The Riders

  ‘Billie?’

  She grabbed the money and tugged at him. He smiled. It was a look you wanted to Ajax off his face with a wire brush. She pulled him back from the counter to the rear where old people argued over their maps and kicked their luggage.

  ‘Just let me read it again,’ he said vaguely, but she snatched it from him and pressed it flat on a low table.

  SCULLY. MEET TUILERIES FOUNTAIN NOON DECEMBER 23. COME ALONE. WILL EXPLAIN. JENNIFER.

  It was hard to breathe, looking at it. Not even the bit about him going alone. Just the idea, like a rock falling from the sky. The wickedness of it. It made Billie’s chest hurt, as if she’d gulped onion soup so hot it was cooking her gizzards.

  ‘She shouldn’t be allowed,’ she whispered.

  The Tuileries. Paris. The part near the English bookshop. All the white gravel. Where she collected chestnuts and made a bag out of her scarf. Paris. It wasn’t fair.

  Her mother.

  Questions hung like shadows behind Scully’s head. His thoughts went everywhere and no place. Blasts, flickers, comets of thought. A miscarriage, a bleed contained. Missed calls and telegrams. Had she wired every Amex office in Europe to find him? Was she frightened and desperate, circumstances piling up, fear taking her whole body? Could she perhaps believe for a moment that he mightn’t come? That he’d passed a point somehow. Oh God, was she feeling pain and panic like him, aching even in sleep for a break in the smothering static, simply not knowing? Chasing them? How little had they missed each other by? How would they find the distance to laugh about this later, at the comic weirdness of it, taking for granted the great terrifying leaps they’d come to so casually make from time zones and continents, seasons, languages, spaces. You forget so quickly the teetering bloody peril of movement, of travel. The lifting of your feet from the earth.

  He flickered on in the wake of his own mind. A jilting, maybe. A thing, an attachment come unstuck. A mistake, a human fuck- up of the heart she’d suddenly seen. In ten days? Or some medical thing, like a blood test, an x-ray she couldn’t bring herself to tell about until now. In Ireland he was so cut off, so bloody preoccupied with physical, urgent things, and his own sad-sack loneliness, for pity’s sake. He wasn’t paying enough attention. Should have called every second day, kept up with progress. Some terrible family thing maybe she’d kept from him all these years for his own sake. Or some . . . some development, some new coming to terms, some change of heart, some Road-to-Damascus experience, as the Salvos called it. Religion even. Or Art. Some blinding light, some stroke of luck or genius or force – who knows – even a simple, mawkish explanation would do him. A scalding blast of hatred. News of another man, a whole new life – he really felt he didn’t care, that he could take it between the eyes. Because all he could hold in the spaces of his brain for longer than a second was her standing there in boots and a coat, her scarf like an animal round her neck. There on the arid geometry of the Tuileries. Bare trees, low sky. And only steaming breath between them.

  He looked up to see Billie press out through the glass doors. He snatched up the telegram and surged out into the street after her.

  ‘Billie!’

  She was doll-like, her hands slack at her sides as she stumped along the cobbles, ankles tilting madly in her riding boots. The street was heady with coffee and cigar smoke.

  He drew up beside her, laid a hand on her shoulder. She wrenched aside and kept walking.

  ‘Billie.’

  What if she wants me? Billie thought. You only get one mother.

  ‘Billie, stop. What about the doctor?’

  ‘I’ll scream,’ she said hoarsely. ‘If you touch me, if you talk to me I’ll scream and police’ll get me. They’ll take me off you.’

  He stood there, stunned. Cars and cobbles shone in a drizzle he hadn’t even noticed. She wiped her face on the dewy arm of her jacket and with a sobering visible force of will she straightened her back and pulled out the wad of lire he had left on the counter.

  ‘Just don’t talk,’ she whispered.

  And they said not a word between them all through the streets to the hotel and the station and the night train to Paris.

  Thirty-four

  SCULLY PROPPED HIMSELF UP in his bunk to watch the lights of the Italian Riviera peel by. Boats were stranded stars out in the low darkness. Tunnels tipped him into roaring space and gave him gooseflesh. He couldn’t see beaches but in the unlit gaps, in places no steel or concrete would fit, he sensed them out there. Palm-lined boulevards, stretches of sand. Breaking waves.

  He recalled that weekend at St Malo in Brittany, the sight of a beach after so long landlocked in London and Paris. The wind off the channel was vile. The sand was ribbed by the outgone tide. It was so strand-like, so strange. In boots and coats the four of them belted up the shoreline, running in the wind, beneath the medieval ramparts of the old city. You could imagine Crusaders on this beach as easily as Nazi soldiers. Protected by a tidal spit, a fortress stood out in the sea as an advance guard. It wasn’t much of a sea but it sharpened his homesickness all the same. Inside the rampart walls overlooking the channel, built into their very cavities, was a labyrinth of marine aquariums, a discovery that delighted him. While the other three charged on through, gasping and nudging on ahead with their girlish voices reverberating in the subterranean dankness, Scully lingered at every tank, studying fish he did not recognize.

  It was a good weekend, a relief from Paris. Of all their Parisian friends Dominique was the one Scully came closest to relaxing with. There was no sexual brittleness between her and him, no vast cultural gap. She carried her Leica everywhere, that weekend. Along the waterfront, in the strange old cemetery, in cafés and wintry streets. In the deserted hotel they played pool downstairs and drank hot chocolate and calvados. The sound of the shutter clunking away. Pool balls socking into cushions. The channel wind outside. And sea.

  Scully opened the train window and felt the frigid blast on his cheeks.

  Paris. This time he’d get the best of the bloody place. This time he was free, just passing through. And he wasn’t as green as he used to be. No pouting landlords to deal with, no scaly ringworm ceilings of the rich and tightarsed, no looks down the Gallic nose that he’d once had to take humbly, thinking of payday. The drudgery and anxiety of illegal work was gone – nights lying awake stinking of turps with fists like cracked bricks. This time he’d kiss no bums. No apologies for his hideous French or his hopeless clothes. No reason why he couldn’t enjoy himself. This time he was taking no prisoners.

  He slid the window back down and felt the pleasant numbness of his face. There was no fear tonight, just a wild anticipation. Anything was better than not knowing.

  • • •

  BILLIE WRUNG THE BLANKET AT her chest as the black tunnel of night blasted by her head. Look at him tonight, like Quasimodo up in the bells. That smiley shine on his face reflected in the glass. His knees up. Like the hunchback kicking the bells, right inside himself, setting bells going that he can’t hear. She pulled the bedclothes up over her head and smelt the sourness of her breath. The train lurched and bucked. It felt like it wanted to leave the rails. Right there with the sheet between her teeth and the blanket like a fuggy tent above her head, Billie prayed for an angel, for a whirlwind, a fire, a giant crack in the world that might save them from tomorrow, from the other side of the cloud.

  • • •

  IN THE ZIRCON GLARE OF Indian Ocean water – reef water, bombora water, shark water – Scully saw a furrow. He paused at the gunwhale stinking of mackerel blood and running sweat. He peered. A wake, a flat subsurface trail that made him think of dolphins. But this swimmer had limbs. He saw it now – the outline of legs, arms, a kelp fan of hair – and she surfaced beneath him in the clear shade of the boat, naked and slick, breasts engorged, belly huge. Jennifer. Laughing, calling, buoyant. He didn’t even hesitate. He went over the side in his sea-boots and heavy apron, the gloves greedily sucking water at his elbows, and he sank lik
e a ballasted pot, roaring down in a trail of bubbles to the hairy, livid base of the reef where Billie waited smiling, her face ragged from sharks, her body breaking up and the shadow of the swimmer on the surface passing over like the angel of death.

  Thirty-five

  WITH THE HEATER BLOWING ITSELF into a useless fit and his hands stiff on the wheel, Peter Keneally pulls in off the icy road with the mail of the Republic sliding about behind him. He kills the motor in front of Binchy’s Bothy, and heaves himself out. It’s no damned colder out there. Jaysus, the sky is opaque as frozen ditchwater and the little house stands silent beneath it on the hill. Birds wheel and jockey down at that godawful pile of a castle and cloud spills down from the humpbacked mountains.

  The postman unlocks the heavy green door and watches it heel back with a murmur. He’s been wanting to do this for a week now, be in Scully’s house alone. A smell of fresh mildew. Detergent. Paint and putty. The wee curtains all drawn, the womanly things here and there on sills and shelves. He sets a fire in the grate and lights it, goes prowling, hearing his big ugly boots on the boards and the stair.

  The little bed, torn open and left. Some books. Madeline, The Cat in the Hat, Where the Wild Things Are, Tin-tin, a big Bible with pictures. The fresh paint on the walls. A whiff of smoke from a chimney crack somewhere. And the big bed all rumpled and strewn with toiletries and clothes dragged out in a hurry. There are books here too. The World According to Garp, for Godsake. Slaughterhouse Five, Monkey Grip. Newspapers, hardware catalogues.

  Peter sits on the bed and uncaps his pint of John Jameson. The whiskey goes down like a pound of rusty nails. His heartbeat is up, being in this house. It has the strange fresh feeling of the new. It doesn’t look Irish anymore. The nicely made bookshelf beside the bed, the sanded chairs, the bright rug thrown across the floor. The house of a man who knows a few things, good with his hands and thoughtful. A careful man, and thorough, able to cook and do all these womanly things. A fella with books by his bed and stories of Paris and the red desert and huge blinking fish. A man with a child, no less. Yes, he envies old Scully, no way round it. All that coming and going. Even this little house now – he envies him for what he saw in it.

  The postman gets up and opens a few drawers. He touches shirts and pencils, picks up a photograph of a girl with coal black hair and a ghost’s still face. The sky is blue behind her. His mind goes blank just looking at her, and he returns the photo to the drawer and sits back on the bed to look at his boots.

  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.

  IV

  Well I loved too much

  And by such and such

  Is happiness thrown away . . .

  ‘Raglan Road’

  Thirty-six

  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. ‘Y
ou 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.’