Tim Winton - The Riders

‘Nice place you have here,’ Irma said, slumping against the banister. ‘Is this a spiral staircase or am I just pissed?’

‘Both,’ said Scully looking up at her firm backside and giving her a shove onwards that caused her to shriek and giggle. He was drunk himself but he could still see the whole night ahead.

‘How many more floors?’

‘Next one.’

Irma tipped on her little boots and rested against the wallpaper. Hair fell into her eyes and she tilted her head back to clear it, exposing her long neck, white and marked.

‘Help me, Scully.’

‘Come on, you can make it another flight.’

‘Help me.’

Scully joined her on the step and she opened her eyes but did not look at him. She grabbed his lapel.

‘Can’t you help me, Scully?’

‘You want me to carry you.’

She pulled him to her and looked into his face. She kissed him with her eyes open while her tongue travelled across his teeth, his lips, his chin. Scully felt her pelvis rock into his and he reached behind with one hand and pulled her tighter, feeling her butt clench.

‘It’s what you want,’ she said. ‘To help me.’

Scully picked her up and staggered on with her sucking his neck and pulling at his sweater. Up the stairwell from the ground floor came the screech of brakes and a roaring cheer as somebody’s bus arrived. Scully saw the open door and steadied.

‘And I’ll help you, Scully.’

He couldn’t bring himself to answer, but he knew she was right.

• • •

BILLIE FELL ASLEEP WITH HER shoes on and her backpack still hanging from one arm. Scully lowered Irma into a chair and knelt down to make the kid comfortable. He pulled off her boots, unhooked the pack and her jacket, and rolled her under the covers. He turned out the light and left the bathroom door ajar. The drapes lay open to the soft sandstone light of the city. He leaned his head against the window to get his breath back. Behind him, Irma fished in her bag for a bottle and sighed.

‘Where are you staying?’ he murmured. ‘Where’s your stuff?’

‘Here.’

He turned and saw her holding the bottle out to him. He shook his head. He walked past her and locked the door. He felt the bottle pressed into the small of his back and he turned to where she sat smiling blearily up at him. Irma placed a heel on his thigh. It bit into his skin. He looked down her leg and then back at the sleeping child. Irma tilted the bottle and drank deeply. He watched her, saw her pale neck moving in the dimness.

He took hold of her ankle and she planted the other boot on his free thigh. He moved his hands down her legs. Her tights crackled with static and he was surprised at the softness of her flesh as he held her calves. He held tight to keep his hands from shaking. Weeks of pent-up frustration smoked in him. He watched her pull down her tights and pants, still drinking from the bottle.

‘Billie,’ he whispered hoarsely.

‘Billie’s no longer the point.’

Her skin was ivory in the dark. The bottle fell and Scully lost his clear, hard sight of the night and yanked her to the floor where she grabbed at his belt and ricked up her skirt till her boots ground at the back of his legs. He slid into her with her breasts in his hands and his knees burning on the carpet. Her breath was volatile. It filled his mouth.

‘You need me, don’t you,’ she gasped.

‘Shh.’

He covered her mouth with his hand and felt her tongue between his fingers and then her teeth in his palm and her nails in his buttocks. She was soft to touch, too soft, like something overripe, but he clung to her knowing she was right. He needed her in more ways than he could make plain to anyone. He felt his desperation winding into hers, his lies into hers, his gratitude, his shame, the shocking current that surged down his spine.

NEAR MIDNIGHT SCULLY STOOD dressed in the stark bathroom and emptied Irma’s shoulder bag into the sink. Her snores carried from behind the closed door as he shuffled through dental floss, crumpled tissues, lipsticks, a notebook in scrawled German, old boarding passes, mints, tampons, a condom, a receipt from the Grand Bretagne in Athens, some fibrous strings of dope that lay like pubes against the white enamel, a spectacle case and finally a python-skin wallet.

Inside the wallet was a lock of snowy hair, an EC passport in the name of Irma Blum with a photo of an auburn-haired Irma with a wicked smile on her face, a sheaf of carelessly signed travellers’ cheques in American dollars, a Polaroid snap of a fat baby, and eight hundred francs in crisp new notes.

Scully stuffed the money into his pocket and picked up Billie’s backpack from where he’d put it on the toilet cistern. His mouth tasted of cigarette ash and his head hammered. He looked at the brassy tube of lipstick a moment, hesitated and picked it up. He pulled the cap off, wound the little crimson nub out experimentally. Then he signed the mirror. XXX. Before the idea of it sank in he dropped the tube and turned out the light.

The city glow chiselled in through the open drapes and showed Billie and Irma in deep sleep, their limbs cast about the bed before him as he crept across the room. In sleep they could have been mother and child. He crept closer. Irma’s mouth was open. The room stank of booze and dirty socks. Her arm lay across the counterpane, white and still shocking. Billie bunched up at an angle to her, fist against her own lips.

He picked up Billie’s boots and coat, stuffed them into the backpack looped over his arm, then peeled back the bedclothes a way and gathered her up. Irma snored on like a surgical patient. He held the child to him and looked down a moment upon this strange woman. He felt a twinge of tenderness and a momentary impulse to wake her, but he was heading for the creaky door even before it passed.

Out in the sudden light of the landing he laid Billie on the carpet and pulled the door to without daring to breathe. He put his ear to the door. Nothing but snores.

As he struggled to get her boots on, Billie stirred and muttered.

‘What? What?’

‘Don’t talk — shh.’

Then she opened her eyes; they widened awfully a moment and settled on him. He put a finger to his lips in warning and went back to booting her up. She sat up to receive the coat, her hair upright, her scabs livid.

‘Hop up, love. You’ll have to walk, at least till we get down to the street.’

She began to whimper. ‘I’m tired!’

‘Me too,’ he said, clamping his hand over her mouth. ‘Now shut up.’

• • •

WITHOUT LUGGAGE and with him grotesquely whistling Christmas carols with barely enough breath to get a note, Scully took Billie through the tiny lobby without arousing suspicion from the dozing concierge. Out in the street it was all Scully could do not to break into a mad run. He drank in the frigid air and saw his breath ghosting before him. That’s it, that’s all it took to desert someone, to leave a woman behind with his bag of dirty clothes, his candles, his sodden picture by poor dead Alex, the strewn presents of the drunken day and his strapping hotel bill. This was how it felt to be an empty cupboard, to know you were capable of the shittiest things.

He hoisted Billie onto his back to cross the Pont St Louis as a great barge churned below. The bells of Notre Dame began to toll midnight, plangent and mournful. They rang in the cellar of his belly. Around them the cafés roared, echoing along the shadowy buttresses of the cathedral, setting his teeth on edge.

‘Where’s Irma?’ murmured Billie, twisting her fingers in his hair.

‘Listen to the bells.’

Scully felt the child’s breath against his neck and knew he needed to eat, but he was afraid to miss the Metro at Cité by the flowermarket before the system closed down for the night.