Tim Winton - The Riders

As soon as his hands thawed and the pan was on the fire, he found pencil and paper and began to plan the septic system. What had Binchy and his family done all those years? Generations of them squatting out in the rain, the mud, the snow, in the barn itself, judging by the uneven sod floor. The trials of defecation alone might have driven the poor buggers to drink.

He was digging in the partly thawed field late in the morning when a black car drew by, hissing slow and quiet down the long hill with a train of other cars in its wake. He leaned on his shovel to watch the procession snake through the hedges, fifty cars and more making the turn to Birr with the sky the colour of dishwater above. Scully stood there, the minutes it took to pass, while the fields faded from their lustrous green, and when the last car was gone, the air was heavy, and the world suddenly becalmed.

• • •

PETE-THE-POST FOUND HIM waist-deep in the earth a little after midday. The ground was littered with the stones, bones and pieces of metal he’d heaved up past the mound of chocolate soil at the hole’s rim. It was unpleasant in the ground which smelled too rich for a man grown up in sand. It was too soft, too spongy underfoot and he was relieved to see the postie come smirking across the field, mail flapping.

‘Didn’t you hear, they’ve dug all the gold out of Ireland, Scully.’

‘I’m not withdrawing,’ said Scully, heaving up a spadeful. ‘I’m depositing. This is the septic. There will always be a corner of some foreign field that will be forever Scully.’

‘Aw, you witty bastard. Depositin, now, is it.’

‘How you been? Haven’t seen you for days.’

‘Bit of family business.’

Scully leaned against the wall of dirt and wiped his brow. The earth smelled burnt and rotten like the inside of that castle.

‘Everythin alright?’ he said.

‘Grand, grand. Some mail for you.’

‘Can you leave it inside? I’m filthy, Pete.’

Pete looked down into the hole and then along the pegs marking the trench uphill to the barn. The fall was good, the distance was good. ‘Puttin the lavvy in the barn, are we?’

‘No room in the house. Back home I’d stick it outside, but here no way. I don’t wanna leave the skin of me bum on the toilet seat of a morning.’

Pete laughed and his ears glowed. ‘I’ll have you a pipe and a liner by four. You don’t mind them pre-loved, as the Americans would say? I’ve even got a pan, pink and all.’

‘Mate, pink is my colour and pre-loved is my destiny.’

‘Rightso. Um, what about water, Scully?’

Scully looked up and gripped his shovel. ‘Gawd! I forgot that.’

‘Even if the pan is Teflon-coated I think you might have some problems without water.’

‘Smartarse. Can we run it off the pump, you reckon? Hand pump the cistern full?’

‘Jaysus, you’re goin basic here, Scully. I presume you had it better at home.’

‘A damn sight better,’ Scully muttered.

‘You need an electric pump off your well and full plumbin.’

‘Well.’

‘I know, I know. I’ll see you at four. Sign this. Ah, you dirty booger. Wash your hands.’

• • •

SCULLY READ HIS MAIL BY the fire with a mug of tea steaming beside him. There was a card from his mother with a hurt, distant tone to it. The picture showed the Swan River at dusk with the lights of Perth budding against a purple sky. A query from the Australian Taxation Office about why he had not filed for the past two years. This had been forwarded by Jennifer, it seemed, along with a card from the wife of a mate from his fishing days. Judging from the incoherent message she was drunk. The card showed a koala bear surfing, GREETINGS FROM GERALDTON. In a fat envelope was a news-stand poster from the Daily News , sent by a mate from the tackle shop, JOH GOES! Bjelke-Petersen, the doddery despot had finally quit politics. Thank God. In the registered envelope were all the documents relating to the sale of the Fremantle house ready for signing, and under separate cover, a cheque from Jennifer for two thousand dollars. The cheque was in her name from an account he didn’t recognize, a bank neither of them had accounts with. There was no note. The writing and the signature were hers, the envelope postmarked Fremantle a few days ago. Why didn’t she just transfer money into the account here with Allied Irish? It must be something specific. Maybe just enough to tide him over, clear the debt on the credit card. Money, it always made him nervous. He turned to the final item, a card from Billie. On the face of it was a photograph of the Round House, the old convict prison on the beach at Fremantle. Its octagonal limestone walls softened by sunset, rendered scandalously picturesque. It was somewhere they went often, him and her. Jennifer would be at work and the two of them would wander through town to the beach, talking about buildings, about what had been. He was grateful for those years, to have been the one who had her most days. She listened so carefully, you could see her hungry mind working. It was the reason he didn’t have so many friends anymore, as if the kid was suddenly and unexpectedly enough for him.

Today I went to Bathers Beach with Granma and now I am thinking about the convicts. They must of thought God forgot them. Like they fell off the world. When we went to London I was five. I felt like a convict, like it was too different for me. But I was only a kid. Granma says the tailer are good now. I can tie a blood knot, so there. Don’t fall off the world, Scully. Do not forget about me, that is BILLIE ANN SCULLY.

(all for one!)

And one for all, thought Scully. The house was quiet but for the mild expirations of the turf fire. Scully looked at the postmark and felt raw and unsettled. What a kid. She put the wind up him, sometimes.

He could see her now, the way she was the day they bought this place. Reading that old comic. She had all his old Classics Illustrated in a cracked gladstone bag from the farm. She had them all. Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, The Count of Monte Cristo. Yes, he saw her lolling back in that shitheap rented VW with her absolute favourite, The Hunchback of Notre Dame , with its gaudy pictures and forests of exclamation marks. Her lips moving as she snuffled at a bag of Tato chips, humming some Paul Simon song. Her hair bouncing, wide mouth rimmed with salt. The laces of her shoes undone.

On that strange day, when Jennifer got out and looked at the bothy, they exchanged looks, him and Billie, and he couldn’t tell what it meant. Mutual doubt, perhaps. And even when he’d been won over by Jennifer’s pleading, her infectious excitement and happiness, Billie remained doubtful. He remembered that now. That and how resistant she was at the airport. Crying at the departure gate, tugged down the hall by her mother who looked simply serene. That was the only word for it — serene. Being pregnant maybe, or being decided. The afterglow. Black hair glossing out behind her. Arms swinging like a woman content and on course at last, relaxed the way she had never been before. Yes, her features serene but indistinct even now. And Billie like a sea anchor, dragging all the way to the plane.

• • •

BY THE END OF THE next day, Scully had himself a connected, waterless toilet. On the barn wall beside it he had taped his poster: JOH GOES! He filled the cistern with a bucket and flushed it, hearing the water run away downhill. He laid planks on blocks between house and barn for a bridge across the mud. Pete stood by with a wry grin.

‘Pumpin out the bilges, it’ll be.’

‘Come in and have a drink, you cheeky bastard.’

The north wind rattled the panes of the Donegal windows at their backs and the chimney snored beside them as they drank their pints of Harp. The room was warm and humid with simmering stew.