‘I don’t know much,’ said Irma. ‘I guess I feel things.’
Billie thought about this. ‘Do you think someone can love too much?’
Irma just went back to her cards with a sad little smile and said nothing.
• • •
SCULLY FLUSHED THE TOILET, pulled the lid down and sat on it. Six hours till Brindisi. Out there he could hear them tittering. Jennifer would never let herself get into a corner like this. She crossed all her T’s and dotted all her I’s. She was organized and he was a fool. Last night this woman had his wallet open and this morning she was dressing his kid. She’s moving in on you, mate, and you’re like a stunned mullet. What is she, a travelling hooker, a rich adventurer, a dipso nutcase? She murdered half a bottle of Jack Daniels last night and this morning she’s giggling, for Chrissake. Still, you had to admit she’s better sober. In the light of day she’s human. But it ate at him, the sound of his daughter chirruping away all of a sudden. After all the sullen quiet. The ache of waiting. Gabbing to a fucking stranger. This Irma. Scully put his elbows on his knees and realized that he was afraid of her and didn’t know why.
• • •
OUT ON THE DECK after their pre-digested breakfast, as Billie ran up and down between hungover Germans, Scully let Irma talk. The woman was bursting with a need to share information he didn’t want to hear.
‘He left me in Athens,’ she said.
‘No explaining people sometimes,’ he said, his irritation not quite concealed. The sea fell by in the soft light and around them bleary backpackers sipped their industrial-blend Nescafé.
‘You never really know them,’ he added as one backpacker began to blurt and gasp foully at the rail. Scully turned his back to the puker and looked unhappily at Irma’s bruises. She had them on her upper arms and around her neck and didn’t mind his noticing them.
‘I met him in Bangkok. He works there in some kind of security thing, I don’t know. Used to be in the Green Berets. Had scars all over him. He’s one of those vets who never came back from Asia. He’s not quite crazy, but, well he is a Texan. Not beautiful, but hard, you know? I liked him. This was last year. I just walked into a bar and there he was, just like in the movies. The best fuck of my life, and free! We stayed together a week.’
Scully half listened to Irma and watched Billie skipping across the aft deck. Her face was blackening now with her own bruises. She looked like a kid with leukemia.
‘So we arranged to meet in Amsterdam, last month. Had a wild time there, really, and then we sort of travelled, you know. Under the influence of various, well, substances as the Americans call them. Had a spree. My God, what a pair we were! Ended up in Athens. He left me at the Intercontinental. I was having a shit, can you believe. He packed his stuff and went. At least he paid the bill.’
‘A gentleman,’ said Scully, hearing the awful priggish note in his voice.
‘That’s where I saw her.’
‘Who?’
‘I got a shock when I saw your wallet. I mean, it was a surprise. Funny, isn’t it, that we’d all been staying together without knowing it.’
Scully looked at her. She was flushed now and nervous. She wore a quilted vest and jeans. Her eyes were hidden by sunglasses and she fingered her bruised throat absently.
‘Saw who? What are you talking about?’
‘The woman in your photograph. Your wife.’
‘You saw her?’
‘At the Intercontinental.’
Scully ran a hand through his hair, looked about momentarily. ‘My wife?’
‘The one in your wallet.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I could be wrong.’
Scully licked his lips.
‘Was she alone?’
Irma sank back a little, looking shaky now. ‘I… I don’t remember. It might have been a woman she was with.’
He looked at her and felt like spitting in her face. She’s making this up. She’s lonely, she wants a bit of mutual misery.
‘So, you and your Green Beret, blasted out of your minds, bumped into them in the lift. And you remember it clearly.’
‘In the reception, the lobby. I didn’t see you. I would have remembered you.’
‘I wasn’t there. I’ve never stayed in an Intercontinental in my life.’
Irma smiled crookedly.
‘You sound proud of it, Scully.’
‘Could be I am.’
‘The working-class hero.’
‘How would you know what class I’m from?’
‘Look at your hands, for God’s sake, and that face. You’re a brawler, Scully.’
He backed off a little, breaking into an angry sweat.
‘A man could drive a truck down your nasty streak, Irma.’
‘And back again, darling. Listen — we sound like the movies.’
Scully turned away and looked at the sea.
‘You never saw her. She was never there, and you probably weren’t either. Is this what you do, attach yourself to people? For a living?’
‘You’re frightened, Scully, thinking of all the possibilities.’
He knew now that he had to get free of her. She was like a foul wind, the whispering breath of nightmares.
‘Billie and I are going for a walk.’
‘Your things are in my cabin.’
‘You want them out.’
‘No. Just reminding you. You can’t ignore me, Scully.’
‘My friend Irma.’
She sighed. ‘Jerry Lewis, I know. You’re such a ground- breaker.’
He went over to where Billie shouted gaily down a ventilator and took her by the hand. He was shaking — he felt it show. The bloody woman was poison. She’d summed him up like a professional, hustling him. For what? Money? Company? A ticket home? She’s sick. Jennifer never even went to Greece, he knew that for a fact. Well, an educated guess. As far as he could tell. Jesus.
• • •
BUT UP IN THE BOW where the air was freshest and the passengers weakest in their illness, Scully stood at the rail and thought of what it could mean if Irma was telling the truth. Jennifer in some flash hotel room with a mini bar and a big view of the Akropolis, a terry-cloth robe and people he didn’t know about. Maybe old Pete-the-Post was right — you never really knew anybody, not even those you loved. People have shadows, secrets. Could be it’s a jaunt with a mate, a few days blowing money and ordering up room service. She’s just sold off a whole previous life back there in Fremantle, a scary thing to do, unnerving, upsetting. Maybe she just needs to blow it out of her system. Wasn’t it the sort of thing men did all the time, going off on a spree and coming home sheepish and headsore? His own father would find a bottle of Stone’s Green Ginger Wine and go off up Bluey’s Knob for a night. Feelin black, he called it. He’d come down and fess up to Mum and they’d get the Bible out and have a howl and make up. That was as rugged as it got at the Scully place, a guilty suck on the Stone’s Green Ginger and a contrite heart in the morning.
Alright. A jaunt then, say it’s true and she has a spree. So who’s the woman? He felt his fresh fortress of certainties crumbling again. A couple of days ago he was certain that Greece was a false start. And a couple before that he felt in his blood she was there. Now he didn’t know what think.
‘Scully?’
Billie tugged at him by the rail and he came back to the salt air, the sea forging and reaching beneath him.
‘Yes, mate? You cold?’
‘Irma wants to be my friend.’
‘Yeah? How d’you know?’
‘She said. She likes our hair. Yours and mine.’
‘You tell her about your mum?’ Scully’s throat constricted as he uttered it. He could not stomach the idea that a stranger might have Billie’s secret before him — he was churning at the thought.