Tim Winton - The Riders

‘And Jennifer?’

‘Jesus Christ.’

‘It’d be easier if you just told me,’ said Scully.

‘Told you? Told you?’ Arthur scowled and looked hard at him in a vexed and questioning way. He slapped his hand down on the bar. ‘Does anyone want to tell him? Please, our Scully wants to be told!’

But only a few faces looked up. Someone smirked, someone else shrugged.

‘Whatever it is, no one’s telling you this morning, Scully.’

‘I didn’t think you’d be such a prick about it.’

‘Could be your primitive manners,’ said Arthur lighting up his cigar. ‘Buy your child something to eat. She looks all in.’

‘You’re so fuckin sorry for us, you buy her something.’

‘Be an adult, lad.’

‘Where is she?’

‘Your wife? You want me to tell you where your wife is?’

‘I think I’ve had a breakthrough here, Billie.’

‘She’s your wife, boy. Have you mislaid her somewhere?’

‘Mislaid!’ giggled Rory.

Scully got off the stool.

‘Rory,’ said Arthur, ‘you’d better go. Our friend has large calloused hands and your balls will be fasolia if he gets to them.’

‘You got that bloody right,’ said Scully between his teeth.

Rory got up and left, and then in twos and threes, so did everyone else but Sofia’s deaf uncle Ioannis who smiled up gaily from his newspaper.

‘Well, that was pleasant,’ said Arthur. ‘You seem to have everyone suitably on-side. I think I’ll be off as well. I can’t afford being biffed about at my age.’

It shocked Scully to see the fear come to people’s faces, their instant expectation that he would do them harm. He felt stupid, misunderstood.

‘Why don’t you just tell me what’s going on, Arthur?’

‘Why don’t you get off my sodding back and find out for yourself? Where did you come from?’

‘Ireland.’

‘To do this?’ Arthur waved his cigar at the empty taverna. ‘To make a fool of yourself?’

‘I’ve always been a fool to you people.’

‘It’s only that you were such a terrible working-class puritan, Scully. It embarrasses you to see people having a good time and not paying for their sins.’

‘Most of you can’t seem to pay for your drinks, forget sins.’

‘An insecure man is never a heartwarming sight. Less than sparkling company you might say.’

‘Fuck you, Arthur.’

‘Feed your child.’

Arthur stuck the Havana back in his mouth, gathered up his week-old copy of the Sunday Times , and left them there with Sofia studying father and child coolly from behind the counter.

FATHER AND DAUGHTER SAT IN the sun on the terrace at the Lyko with plates of calamari, tzatziki and salad barely disturbed before them. Scully bought the food to placate Sofia after driving her custom away with his presence, and besides it was time they both ate, but his gut was tight and acidic and Billie merely picked at a piece of bread, legs dangling lank from her chair. Water flapped at the sea wall. Across the little harbour a donkey bawled itself hoarse.

‘What d’you think, Billie? You think they know? Of course they know. See how they look at us — we’re a bloody embarrassment.’

Billie’s eyes passed over him a moment, and then she looked away past the mole where a man in a little wooden boat was jigging for squid.

What the hell is the woman doing? he thought. I’m here, I came, and every bastard on the island is watching me squirm. What else does she want? What have I done? What can I do? Give me a clue, something to go on.

Just after one o’clock, Scully ordered a half jug of kokkineli and a Milko for Billie. They sipped without speaking as curious islanders sauntered by, shaking their heads. The resinated rosé soothed him a moment.

Wait it out, he told himself. Calm down. Give her time. Just being here is enough for now. Sit tight.

At two, Billie shucked back her chair and went inside to the toilet. Christ, why wouldn’t she speak to him? He hurled his glass out into the harbour and sat back. He ate some squid, sponged up a little of the yoghurty dip with the bread, and thought back on his life here with Jennifer to find a wrinkle in things, something that might have brought this on. He’d been patient here. It was easy to be patient in a place you loved, but he honestly believed that he’d acted well here. It wasn’t like Paris where he was being ground to a pulp by the city itself, but even in Paris he’d made no waves for her sake. London was the same. Hell, it was always the same; he was always ready to give way for her sake. He loved her. That was all it came down to. In Greece it was easy to love her, easy to wait for her to find whatever it was that might let her relax at last and be herself.

Hadn’t they been happy, the three of them?

Look at this place! A world without cars, without paperwork, without a calendar half the time, amongst good simple people who were content to live and let live. Old Fotis the stonemason was a gentle taskmaster and the work was satisfying and inconstant. There were long days on the pebble beach for just the three of them, the mountain walks, mosquito coil evenings out on the terrace with muscat grapes heavy overhead and the rats riffling through like relatives. Long letters home, endless meals, collaborations on the Mickey Mouse colouring book and readings from Jules Verne. There was the golden colour of their always bare skin. Songs. Silly moments. There was the day Billie learnt to swim, like a Sunday School miracle. In the afternoons he would come down from the mountain where that great house was taking shape in the side of the cliff, to the cool terrace of their place by the shore where a few cold bottles of Amstel waited and Jennifer and Alex wound up the day’s lesson. Billie coming in from the Up School on the horse with the neighbours’ boys. Oh, yeah, they’d been happy or he was worse than stupid.

He was even more or less happy about Alex and the daily painting lesson which kept the old fart in drinking money. Alex Moore. Worthless, as Scully’s mother would have said, but likeable enough. His paintings hung in some good American collections, but all Scully could go on were the canvasses from the sixties that he saw in some of the bigger expat houses on the island. They were better than good, as far as anyone who had finished high school in his twenties and bombed out of university could tell. Alex had pissed it all away and had done nothing but cadge and bludge and weasle and whine since men first went to the moon.

Having the smoke-cured old blight there every day and for half their meals took some taking, it was true, but Jennifer felt she was getting somewhere. She was so infectiously excited that Scully simply wore it. The house at the edge of the sea soothed him. She came to bed at night with the sweet musk of ouzo on her breath and the creamy moonlight on the sheets and they made love like in the old days.

Looking back, Scully saw nothing to strike a real note of warning. True, he occasionally argued with Arthur or one of the expats’ summer friends, and he was cranky when the meltemi blew its guts out in August, but then everyone was shitty with chalk in their eyes and the sea too dangerous to swim in, and the heat sucking the sweat from you.

Billie returned from the toilet. She had splashed her face with water and her cotton sweater was blotched with it. She moved her sneakers in small circles on the smooth flags.

Scully sat with the taste of resin in his mouth and tried to think. He hated to drink wine during the day. It did exactly this, it stopped your brain.

Just then, Arthur came wheezing back along the wharf, his white ducks sweaty and soup stained.