by Tony Parsons
The magistrate’s eyes narrowed. “Why are you hiding out?”
“It’s a long story that would consume too much of your valuable time, Your Worship. I’m telling it in my next book,” Steele said.
“Do you have the financial means to look after Billy Sanders?” Mrs Butler asked.
“I should think so. I have money from royalties in the bank and I’ll receive a fair advance for my next book. Writers don’t get paid a weekly wage like everyone else. We get an advance on our books and royalty payments twice a year,” Steele explained.
“Is Billy happy to live with you?”
“I should say he’s very happy to live with me while his mother’s in hospital. Billy’s been coming to visit me ever since we began to restore the old place. He’s fond of his mother, despite her failings and her men, but he hated Dooley Davis. The man had a violent temper. Billy had a black eye the first time he came to visit me. Dooley belted Lilly too, but she wouldn’t do anything about it,” Steele said.
“You’re aware that Billy is indigenous?”
“Oh, yes, though I’m not sure that should exclude me from being a fit person to care for him. I’ve been his neighbour, his friend and his mentor for months now. Billy’s a great kid and I think he could go a long way if he’s pointed in the right direction,” Steele said.
“Hmm.” Glenda Butler looked at Steele and then went on to illustrate her grasp of the situation. "This is the situation, Mr Steele. Lilly Sanders was only sixteen when she got pregnant. The boy’s family made an agreement to pay Lilly a sum of money, monthly, until Billy turned eighteen. Billy’s father is now a prominent doctor in Brisbane. He’ll have to be advised of what’s happened and that Billy is without a carer right now and for an unknown period into the future. He’ll have to be given the choice of taking Billy or simply carrying on paying the maintenance his family agreed upon. I would think that as Billy’s father is a married man with two small daughters, he won’t wish to take Billy into his home. But he has to be given the option of doing so.
“In the meantime, I could probably give you temporary care of Billy while the Court determines exactly where we stand. But first I’d need to come and look at what kind of home you could offer Billy,” Mrs Butler said with a gentle smile.
“Then, I extend you an invitation to visit me at your earliest opportunity, Your Worship,” Steele said and returned her smile.
“A visit with Clayton Steele. That would be something. My oldest daughter regards you as a kind of god. You were the reason she decided to do journalism rather than law. Donna will be thrilled to know I’ve met you,” the magistrate said.
“I’d much prefer that she isn’t made aware of my presence here, Your Worship. I am, as I told you, trying to protect my privacy. Come and have afternoon tea with me. I can’t offer you anything stronger than tea or coffee, as apart from an occasional glass of wine, I’m not much of a drinker. I’m afraid I don’t conform to the popular image of the heavy drinking writer,” Steele said.
“That will count in your favour, Mr Steele. A great many of the cases I have to deal with in this Court stem from alcohol. I’ll come next Sunday afternoon if that’s convenient. I’ll be interested to see what you’re working on now. You did say you were working on another book,” she said.
“I am, Your Worship.”
“Let’s dispense with the Your Worship, shall we? If you’ll allow me to call you Clay, you may call me Glenda,” she said.
“Surely not in Court?” he asked with a twinkle in his eye.
Glenda Butler shook a finger at him. “Definitely not in Court, Clay.”
“So, where is your journalist daughter now?”
“Donna’s in London. I’ll be phoning her in the next couple of days and in the ordinary course of events. I’d be telling her that I propose to visit you. You don’t appear to want me to do that,” the magistrate said.
“No. I’d much prefer that you keep that to yourself. I have a very good idea what an ambitious journalist would do with that item of news,” Steele said.
“And do you have a very good reason for wishing to remain anonymous?” Mrs Butler asked.
“It’s rather a long story.” When Glenda nodded encouragingly, he continued. “You see, I was quite ill and I went to America for treatment. I thought there was a very good chance I’d never return, but thankfully, the treatment was successful. I travelled about a bit before I came back to Australia. I’d purchased the old Hewitt place on a previous visit to Queensland and when I came back, I lived in my van while Josh Evans restored the old place. There were reasons why I bought the property that went beyond the wild beauty of the place. Sure, I wanted to smell the flowers, so to speak, but I wanted peace and quiet, a place where I could work and not be disturbed. A place to recuperate,” Steele said with a smile.
“That hasn’t been the case, has it? You’ve been disturbed quite a bit, haven’t you?”
“More than I expected to be,” he admitted. “Mind you, I have gained something. I’ve added song-writing to my accomplishments.”
“That you must tell me about next Sunday. The beard is new too, isn’t it? I remember that the cover photo on one of your books depicted you as a clean-skinned Adonis,” Mrs Butler said, flattering the writer.
“I believe I stand less chance of being detected with a beard. So far, it’s been a good ploy.”
Glenda Butler nodded. “I’ll see what can be done to keep your name out of the public eye, Clay.”
“Thank you, Glenda. It’s the media that would delight in locating me. They’d blast the fact all over the country and I’d have my peace and my birds disturbed by all manner of journalists. I don’t want that,” Steele said earnestly.
“I doubt that the media would have much interest in what happens to Billy Sanders,” the magistrate said.
“They’ve gone to town on what happened to his mother.”
“Murder, or manslaughter, is a different matter, Clay. And the media thrives on sleaze and scandal. They’re always good for headlines,” she said. “Now, you’ll have to excuse me. I’ll see you on Sunday afternoon. Shall we say three o’clock? In the meantime, I’ll visit the hospital and talk to Billy.”
“I’ll look forward to your visit.” And Steele meant it. He thought Glenda Butler was a rather special kind of woman. And she’d have to be to sort through all the problems she had to deal with in her Court.
“There’ll be two of us, Clay,” she said as he was about to vacate her chamber.
Oh dear, thought Steele. He hoped she wouldn’t be bringing a male companion; he rather liked the idea of entertaining such an intelligent woman. And he wondered who Glenda Butler was planning to bring with her. He could have asked her, but felt it wouldn’t sound right. So, he’d have to wait until Sunday to find out.
When he left the courthouse, Steele made a beeline for the shops. He had to install a single bed for Billy and with it, bedclothes and a colourful bedspread. Billy needed to feel at home so there needed to be a rug for the floor and a desk and chair. And if he was going to provide Billy with a safe haven and prove he was capable of caring for Billy in his mother’s absence, the second bedroom had to look right when Glenda Butler visited him. He also needed a better tablecloth for the kitchen table, he decided, something that showed he was more than just a bachelor living in a basic dwelling.
After he’d made his purchases, Steele bought fruit cake and biscuits for the afternoon tea. He also bought a bottle of expensive coffee, just to be on the safe side.
When his purchases were delivered, Steele made up the bed, laid the rug and placed Billy’s guitar across the desk. The room certainly looked friendlier now, but still a little bare. Steele debated going into town for some lively posters but decided that he’d allow Billy the final decision about what he wanted in his room. In the meantime, he’d add a vase of bougainvillea flowers, which would add a bit of colour until he could take Billy shopping to choose some items for himself.
Steele v
isited Billy every day, and after several visits found that Billy seemed to have accepted being without his mother for some time and responsive to the idea of living with Steele. The day before Mrs Butler’s visit, Billy told Steele that ‘the judge’ had been to see him. She’d asked him how he felt about living with Steele and he’d told her that he’d like it very much.
In the days that followed, Steele found it difficult to settle down and write. He felt that with the likelihood of Billy coming to stay with him, his life was moving in a different direction. He’d have Billy’s welfare to consider and be responsible for him. The prospect wasn’t daunting. In fact, it excited him, and not just because of the boy’s musical talent. There’d been something about Billy that had sparked his interest from the first day that he’d put in an appearance. Initially, there’d been Billy’s willingness to help in the restoration of the derelict cottage and, subsequently, the pleasure he’d displayed in its eventual completion. There was also the fact that Billy seemed to fit in so well. And if there was a deeper or more metaphysical reason, it probably lay in the fact that some of Billy’s forebears had roamed as free as the wind along Jerogeree Creek long before the arrival of European settlers. It seemed right that Billy should stay close to where he’d been born and in the area that he loved. To place Billy in a State home or foster care would be akin to imprisoning a butterfly in a bottle.
So thought Steele as he made last-minute preparations for the magistrate’s visit. Glenda Butler was certainly a surprise packet. She was not at all the austere magisterial figure he’d foolishly imagined she’d be, though he had no doubt she could be all that when it was warranted. Certainly, he hadn’t anticipated that a magistrate would go so far as to visit for the purpose of ascertaining his suitability as temporary custodian for Billy. Steele decided that moral considerations would weigh heavily in a magistrate’s judgement. It all boiled down to whether he would be considered a suitable person to care for a teenage boy. Steele was well aware that Mrs Butler would have had to deal with many instances of child molestation and that young boys were often the victims of such assaults. There had to be a big question mark over the suitability of a bachelor to care for a young boy. But he wasn’t blind to the fact that his status as a writer was probably a factor in the magistrate’s interest in him.
It was a surprised Steele who saw not one, but two females climb out of a spotlessly clean white BMW. Glenda Butler was wearing a bottle-green pantsuit and looked very smart, while beside her was a stunning girl in blue jeans and a white T-shirt. She was a younger version of the older woman, with the same dark hair and grey eyes and was, like Glenda, generously endowed and very shapely in her faded jeans.
“Clay, this is my second daughter, Deborah. I thought it would be better for my reputation if I brought a chaperone.” Glenda laughed lightly. “I’m afraid Debbie insisted on coming with me when I told her who I was proposing to visit. Now, don’t panic. She’s sworn to secrecy on pain of being locked up on a diet of bread and water should she spill the beans about you,” Glenda Butler said with a smile that softened the fact that she was a magistrate on official business. “I couldn’t phone you but I was sure you wouldn’t object. And we’ve brought some afternoon tea.”
Steele took Deborah’s hand and pressed it. “You’re very welcome, Deborah. Are you going to follow in your sister’s footsteps and be a journalist, or be a lawyer like your mother?”
“Neither,” Deborah said in a voice that some would have described as defiant. “I’m more interested in the environment and the way we’re stuffing it up.”
“Debbie,” Glenda chided. “Clay doesn’t need a lecture and my first impression here is that he certainly hasn’t stuffed up his place. It’s quite beautiful.”
“I like people to say what they think,” Steele said.
“Then you’ll hit it off with Debbie because she very definitely says what she thinks.”
“Oh, just look at those birds. They’re northern rosellas, Mother,” Deborah said with shining eyes.
The parrots in question were eating from one of the feed dishes Steele had hung from the large magnolia. “Well, they’re pale-headed rosellas actually, Deborah,” Steele said. “There’s not a lot of difference but these have a clear or yellow head whereas the northern rosella has a black crown over white cheeks.”
“Are you sure?” Deborah asked.
“Quite,” Steele said. “The northern rosella isn’t found here. Its territory is the northern areas of the Northern Territory and Western Australia. You can check it out in my bird books, Deborah,” Steele said with a half-smile.
Deborah looked at Steele with something between admiration and respect. “Do you keep those feed troughs filled?” she asked.
“No,” Steele said. “I try not to make them overly dependent,” he explained. “I suppose I’m a little selfish enticing them here really, but I love to have the birds visit my garden.”
Glenda Butler had been surveying ‘the garden’ while her daughter gazed at the rosellas. She saw a large area that had no shape or form yet was wildly beautiful and filled with colour and perfume. There were tropical fruit trees growing contiguously with flame trees, bougainvillea, frangipanis, wisteria, magnolias and others she couldn’t identify. There were birds by the score, some in the trees and some eating greedily from the troughs and hollow logs that held millet seeds. Below the restored dwelling and above the creek, was a tidier area with vegetables growing and beyond that a mini-grove of perhaps two dozen obviously recently planted trees.
Steele took the two women down to the creek and showed them where he fished then walked back via the spring where each woman sampled the cold spring water from the heavy china mug Steele left hanging from the branch of a peach tree.
At the back of the dwelling was a drum with a detachable lid and it was in this drum that Steele stored his wild bird seed mix of millets, canary seed and grey-striped sunflowers. He filled a dipper with this mix and then, did a small circuit to spread seeds into some of the closer troughs and trays that were hanging from trees in different parts of the garden. Lorikeets swooped down from the surrounding trees and one settled on Deborah’s head.
“Ooh,” she squealed, though not in fright or protest because she was in seventh heaven.
Steele replaced the dipper, closed the drum and then escorted the women into his restored building. “Obviously, it’s not quite the same as the original building because it’s been modernised, but the overall layout is exactly the same. The old building had earthen floors, so we had to make the house taller to give us clearance for timber floors,” Steele explained.
“Is that what it was like when you bought it?” Glenda asked. She was scrutinising a picture of the building in its derelict state.
“That’s exactly what it was like, Glenda,” Steele said. “That’s how it looked when I first saw it and before I bought it.”
“Ooh, smell those herbs,” Deborah said.
“My own, Deborah. I have over twenty varieties of herbs growing here now,” Steele said proudly. “I grow a lot of the food I eat. I catch fish in the creek and I use herbs to heighten their flavour because these fish are a bit bland.”
“Is this to be Billy’s room?” Glenda asked as Steele led them through the house.
“This would be it and this is the guitar Billy and I bought after he told me Dooley smashed his mother’s. I wrote him a song too,” he said almost shyly.
“Your builder has done an amazing job, Clay,” Glenda said. “I wouldn’t have thought it was possible to restore the old building that was in your picture. It’s a very comfortable dwelling now. Of course, having a modern bathroom and toilet makes a big difference, not to mention the electricity.”
“It’s enough for me,” Steele said. “What’s important is that I feel contented here. I think one needs to feel content to write well. I realise that a lot of great writers wrote while in terrible circumstances but to my way of thinking, one writes best when one’s mind is clear of oth
er problems. I didn’t write much at all while I was in America. Here, I feel in harmony with the surroundings. I get up in the morning and my heart beats a wee bit faster for the joy of being here.”
“I think it’s the most wildly beautiful place I’ve ever seen,” Glenda said. “It’s overflowing with life. Don’t you think so, Deborah?”
“Absolutely, Mother. It’s a kind of Garden of Eden, isn’t it? And then, there’s that great mountain as a kind of backdrop. Oh, I think it’s an enchanting place,” Deborah said enthusiastically.
The truth of the matter was that it hadn’t taken much more than an hour for Deborah Butler to fall madly in love with Clayton Steele. She had never met anyone remotely like him. All the senior boys she knew appeared mere juveniles compared with this man. The image of Steele at work at his computer in the beautifully restored house completely overwhelmed her. She remembered how her sister had ooh-ed and aah-ed over Steele’s books. Up to now, she’d read only his first two books but they were stunning. Then, there was Steele’s ‘treatment’ of the garden that came with his purchase of the property. She thought that most people would have tried to ‘tidy it up’, but he hadn’t. Instead, he’d planted more trees and shrubs. He did have a cleared area where he grew his vegetables and vines but the remainder of the garden had been left in its wildly beautiful state.
The astute Glenda picked up the danger signs. There was the rapidity with which Deborah seated herself beside Steele for afternoon tea and the speed with which she offered him cake and bun. This was followed by the girl’s eagerness to ask questions about Steele’s writing.
Time slipped by as Steele discussed his writing and then tried to explain why he’d bought the neglected property and restored the old cottage. "I was searching for something and I didn’t know what it was. All I knew was that I wanted something rudimentary because I wanted to smell the flowers and get close to the earth.
“It seemed to me that the old cottage was crying out to be restored. Perhaps I was the only person in the entire world who thought so, but I’ve always been an individualist, so that wasn’t surprising. The property had a kind of wild beauty and I felt it was the place for me. And then, Billy came to help us and I found that he was a descendant of the Gubbi Gubbi people who’d lived here before the first Europeans came to this place. Even the discovery that dark deeds, indeed murder, had been committed here, and wholesale murder close by, didn’t concern me. I had the notion, as foolish as it may sound, that I would in some way be able to make amends for those past ills. I wanted to be able to prove that I could live a healthy life on my own and of course, I wanted to write again,” Steele said.