Tim Winton - The Riders

‘Me again.’

Nothing. Just static. A blizzard from that little speaker box. He looked at his boots, felt the chill of the wind still in his spine, saw Billie’s feverish eyes and livid cheeks.

‘It’s cold down here, Marianne. And I’ve brought Billie.’

It was a long ugly few seconds before the access door clicked open. He took Billie’s mittened hand and they went up silently in the elevator. It was familiar, that little red box. He remembered coming down in it with Jennifer a couple of times, both of them four sheets to the wind and giggling like kids.

Up on her floor Marianne had the door open. Her thick auburn hair was free and she wore little lace-up shoes and a black woollen suit. She fixed him with a firm smile.

‘Scully, you look —’

‘Terrible, I know.’

She presented her cheeks to him in the ritual manner and touched Billie’s head gravely and then the three of them stood awkwardly in the hallway.

‘We’re house-trained, Marianne. It’s safe enough to let us in.’

She hesitated a moment and turned on her heel. Scully followed across the lustrous timber floor into the kingdom of steam heat and hired help. Marianne’s two fat Persians loped away to hide. The apartment smelled of polish and of the oil of the puce abstracts that hung huge on the white walls. Scully couldn’t help but run his hand across the painted surface of the plaster as he went. His first job in Paris, this place. It was perfect. He worked like a pig on it and took a pittance, setting the tone for the rest of his time here. Still, they were friends, Jennifer’s new friends, and he was eager to please.

But sometimes he wondered if the cheapness of his bill hadn’t caused its own problems. Marianne had been more friendly to him first up — effusive, even. But after the paint job she cooled off. For a few weeks he tried to think of anything he could have done wrong. The job was excellent, but had he spilt primer on something, scratched the floor somehow, pissed on the toilet seat? There was nothing — not even a Rainbow Warrior joke. It was the size of his bill. She wasn’t insulted — Scully always let her know that he knew she and Jean-Louis were loaded — but it was as though she felt he expected something in return. A fresh guardedness lay across the top of her Parisian diffidence. She saw him as a loser, he thought. Not just a tradesman but a cut-rate one at that. Europe — it was hair raising.

‘I’ll have coffee and Billie’ll take a hot chocolate,’ he said brightly. ‘She’s a bit sick. You remember Marianne don’t you, Billie.’

Billie nodded. Marianne stood beneath the big casement windows, mouth contracting on its smile. She was all diagonals — nose, hips, breast, lips — and not at all like Jean-Louis who was more the fulsome type with the lines of a nineteen-forties automobile. Jean-Louis was easier to like, softer in nature as well as in shape.

Not that he’d instantly disliked Marianne. She was smart and funny and seemed genuinely interested in Jennifer, even read her work and showed it around. She worked for a chic magazine and knew people. Her friends were amusing yuppies, handsome, curious and unlike people they’d known before. It felt like a lark to Scully, knowing these people. Jean-Louis had a romantic European fascination for wild places and people. He defended France’s right to test nuclear bombs in the Pacific and yet turned purple at the thought of roo-tail soup. Scully liked to shock him and his friends with redneck stories told against himself and his country. Chlamydia in koalas, the glories of the cane toad. The wonders of the aluminium roo-bar. For a while he felt almost exotic at Marianne’s parties, but it wore off in the end, playing the part of the Ignoble Savage. He kept up a kind of affable relationship with Jean-Louis, without any intimacy, and a diplomatic air of deferral to Marianne for Jennifer’s sake. The parties became a bore. Scully loitered at the bookshelves picking through art books, most of the time, and they left him to it. When Dominique came he relaxed a little more and joined in. And the wine was a consolation. He wouldn’t be drinking that stuff back in the borrowed apartment.

‘I’ll put the kettle on, will I?’

‘Scully, I am busy.’

‘Too busy for a cup of coffee?’

She sighed and went ahead into the white kitchen and he noticed her limp.

‘Hurt your leg?’

‘It’s nothing. I was sitting on it. It will give me bad veins.’

‘Nearly broke my own leg today.’

‘Things are not going well for you. You look wild, Scully.’

‘Oh, I am wild.’

‘Have you done this to Billie?’ she said filling the kettle. Her hands trembled. She was fumbling.

‘You mean her face? Marianne, she was bitten by a dog. That’s what I wanted —’

‘In Paris?’

‘In…’ he caught himself. ‘Doesn’t matter where.’

‘She looks like… un fantome , like a ghost.’

Marianne leaned against the blinding brightness of the bench, sizing him up. Billie came in, her eyes following the cats.

‘I have to pee,’ Billie murmured.

‘Down the hall,’ said Scully. ‘You remember.’ He watched her go.

‘I can’t help you, Scully. You know I never liked you. Such a woman with… un balourd like you.’

‘I won’t even pretend to know what that means.’

‘No, you never did pretend. Such a simple man’s virtue.’

‘Tell me about the park today.’

Marianne’s hoarse laugh was a tiny sound in that bleached space. ‘Scully, you are losing your mind.’

‘Yeah, I’m tired and mean and desperate.’

‘I can call the police. You are a foreigner, remember.’

‘Oh, I remember.’

Marianne reached for a pack of Gauloises and lit up shakily. She smiled.

‘Share the joke, Marianne.’

‘Oh, Scully, you are the joke.’ She dragged hard on the cigarette and blew smoke over him. ‘So you are all alone.’

‘You know, then.’

‘Scully you are the picture of a drowning man. I do not have to know.’

‘Where is she?’

‘If I knew do you really believe I would tell you? My Gahd!’

The kettle began to stir.

‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’

‘Oh, yes.’

Scully’s skin crawled. A cold anger percolated through him.

‘I figured you were a little nasty, Marianne, but I thought deep down you were probably human.’

She laughed.

‘Listen to me. Try to listen to me,’ he breathed. ‘Forget about me. Forget about Jennifer and the baby and what I’m going through. I have a sick —’

‘Baby?’ Marianne’s glossy lips parted. ‘She’s pregnant?’

‘She didn’t tell you, then.’

Marianne waved her fag non-commitally. ‘It’s ’er body, Scully.’

‘Of course it’s her fucking body. You think I need a night-school course on sexual politics? Do I need permission to be worried out of my bloody mind? I didn’t call the cops, no private detective, I go softly, softly and play the game but I’m sick of playing the game, you hear me?’

He kicked a stool across the floor and watched it cartwheel into the wall, jolting shiny implements from their hooks in a horrible clatter. He saw the whiteness of his own fists and the way Marianne had edged into the corner and he thought of Mylie Doolin and the men who did this all the time. She was afraid and he felt the power. He remembered Irma and the ferry. Oh yes, he was capable of anything — he was no different.

‘I always believed you beat her, Scully,’ she said feebly and then with more defiance. ‘The working man out of his depth… the charming woman with ’opes for something better. Did you beat her much, Scully? Were you rough in bed, were you ’ard on her, Scully?’