There was a brief silence at the other end followed by a sigh. ‘Everybody in our trade drank in those days. Just part of the culture. Long lunches. Unlimited expenses. The stress and the pressure. Competition. Deadlines. So yes, I was an alcoholic. Still am. Do you have a problem with that?’
I did and I told him why in garbled detail. All my bitterness and resentment over my mother’s love affair with the bottle must have surfaced in my addled brain and I directed it at the man I loved and respected more than any other. Eventually, Percy ended the call without saying another word.
I still feel nothing but shame and self-disgust when I think back to that episode. Why did I not call him back the next day and apologise? He would have understood. Pride is such a terrible thing.
Looking back, Percy’s funeral in Sydney is a patchwork memory of hazy episodes. I am dimly aware that I screwed up the eulogy. A cocktail of coke, vodka and grief turned me into a stumbling, mumbling wreck. I think I wept. I know I failed utterly to do justice to the memory of the bittersweet bloke who had been more like a father to me than my own dad. Percy was just sixty-nine when he died.
After my pisspoor performance, I beat a hasty retreat. Percy’s sister Sadie followed me outside. She’d come over from Scotland for the ceremony and to sort out his things. She pulled a small white envelope out of her handbag and handed it to me. It had my name on it.
‘I found this in his papers. He wanted me to make sure you got it.’ Her soft Scottish accent was a stark contrast to her older brother’s chainsaw vowels.
I waited until I was safely in my room with a large vodka tonic in my fist before I opened the envelope. There was a strange-looking metal token inside and a sheet of plain copy paper. The blue ink handwriting was in Percy’s familiar neat cursive style; there were few flourishes, loops or extravagant tails. The content was typically brief and to the point.
Dear Jonno,
If you’re reading this, it means I’m a goner. Hopefully, I’m now in the great newsroom in the sky putting out the Daily Miracle with a few other old hacks. But I couldn’t go without telling you something that I could never have said to your face.
You were the closest thing I had to a son. I remember the first time I saw you at the paper: a bit shy, but you stood up for yourself. You had real talent and I knew you would be a wee bit special. So listen, laddie – it’s high time you got your shit together. You are capable of great things. And maybe think about settling down: find a fine lassie, start a family. Trust me, you really need those things in your life. I never had them and I was the poorer for it.
The enclosed gift is my greatest treasure. Maybe now it can help you too.
Take good care of yourself, son. You were a light in my life.
Your pal,
Percy
By now the words had blurred. My tears were dripping down onto the single sheet of paper, the ink beginning to spread and blot like little blue spiders. I picked up the strange token. It looked like it was made of bronze. Engraved on one side was the legend: ‘To thine own self be true’. The words ‘15 years recovery’ were writ large. On the other side: ‘God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.’
Despite my pain and my shame, I shunned Percy’s advice. Over the next few weeks in Sydney, I drifted into an LA-lite pattern of partying with what passes for an Aussie B-List. My agent, Drusilla Gottlieb, a red-haired Jewish firebrand, forced me to do a few more TV chat show appearances to help sell the book and DVDs of the film. I hung out at the ‘in’ clubs and the restaurants du jour. Invitations to media events piled up. And everywhere I went, my new friend Charlie was there too.
The hard shell of celebrity ennui that I had put on like armour in the US kept me functioning in that unreal world, aided by the coke. But underneath I felt like a fraud. I had created this external character – smooth, successful, Oscar-winning writer tinged with a down-to-earth Aussie larrikin humour. Most people who didn’t know me seemed charmed. But I wasn’t fooling myself. The truth was . . . I had no idea what the hell I was going to do next. I had run out of book ideas. My writing flow was truly blocked. I didn’t even know where I belonged anymore – Sydney, London, LA? My future plans seem to have narrowed down to where I would score my next line of coke.
Something had to give.
4
NOT LONG after Percy’s funeral I found myself sharing a pavilion with a TV weather chick called, I think, Meredith. We were at a prestigious yachting regatta on Hamilton Island. Hammo, as it’s known to Aussies everywhere, is the hub of the Whitsunday Islands, on the northern tip of the Great Barrier Reef. The regatta had a shoal of other ‘off-water’ activities, like celebrity chefs, fashion events and parties. Meredith was quite tipsy after a champagne reception and, as we tottered to my suite, she gave me the following forecast: ‘You can expect a warm front, some slight turbulence and a storm surge followed by a sunny outlook.’ I had no doubt she had used that line many times before but her prediction was still spot-on.
But even she could not have forecast what followed. We went to a big party hosted by one of the main sponsors, Berenger – boat builders based in Sydney. They were using the event to showcase their new world-class creation – a fifty-two foot nautical masterpiece of design, speed and efficiency. The beautiful Berenger sloop had sleek lines, a plush owner’s stateroom and a huge cockpit. It was a boatie’s wet dream. And I wanted one. Now! At any cost. I suddenly remembered it was my birthday the following week, although I couldn’t remember exactly which one it was. Go on, I told myself, you deserve it.
Back when I was a nipper in Sans Souci, sailing had been a passion. Still is to this day. Sans Souci means ‘no worries’ in French and that was just how I felt as I solo-sailed my first cat-rigged Laser one sun-kissed summer in the enclosed waters of Botany Bay. I must have been about nine years old. My best mate Cody Knox was in another dinghy as we endlessly criss-crossed each other on a sparkling sea. We have both loved the water, and boats, ever since.
The Berenger blokes played hard to get at first. Their rugged yachts are high quality, hand-built and heavily customised. They already had a waiting list for the first half-dozen and they only made two boats per year, but I persisted: ‘Name your price,’ I told their CEO. He wasn’t impressed. Rightly so. I was behaving like a total prick, but in the end, we came to terms. I could have the demonstrator for something a little north of $2m once the regatta was over and it had been cleaned up and properly commissioned.
The boat made a colossal dent in the proceeds from both the Hard News book and film. I had also thrown in most of the handsome advance money on my next book . . . if I ever managed to write the bloody thing. Typically aggressive, my agent Dru had harassed me several times about it since I had been back in Australia.
‘Jonno darling, you now have less than six months to deliver the book, otherwise those schmucks will want their money back. You know that generous publishers are as rare as bacon sandwiches at a bar mitzvah.’
On a whim, I asked Berenger to name my shiny new possession The Scoop Jon B. Apart from the obvious punny references to my name and the newspaper scoop, the Beach Boys hit was the first song I remembered singing along to. I was a toddler, strapped into the family Holden, the album Pet Sounds playing on the car stereo. Later, Cody Knox and I used to sing it as teenagers, badly but joyously, every time we let rip on the Lasers.
They say that the two best moments in a boat owner’s life are when he buys a boat and then again when he sells it. In the interval, boats cost a fortune to sail and maintain; they provide equal measures of pleasure and pain; and they provide twin opportunities of wonderful adventure and deadly risk. But at that moment, I was ecstatic. For some time I had been wondering what the future might hold: here, suddenly, was the solution. I’d live on the boat, get my shit together and write another blockbuster. It was that simple.
For the first time in a very long time I was engulfed
in a feeling of euphoria that had nothing to do with pharmaceuticals. Buying a bloody great big expensive boat will do that to a man.
Needless to say, the euphoria did not last.
In a state of child-like excitement, I called my old mate Cody. These days he was a commercial boat skipper in Sydney. He’d also helmed a mega-yacht in a couple of Sydney to Hobart races.
‘Captain Bligh, long time no speak!’ he said. It was an old joke. When we used to sail together, he’d always played the part of Fletcher Christian, threatening to mutiny and cast me adrift.
‘Mate,’ I said, ‘I’m sitting on my magnificent cruising boat with a beer and a map of the world. Check your phone. I’ve just sent you a photo. Isn’t she a ripper? I’m thinking of heading off somewhere. Fancy coming?’
Less than a week later, Cody arrived in Hammo. It was good timing, he said, because he had just split from his long-term girlfriend. We spent another week in the marina at Hamilton while he worked his way around the boat during the day and we worked our way around the waterfront bars at night. The Scoop Jon B was like a five-star floating hotel. Cody couldn’t believe his luck.
‘Good on ya, mate, you weren’t kidding. She’s a real beaut! I bet this is as good as one of those swanky places in Beverly Hills you stay in.’
‘Better,’ I replied with a smug smile.
Cody was a breath of fresh air in my jaded life. We had been best mates since primary school, even though we were opposites in almost every way. While I was six-foot-three and blond, he was short and sallow; I was shy but mischievous while Cody was outgoing and a straight-edge guy who never got into trouble; I was an enthusiastic atheist and he was a passive believer. Yet somehow, despite all the differences, we had been inseparable as kids.
Now, in Hammo, sitting in the cockpit under a starlit sky as dusk crept in, we revisited our shared childhood and bragged about our more recent exploits. ‘Love the name,’ he said, pointing to the raised lettering of The Scoop Jon B on the stern. ‘Remember when they used to play that song at the sailing club?’
The next day we put the Berenger through its paces around the Whitsunday Islands. The fresh wind, the glittering sea and the sheer joy of sailing a high-performance boat in such spectacular surroundings sent my spirits soaring. On a whim, I decided I wanted to go to Singapore. No particular reason other than I had always fancied going there and it would be a suitable challenge for both the boat and us.
Cody and I mapped out the journey: Hammo to Darwin, then across the Timor Sea to Kupang; through the southern coast of Sunda Islands to Bali; then it was a straight shot through the Java Sea staying inshore north-west up to the Bangka Belitung Islands before trying to catch a trade wind north to Singapore via Bintan Island.
Sounds simple enough but the distance was roughly 3500 kilometres. Without wind, The Scoop could motor happily for a thousand nautical miles so we were unlikely to have any fuelling problems. It would take a few months with some hard sailing ahead, but I already felt excited. I had a new purpose and the trip would give me a chance to recharge my batteries and try to get my literary mojo back.
Cody was stoked. ‘Mate, I’ve always dreamed about a boat and a voyage like this,’ he said in the Verandah Bar one night. His brown, curly hair was tied in a short ponytail under a battered baseball cap. He was dressed in his usual denim shorts and a tank top, showing strong, sinewy arms and capable hands. Tanned, his clear hazel eyes dominated a thin, open face that looked out on the world with quiet, good-natured confidence.
Cody liked the odd beer but was contemptuous of drugs. He strongly disapproved of my coke habit and made me swear that I wouldn’t use while we were sailing.
‘If you get completely wasted and we hit some crap weather, you could get us both killed,’ he said. ‘Besides, Indonesia is pretty heavy about drugs. Remember the Bali Nine?’
I nodded. I might have been overseas for several years but I knew about the young Australians who had been caught smuggling drugs. Two of them were later executed by firing squad.
‘No worries, mate,’ I said. ‘I’ll stick to beer. I want to clean up my act anyway; I need to get started on my next book.’ Little did he know that I had enough Charlie in my cabin to choke a koala.
5
WE LEFT Hammo for the first major leg of our trip at the end of September. Our route hugged the east coast of Queensland, stopping at Cairns and then rounding Cape York, Australia’s most northerly tip, before crossing the Gulf of Carpentaria to East Arnhem in the Northern Territory. Then it would be an easy hop to Darwin.
Heading out into the Coral Sea under a glorious sky, The Scoop behaved beautifully, sailing fast and close to the wind, belying her twenty-one tonnes. The sails in a sloop are generally large and heavy and need a bit of effort to hoist and trim, but we had the luxury of push-button winches, a hydraulic furling system and a self-tacking headsail. We also had the 160 horsepower turbo diesel engine to take up any slack.
Cody pressed a button and the mainsail automatically glided up the mast like a ruched cinema curtain. He trimmed the sail and we sliced forward, The Scoop’s bow dipping into the ocean like a playful dolphin. Soon we were running a steady twelve knots, the headsail poled out on a tight reach in eighteen knots of true wind. The ocean spray glittered in the sunlight as it danced over the chiselled grey hull.
We quickly fell back into our old sailing rhythm from the carefree days back in Sans Souci when we sailed a double-handed Feva together. We didn’t need to talk much; we both quickly and instinctively learned how to keep the sloop running smoothly and efficiently as a team.
In the beginning, it was wonderful: Cody listened goggle-eyed as I fed him tales about the rich and famous I’d rubbed shoulders with, while I absorbed his sailing skills and knowledge. My childhood friend was a highly competent skipper. He stood in the cockpit day after day, looking out over the sea like a king surveying his realm.
Meanwhile, the sun, the sea and the fresh winds provided me with a natural high. That and the fact that the physical effort of keeping the boat running smoothly made me so tired that I slept like a hibernating bear each night.
We didn’t see that many boats along the way. Some fishing vessels, of course, a few big motor cruisers possibly on their way back to civilisation after a visit to Broome and the Kimberley, and some other kindred sailing boats buzzing round the Tiwi Islands. Twice a Border Protection patrol vessel named Triton, a large, heavily armed trimaran, swept majestically past us. At ninety-eight metres and with two big, deck-mounted machine guns, the Triton looked businesslike. Both times they called us up on the radio and checked our details, destination and port of origin. We also heard from an ‘eye-in-the-sky’ Customs air patrol. It was oddly reassuring.
The voyage to Darwin was exhilarating. I realised that I hadn’t enjoyed myself so much in a long time. It was fair weather sailing, a clear sky, only the occasional light breeze on the nose, a few friendly dolphins providing light entertainment.
Apart from a few joints while Cody had been asleep and a few surreptitious lines of coke at sunset, I was cleaner than I had been in years.
But Bali changed all that. It changed everything.
A few days later, we motored through the Badung Strait in a slack tide. As the sun came up, Cody carefully navigated our way into the busy Bali marina at Benoa Harbour. We were tired but boyishly happy.
After about three bloody hours wrangling with Indonesian Immigration, we scrubbed salt off our bodies in the rather smelly marina showers, changed and headed for brunch at the Yacht Club.
Cody was in an upbeat mood, looking forward to a few days rest in Bali before tackling the second leg up to Singapore. After poached eggs with spinach and a huge OJ, he headed back to The Scoop to do some minor repairs and arrange to have her properly cleaned. I decided to get my land legs back so took a taxi to the tourist drag at Kuta.
The sounds and smells of the crowded, chaotic streets were comforting, a sharp contrast to the sly sophistication and Hollywood gla
mour of LA. After a few Anker beers, I picked my way through the crush of tourists and touts selling everything from henna tattoos, Viagra and their ‘virgin’ sisters to pick up a taxi back to the marina.
There, I found Cody sitting in the cockpit, one leg crossed over the other, foot jerking like a puppet on a string. He looked tight-faced, pale and strained.
‘What’s up mate?’ I asked carefully. I had a nasty feeling that I knew what was coming.
‘You stupid selfish bastard, you could have got us both locked up. What were you thinking?’
‘Okaaay,’ I said slowly. ‘What’s got your knickers in a twist? Did I leave a dirty T-shirt in the galley? Or did I forget to put the trash out?’ I shrugged. ‘Look mate, whatever it is, I’m sorry. Promise I won’t do it again. Scout’s honour.’ And I put two fingers to my forehead.
Cody stood up. ‘I found your bloody stash!’ He was having trouble getting the words out, he was so angry. ‘You promised me no drugs on this trip,’ he shouted.
I looked around to see if there was anyone listening but there didn’t appear to be anyone on the boats on either side of The Scoop and the busy harbour sounds would have drowned out his voice.
‘You fucking promised me!’ he repeated. Now I knew it was serious. Cody hardly ever swore. ‘Do you know what would have happened if the Customs people had found that stuff? They could have fucking executed us, mate. Or locked us up in a stinking hole for twenty years. Haven’t you heard of Schapelle Corby, you dumb shit?’
‘Mate,’ I said defensively, ‘you’re overreacting. There’s not that much gear and the chances of us being busted are pretty remote. Besides, I’ve hardly used it. In fact, I pretty much forgot I had it.’ The lies came easily. I tried a conciliatory tone: ‘Look, I’m really sorry, mate, I didn’t think. Really stupid of me.’
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