Tim Winton - The Riders

Conor. That’s who Scully reminds him of. The old Conor. Could be why he likes the man for no good reason, could be why he doesn’t move in here and squat, take possession in lieu of payment for all those bills unpaid. Scully’s fierce about life, like old Con. Life’s a fight to the friggin death, it is.

The fire chortles in the chimney and the postman lies back, takes another belt of Jameson and finds himself thinking the Our Father, just thinking it like a man afraid for himself, while the mail of the Republic lies crumpled down there, going nowhere.

IN THE SOUPY LIGHT OF dawn, as the train tocked and clacked languidly into the glass and steel maw of the Gare de Lyon, Scully brushed the child’s hair tenderly and straightened her clothes. With his handkerchief he buffed her little tan boots before repacking their meagre things. Porters and tiny luggage tractors swerved across the platform. Pigeons rose in waves. His joints, his scalp, his very teeth tingled with anticipation. He felt invincible this morning, unstoppable. Today was the day. The Tuileries at noon. Look out, Paris.

‘This morning,’ he said, ‘after we find a hotel, I’ll take you somewhere, anywhere you want to go. You choose. Anywhere at all, okay. You just name it.’

Billie looked up, feverish with prayer and worry. ‘Anywhere?’

He’ll know, she thought. He won’t have to ask. He’ll know where I want to go.

She felt the train stopping. The world swung on its anchor a moment. Everything rested. Nothing moved inside or out of her. It was like a sigh. Billie held on to the moment while the edges of things shimmered.

• • •

WITH HIS FACE IN THE frigid sky and the sweat of the climb turning to glass on him, Scully tilted his head back and laughed. The wind rooted through his hair, billowed his hopelessly underweight jacket and tugged his cheeks. He laid his bare hands on the stone barrier and looked out across the whole city whose gold and green and grey rooftops lay almost vulnerable beneath him. Yes, Paris was beautiful still, but not crushingly beautiful. Up here it had a domestic look — all its intimidatory gloss, all its marvels of hauteur and hubris failed to carry this far. To the north the wedding cake of Sacre Coeur, to the west the rusty suppository of the Eiffel Tower. Even the monochrome turns of the Seine seemed quaint between spires, mansards, quais and balding regiments of trees. It was just a place, a town whose traffic noise and street fumes reached him at a faint remove.

He swept along the parapet, the tour guide barking behind him. The wind made tears in his eyes, blurring his vision of the sculpted rectangle of the Tuileries across the river. Within a spit of the bell tower. Just beneath him. Here, at kilometre zero.

Billie watched him scuttle out along the walkway, bent over in the freezing wind with pigeons scattering before him. He had his arms outstretched like a conqueror, like a kite, but the wind made a rag of him beneath the overhanging twists of carved stone, the laughing goblins and gargoyles. He wouldn’t jump — she knew he wouldn’t — but he was airborne anyway with his face bent by gusts of cold.

The others in the tour were turning already, heading back for the protection of the spiral stairs and the creeping dark of the stone walls, but Billie stayed out with him to see the dull glow of the city, marvelling at the way it stood up. The whole underneath of Paris was an ant nest, Metro tunnels, sewer shafts, catacombs, mines, cemeteries. She’d been down in the city of bones where skulls and femurs rose in yellowing walls. Right down there, in the square before them, through a dinky little entrance, were the Roman ruins like a honeycomb. The trains went under the river. There were tunnels people had forgotten about. It was a wonder Paris stood up at all. The bit you saw was only half of it. Her skin burned, thinking of it. The Hunchback knew. Up here in the tower of Notre Dame he saw how it was. Now and then, with the bells rattling his bones, he saw it like God saw it — inside, outside, above and under — just for a moment. The rest of the time he went back to hurting and waiting like Scully out there crying in the wind.

The tour lady yelled from the archway.

Yes, you could see clearly up here. Sanctuary, sanctuary, sanctuary.

She never wanted to leave.

• • •

THE HOTEL ON THE ILE St Louis was more than he could afford but Scully figured that for one night it was worth it. All that time in Paris he’d passed it, staring in at its cosy, plush interior, on his way to a painting job with his back aching in anticipation. Hotels like this, their lobbies glowed with warmth and fat furniture, their stars hung over their doorways like gold medals. Hell, you deserved it once, and there’d never be a better day.

In the tiny bathroom he shaved carefully and did the best he could with his clothes. He picked the lint from his pullover, poured a bit of Old Spice inside his denim jacket and helped Billie into her stall-bought scarf and mittens. She shook a little under his hands.

‘Nervous?’

She nodded.

‘Tonight we’ll be all together. Look, two beds.’

‘We could go home now,’ she murmured.

‘In the morning. Be home for Christmas.’

Billie’s face mottled with emotion. Wounds stood out lumpy and purple on her forehead. She ground her heels together.

‘We don’t have to,’ she said.

‘I do.’

She pushed away from him. ‘You go.’

‘I can’t leave you here.’

‘You left me before.’

‘Oh, Billie.’

‘You’ll choose her! She’ll make you choose! She said come on your own! I can read, you know! Do you think I’m a slow learner? I can read.’

She didn’t want to be there. She didn’t want to see, but deep down she heard the tiny voice tell her — you only have one mother, you only have one. She felt his hands on her baking face and knew she would go.

• • •

THEY LEFT THE TINY RIVER island and crossed the Seine at Pont Marie. At the little playground past the quai, Billie stopped to peer through the wrought-iron fence at the kids who yelled and blew steam, skidding in the gravel. She looked at their faces but didn’t know any of them. Granmas stomped their feet. A ball floated red in the air. Scully pulled her and she went stiff-kneed along the street into their old neighbourhood.

Scully steered them past the Rue Charlemagne without a word. There wasn’t time to think of the sandstone, the courtyard, the smells of cooking, the piano students plunking away into the morning air. They walked up into the Marais where the alleys choked with mopeds and fruit shops, delicatessens, boutiques and kosher butchers. The air was thick with smells: cardboard, pine resin, meat, flowers, lacquer, wine, monoxide. At the fishmongers Scully resisted the urge to touch. Cod, sole and prawns lay in a white Christmas of shaved ice. The streets bristled with people. It was a vision — he felt giddy with it.

Billie yanked on his arm. ‘I need to go.’

‘To the toilet? Didn’t you go back at the hotel?’

‘No.’

‘Jesus.’

‘Don’t say that. Gran says you’ve forgotten the true meaning of Christmas.’

‘I’ll parcel you up and post you to Gran if you don’t —’

‘I’m bustin. D’you wanna argue with my vagina?’

‘Keep your voice down, will you?’ He looked up and down the street, saw a café. ‘C’mon.’

He hoisted her into the smoky little joint and found the toilet under the stairs.

‘In there,’ he murmured, nodding to the patrons propped against the bar.