He was working up the Greek words in his mind to break it to the chattering driver, when he noticed that they’d slipped onto the new expressway heading west instead of east. He saw the sign for Patras and heard the driver gasp.
‘Patra!’
‘Patra is okay,’ said Scully, ‘Patra endakse.’
‘Patra?’
‘Yes, keep going.’
A blaring semi blasted past and the driver snatched his worry beads from the rearview mirror. They drove on as the great barren scape of the expressway unfolded. The air smelled of monoxide and pine resin. Billie slept again and Scully held his hands between his knees for the hour it took for the port city to come into view in the wan light before dawn.
Twenty-seven
SCULLY WOKE IN THE CHALKY light of afternoon. He lay still. On the bed beside him, with her back to the scabrous wall, Billie scratched in pencil on a sheet of Olympic Airways paper. Her face was taut with concentration, so like the beleaguered intensity she was born with — that expression which implied that only willpower and doggedness had gotten her out into the noise and light of the world. But now her brow was grey and green with contusions. He wanted to touch her but he daren’t. He listened to her shallow breathing, the scrape of her pencil, and after a minute or two she looked down. Her mouth moved hesitantly. She went back to her sheet of paper.
‘Drawing?’ he murmured.
She held it up. A house. A tree. A bird. The bird’s nest was huge as a sun in the branches of the tree.
‘Ireland?’
‘Heaven,’ she breathed.
He saw that her tee-shirt was on backwards. The Ripcurl tag flapped beneath her throat. He hadn’t noticed, not last night, nor all yesterday. Today it was the pharmacy — first thing. There was no excuse today.
Billie picked up another sheet of paper, the ruin of Alex’s pen- and-ink of the Rue de Seine.
‘When is a dream… kind of not a dream?’
Scully turned on his hip. He savoured the husky tone of her voice. ‘When it’s real, I guess.’
She nodded.
‘I’m sorry about all this,’ he said. ‘I had to do it. Go looking for her.’
Her face closed over like a moving sky. She went back to her sketch and he lay there flattened against his pillow.
After a long time he got up and ran her a bath. It had cost an extra ten thousand drachs not to have to share the shower down the hall. He was low on cash, but there was no question of not having a bath, not the way his mind was working at dawn. He emptied the case and found some spare dressings and some swabs. Billie ignored him. The water bored into the big enamel tub. He unbuckled his heavy diver’s watch and took it over to her.
‘Here, you can wear this in the bath.’
Billie held her arm out and he strapped it on. It ran round her wrist like a hoop. The last hole on the strap might have fitted her ankle. She twirled the dive dial. A ratcheting sound from another life.
In the bath she let him swab her wounds. She clung to the lip of the tub. Scully felt the floor cold on his knees. Her puckered gouges seemed clean, if firm. Maybe he could get an antiseptic ointment here in Patras. He had to keep the wounds closed to minimize scarring, but clean, always clean. He needed more gear. And what about tetanus? She had shots at five. He took her himself. He recalled how damned stoical she was about it. How long did a tetanus shot last? Ten years? Five? Five, surely five. And the dog. He couldn’t help worrying about the bloody dog’s papers. Were they fake? Kufos swore black and blue. Arthur said they were for real. Geez, the idea of a series of rabies shots. That would be the end of her. No, she was safe there.
He held her head cradled in his hand the way you bath a baby. She let him tilt her back into the water, her eyes trusting. He couldn’t help but think of his mother bathing his head like this the day he hitched back to the city delirious with his face smashed and bloated, the poison purple in him, the way she held his head and dabbed at his holes.
Billie lay back with the water over her ears, her hair waving like seaweed. He didn’t know why she trusted him. Maybe she knew him better than he could have imagined. Maybe she didn’t trust him at all. He washed her hair gingerly and let her soak till the water went cold. He tidied up their things and soaked stains from their clothes. He scrubbed them with soap, rinsed them several times and rolled them in towels to speed their drying.
‘We’ll get you a hat today,’ he said brightly. ‘Till your hair grows out at the front. A Greek captain’s hat, what d’you think?’
She lay on the bed, head tilted back, mouthing the words of a song he didn’t know. He hung their clothes in the open window and stood watching her a long time.
• • •
THE SUN WAS FIRMLY ON their backs as they climbed the wide steps to the kastro above the town, Billie with her new hat covering the worst patches, Scully impassive behind his sunglasses. The walls of the old town were heavy and worn, reverberating with the sound of mopeds as young people darted through the narrow streets.
They sat and ate tsipoures at a small place with the sun on their legs and the sea below. Neither said much. The fish was good and Scully had a half-bottle of the same brand of rosé he’d drunk with Alex. The taverna terrace was all but empty.
A woman alone at the next table smiled at Billie and made a face. Billie looked at her plate for a moment, but looked up again and poked her tongue out. Scully put down his glass.
‘What happened to your face, darling?’ the woman asked in English.
Billie pulled the hat lower. Scully looked at the stranger a moment and saw a straw hat, mirror glasses, black bobbed hair and a sleeveless dress the colour of watermelon. There was an ouzo on her table, a jug of water and a manila envelope.
‘I got bit by a dog,’ said Billie.
‘Oh my God, you poor lamb.’
Scully smiled perfunctorily and went back to his fish. A tiny germ of pique lit up in him.
‘Let me see,’ said the woman.
Billie tilted back her hat and exposed the swellings, the shaved patches and blue-yellow bruises.
The woman clucked and lit a cigarette. Her skin was white and Scully saw immediately the bruising on her upper arm and wrist. She smiled as if in acknowledgement, in collusion somehow. It made him want to leave.
‘And what became of the dog?’
‘Beg your pardon?’
‘What happened to the dog, darling?’
‘It got killed.’
‘Very good.’
‘Beaten to death with a bottle of brandy,’ said Scully without warmth.
‘Bravo.’
‘Poor dog,’ said Billie.’
‘Oh, no, your father did well.’
‘Her father didn’t do it,’ said Scully.
‘You are not the father?’
‘I didn’t kill the dog.’
Scully saw himself — mouth open — in her sunglasses. It wasn’t a happy sight. Pale. Hostile. Guilty. Blinking. Below his reflection was her too-wide mouth, a smear of lipstick on her teeth and a cigarette.
‘Eat up, Billie,’ he said, turning to his meal.
There were ships leaving the harbour now, blowing columns on the breeze. The Adriatic was the colour of chrome.
‘I’m sorry,’ said the woman. ‘I’ve forgotten my manners since the church this morning. They have Saint Andrew’s head there. It disturbed me. He was the one who first signed an X for a kiss, did you know? At the bottom of letters. How many times I have done that. They crucified him on an X. Especially. It upset me.’