‘Christmas Eve!’ said Irma. ‘Can you believe it?’
‘No,’ said Scully and Billie at the same time. He blushed.
They walked on a long way until her legs got tired. Irma led them into a café. She ordered apple juice for Billie and Pernod for them.
Irma pulled off her jacket and rolled up her sleeve.
‘Look.’
She had a tattoo of a knife on her white arm. The knife had flowers around it.
‘Did it hurt?’ asked Billie.
Irma laughed. She pulled a flat packet out of her pocket.
‘They’re stick-on, silly.’
Billie tipped them out on the table. One was an anchor. There was a snake. One said MOTHER but the next one was a shark.
‘Can I?’ Billie said to Scully.
He shrugged. The café was full. He looked busy again, in his head.
Scully watched Irma lick the kid’s arm wet. She looked up as she did it, deliberately engaging his gaze. Billie pressed the shark tattoo to her arm triumphantly.
‘Australian,’ said Irma gulping her pastis. ‘She chooses the shark.’
Billie held her arm up to the long mirror behind them. ‘It’s cool.’
Scully nodded. ‘Yeah. It’s clever.’
Irma raised her eyebrows innocently. He thought about Amsterdam. Irma had been in Amsterdam lately herself.
‘I have to go,’ said Billie.
‘It’s just there,’ said Scully pointing to the WC door beneath the stairs. ‘I’ll come with you.’
‘No,’ said Irma. ‘I’ll go.’
‘I’ll go myself,’ said Billie. ‘So embarrassing!’
‘Lock the door,’ said Scully.
‘What a pair you are.’
‘What’s the story, Irma?’ he said when Billie was out of earshot.
‘What story?’ She gulped the rest of her pastis and called for another.
‘This remarkable coincidence.’ The moment he opened his mouth, he started seeing it clearer. ‘Our meeting at Amex the very day I have to go in and see about my stolen card. The card somebody reported stolen. I’m thinking of the ferry, Irma. Your adventure into my luggage. You got the number then, didn’t you? What is it you want from me? I’ve got no home, no money, no wife. Are you some kind of hustler, a travelling whore?’
‘Not professionally, no.’
‘Is there an amateur league for whores?’
Irma smiled. Her cheeks flushed. Around the glass tumbler, her nails were uneven, some bitten, some long and glossy with varnish.
‘You’ve been with us since Greece, Irma. That’s a long time.’
‘Okay, I followed you.’
‘And the rest.’
‘That’s all.’
‘The Amex card. Who cancelled it, then?’
‘Alright, the card, then.’
‘And the note. You were in Florence.’
‘No, there was no note from me.’
Scully rolled his eyes.
‘What note?’ She drank greedily and licked her lips.
‘And the so-called sighting in Athens. You never saw my wife at the Intercontinental, did you?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Geez, you don’t even know when you’re lying, do you?’
‘Why would I lie, Scully?’
‘Why? Why? Why would you get my credit card stopped? Do people like you have reasons?’
Irma smiled bashfully and licked a crimson smear from her teeth. ‘People like me? You think I’m mad and just do one thing and then the next thing and then something else, don’t you? But that’s exactly what you do, Scully. It’s what you’re doing this very minute, it’s what you’ve been at all day, all this week. You follow whatever moves. We’re not that badly matched.’
Scully’s mind reeled. Was he crazy? Had he lost it so completely?
‘Are you a friend of Jennifer’s?’
‘You might ask yourself the same question, Scully.’
‘You are, aren’t you?’
‘I’ve never met her,’ she said, raising her glass at the waiter and smiling coquettishly at him.
‘Never met her? Not even at the Intercontinental?’
‘Don’t be clever. I told you, I just saw her. You’re clinging to me like… like a Greek to a wooden horse. I saw her. I’m sorry I ever told you. Honestly, can you image Jennifer and me together?’
‘What exactly do you mean by that?’ said Scully hotly.
‘Well, she’s like that’ she said squinching her index finger into a circle so that a pinhole of light showed through at the centre.
Scully held the table by the legs. ‘And you’re, you’re what?’
‘Me? I’m interesting. She’s just trying to be.’
‘Still, you’ve never met her?’
‘I’m like you, Scully. I like being who I am.’
‘Irma, just what you are is not real clear.’
‘I said who, not what. What a sadly male thought. I’m like you, Scully. A little rough around the edges. I can take it as well as dish it out. I already forgave you for bolting on me. The ferry. Remember?’
‘I’m surprised you remember.’
‘Okay, I was blasted. Listen, I like you. I like Billie. I just think I deserve another chance. I know you do.’
Scully shook his head and bit back the stream of abuse that bubbled in his throat. But he smiled despite himself. She was a phenomenon alright. And he needed her if he wanted to get to Amsterdam. Time to suck eggs.
‘You look wild, Scully, but you’re soft.’ She laughed and accepted the new pastis from the waiter.
‘Oh?’ That word again. He felt a ridiculous pang of shame at this. ‘Really?’
‘I meant tender, Scully.’
Irma put her hand on his and for an instant he liked her. She was mad, a liar, a bad dream from hell but she was flesh and blood. Just the touch of a hand, a human touch. God, he missed being wanted. The café smelled warm and friendly with its scents of onions and coffee and tobacco. He felt himself loosen a little.
‘Is it that you’re lonely, Irma? This business?’
‘I’m not lonely,’ she hissed. ‘Don’t feel sorry for me.’
Scully looked at her, the way her neck stretched back and her eyes narrowed like a snake about to strike. It cleared his head immediately.
‘Okay, Irma,’ he said, meaning it. ‘I won’t.’
‘You don’t understand simple attraction.’
Scully made a smile. ‘Well, maths was never my thing.’
Billie came back, trying not to smile as she climbed onto her chair.
‘What?’ said Scully.
‘The toilet,’ she burst out, scandalized. ‘It was just a hole in the ground!’
He looked at Irma. ‘My daughter has toilet adventures everywhere she goes. Travel with Billie — see the toilets of the world. It’s a squat, Billie. You’ve seen them all —’
‘No,’ she said. ‘No, no, that bit’s gone. Like someone’s stolen it. It really is just a hole in the ground.’
‘So what took you so long?’
‘I was trying to find the button.’
‘Here,’ he laughed. ‘Take your tablet.’
‘Let’s go shopping,’ said Irma. ‘It’s sad, the two of you on the road at Christmas.’
‘Jesus was on the road at Christmas,’ said Billie.
‘Yes,’ said Irma, flummoxed at last. ‘Yes.’
Forty-four
AFTER LUNCH IN THE CAFE it was a long noisy afternoon in the shops with Irma. She took them to Fnac and bought tapes. Ry Cooder for Scully. Hoodoo Gurus for her. At Les Halles she bought herself Ysatis and splashed it on. In a taxi she took them to Galeries Lafayette where she found the same perfume cheaper and didn’t care. She bought Scully a silk shirt there and little red dancing shoes for Billie. In another taxi they went down to the big street market past Bastille and bought lychees and bananas and oranges. There were so many people and smells you couldn’t move. Irma found a saddle in the fleamarket but Scully said no, they couldn’t carry it. It was disappointing but she knew he was right. Then in a big street of ritzy furniture shops they saw a man with a wallaby in a dog-collar. It was a bad moment, but Irma didn’t notice.