by Tim Winton
Scully reached down and grabbed the small suitcase and the child’s backpack in one hand and hefted Billie onto his hip.
‘The cops’ll be back about now.’
‘You’re not saying you really did it?’
‘I’m saying I want to go.’
‘They might chase you, you know.’
‘Maybe.’
‘What the dickens happened to you?’
Scully laughed sourly. ‘You could say I’m having a bit of a rough trot just now.’ He felt his mouth losing shape as he said it, and the Englishman put the bowl down, went to the window and lit a cigar.
‘I just have to know.’
‘Why should you be the only one getting answers?’
‘He was a friend.’
‘He talked about how they threw old people off the cliff in baskets. I didn’t think anything of it. I was preoccupied, I guess. I’m really sorry, Arthur. It’s horrible.’
Arthur puffed on his cigar, trembling a little. ‘Of course he was making that little bit of folklore up. Vain little prat.’
The house was cold and quiet. Its seaman’s furniture gleamed darkly. The Persian rug across the marble floor looked thick and deep enough to sleep in. On the wall across Arthur’s shoulder was a small canvas that both of them lit on at the same moment.
‘One of his,’ murmured Arthur unsteadily.
‘I know.’
The painting was a luminous landscape, quite simple. Bare, pale rock. Sleep-blue sky. Perched on a granite cliff over the water was a small, white chapel.
‘You know the chapel?’
‘Just before Molos.’
‘Yes. The wine chapel. A sea captain with a load of wine from Crete was caught in the worst storm of his life, just in sight of this island. He prayed to the Virgin to deliver him and he promised that if he lived he’d build a chapel in her honour. That’s what happened. He mixed the mortar with his cargo in payment. Cement and wine. The wine chapel. Alex’s favourite. Not hard to see why. At least that piece of folklore is real.’
He left Scully and Billie alone in the living room. Scully looked at the painting and thought of the afternoons he’d swum below the place spearing octopus and rofos with the sun on his back and the water moving across his body like a breeze. In the water there was always a stillness denied the rest of the world, a calm hard to recall standing here shitscared and shellshocked. Underwater there was just temperature, no time, no words, no gravity. It was the kind of thing monks disciplined themselves for, junkies destroyed themselves chasing. Is it what dolphins and birds had now and then, a still point in the centre of things? Murderers? Marathon runners? Artists? Is that what Jennifer was after, this total focus? It was something worth feeling, he had to admit.
Arthur came back in with blankets, painkillers and some food.
‘Ten minutes from now, outside the Pirate Bar. Fifteen thousand up front.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I’ll help you down there.’
‘I thought Kufos might come by.’
‘He’s as pissed as a rat, I’m afraid.’
‘You mean he didn’t break the bottle?’
‘The Metaxa? No. He’s a big hero tonight.’
‘Poor bloody dog.’
‘Well, it’s a quicker death than the traditional mothball in the minced beef.’
‘The owner should be shot.’
‘The owner is Kufos’ wife. The Albanian.’ Arthur waved aside his open mouth. ‘Don’t ask. Let’s go, shall we?’
Twenty-four
ALONG THE DARK SHUTTERED WATERFRONT in the storm, Scully held the shivering child to him and saw Arthur ahead holding grimly to the luggage that bucked and swung in the wind. The sky was starless and whining. Masts lurched amid the shriek of rigging and the seance groan of hawsers. Scully felt himself gone from here. He was almost faint with relief. His eyes ran in the wind and his hair ripped back from his head till it ached at the roots.
Beneath the statue of the hero, its head lit wildly by an upstairs window, the shadow of a man came forth. Arthur met him and Scully heard their hissing. He waited, feeling light, careless, away.
Arthur came back.
‘Forget it, Scully. He wants twenty thousand.’
‘Give it to him,’ said Scully, holding out the flapping wad.
‘The price is too high and the sea is too bloody rough.’
‘Tell him we go now.’
‘For God’s sake!’
‘Give it to him, Arthur.’
‘You’re not thinking!’ said the Englishman, the pale palms of his hands flashing. ‘You’re overwrought, Scully!’
‘Let’s go.’
Scully felt his body unwinding, the heat leaving his temples and feet, and he knew that if the boat didn’t leave he’d simply spring from the wharf and hit the water swimming. He saw the flash of Meatballs’ teeth, the twinkle of his fingernails as he took the money. The Greek led them down between fishing boats to where his taxi laboured in the swell.
‘Was she here, Arthur?’ Scully asked as Meatballs slid the canopy back.
Arthur scowled. ‘I can’t get a straight answer out of anybody. Rory and his chums say things, but can you believe them? Seems certain she’s not here now.’
‘Fair enough. Thank you.’
‘Well, what a pleasant visit.’
‘I’ll miss the funeral.’
Arthur grunted, shrugged and walked back down the mole.
Scully watched him a moment before stepping down into the taxi. The big Volvo started and purred. Meatballs cast off fore and aft and the boat eased out among the pens. Billie lifted her head to see the lights of the town rising above them like Christmas.
Meatballs throttled down hard.
‘You sit! Sit!’
Scully went back to the upholstered bench as the canopy slid shut above them. The Volvo began to bawl. The lights of the Maritime School blurred by above. The boat rose to the plane and then the water beneath them began to harden up as they left the harbour wall.
The first wave crashed across the bow as the navigation lights went on. Water streamed down the windows. Meatballs wore a green halo from the glow of his dashboard. With the harbour police and the moles out of sight already, they rode down into the trough and broke the back of the next swell with a crash that jarred Billie and Scully to the deck. Shaken, the two of them clawed back up and looked for ways to brace themselves. The luggage raced about at their feet. Meatballs shoved a cassette into the tape deck so that bouzouki music screeched through the little cabin. Scully held himself in position and watched Billie’s face as they ploughed on into the darkness.
The sea came at them from every point. The boat pitched, rolled, plunged and fluttered. The prop screamed free of the water and hit again. The fibreglass hull shuddered – Scully felt the impact in his teeth. Already he was withdrawing into the deckhand’s stupor, the blankness that kept him sane all those years ago. When it got too awful out there in those days, you simply shut down inside and carried on in autopilot. The deck lurching and heaving, the chop breaking in cold sheets across the wheel- house and the stinking bait washing through the scuppers. Dreamy, that’s how he was, with that animal Ivan Dimic at the wheel and the ropes fidgeting from their coils to race over the side. The stinking pots clashing up onto the tipper full of lobsters and sharks and writhing octopus. Yes, Ivan Dimic, last of the fleet to leave and first to return. He fished all day at full throttle, hungover and vicious. From the flying bridge, shrieking down on your dripping head. His was the kind of bestial voice the mad heard, only the man was as real as the torment. Buy first, pay last, and always get your punch in before the other poor cunt sees you coming, that was Ivan’s philosophy. Scully stayed with him for the money of course, outrageous in those boom years, and because he believed that things could only get better, that he was capable of getting on top of it. But he didn’t come from the same stock as Ivan and the crews he knew in his fishing days. Scully simply wasn’t a fighter and the o
nly way to win Ivan over was by force. The deckhand’s revenge. Oops. Over the side twenty miles out. It happened. But not for young Scully. All those February mornings hacking back into the easterly, Scully imagined himself elsewhere. But tonight there was only so far out of himself he could go.
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.
Twenty-five
DEEP 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.
Twenty-six
SCULLY FELT THE VOLVO 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!’
‘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.