
‘Wait, I’ve got something for you.’
Alex scurried upstairs while Scully straightened Billie’s pullover and retied her shoes. There were bluish shadows beneath her eyes and she reacted irritably to his touch.
‘Here it is.’
Scully stood and helped Alex with a battered folio which he laid over the table, across the food and unwashed dishes. From it the old man drew a yellowed sheet of paper which Scully accepted silently. It was a pen-and-ink drawing of a Parisian street scene, richly detailed and quite beautiful.
‘Rue de Seine,’ said Alex. ‘Nineteen-sixty.’
‘I was three years old in nineteen-sixty.’
‘Just promise me you won’t show it on this island. Those vipers have had their last laugh on me. Bacon liked that one.’
Scully felt giddy with wine and fatigue. It was a real piece of work, even he could see it.
‘Thank you, Alex.’
‘Here, roll it up. Say hello to that girl when she turns up. Tell her to go back to bureaucracy. As a form of parasitism it’s far more efficient. Speaking of which, you wouldn’t have a few spare drachs, would you?’
Scully dug in his pocket, laughing.
• • •
THE NIGHT WAS CLEAR AND sharp. There was no moon and the gravel track unwound dimly. The island was silent as Scully carried his daughter across its spine and down through the piney groves in the shadow of the mountains. It was late when he found the wide flat path above Kamini and came by the cemetery with all its lit candles and shrines. He stopped by the wall feeling Billie asleep against his sweating neck, and watched the flickering at the heads of tombs where cats slunk about fattened with shadows and bristling at the rattle of plastic flowers. Sweat turned cold on him, and looking at that little lake of candles, he was afraid without knowing why. He went on, almost at a trot, until he began the descent into the harbour of the place he had once loved.
He came finally and sleepily to the hotel whose courtyard door was still ajar, and he took Billie upstairs, fumbled noisily with the key as she slid down his back, and got her in to lay her on the bed. He undressed her and slipped her beneath the blanket. Starlight sloped in faintly through the balcony doors and the fishhook of the harbour shimmered below. He needed to sleep, needed to think, but the water reminded him hopelessly of other nights, and he left Billie sleeping, crossed the courtyard and slipped out through the gate.
Nineteen
ALEX MOORE SHUFFLES BACK from the donkeymen’s hut with the bootleg ouzo clutched coldly to his chest. The stars hang down through the sighing pines in the most irritating and painterly fashion. The earth is uneven, so bloody terrestrial ahead of him.
The big white house yawns before him, empty, virginal – yes, face it, virginal in every imaginable sense – and he goes stooped and bagtrousered up the steps to the heavy door and the waiting silence.
Out on the terrace he pours himself two fingers of ouzo and doesn’t bother with the water. Damnation, what he’s done with two good fingers in his time. He laughs aloud and hears the nasty little crone sound of it. Here’s to you, Scully, this one’s yours, you poor creeping jesus.
Alex feels the papery smoothness of his palms brushing together. Out in the distance the late slice of moon tracks across the water in a showy effect that’s quite risible in anyone’s terms. The whole dreamfield of the Aegean warps off into blackness. He lights a cigarette and watches the prissy little glow of it out here in the waning night. Look at that moon. God making a mockery of good taste, a final petty insult.
He finds himself thinking of those heavenly caramel legs, stretched before him on the terrace down at Vlikos. If he’d been up to it, would he have? She was such an eager beaver, and thwarted ambition is so sexy. After all, isn’t that what they went for in me all these years, my heroic and erogenous failure, the glory of my tremendously fucked-up life? I should know.
Alex tries to think of who did, but no one springs to mind. He tips the glass off the parapet and drinks straight from the bottle. What a prize she’d have made. Poor simple Scully. She was a bomb waiting to go off on him. And such a nice boy, cooking and cleaning and buying a man in extremis a bottle. Something terribly provincial in that kind of niceness. The patience of Job and the face of the Cyclops. A strange lack of pride. Women want monsters, doesn’t he know?
He lurches up and opens his fly, pulls his poor dead dick, the old John Thomas, his faithful loannis Tomassis, out into the moonlight. A real man should take it out into a field and shoot it the way he would a lame horse. He pours ouzo over the beaten little bugger and feels it sting righteously. Like a lump of jade in his gut, green and ragged and heavy, he feels his envy for that poor little shit, Scully. Hatred. A stone in him of real hatred for what he has despite it all. The also-rans will inherit the earth, the whelps, the meek and the fucking nice, and that’s what he can no longer stand.
Alex throws his head back and lets the ouzo trickle down his neck, first rate to the bitter end. Voilà!
Twenty
THE ALLEYS WERE EMPTY and the whole town smelt of exhausted geraniums and chalky whitewash as Scully wound his way down the labyrinth of steps to the harbour. Along the waterfront the lights still shone but the last taverna was closing. He bought an ouzo from a sleepy man and his wall-eyed son who swept around him and stacked chairs against the wall. Scully sat half in the light and sipped, listening to the sea chop outside the mole. Caiques and smaller boats tossed lightly and turned at their moorings. Across the smooth flagstones cats went stalking. Scully’s back ached from hauling Billie and his feet were sore, but inside now there was a curious deadening, a rising blank. He had a second ouzo which he drank quickly so as not to keep the men awake any longer. A little tipsy, he bade them goodnight and walked out by the water, where tiny mullet flickered under the lights.
He was dead inside now, but it didn’t stop him remembering. Quiet nights like this back over in the village at Vlikos. Breathless nights with heat still radiating from the stones of the island, when the house was heady with the smoke of mosquito coils and the drapes hung lifeless against the walls, and the little cluster of houses lay in darkness. The only sound the tinkling of goat bells up the mountain. Those nights, under cover of darkness, the two of them left Billie asleep and slipped down naked and giggling to the pebble beach. The water was cool and black. They stroked out between moored boats, stirring up trails of phosphorescence that clung to their bodies like strings of tiny pearls. Old Sotiris, soaking his feet below the local taverna, would puff on his cigarette at the end of his long day and not see them out in the darkness. Some nights he played his battered guitar and sang mournfully, unaware of their presence.
In September, the night she came back from Piraeus with the pregnancy confirmed, they made love down there on a smooth ledge where his back pressed into the rock and the water surged through her slick legs as they clamped about him and her breasts glistened in his face. He held her buttocks in his hands as she rose on him. On the cliff above, mules clattered along the track. She pressed him hard into the rock, hard into herself, the flat of her hand across his face until she cried out like a bird, a surprised, plaintive sound that travelled across the water, across his skin as a sudden burn. Scully was never so happy. He had the life he wanted, the people he loved.
Scully walked up by the old cannons at the head of the harbour and looked down at the roof of the grotto. The sea was fairly placid but a c
hange was upon it. He stepped down over the smooth rocks and found the swimmer’s platform the town fathers had built for the tourists. For a moment, he sat, looking down at the faint light on the water. The sweat of the day, the shock, the worry, the fear and disappointment were rancid on him. There was dust in his hair and grit in his shoes. There was no one about – stuff it, a swim was better than a bath, and he needed something, some good clear sensation to sponge off such a bastard day.
He stripped and hit the water in an ugly flat dive that stung his belly and rang his balls like bells, so it took him ten seconds or more to realise just how cold the water was, and to know suddenly how much booze he had on board. Submarine light, a phosphorescent glow struck the ceiling of the grotto and lit the submerged rocks with a ghostly ice blue that pulsed and surged like the garish pool of a five-star hotel, a blue that slipped further from him the longer he watched.
‘Ugh!’ His shock was audible. He struck out in a frenzied crawl, the hurried stroke of the dam swimmer, the creek scrambler, the Pommie tourist, the pissed and careless idiot. He punched the water. It burned pale in his eyes, and when he rested to check his progress and calm himself, he saw that he’d made no ground at all, and the grotto was slipping to the right. He went at it again, measured and hard, kicking straight and postponing every second breath, stretching himself, making cups of his hands as he raked downward, till lights spattered his vision and the taste of ouzo rose in his sinuses. His breath was gone. He couldn’t do it. God, he couldn’t do it. The grotto slipped further round. He went into a hopeless, panting breaststroke and saw the grotto disappear altogether, swallowed by the black featureless bluff that reared like the face of God. Scully stopped swimming. He hung there, hyperventilating. He turned on his back. That blackness was too much to behold. His nuts felt like snapper sinkers.
Geez, Scully, he thought, you’ve really made a day of it. A class act. Making an arse of yourself in a thousand ways, and now this. Live stupid, die young.
He felt the first twinge of cramp in his toes, up his calves.
Scully, you’re a loser.