by Tim Winton
‘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.
• • •
BUT 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.’
• • •
IRMA HAD A HEINEKEN 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.
‘Souvenir,’ she breathed.
Scully felt his boot go back. His leg. Felt himself adjusting his balance to kick her, the way you might kick down a toadstool in a winter paddock, turning it into a noxious cloud of shit in a second, and then he saw the look of fear and exultant expectation on the woman’s face and felt sick to his bladder. He staggered, bringing himself short, and almost fell on her.
‘Gutless, gutless!’ she hissed.
Scully reversed out of the cabin as though pressing back into a cold wind.
‘She was beautiful!’ Irma yelled. ‘They spoke French. They were checking out, Scully. She was soooo beautiful. I can see why she made the choice. I saw them! I saw them!’
He bounced off the walls of the corridor, her voice chasing him from every direction, and up against the firehose in a rusty recess he listened to the shocking sound of his heart in his ears, shaming him with every beat.
In the lounge, Billie and the barman looked up in alarm and curiosity. Irma was screaming back there, hollow and faint. Scully swung the luggage into a booth, stood panting beside it and sat down sweating, nursing his fists like stones on the sticky table.
Thirty
THE SOLDIERS STAND MOTIONLESS . . . Quasimodo’s one eye gleams wildly. They are held at bay for a moment . . . until one of the more adventurous men can stand it no longer . . .
Out on the deck, in the fine cold, Billie read her comic and plugged her ears with her thumbs. Now that was a tantrum down there. The Hunchback bounded and raved, cried and shook and poured his bubbling lead down upon the mad masses of Paris. Sailors went bucketing downstairs to see what all the noise was, and Billie read on. It was even a bit funny. But Scully wasn’t laughing. He looked shocking.
In the end it went quiet and birds landed on deck. She squeezed Scully’s hand and tried not to feel the tight burning of her face. Boiling lead. The bells going mad. She knew this story like a song.
A while after Irma gave in and shut up, after passengers quit giving him the evil eye in his seat in the lee of the lifeboats, Scully felt Billie at his side nudging him out of his stupor. Out there, in the late afternoon gloom, the forts and rocks and lights – the houses of Brindisi winking their languid green and gold – raised a cheer from travellers at the rail.
Scully gathered up their gear and bullocked a path toward the exit companionway. It took a cruel time for the engine vibrations to change pitch, a hard foetid wait wondering where Irma was in the shoving crowd but the great hatch finally did crack open and Scully and Billie were amongst the first on the dock. The sun was down beyond the drab blocks of the town’s monuments and the quay was grey and close with the shunt and stink of travellers. Everywhere you looked there were people moving and waiting, watching, many of them without any obvious purpose or destination. They were faceless in the bad light, and sinister. Scully knew right off, clasping Billie’s hand and surging ahead blindly, that he wouldn’t stay in this town. He needed a shower and a sleep and they both wanted a quiet place to lie down but Scully knew they would have to keep travelling. Maybe his nerves were buggered and he was imagining a threat that didn’t exist here, but he wanted the first train out of here. Somewhere behind was Irma, and she was enough excuse to keep going.
Up in the streets there were backpackers and vagrants dossing down for the night in cardboard and torn blankets and bright nylon sleeping bags. Monoxide hung between buildings. Garbage crackled underfoot. Scully kept a straight tack up the main drag, feeling her bounce and lag beside him. Everyone seemed to move in the same direction, from the wharf upward, so he kept on.
‘What is this?’ Billie asked.
‘It’s Hell,’ said Scully.
‘No, that’s underground.’
‘Well this is Hell’s penthouse suite, Bill,’ he murmured. ‘Ah, see, STAZIONE, that’s the stuff. Quick, this way.’
‘Where’s Irma?’
‘Way back.’
‘What a tantrum. I feel sorry for her.’
‘Don’t bother.’
‘She’s like Alex.’
Scully felt a stab at the thought of Alex. Maybe they’d buried him already, the great bearded priests singing dubiously over him, the cats prowling between the headstones behind them. How long had it been? Two days? Three?
He shrugged off touts and buskers as they came to the station, Billie pressed to his side. Scully hissed at anyone who came near. He felt a wild fervour, a queer joy as people made way, sensing that this madman would head-butt and bite his way clear if need be. People’s skin was sallow, their teeth wayward. It was a lunatic asylum in here. Timetables rolled and clattered above their heads. Scully looked for any destination north, anything leaving soon, but there was only Rome at seven-thirty. A ninety-minute wait. It wasn’t ideal but he changed some money and bought two tickets for Rome. At the kiosk he bought a week-old Herald Tribune. People swirled aimlessly about them, pressing, surging, crying out and spitting.
‘I’m hungry,’ said Billie.
‘Okay, let’s get some spaghetti,’ said Scully hoisting her up out of the human current. ‘God, let’s just get out of here.’
• • •
BILLIE SAW SCULLY WINDING DOWN like that organ grinder’s music out there in the street. All the wildness was gone now. He just tooled with some bread in a little puddle of wine and said nothing. He was awake but nearly switched off. She sucked up some spaghetti. It wasn’t as good as he made. Anyway she could taste the antiseptic ointment on everything. It seemed a long time ago tha
t she had spaghetti made by him. Out the window in the lights of the street the grinder’s monkey scratched himself and tipped his head at her. The holes in her head throbbed like music.
‘What country is this?’
‘Italy,’ said Scully.
‘So they speak -?’
‘Italian.’
‘What town?’
‘Brindisi.’
‘Is it all like this?’
‘Italy, I’ve only ever passed through. No, we stayed in Florence a couple of days, remember?’
Billie shook her head. There were too many places. Stations, airports, the flat heads of taxi drivers. She remembered Hydra and Paris and Alan’s house, but other places were just like television, like they weren’t for real. And that house, that little house Scully made was all in a fog, blurry, swirling, like the cloud that came down on her head when she thought of the plane. The steamy hot towels the stewards brought. The toilet light going off. Her coming, so beautiful down the aisle. Hair all stuck back like perfect. The white neck, so white . . . and the cloud coming down.
‘All the statues have little dicks,’ she said.
‘I didn’t notice. Wipe your face, you’ve got sauce all over your chin.’
‘Why doesn’t that monkey run away?’
He looked at the monkey in the funny suit on the grinder’s box. ‘Maybe he’s too scared.’
‘Doesn’t look scared.’
‘Maybe he needs the dough,’ he said, trying to crack a smile.
Billie thought of all those people on the wharf and in the skinny streets. Like the ones you see in Paris, in the Metro and the hot air holes lying on boxes and sleeping bags.
‘Are we going to be beggars?’
‘No, love.’
‘We haven’t got much money anymore, have we.’
‘I’ve got a card.’ He got out his wallet, the one with the picture she didn’t want to see. He held up the little plastic card. ‘I can get money with it, see?’
‘They should give them to beggars. Jesus would give em cards, right?’
‘Spose. Yeah. I have to pay the money back later. It can be scary. People go crazy with them.’
‘It wouldn’t help Irma.’
He just looked out the window at that and didn’t want to talk. He had a good heart, her dad, but maybe it wasn’t big enough for Irma.