Tim Winton - The Riders

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.

‘Yeah, but, I know, but I’m her husband, you see. Yes, but be reasonable about this… No, I don’t think I have to… oh, listen, I’m asking you a… well, fuck you!’

He whacked the receiver down and coins spilled free. Billie sniffed blankly.

‘Scuse my French. Sorry.’

Scully looked down the narrow, grey street and went back to scraping. So, she arrived in Heathrow, sent the kid on alone. Either she’s in London, or, or she’s gone on somewhere else. But why? Oh, never mind bloody why, Scully, where is the issue first up. Think, you dumb prick. Start at the least likely and work your way back. What are the possibilities? The house deal falling through? Some stock market economic glitch, some problem with the papers? Maybe she’s gone back to sort it out, save you worrying.

He dialled the house in Fremantle. Evening in Australia. Summer. The Telecom message chirped — disconnected. Automatically he dialled his mother but hung up before it could ring. No.

London. It made all the sense. She’d be at Alan and Annie’s. She was having a bleed. God, it was trouble with the baby and she was stuck in… but Alan and Annie, they were saints. They’d be looking after her. Yes, pain at the airport, a cab to Crouch End.

He rang them, his fingers tangling in the stupid dial.

‘Alan?’

‘Sorry, he’s out with Ann.’

‘Who’s this?’

‘Well might I ask.’ Who was this snot with the Oxbridge lisp?

‘When will they be back?’

‘Who is this?’

‘Scully,’ he said. ‘A friend.’

‘The Australian.’

‘Listen, when will they be back?’

‘Don’t know.’

Scully hung up. It was Tuesday for Godsake. They worked at home — they never went anywhere on a Tuesday. He called back.

‘Listen, it’s me again. Have they had visitors this weekend?’

The kid at the other end paused a moment. ‘Well, I’m not sure I like the way this conversation is going.’

‘Bloody hell. Son, listen to me. I want to know if a woman called Jennifer —’

The kid hung up. Shit a brick. Who else could he call? They had friends all over Europe, but in London they had all their eggs in one basket. There was no one who knew them as well as Alan and Annie. The house was always full of waifs and strays. In London it was the only place she’d go. What could he do — call the embassy? Everyone else he knew from London was probably IRA. Sod that.

He waited. He scraped. He dialled Fremantle again. Nothing. He dragged the little address book from his pocket and called the number Pete once gave him. Nothing. Twists of paint dropped into Billie’s hair. He began to shuffle on the spot. He made a fist, pressed it against the glass. She was losing the baby and he was in some frigging Irish abbatoir town, helpless.

He dialled Alan’s again.

‘Scully?’

‘Alan, thank God!’

Alan sounded startled, a little sharp even. Maybe he’d got an earful from young Jeremy Irons or whoever.

‘How’s Ireland?’

‘Ireland?’

‘We’re dying to come out and see the place. Maybe we can pretend to be Aussies. You know, improve our standing.’

‘Alan, listen, did Jennifer drop by yet?’

‘Jennifer? Are they back from Australia yet?’ Scully’s mind rolled again. He couldn’t pull it back. But Alan sounded odd.

‘Course she’s very welcome, they both are. Great about the house, eh?’

‘How, how d’you know about the house?’

‘Got a card. Is everything alright, Scully?’

‘Yeah. Yeah, it’s fine.’ Tell him, he thought. Tell him.

‘Should I expect them, you think? We can make up a bed.’

‘You wouldn’t hide anything from me, would you, mate? I mean, she’s your friend as well.’

‘What’s happening, Scully?’

Why can’t you tell him? What kind of stupid suspicious pride is it that -

‘Scully, are you alright?’

Scully listened to the hiss of the Irish Sea in the wires.

‘I thought it might be the baby,’ he murmured.

‘What baby? No one told us about a baby. Annie! Annie, get the desk phone will —’

Scully hung up. He couldn’t do it anymore. His mind was twisting. They were the only people in the world he could trust. It wasn’t London. Friggin hell, it wasn’t London.

Coins jangled out onto the floor. Billie looked up at him knowingly. She knew. He could see it, but what could he do, beat it out of her?

‘Listen sweetheart,’ he said to Billie, dropping to her level, wedging himself like a cork at the bottom of the booth. He grabbed her by the hands and looked imploringly into her shutdown face. ‘You gotta help your dad. Please, please, you gotta help me. If you can’t talk I understand, but don’t… don’t not talk because you’re angry, don’t do it to get back at me. I’m worried too. I’m so worried… I’m… Tell me, was Mum sick or anything on the plane, at the airport? Did she seem sort of strange, different somehow? Did she say anything to you, when she’d be coming, where she was going to, did she tell you to say something to me?’

Billie’s forehead creased. She clamped her eyes shut. Scully put his fingers gently on her eyelids. So tired, so frail and shell-shocked. This was a terrible thing, too terrible. He wanted to ask other things, worse things. Was there anyone else on the plane, in the airport? Had there been anyone else around these last weeks in Australia? But there were things that, once uttered, couldn’t be reigned back. He had the fear that saying more might bring some worse calamity down on his head. Once you stopped thinking of innocent possibilities, the poison seeped in, the way it was already leaching into him, the ghastly spectrum of foul maybes that got to him like the cold in the glass around him. Old Scully, who according to Jennifer, hadn’t the imagination to think the worst. Something she said once, as though neurosis was an artform. Said without bitterness, accepted with a shrug.