Tim Winton - The Riders

He touched the photograph once. Coal burned lustily in the grate. The house began to steam and dry. Scully went out to survey the gable wall.

THE DOOR SLIDES TO ON the lowing, dungspraying cows as the man in the cloth cap turns to see the scaffold up against Binchy’s Bothy and two figures beneath it like trolls atop the hill. The sky is the colour of fish, a Friday colour beGod, and the bare trees stand forlorn. It’s Pete-the-Post up there with that woolly young bastard with love in his eyes.

He fingers in his waistcoat for the damp fag he’s been saving. The stink of silage burns at the back of his gullet and he lights up to beat it off.

It’s love alright. Jimmy Brereton, bachelor unto the grave, recognizes a man doomed by love, snared by a woman. You could see it the day they turned up in that thresher of a Volkswagen. Her with the hair out like a black flag and her hands on the smooth stones of Binchy’s wall as if it had a fever pulse, and him, hairy as anything on Christ’s earth, waiting on her with eyes big and hopeless as a steer. The shackles of marriage, of doilies and lace curtains and mysterious female illnesses staring him in the face, and him cheerful as you like, and sheepish, sheepish like a lamb unto the slaughter, poor booger.

Jimmy Brereton kicks the shite from his boots and watches a while. He wishes they’d come down and bulldoze that eyesore nuisance of a damn castle out of his high field while the government’s asleep in Dublin. It’s a danger to one and all. In a big norther stones and rubble come belting down out of the keep, and a man can no longer leave his cattle in there out of the weather for fear of having them brained with Celtic history. He thanks God and Arthur Guinness he sleeps well enough at night not to worry himself sick about the things he’s seen here over the years. Things that make the hairs on your arms stand up, like every poor bastard mortared into the walls and fed to the pigs and tilled into the cellars of that place is stirring. Sometimes you hear voices on the wind and stones falling like men to the ground. Bawlers, stinks, a bedlam of rooks, and lights from the mountains, streams of them that he doesn’t look for anymore. It’s not madness or drink in all of this, though he bothers the bottle mightily. All the valley people are chary of the place. He remembers standing right here with his own Da watching the priest from Limerick bellowing Latin at the keep and waving his candles at no one in particular. No Brereton, man or child, would be up there after dark at that nasty fooker of a place. It’s a blight on his land, and it’s made him an early retirer, a six-pint man at sunset. But he’s not unhappy. Things might have turned out worse. He might have married Mary Finneran in 1969 instead of backing out like a man with spine. He might have a brother like Peter Keneally’s instead of no family to speak of. He might be up the hill there with those two mad boogers trying to save the long lost and working like black monkeys.

Sheepish, that’s him. That woolly booger with the hod on his shoulder and the love in his eyes.

Jimmy Brereton retires indoors to the company of Mr Guinness.

JUST ON DARK, Scully and Peter Keneally laid the last block of their rough buttress and stood blowing steam on the makeshift scaffold.

‘That’s got her,’ said the postman. ‘Tomorrow we’ll render it!’

Scully laughed and leaned his brow against the gutter. The man could work. They’d hardly spoken all afternoon and now the postie seemed determined to make up for it.

‘So, where did you learn to throw blocks like a Paddy?’ said Peter.

‘London, I spose,’ said Scully looking down the valley. It was beautiful in an eerie, organized, European way.

‘Jaysus, throwin blocks for the English!’

‘No, an Irishman, actually,’ said Scully climbing down.

‘I went to London once.’

‘Once is enough.’

‘Oh, you got that right.’

Pete clanged the trowels together and they headed for the well.

‘I worked with a gang of Offaly boys,’ said Scully. ‘Hard men, I spose you’d call em. We did cash jobs, you know. Jobs light-on for a bit of paperwork, you might say.’

‘Like this one, you mean.’

Scully smiled. ‘Let’s have a drink, I’m freezin.’

At the well, as they stood washing the mortar off their arms, Peter hummed a tune, low in his throat. In the dark he sounded like an old man, and it occurred to Scully that he had no idea how old the postie might be. Abruptly, the humming stopped.

‘What was her name again? Your wife?’

‘Jennifer.’

‘They say she’s a beautiful girl.’

‘Geez, they’re quick around here, aren’t they?’

The postman wheezed out a laugh. ‘But are they liars?’

‘No, they got it right.’

‘Then you’re a lucky man.’

‘Mate, she’s a lucky woman.’

They went in tired and laughing to the swimming warmth of the hearth, and Scully poured them a porter each and they sat on a chair and box to listen to the whine of the fire. Scully wrote out a telegram message on the back of an envelope: GOOD NEWS. ALL WELL HERE. KEEP IN TOUCH. LOVE YOU BOTH. SCULLY.

‘Telegram? I’ll send it for you.’

‘Would you?’

‘You got snakes there in Australia,’ said Pete thoughtfully.

‘You bet. No St Pat out there.’

‘Poisonous snakes, eh?’

Scully grinned. ‘Dugites, taipans, king browns, tigers. A tiger snake once chased me all the way down the back paddock.’

‘Are they fast, then?’

‘I was on a motorbike.’

‘Aw, Jaysus!’

‘Snakes and sharks,’ said Scully, hamming it up. He handed Pete the soiled envelope.

‘And Skippy the bush kangaroo, beGod!’

Scully laughed. ‘Not as unpredictable as a Paddy, though. Those Irish boys in London were a wild bunch, I tell you. Talk about take no prisoners.’

‘Offaly boys, you say?’

‘Yeah, the boss was from Banagher.’

Pete licked his lower lip, uncrossing his legs slowly. ‘Banagher.’

‘Yeah, you probably know the bloke.’

Pete swallowed. ‘Could be.’

‘Bloke called Doolin.’

‘Mylie,’ the postie breathed.

‘You know him, then?’

‘Jaysus, Mary and Joseph.’

‘Silly bugger got busted in Liverpool.’

‘I heard he was… taken.’

‘The VAT man, I spose.’

‘You don’t need to pretend with me, Mr Scully.’

‘What?’

‘We don’t want any trouble here. I mean we’re all good Catholics here, but…’

Scully looked at him. The man was pale.

‘We just want to leave all that behind us. We don’t want the Guards crawlin all over the countryside, unmarked cars, questions at all hours.’

The postman’s huge ears were red now and a sweat had formed on his brow.

‘Pete —’

‘We just want to live our lives. I’m sorry to give the wrong impression.’

‘There’s something here I’m just not getting.’

‘I have two hundred pounds here in cash, and I’m a man who can keep his mouth shut. I should have known, oh God. You turnin up like that out of the blue and wantin this house in the middle of nowhere. It was the accent, I spose. I didn’t think… yeah, with Mylie inside you’d be recruitin lads.’

‘What lads?’

‘The lads,’ said Pete, tilting his head a moment to look directly at Scully for the first time. ‘What d’ye mean, what lads? Are ye playin with me?’

Scully stood up carefully. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

Pete licked his bloodless lips. ‘You mean you don’t… before the Mother of God you’d swear you don’t know?’

‘Know what? Tell me what it is I’m supposed to know!’ Now that his blood was up and his eye wandering somewhat, Scully looked threatening to the uninitiated.