Long Gone the Corroboree

by Tony Parsons

  “Oh, I know he was ill. I found that out reasonably quickly,” I said. “But I also know that he must have regained his health because he sent another novel to his publishers. I’ve kept in touch with Brenda McEwan and she told me about the new story,” I said.

  “You appear to be a very competent journalist.”

  “Thank you. I like to think I’m a professional,” I said. “You said Billy Sanders is at high school. Does he come home to his mother every day?” I asked.

  “He sees her most days.”

  “I suppose in the country, everyone knows everyone else’s business,” I suggested.

  “That’s more or less true. What will you do when you find Billy Sanders?”

  “I’ll probably write a story about him, but I’m really hoping he’ll tell me where to find Clayton Steele.”

  “And what will you do if you find Steele?” he asked.

  “I… er… well, I’ll let a few people know that I’ve located him. It will be the conclusion of a matter some of my ex-university friends and I discussed some years ago. We wondered if it would be possible for someone to live in anonymity in Australia. It seems that Steele has managed to do it… for a while, at least.”

  “Has it occurred to you that perhaps Clayton Steele might be very unhappy about being ‘rediscovered’ as the result of your efforts? Don’t you think it might be the very last thing he’d want?”

  “Yes, I’ve thought about that. The decision about whether to publish or not publish a story is a constant for a journalist or newspaper. It’s one of those things, like libel, that’s always with us. A story is usually published because of its news value. I think that being able to announce that Clayton Steele had been located would have great news value and it would override Steele’s desire for privacy. Sooner or later, he’ll be found and then, some journalist will get the kudos for locating him. I’ve done the investigative work and I think I deserve to be that journalist,” I said.

  “You’re honest, anyway,” he said. He proceeded to mix up a batch of scones, which he placed in the oven of his electric stove. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. You could keep your eye on the scones. By the way, you haven’t told me your name,” he said.

  “It’s Gillian. Gillian Brooker,” I said. He nodded and then left the room before I could ask for his name. When he came back into the room a few minutes later, I looked at him and my mouth fell open. I couldn’t help myself. The fellow had shaved off his beard and I recognised him immediately. I didn’t have to look anywhere else for Clayton Steele because he was standing in front of me.

  “You’re Clayton Steele,” I managed to get out. Although he was older now, he was the same man whose picture adorned the back cover of his second book. When I recovered my senses, I felt many kinds of a fool. How could I, a supposedly cluey journo, have failed to identify Steele immediately? I’d looked at his picture many times yet his heavy beard had completely fooled me.

  Steele gave me a gentle smile and turned to deal with the scones.

  “Why?” I asked at last.

  “I never did like wearing the beard, but it served its purpose. I suppose if you hadn’t turned up, I could have gone on trying to fool everyone but when Billy arrives very shortly, the cat will be out of the bag. I thought that if anyone had to find me, it might as well be you.”

  “That’s rather decent of you,” I said. “I imagined you’d be furiously angry with me.” I wondered what calibre of journalist he considered me. Had I been given brownie points for finding him? Or did he consider me less than bright for not recognising him, beard and all?

  “I couldn’t expect to stay hidden forever. I was lucky to escape being recognised while at Tamworth with Billy. Meanwhile, the whole district is aware that Billy lives here with a fellow who writes books. It’s amazing that some local journo hasn’t tumbled,” he said.

  “That’s another thing. How on earth were you able to obtain legal care of Billy? You’re a single man or I presume you are. I wouldn’t have thought you’d have had a hope in hell of being allowed to look after him. Shouldn’t he have gone to a government children’s home or foster care?”

  “I had a very sympathetic magistrate to deal with and she allowed Billy to come here temporarily until we knew what was going to happen to his mother. Lilly had some… er… trouble and was in a coma for months. She came home from hospital eventually but she’s in a wheelchair now. There’s a cousin looking after her so, technically, Billy is still in his mother’s care but she’s unable to do anything for him, so he stays here with me,” Steele said.

  I considered Steele as he sipped his tea. He was really something. He’d looked quite presentable with the beard but he looked much different now. Granted he was older than when his picture had appeared on his second book, but he hadn’t deteriorated. In fact, he looked more handsome than ever, which was remarkable because he’d evidently been very sick for some time. There wasn’t the fierce take-on-the-world look about him, rather a kind of dormant strength. I thought that anyone who considered him meek or mild would be in for a rude shock.

  “So, what will you do with your newfound knowledge of my location?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. And I didn’t.

  “You don’t appear to be the kind of young woman likely to be lost for an answer. You wouldn’t be here now if you were. I would have bet that you’d head for the nearest phone so you could release your news,” he said.

  Gillian Brooker pulled her phone from her handbag. “The nearest phone is here and I couldn’t very well use it in front of you, could I? Besides, I don’t want to get offside with you before I know more about you. Can I call you Clayton?” I asked.

  “I’d prefer Clay. Just about everyone calls me Clay. A few, Billy included, call me Mr Clay. I haven’t used my surname for a while… part of the smokescreen,” he said, and smiled.

  “Except in the case of ‘No More Corroboree’ with lyrics by Clayton Steele,” I reminded him.

  “That was Billy’s doing. He wanted to give me the credit for writing the words of his first song. It let the cat out of the bag, so to speak. In your case, anyway.”

  “Can I meet Billy?” I asked.

  Clayton Steele glanced across at the clock on the wall. “He’ll be on the bus home now. You’ll meet him shortly.”

  I wiped up our few dishes then I followed Clay out to sit on the back porch. There were rainbow lorikeets squabbling in the mango tree.

  “Noisy devils,” he said when he saw that I was watching the birds.

  “Would you mind answering a few questions for me?” I asked.

  “It depends on the nature of your questions. Are you asking from a personal or off-the-record viewpoint, or as a professional journalist?” he asked. “What I mean, is this a forerunner or even part of the in-depth interview with Clayton Steele that you’ve been working towards?”

  He was very sharp. No doubt about it. “I haven’t decided,” I said. It was a ‘nothing’ answer but the truth was that at this exact moment, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to reveal Steele’s whereabouts. Indeed, I felt now as if I was intruding into his hitherto hidden life.

  “Any journalist worth his or her salt wouldn’t hesitate to spill the beans,” he said.

  “I’m well aware of that. Right now, I’m more interested in why you decided to drop out.”

  “When I left Australia, I thought there was a very good chance I’d never return. Why did I leave? I refused to stay and be pitied as my health declined. Fortunately, American doctors and associated medical staff pulled me through. When I eventually came back to Australia, I decided that it would be a worthwhile project trying to see if I could live satisfactorily on my own. I’d bought this property on my one and only trip to Queensland and through all the bad times I endured in America, the beauty of it stayed in my mind, and with it, the thought that I might one day restore the old place and make it a comfortable dwelling.”

  Clay took a deep breath then sipped his tea. “When I le
ft America, I made a trip to various countries and stayed with some of my writer friends. What I saw convinced me that the world was in a mess. It’s lousy with greed, with bigots and religious maniacs and with racists. Humanitarian initiatives are being swamped by idiocy and corruption. There was enough to write about for the remainder of my life. This place promised me a kind of sanctuary in which to do that,” he said.

  “Couldn’t you have told your mother and Camilla and Shelley, not to mention your agent and your publishers, the exact state of play and what you intended doing about it?” I asked, being the hard-nosed journalist.

  “I suppose I could have, but as I’ve already told you, I didn’t want sickly expressions of sorrow. I wanted people to remember me as I’d been,” he said.

  “Shelley was very upset, Clay. She thought you loved her,” I said.

  “Shelley would. I never loved her. I liked her up to a point because in some respects, she was a decent enough young woman, fairly bright and…”

  “Good in bed?” I suggested.

  “That, too. Shelley regarded me as a possession just like her fancy car and her up-market unit with its expensive furniture. We were poles apart in so many ways that I considered it was pointless carrying on with her. And she was better off without me. She’d never have considered camping out in the bush to restore this place. It would have been too basic for Shelley; she was hugely afraid of snakes and spiders. And once I started to get my life and this place in order, I couldn’t imagine Shelley living here, so there was no point renewing the relationship,” he said.

  “This is a beautiful place,” I said.

  “The house is comfortable enough now but it’s still very basic. It wouldn’t do Shelley at all. She prefers the bright lights and men fawning over her. If half a dozen men don’t admire her cleavage every day, she imagines she’s losing it,” he said.

  “You’re sure about that?” I asked.

  “Absolutely. I saw Shelley in action. She’s the archetypal personification of the modern, liberated young woman, just as you probably are, Gillian,” he said.

  I couldn’t deny his assessment of me. “So, how come you got together in the first place?” I asked instead.

  “These things happen. Shelley interviewed me on one occasion and it went from there. I regard Shelley as one of my mistakes. We all make mistakes, Gillian. Maybe, Shelley boosted my ego. I like to think I’ve grown up a lot these last years. I admire good-looking women now, but I don’t lust after them. I have other priorities,” he said.

  “Like caring for Billy?” I suggested.

  “That’s right. And while caring for Billy, I’ve launched into song-writing and learning music. I play a mean guitar, Gillian.” Clay’s eyes twinkled as he grinned.

  “Are you ever lonely?” I asked.

  “I haven’t been lonely for a single day since I came here. I have a few very special friends who are aware that I’m Clayton Steele and they’ve kept this knowledge to themselves. Then there’s Billy. I care about him deeply and I’ve had a big hand in his development. Billy’s going to be a big name one day. He has a great voice and he loves music. Quite apart from Billy, there’s the magic of this place. I consider myself very fortunate to be living here. The property has links with the people who were part of this district before the first European settlers came here. Just across the creek from this house, the first Australians used to hold big corroborees. And then, the settlers and soldiers came and grabbed all their land. A great many Aborigines were shot or died after being given poison in flour. One of the men who gave them that flour seduced a young black girl who bore him a son. The old sinner was bashed to death with a waddy and was buried on my land. His son lived, so it was said, to be one hundred and three. Billy Sanders is descended from him and is also one of the last of those tracing back to the original Gubbi Gubbi people. I’ve written about these people in my latest novel,” he said.

  “Brenda McEwan told me that it was a beautiful story. She said it sings. I understand what she meant now,” I told him.

  “And one that you’ll want to write about when you put together your interview with me?”

  “Not necessarily and not without your approval,” I said. “I don’t want to step on your toes, Clay. I’d hate you to remember me as the woman who loused up your anonymity.”

  “Then, why did you set out to find me?” Steele asked.

  “I think it was the challenge more than anything… the biggest challenge I’d faced as a journalist. Any journo with any nous at all wants to be regarded as a good investigative reporter. The really big stories don’t come along very often. We’re not all as talented as Chris Masters who gave us ‘The Moonlight State’ but we’d like to be. I was at a loose end and your disappearance presented as a real mystery. I thought that if I could break your story, I could claim to have arrived as a journalist,” I said.

  “So, you found me. What now?”

  “Now that I’ve met you and heard your story, I don’t feel inclined to rock the boat. I don’t depend on journalism for my living. I have independent means,” I said.

  “You’ll drive back to Sydney and forget you ever saw me? You won’t talk to Brenda or Camilla or Shelley? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Right at this moment, I haven’t a clue what I’m doing tonight, let alone whether I’ll drive back to Sydney and keep quiet about you,” I said.

  “That’s not the confession of an organised mind,” Steele said.

  “I’m confused rather than organised. You floored me when you shaved off your beard. I’m still recovering,” I said with a smile.

  “Perhaps, you’d like to take a walk. I want to pick some vegetables for dinner,” he said.

  “That sounds like a good suggestion,” I said quickly. The fact was that Steele fascinated me and I didn’t want to pass up the chance to talk to him more.

  We walked down off the back veranda and by slow degrees, made it down to the creek. Along the way, I was shown Steele’s herbs and vegetables and the various trees he’d planted since his arrival.

  “There,” he said and pointed, “is where Jack Hewitt Senior is buried. Someone rolled that big log over him and that’s the only headstone he’s ever had. Some would say that it’s all he deserved because, by all accounts, he was a hard man. I think that’s only half the story because if he was an ex-convict or an escaped convict, he would have been brutalised by the British Justice System. Someday, I’ll try and research his background and find out why he was sent to Australia.”

  We walked along the creek until we came to what Clay said was the boundary of his land. “The next-door property belongs to Billy’s mother,” he said.

  The creek widened again into another large pool. “It seems this and the pool opposite my land were favourite swimming places of the Gubbi Gubbi,” he said. “Billy’s mother used to swim here.”

  I looked at him and wondered why he’d mentioned her. “What’s she like?” I asked.

  “She’s in a wheelchair and still suffers a bit from her injuries so she’s pretty harmless now. What is she like? Or more correctly, what was she like? She was a mixture,” Steele said.

  I looked at him and raised my eyebrows. “A mixture? What do you mean by a mixture?”

  “Lilly was a mixture of the good and the not-so-good. She was a very talented musician with a lovely singing voice and with a bit of help, she could’ve been as successful as any of today’s country and western vocalists but she had no ambition. She was a very sexy woman and was a bit too fond of men. It almost killed her in the end, and it’s why she’s in a wheelchair now. Billy has her musical talent and voice, and the big question will be: does he have the ambition Lilly lacked?”

  Steele turned sharply on his heel and began to retrace his steps. I hurried after him hoping he’d say something more about Billy’s mother. I wondered too if he had ever swum with Lilly in the big pool the Gubbi Gubbi had loved so much.

  “Have you made up your mind where you’ll stay tonig
ht?” he asked.

  “I suppose Beerwah would be the handiest.”

  “It would be but there’s a bed in my van if you don’t mind roughing it a bit. If you decide to stay here, there’s a lady I’d like you to meet,” he said.

  “Is she your lady?” I asked with some trepidation. It suddenly seemed very important that she wasn’t.

  “No, she isn’t. Glenda Butler’s the court magistrate who allowed Billy to come into my care when his mother was seriously hurt. I think a lot of her. She’s the most impressive woman I’ve met since I moved here. Glenda has two daughters. One I haven’t met because she’s been in the UK since before my arrival. She’s a journalist, specialising in finance and highly paid from what I’ve heard. She hasn’t been told about me in case she lets the cat out of the bag. Donna is supposed to be a younger version of her mother, so she must be an impressive young woman. There’s a younger sister, Deborah, who had a crush on me at one stage. She imagined she was in love with me but she’s at university now and probably in love with someone else. I was flattered that a lovely seventeen-year-old should be attracted to me… beard and all,” he said with a chuckle.

  “You’ve had an interesting time here,” I suggested. “I mean, it hasn’t all been writing and watching the birds.”

  “Especially not since Billy came to live with me.”

  “I’ll take the van and thank you,” I said. I couldn’t have Steele think I was a hedonist like Shelley Carruthers.

  “Good. I’ll see if I can get Glenda to come for dinner. You sit out on the front veranda while I talk to her. I hope she’s not in session,” he said.

  A few minutes later, Clayton Steele joined me on the veranda. “She’ll come,” he said.

  Immersed in what Clay had told me, I was surprised when I looked down at my watch and it was just after four thirty. As we sat together on the front veranda, a school bus came rolling along the road and stopped at the entrance to Steele’s property. A teenage boy stepped off the bus dressed in long grey trousers, a grey shirt and dark blue tie. He was carrying a school bag and seemed to float across the ground, so effortless was his stride. He was a tall, slim boy with dark wavy hair, brown eyes and a face that would be hard to forget.