The Riders

  ‘There’s a kid here.’

  ‘Fuck em twice. I’m banned. That fucking Alex!’

  ‘You look terrible.’

  ‘Strange, you know, but I feel better every day. 1963 I came here, Scully, and I’m feeling better every day.’

  ‘Yeah, sure.’

  Max pulled himself more or less erect and looked Scully up and down. ‘Didn’t you go back to the colonies?’

  ‘Where you banned from, Max?’

  ‘The Lyko. The smug bastards. Hm, that’s a pretty girl.’

  ‘It’s my seven-year-old daughter, Max.’

  ‘Lost-looking. Like her mother.’

  ‘You’ve seen her, then.’

  Max Whelp stubbed his fag out, looked hard at Scully and laughed. Scully hauled Billie out of there and headed back down to the water.

  ‘When I was a boy on the farm,’ said Scully to the child, ‘my mum used to tell me to beware of worthless characters. I thought she was a bit hard on people, you know, being a farmer’s wife and everything, but I found out otherwise when I came here. Max is a worthless character. Don’t ever go near him.’

  Billie held his hand and was jerked into a run to keep up with his long driving strides.

  The Lyko, then. Okay, the Lyko. He didn’t mind owning up to it: the expats had always intimidated him. In their presence he felt the complete farmboy, the toolslinger, the deckhand. He looked at them sometimes and felt his knuckles drag on the ground. They were world-sodden, tired, confident, and while you were learning Greek out of a two-buck Berlitz, they were unavoidable. Before Greece, Scully had never met people with hidden money, with independent means, and they fascinated and frightened him. They were Oxford graduates, poor aristocrats, American bohemians, artists and faded lower-order celebrities whose hopes had somehow fallen away. There was a mercenary from Adelaide who he quite liked, and a defrocked priest from Montana who came down from his hilltop eyrie now and then, but the ones who worried him were the ones you saw every day without fail, the ones who staggered down to the waterfront morning after morning and stayed till the wee hours, drinking, sniping, recalling better days. They lived for the youthful influx of summer when they could mingle with the fresh and the novel, when they could whine entertainingly and fall in love, strike poses, relieve each other of the burden of old gossip. They were bright, funny, lordly, talented for the most part, and almost completely idle. To Scully they were like bookish inventions. He learned not to bristle.

  Jennifer found them engaging. She loved their backlog of stories, she envied the poets their old words, the sculptors their hands, idle or not, and the heirs their independence. She liked to swim with some of them in the afternoons, or meet them for dinner a few nights a week, and Scully went along, often as not for something to do. To Scully in private Jennifer told cynical jokes about the expats. The two of them rolled their eyes at the mention of oily Rory, the Canadian stud who wrote novels in his few daylight hours, or the two nice queers from Spain who carted a Steinway a thousand steps up to their house with a donkey and two old men. Scully knew why she liked these people. They were not boys and girls who’d followed their parents’ dreary instructions, gone to a sensible school, dated sensible boys, closed off all possibility of spontaneity and ended up as bureaucrats whose job bored them rigid and whose only act of defiance, late in their twenties, was to marry a little beneath themselves. Jennifer admired poor Alvin the gold dealer, who needed a bottle of vodka a day just to sign his own name. Alvin, she said, had class. He just refused to be browbeaten by commonsense, by the mean, the average, the sensible. She liked Lotte the destitute German princess who sublet her rooms in the summer and slept with every guest, male and female, and charged extra for services rendered. And there was Alex, who truly was a worthless bastard, who dined out on his friendship with Francis Bacon, his collaboration with Leonard Cohen, and his fling with Charmian Clift. Alex was a carbuncle, but Jennifer saw his painting talent as awesome, despite his not having squeezed more than a toothpaste tube since the early seventies.

  Scully floundered among them all, at parties on terraces high above the harbour, or picnics they took in big rolling caiques to Dokos or Palamidas down the other end of the island, but he learned to survive and he saw what pleasure it gave Jennifer. He didn’t need much to keep happy. He had the water, after all. He dived for octopus and walked the rugged hills with Billie. He had some space and plenty of sunlight, and a bit of work with Fotis the stonemason to keep his hands rough and the cupboard full. Maybe she was right, perhaps he was too easily contented.

  On the mole at the edge of the harbour, an old man pounded an octopus, throwing it down at his feet over and over again. The water tanker tied up ready to pump its load into the town reservoir. Scully strode out along the arm of the wharf to where the little tables of the Lyko stood in the sun by the water, their plastic cloths flapping benignly. Scully hesitated a moment, took a breath. Was he imagining that sudden lull in conversations out on the terrace? He hauled Billie ahead and weaved through the door, into the smoky fug of fried feta, cigarettes, coffee and fresh bread. The furniture in here was simple and occupied. He saw the faces. In such a small place, the expats became a crowd, a nation unto themselves, and they faltered in their chatter as Scully fronted the bar.

  ‘Good God!’

  Arthur Lipp twisted hugely on his stool and butted out his Havana. Scully felt the field of upturned faces.

  ‘G’day, Arthur.’

  There was a long moment of discomfort and silence. Old Lotte shoved a white cat from her table and blushed gloriously. Bertie and Rory-the-Dick smiled thinly and Alvin raised his shaking hand in greeting.

  ‘You look terrible, me little convict mate,’ said Arthur.

  Scully shrugged. Arthur rolled the dead cigar between thumb and forefinger, unnerved. A man Scully didn’t know got up and went out. At the door he seemed to hesitate and look back. Arthur pursed his mouth. The man went.

  ‘Do I look that terrible, Arthur?’

  ‘How terrible do you need to look? Have you suddenly found ambitions?’

  Scully pulled Billie up onto the stool and sat down himself with his chest against the bar.

  ‘Honestly,’ said Arthur, ‘you look bereft.’

  ‘Bereft.’

  Scully was never able to figure out exactly what it was that Arthur did. He knew the old bugger had been here on the island thirty years, that he was a London Jew who drank screwdrivers for breakfast, that he always had some mysterious project on the go, that he took calls from London and New York but never quite disclosed what business he was in. In his sixties, he was bluff, beefy, loud, evasive and tended toward the pompous. A strange, lonely man with a kindly, magisterial streak. Scully had developed a grudging regard for him. He was a bit of a character and the unofficial king of the expats. Every summer, it seemed, the old goat fell for some luscious backpacker in a halter top who took his dough and gave him the bum’s rush. He was a creature of habit. Beyond that he was unknowable.

  ‘Bereft,’ said Arthur. ‘Quite.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘She? She?’

  Scully smiled, felt Billie pressing into his side.

  ‘There’s no she,’ said Arthur. ‘The little bitch took off back to Copenhagen the last day of summer. Left her bloody diaphragm in the bathroom cupboard.’

  ‘That’s not who I meant, Arthur. You know it.’

  Everyone else went back to carefully talking at their tables. Back in the kitchen, Sofia cursed and whanged pans about. Arthur looked at him and then at Billie. A little sheen of sweat appeared on his large brow.

  ‘Come on, Arthur, let’s not piss around.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘I’ll give you a description, then. Tall, long black hair, serious suntan, long legs, as you once told me when you were smashed, Australian, practical, friendly, smart, married.’

  ‘Can’t help you.’

  Billie looked at her knees. Her fists were clenched just above them on
her jeans. Scully looked at her, saw Arthur glance down uncomfortably himself, and looked back out at the harbour through the smudged panes.

  ‘I’m sorry, old boy.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘That there should be trouble.’

  ‘Are you expecting some trouble, Arthur?’

  ‘I’m just offering my condolences, you ignoramus. Behave yourself.’

  ‘You mean –’

  ‘I don’t mean anything, Scully. I liked you as a couple, that’s all. Come up to my place for a drink later. How long are you staying?’

  ‘Everyone looks a bit shellshocked,’ said Scully loudly.

  ‘Well you’ve only just left us tearfully on the wharf a few weeks ago. We thought you were in the colonies.’

  ‘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.

  Seventeen

  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 ha
d 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.

  ‘Sofia’s trying to shut up shop, Scully.’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘It’s afternoon. She wants a rest. You’re sitting out here like yesterday’s milk.’

  ‘I fed my child.’

  Arthur sat down. ‘What the sodding hell has happened to you?’

  Scully smiled and ran his fingers through a puddle of kokkineli on the pine tabletop. ‘That’s what I’m here to find out, Arthur.’

  ‘Get back on the hydrofoil, save yourself a horrible scene.’

  ‘Now why did Rory leave in such a hurry this morning, you think?’

  ‘Because he’s vain. He was terrified you’d mar his great asset.’

  ‘Mar, now there’s a word.’

  ‘There’s a hydrofoil at six.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought Rory, though.’

  ‘Rory is a dung beetle.’

  ‘You’re quite right, no change. I don’t suppose she’s up at Lotte’s?’

  Arthur closed his eyes against him.

  ‘You’re not going to tell, then.’

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, there’s nothing I can tell you but get off this island for everybody’s sake.’

  Scully’s head pounded. Some shadow flickered at the back of his mind, something trying to get his attention, but it just wouldn’t come. He kept seeing Alex’s yellow face, his long smoky forelock.

  ‘Tell me, where’s Alex these days? It’s not like him to mar a gathering by his absence.’

  Arthur’s teeth met beneath his moustache in a click audible enough to startle Billie. A raw nerve there, to say the least.

  ‘He’s not keeping company, just at the moment.’

  ‘You’re kidding. Has the world gone mad?’

  ‘He’s up the mountain.’

  ‘Now you’re just winging it, Arthur.’