The Riders by Tim Winton Read Free Book Online

burning peat hung in the air. He skirted the castle and its farm and went on deep into the valley where the fields were dark and heavy and became bogs at the foot of the hills. A small church stood alone on the bend in the lane. Scully climbed the stile into the graveyard and walked among the granite tombs beneath the Celtic crosses and fossilized flowers. He loved those crosses with their topography of faces and plants and stories, so much more potent than the bare symbols of his Salvation Army upbringing. There was suffering there, life lived, and beauty. He touched their lichened veins and practised crossing himself a moment before walking on sheepishly.
    In a quiet wood beyond he saw pheasants and a few fleeing rabbits. His own footprints were sinister in the leaf litter andhis breath spouted out before him. The valley reminded him of the dairy farm of his childhood with its standing puddles and makeshift gates and diesel murmurs somewhere on the air. The buildings were stone here and had outlived whole family lines, pre-dated nations and accents and understandings, while the sheds and houses of Scully’s childhood were all hewn from the forest around them, their flapping tin and sunsilvered wood ancient before their time. That was the life the banks had taken from his father. The suits came swooping and the farm slipped away. Scully only had the memory, the stirring now and then of that life before chest hair and girls and shopping malls. Maybe that’s why I’m here, he thought, surprised. Maybe I’m buying back the farm in a way, buying back childhood. He thought of his broken father living out an adaptation in the suburbs, his mother dazedly behind him. The quick decline. The strokes. The suits alighting once again. Buying the farm, what a good way to describe oblivion.
    Looking back he saw his tiny faded white house up on the hill against the sky. Between him and it were the sodden fields rising up to the huge bald oak before the shell of the castle and its outbuildings with all their black staring windows. He imagined six hundred years of peasants looking up from their work to see the severe Norman outline of that sentry at the head of the valley. It had as many eyes as God, that shadow up there. Little wonder they burnt it.
    Scully stumped across the miry fields feeling the wind bright on his cheeks.
    As he approached a stone wall looking for a stile, Scully heard dogs. He stopped and cocked his head and almost went backwards into the slurry as two rangy hounds came silently across the wall and over his head.
    â€˜Good day to ye!’ yelled a farmer with one leg over and the butt of his broken shotgun following.
    â€˜G’day,’ said Scully with the dogs about his legs.
    The farmer eased down the wall to land steady on his feet in the mud. He was dressed for hunting.
    â€˜My name’s Scully. We’re neighbours now, I spose.’
    â€˜Ah, you’re the Australian boy from Binchy’s Bothy, then.’
    â€˜That’s me. Pleased to meet you.’
    Scully shook his little spotted hand. He was gaunt and gingery with crazy fat sideburns and bad teeth, and Scully liked the look of him.
    â€˜Jimmy Brereton, man of leisure. I don’t mind tellin ye the first time I saw them candles in the window up there last week I nearly shit meself. I thought, it was auld Binchy back again, the lazy booger.’
    â€˜No, it’s just me.’
    â€˜And the family comin, they tell me.’
    â€˜You been talking to Pete-the-Post.’
    â€˜Aw, Jaysus no,’ the man laughed. ‘Peter’s been talkin to me!’
    â€˜He’s a good bloke.’
    â€˜Ah, he’s great gas is Peter. Follow Pete, they say, for wherever Pete is the crack is mighty.’
    Scully laughed. ‘Well they’re right.’
    â€˜He says you’re doin a fine job of it up there, workin like a nigger.’
    â€˜He’s been a great help,’ said Scully. ‘I’ll