V
On a quiet street where old ghosts meet
I see her walk away from me
So hurriedly my reason must allow
That I have wooed not as I should
A creature made of clay. .
Forty-six
WITH HIS HEAD BACK and his mouth open like a clown you put balls into, Scully snored and sprawled across the seats stinking of train stations and fire and cement and the long, horrible night. There’d been so many rotten nights for Billie, it was all rotten almost as far back as she could remember, but last night was the worst. Last night he really was the Hunchback, no pretending about it. Like a hurt animal, he was, frightened and scary, almost setting fire to that lady’s hair and falling over in church with the priest like an angry king up there in his robes. She got him out of there real fast, before people could do anything to him. It was terrible to see, him falling all over like a killed bull trying to lie down and die. He was so heavy and crying and awful that it hurt in her heart and she knew even then that only she could save him.
She swallowed her pill without water. It wormed down her neck as if it was alive. Her hands felt gritty and she needed a glass of milk or a little bottle of jus du pommes, the kind with hips that reminded her of Granma Scully. Her face didn’t hurt but her eyes were sore from staying awake and keeping watch.
There weren’t too many people in the carriage. Some men, some women, no families. Most of them looked like her Scully, as if they’d slept in a train station on Christmas Eve. She could tell they had no roast lunch to go home to, no presents waiting to be opened, no dollar coins hiding in the pudding, no afternoon at the beach, no party hats, no box of macadamia nuts to scoff on till they got crook. Billie didn’t care about all that, herself. She was a bit shocked not to care, but she had a job now. Looking around the train she bet half these people got on this morning just for something to do, somewhere to be that wasn’t Paris.
She looked at the knees of her new jeans and thought about Irma. She felt bad about her. Irma wasn’t a real grown up. She was little inside, but her heart was big. One day Scully would see that. Irma wasn’t a statue. And she would come looking again, she’d find them. She was just like Scully. Maybe that’s why Billie liked her. Yes, she’d find them and Billie wouldn’t mind at all. All anyone needed was a good heart.
Billie’s head ached. She rested it on the seat in front where some doodlehead had burned two holes with a cigarette. The sound of bells still went around in her head. That and him shouting and crying in the Metro tunnels. Paris exploding with bells. Even underground you could hear the bells in all the churches. Him lying across plastic chairs and on the floor in the Gare de l’Est while all those crazy people ran in the tunnels and crashed trolleys and busted bottles. And the old men sleeping in hot puddles and the sleeping bags rolled against the tile walls. Like under the bridges, it was. Paris was pretty on top and hollow underneath. Underground everyone was dirty and tired and lost. They weren’t going anywhere. They were just waiting for the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame, the whole town, to fall in on them.
She picked up the last piece of her baguette and munched on it. No one in the carriage said anything. It rocked quietly, thumping on the rails. Rain streaked the windows. She needed to go to the toilet, so she put the tablet bottle back in her pack and took it up the aisle to the hissing glass doors.
In the toilet she listened to the roar of the tracks and felt the cold air spanking at her bum. A hopeless flap of light came in the little window and made her think of her bedroom in Fremantle. The big, big window that looked out on the boats. All the straight trees, the Norfolk pines, like arrows by the water. And the sun on the wall of her room, the block of sun with all the tiny flying things in it. When she was little she thought they were the souls of dead insects, still buzzing in the light. The wooden wall. The bare floor with little trucks parked on it and bears asleep in rows. No use thinking of it. It was all gone. There was a room in that little dolls’ house Scully had made in Ireland. And out the window a castle. And a paddock for a horse. It was all in a fog — that whole day was in a fog and she was glad, but fog always rises, she knew that. One day it would be clear, even the parts she didn’t want to see. Even the airport. Even that.
In the toilet mirror she looked dirty, like a gypsy but not so pretty.
She soaped up and cleaned her hands and face and clawed her hair back with her fingers. She was still glad she looked like Scully. He wasn’t pretty either, but pretty people weren’t the kind you need. Pretty people saw themselves in the mirror and were either too happy or too sad. People like Billie just shrugged and didn’t care. She didn’t want to turn into anyone pretty. Anyway, she had scars now, you only had to look.
Billie wet a paper towel and went back down the carriage with it. Scully had four seats now; his boots and legs were across the aisle on hers. His baggy jeans were stained and smelly, and stuff rode up in his pockets.
She stood there poised a moment, the puddles of land slipping by, before she reached into his pocket and eased out the fold of money. She left the coins right down against his leg. This was more money than they had before, much more. She slipped it into her jacket thoughtfully and took up the wet paper towel to scrub him down. He moaned and turned his head, but didn’t wake, not even when she got to his hands. When she finished there were little balls of paper on him here and there but he looked better. Billie stuffed the grey pulp into the ashtray and sat across the aisle from him with the pack on the seat beside her as she looked through their passports, at their old faces, their big watermelon smiles. She counted the money again — five one- hundred francs — and stowed it in her jacket and fell quickly to sleep as Belgium trolled by and by and by without her.
• • •
THROUGH THE STRANGE, neat ornamental suburbs of Amsterdam Scully rested his head against the shuddering glass and felt Billie patting at him like a mother at a schoolboy. The headache had gone ballistic this past half-hour, so frightful that the beating glass made it no worse. His throat, raw with puking, felt like a PVC pipe lately introduced into his body and he smelled like a public toilet. The other poor bastards in the carriage looked ready to climb onto the return train the moment they pulled in. The deadly power of Christmas.
He felt in his pockets for something to chew and came up with change in four currencies.
‘I took the money,’ said Billie across the aisle before it really registered.
‘You? Why?’
She shrugged. ‘I’m scared.’
‘Of me?’
Billie looked at her boots.
‘You’ll need to change it into guilders, then. Dutch money. This is Holland.’