Billie looked at the buffet bar, the procession of travellers with red plastic trays in hand.
‘Billie, I’ve got a big problem. I don’t know what’s happening. I expected two people and only one came.’
Billie chewed, her eyes meeting his for a moment before she looked down at her juice.
‘Did Mum get hurt or sick or something at the airport in London?’
Billie chewed.
‘Was there a problem with the bags?’
Shit, he thought, maybe it was Customs… but she didn’t carry anything silly, unless there was some mistake, some mix-up. And would she go through Customs in London, or would she just have been in transit there? Scully held his head.
‘Was she on the plane with you from Perth? She must have been. She had to be. Billie, you gotta help me. Can you help me?’
Scully looked at her and knew that whatever it was, it wasn’t small, not when you saw the terrible stillness of her face. She was a chatterbox, you couldn’t shut her up usually, and she could handle a small hitch, ride out a bit of a complication with some showy bravery, but this.
‘Tell me when you can, eh?’
Billie’s eyes glazed a moment, as though she might cry, but she did not cry. He held her hand, touched her hair, saw his hands shaking.
• • •
AT THE BRITISH AIRWAYS COUNTER, Scully tried to cajole Jennifer’s name from the passenger list, but the suits were having none of it.
‘I’m afraid it contravenes security regulations, sir.’
‘I’m her husband, and this is her daughter. What security?’
‘I don’t make the rules, sir. It lands in a moment. Then you’ll see for yourself.’
‘Thanks for shit.’
Scully dragged Billie over to the Aer Lingus counter where he moved into lower gear and hoisted the child onto his hip.
‘I know it’s agin the rules and all, mate,’ he said to a soft-faced fellow with sad eyes, ‘but we’ve been waiting for our mum, haven’t we, love, and she wasn’t on the flight a while ago from London and…’
‘Aw, sir, it’s awful for you, I know, but they’s the rules.’
‘Well, I’m just thinking should I wait here all day, or what d’you think? The little girl’s just put in twenty hours from Australia and you can see how tired she is. I just drove all the way in from County Offaly, and if I go back and my wife arrives… and the little girl’s so keen to see her mother… I mean, what harm could it do to know if she’s coming or not?’
Scully saw the genuine apology in the first reluctant shake of the head and pounced.
‘Listen, why don’t I give you her name? If she’s not there you just turn away. Any sign of Mrs J. Scully on a BA flight to Ireland today, orright?’
The Aer Lingus man sighed. Oh, thank God for the hearts of the Irish, Scully thought. The keys on the console rattled. Scully clung to Billie, sweating again.
‘No.’
‘You don’t even have to say anything, just nod or shake your head.’
‘No, I mean she’s not listed, today, yesterday or tomorrow. I’m sorry sir.’
Scully felt it go down like a swallowed ice cube, shrivelling his guts. ‘Thanks anyway, mate. Is there a Qantas office in Ireland?’
‘Doubt it, sir. They don’t fly here.’
‘Of course.’
‘Goodbye now, sir.’
• • •
SCULLY WAITED TILL THE LAST exhausted bugger staggered off the British flight and the last trolley heaved into the hall before gathering Billie’s case and leading her towards the exit. That was it.
‘D’you want to go to the toilet first, love?’
Billie let go his hand and veered for the Ladies’. Scully stood there as the door swung shut. He held the tartan case and faced the wall. He could smell Jennifer on the bag and even on his neck, and how it hurt to smell it. One of his legs began to shake independently of the rest of his body. He stood alone in the milling crowd, staring at the door that said Ladies, until the panic crept on him like a spasm of nausea. His little girl was in there alone, in an airport in a foreign country. Her mother was lost and he was standing out here trustingly like an eejit. He all but knocked down the shrieking women as he barged through the door and went madly among the cubicles calling her name.
Fourteen
ALL THE WAY BACK UP the Dublin road, though the rain had stopped and the wind had eased, the land looked flattened and every human monument grey as bathwater. It was a litany of ditches and slurry-smears, wracks and failures. The men he saw in the streets of grimy towns were coarse-faced idiots and the sky above them a smothering blanket about to fall. Scully clawed the wheel. He tried to think of things he could say, reassuring things, but it was all he could do not to break out screaming and plough them both deep into the fields of the Republic. The small girl sat with her feet not touching the floor, saying nothing for miles, until, mercifully, she went to sleep.
• • •
SCULLY POURED COAL INTO THE grate and heard it tumble and hiss. The bothy was warm and momentarily heartening. He went out into the afternoon chill to bring Billie in from the Transit. She was tilted back awkwardly, mouth agape, and she merely stirred when he murmured in her ear and touched her, so he unbuckled her belt, took her in his arms and carried her upstairs to her new room. It was cool up there, but the stones of the chimney kept it from being cold. As she lay on her bed he unlaced her boots and slipped them off. He eased her from her jacket and slid her in under the covers, where, on the pillow, she seemed to find new ease and the faintest beginning of a smile came briefly to her face.
At the end of the bed, he unzipped her case and pulled out the small bald and one-legged koala that was her lasting vice. He held it to his face and smelled the life that he knew. He tucked it in beside her and went downstairs.
He set the iron kettle over the fire and sat at the table with his hands flat before him. My wife has sent my child on alone. No message, no note, no warning. Yet. It’s Sunday, so no telegrams. There’ll be a message tomorrow. It’s no use panicking or getting bloody self-righteous about it. You’re worried, you’re disappointed, but just show a bit of grit here, Scully. Tomorrow Pete’ll bring a telegram and we’ll all laugh like mad bastards about this.
• • •
THE SUN WAS GONE BEFORE four o’clock. Scully found himself out behind the barn in a strange cold stillness looking at the great pile of refuse he’d hauled out there on his first day. The rain had battered all Binchy’s chattels down into a slag heap, a formless blotch here at his feet. In the spring, he decided, he’d dig up this bit of ground and plant leeks and cabbage, and make something of it. Oh, there were things to be done, alright. He just had to get through tonight and the rest of his life would proceed.
The light from his kitchen window ribboned out onto the field. Scully’s nose ran and his chest ached. He told himself it was just the cold, only the cold. A cow bawled down the hill in some miry shed somewhere, and Scully watched, marvelled, really, as his breath rose white and free on the calm evening air.
• • •
THAT NIGHT SCULLY KEPT A vigil of sorts. It was doubly lonely sitting in the bothy knowing Billie slept upstairs remote from him in whatever dream it was that had hold of her. Poor little bastard, what must she be feeling?
He unpacked all her clothes and folded them carefully. Her little dresser smelled of the Baltic, of the wax of aunts and calm living. Downstairs he looked through her things, her Peter Pan colouring book, her labelled pencils, the Roald Dahl paperbacks. He put aside her tiny R.M. Williams boots and brushed some nugget into them. In the kitchen the sound of the polishing brush had the comfortless rhythm of a farm bore. On the table he opened her folder of documentation. Birth Certificate, 8 July 1980, Fremantle Hospital. Yes, the wee hours. He went home that morning with the sound of off-season diesels thrumming in the marina. Yellow vaccination folder. School reports, one in French, the other in Greek. A single swimming certificate. Three spare passport shots — the perky smile, the mad Scully curls. Taken in the chemist’s on Market Street. A creased snapshot of her standing at the mouth of the whalers’ tunnel at Bathers Beach with some kid whose name escaped him.