London. It made all the sense. She’d be at Alan and Annie’s. She was having a bleed. God, it was trouble with the baby and she was stuck in… but Alan and Annie, they were saints. They’d be looking after her. Yes, pain at the airport, a cab to Crouch End.
He rang them, his fingers tangling in the stupid dial.
‘Alan?’
‘Sorry, he’s out with Ann.’
‘Who’s this?’
‘Well might I ask.’ Who was this snot with the Oxbridge lisp?
‘When will they be back?’
‘Who is this?’
‘Scully,’ he said. ‘A friend.’
‘The Australian.’
‘Listen, when will they be back?’
‘Don’t know.’
Scully hung up. It was Tuesday for Godsake. They worked at home — they never went anywhere on a Tuesday. He called back.
‘Listen, it’s me again. Have they had visitors this weekend?’
The kid at the other end paused a moment. ‘Well, I’m not sure I like the way this conversation is going.’
‘Bloody hell. Son, listen to me. I want to know if a woman called Jennifer —’
The kid hung up. Shit a brick. Who else could he call? They had friends all over Europe, but in London they had all their eggs in one basket. There was no one who knew them as well as Alan and Annie. The house was always full of waifs and strays. In London it was the only place she’d go. What could he do — call the embassy? Everyone else he knew from London was probably IRA. Sod that.
He waited. He scraped. He dialled Fremantle again. Nothing. He dragged the little address book from his pocket and called the number Pete once gave him. Nothing. Twists of paint dropped into Billie’s hair. He began to shuffle on the spot. He made a fist, pressed it against the glass. She was losing the baby and he was in some frigging Irish abbatoir town, helpless.
He dialled Alan’s again.
‘Scully?’
‘Alan, thank God!’
Alan sounded startled, a little sharp even. Maybe he’d got an earful from young Jeremy Irons or whoever.
‘How’s Ireland?’
‘Ireland?’
‘We’re dying to come out and see the place. Maybe we can pretend to be Aussies. You know, improve our standing.’
‘Alan, listen, did Jennifer drop by yet?’
‘Jennifer? Are they back from Australia yet?’ Scully’s mind rolled again. He couldn’t pull it back. But Alan sounded odd.
‘Course she’s very welcome, they both are. Great about the house, eh?’
‘How, how d’you know about the house?’
‘Got a card. Is everything alright, Scully?’
‘Yeah. Yeah, it’s fine.’ Tell him, he thought. Tell him.
‘Should I expect them, you think? We can make up a bed.’
‘You wouldn’t hide anything from me, would you, mate? I mean, she’s your friend as well.’
‘What’s happening, Scully?’
Why can’t you tell him? What kind of stupid suspicious pride is it that -
‘Scully, are you alright?’
Scully listened to the hiss of the Irish Sea in the wires.
‘I thought it might be the baby,’ he murmured.
‘What baby? No one told us about a baby. Annie! Annie, get the desk phone will —’
Scully hung up. He couldn’t do it anymore. His mind was twisting. They were the only people in the world he could trust. It wasn’t London. Friggin hell, it wasn’t London.
Coins jangled out onto the floor. Billie looked up at him knowingly. She knew. He could see it, but what could he do, beat it out of her?
‘Listen sweetheart,’ he said to Billie, dropping to her level, wedging himself like a cork at the bottom of the booth. He grabbed her by the hands and looked imploringly into her shutdown face. ‘You gotta help your dad. Please, please, you gotta help me. If you can’t talk I understand, but don’t… don’t not talk because you’re angry, don’t do it to get back at me. I’m worried too. I’m so worried… I’m… Tell me, was Mum sick or anything on the plane, at the airport? Did she seem sort of strange, different somehow? Did she say anything to you, when she’d be coming, where she was going to, did she tell you to say something to me?’
Billie’s forehead creased. She clamped her eyes shut. Scully put his fingers gently on her eyelids. So tired, so frail and shell-shocked. This was a terrible thing, too terrible. He wanted to ask other things, worse things. Was there anyone else on the plane, in the airport? Had there been anyone else around these last weeks in Australia? But there were things that, once uttered, couldn’t be reigned back. He had the fear that saying more might bring some worse calamity down on his head. Once you stopped thinking of innocent possibilities, the poison seeped in, the way it was already leaching into him, the ghastly spectrum of foul maybes that got to him like the cold in the glass around him. Old Scully, who according to Jennifer, hadn’t the imagination to think the worst. Something she said once, as though neurosis was an artform. Said without bitterness, accepted with a shrug.
Scully felt himself levelling off again, going back to the likely alternatives. Did she just have cold feet? Okay, she made a mistake, it wasn’t too late to change their minds about Ireland. Maybe the sight again of their old house in Fremantle after two years had brought all their plans down around her ears. Hell, it was a whimsical idea in the first place, and plainly hers. She was embarrassed, that’s all. It could be that simple. But why this? Why the silence? Being pregnant hadn’t made her strange before. Maybe more timid than usual. Could be that. But women didn’t suddenly lose their brains with a baby on board. Could be she was biding time for a while, trying to work up courage to tell him she couldn’t go through with Ireland. All this was manageable, they could ride it out. Only it just didn’t feel right to him, none of this did. He was dangling, just hanging, dammit! What was it? Was she trying to send a message about the marriage, expressing some dissatisfaction? She wouldn’t be that cruel, surely. And then he thought of those ugly Paris nights, the rage she had when cornered. His gut churned. She could have some surprise lined up. No. Today’s mail would tell. By one o’clock Pete-the-Post would be by. And there was still time for a telegram to arrive. Do the right thing and wait. Think of Billie.
But if it wasn’t London and there was no telegram? The glass was cold against his cheek. A ragged convoy of Travellers’ vans ground slowly past with horses and donkeys in tow. He watched them all the way up the hill.
‘Let’s go to the travel agent, Bill. We’ll get you some nice brochures you can cut the pictures from.’
He crashed the booth door open, free of the cupboard air, and felt some kind of resolution settling on him. Yes, he had to do something.
• • •
THE TRAVEL AGENCY DOWN BY the river was a modest affair. It catered mostly to locals’ trips to London and Lourdes and Rome, or packages to the Costa del Sol. Scully went in fired up with smiling charm, but the agent, a small woman with flaming pink cheeks, was nervous all the same.
‘I’m just looking for flight connections, you know, good connections from London.’
‘Er, when would that be for, sir?’ the woman said, smiling gratefully when someone else walked into the little shop.
Scully was flushed and fidgety, his eye roving alarmingly in his woolly head.
‘Hm, today, yesterday, ah, about this time of year,’ he mumbled. ‘Listen, why don’t you serve this lady and toss me the book and I’ll flick through.’
Billie sat in a cane chair looking at her feet. The travel agent looked at Scully uncertainly, and passed him the thick schedule book, transferring her attention to a tall tweedy woman with a fedora and a horsey Anglo accent.