Today I went to Bathers Beach with Granma and now I am thinking about the convicts. They must of thought God forgot them. Like they fell off the world. When we went to London I was five. I felt like a convict, like it was too different for me. But I was only a kid. Granma says the tailer are good now. I can tie a blood knot, so there. Don’t fall off the world, Scully. Do not forget about me, that is BILLIE ANN SCULLY.
(all for one!)
And one for all, thought Scully. The house was quiet but for the mild expirations of the turf fire. Scully looked at the postmark and felt raw and unsettled. What a kid. She put the wind up him, sometimes.
He could see her now, the way she was the day they bought this place. Reading that old comic. She had all his old Classics Illustrated in a cracked gladstone bag from the farm. She had them all. Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, The Count of Monte Cristo. Yes, he saw her lolling back in that shitheap rented VW with her absolute favourite, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, with its gaudy pictures and forests of exclamation marks. Her lips moving as she snuffled at a bag of Tato chips, humming some Paul Simon song. Her hair bouncing, wide mouth rimmed with salt. The laces of her shoes undone.
On that strange day, when Jennifer got out and looked at the bothy, they exchanged looks, him and Billie, and he couldn’t tell what it meant. Mutual doubt, perhaps. And even when he’d been won over by Jennifer’s pleading, her infectious excitement and happiness, Billie remained doubtful. He remembered that now. That and how resistant she was at the airport. Crying at the departure gate, tugged down the hall by her mother who looked simply serene. That was the only word for it — serene. Being pregnant maybe, or being decided. The afterglow. Black hair glossing out behind her. Arms swinging like a woman content and on course at last, relaxed the way she had never been before. Yes, her features serene but indistinct even now. And Billie like a sea anchor, dragging all the way to the plane.
• • •
BY THE END OF THE next day, Scully had himself a connected, waterless toilet. On the barn wall beside it he had taped his poster: JOH GOES! He filled the cistern with a bucket and flushed it, hearing the water run away downhill. He laid planks on blocks between house and barn for a bridge across the mud. Pete stood by with a wry grin.
‘Pumpin out the bilges, it’ll be.’
‘Come in and have a drink, you cheeky bastard.’
The north wind rattled the panes of the Donegal windows at their backs and the chimney snored beside them as they drank their pints of Harp. The room was warm and humid with simmering stew.
‘You think your gals’ll take to this place, Scully?’
‘Well, I don’t think Jennifer’ll need convincing.’
‘How old is that little one?’
‘Billie? Seven, seven and a half.’
‘A grand life for her here. You can bring her into Birr to play with Con’s.’
The very mention of Conor Keneally caused Scully to go stiff with irritation.
‘And there’s a school bus by here to Coolderry. Nice little school.’
‘She’s not a Catholic you know.’
‘Aw, they don’t give a toss. And anyway, she might just become one. A little bit of civilization never hurt.’
Scully laughed. The thought of them trying to ‘civilize’ Billie! But they’d learn, and they’d like her. The Irish and her, they’d get on. They liked a bit of spirit, didn’t they?
It was dark outside now and rain fell, light at first and then in roaring sheets. The fire hissed.
‘You’re a lucky man to have a child,’ said Pete staring into the fire.
‘Yes,’ he said with his whole being. ‘Yes. It’s a surprise, you know, nothing prepares you for it. Nothing better ever happened to me. Funny, you know, but I’m so bloody grateful for it. To Jennifer, to God.’ He laughed self consciously. ‘You see, this stuff used to be automatic, you know, natural. Women aren’t so keen to have them anymore, not where I come from, anyway. They’ve got other fish to fry, which is fair enough. But they don’t realize, sometimes, what they’re missing, or what they’re withholding, you know? The power they have. I don’t know if Billie was an accident or not. I thought she was. It’s hard to tell, you see, with people. So I’m grateful, that’s the truth of it.’ Scully blushed. Yes. That was why he dressed her so meticulously when she was small, why he worried too much about seatbelts, why he infuriated the kid with lectures about tooth decay. It wasn’t like him, but she wasn’t to know. It was her, the fact of her. And when she fell from a bike or a tree she came running to him. It shamed him in front of Jennifer, the way Billie ran to him first. Did Jennifer feel what his own father must have felt, being the second parent? Maybe he just took it all too seriously. Perhaps other people didn’t feel these things.
‘You want some of your own, someday, then?’
‘Oh, I could imagine it,’ said Pete, refilling his glass and resting his boot on the hearth. ‘There’s just the little problem of matrimony, Scully. You know, if I wanted trouble, I’d move to Ulster. I like comin and goin as I fancy. And I have Con’s own when the urge hits me.’
Pete watched as Scully got up and lit his three candles at the sill. Both of them stared at the twitching candle-flame and the reflection it threw along the panes.
‘Did you ever come close?’ Scully asked. ‘To marriage.’
‘Aw, once. But I was young. There’s no point goin back on it. All the adventures are ahead of you, not behind. You got to go and find em. And I might say,’ he said with a mischievous cast in his eyes, ‘I believe in deliverin em now and then, too. You’ve been godly patient with my brother.’
‘Pete, we don’t —’
‘No, no, I thank ye for your understandin on this.’
‘Look —’
‘Can you meet me in Birr tomorrow mornin early, say seven-thirty?’
‘Sure. Why?’
‘Power corrupts, you know, but without it, you can neither cook toast nor take a shit. Seven-thirty.’
• • •
THE STREETS OF BIRR WERE almost light at seven-thirty next morning and its houses, shoulder to shoulder in the misty square, were grey and stirring with the shriek of kettles and the scuffle of dogs. Scully saw the van in the rain-slick high street and pulled in beside it as Pete climbed out grimly waving.
Pete led them to the little green doorway at the side of a shopfront. Pete knocked and blew on his hands.
A jaded and fearful woman let them in wordlessly.
‘Mornin, Maeve.’
‘He’ll not be up for hours, Peter. Don’t even bother yourself.’
‘This is Fred Scully from out at the Leap.’
‘Oh, yes, the Australian,’ she smiled wanly.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Scully, smelling boiled cabbage, cigarette smoke, turf and bacon fat.
‘Peter talks about you all day.’
‘Oh. I hope it’s not all bad,’ he said limply.
‘Ready, Scully?’
‘Ready for what?’ said Maeve Keneally.
Scully felt faint from the stuffiness and desperation of this house. It seemed no window had been opened here for generations.
‘Just keep the front door open, Maeve.’