Matthew Flinders' Cat

by Bryce Courtenay

  However, Billy received the red-carpet treatment at the Flag. If he’d been the state premier and called in for a drink, he couldn’t have been greeted more cordially. Billy had defended Sam Snatch in all five of his appearances in court, getting him an acquittal each time. On Sam’s fifth appearance, the bookmakers among the nation’s waterside workers offered odds of twenty to one on an acquittal and were scarcely able to attract a punter, the general consensus being that Snatch was almost certainly going down this time. Had Snatch been smart enough to put his pension on Billy winning once again, he would have been able to pay for the pub twice over.

  ‘Gidday, Billy!’ Sam Snatch yelled out from behind the polished counter of the small private bar known as Marion’s Bar, ‘One Black Label comin’ up, old mate.’

  Billy limped up to the bar, the walk through the gardens had set off the pain in his knee again, ‘Thanks very much, Sam, but I’d prefer to pay for it myself.’

  Sam Snatch, not known for his generosity, feigned a look of astonishment, ‘You’ll do no such thing, my son! Not in my pub.’

  Billy sighed, ‘Well, just the one then, Sam. Hair of the dog.’

  Grinning, Sam Snatch planted a scotch glass on the bar and poured him a shot of Johnnie Walker. The proprietor of the Flag was also not known for his subtlety, yet this was a ritual which took place every morning and was designed so that Billy could maintain his dignity while accepting the handout.

  Marion, who usually ran the bar, placed a small jug of water beside his drink. ‘Mornin’, Billy,’ she said, smiling. ‘Leg hurtin’, is it?’

  ‘Morning, Marion, woke up with it. Getting old.’

  ‘Nah, never, not you,’ Snatch interjected, ‘Yiz strong as a mallee bull.’

  ‘Couple of blokes here to see you,’ Marion said, ‘Come in early. Been drinking steadily, could be they’re too far gone by now for a meaningful conversation.’

  Billy laughed, ‘Meaningful conversations are not common among the brotherhood of inebriates, my dear.’

  In her early forties, Marion packaged herself into an image that met the wishful thinking of most of the working-class patrons of the Flag. In fashion terms she was over-enhanced in the front, a generous C-cup perfectly contoured under a tight-fitting pink sweater. Blonde curls cascaded to her shoulders à la Dolly Parton. She always wore black satin miniskirts that showed a wellrounded derrière and good legs that ended in a pair of six-inch stiletto heels.

  Marion dressed like a tart because it was good for her business. The only thing about her that wasn’t deliberately contrived was her voice, which, activated by three packs of Kent a day, had the resonance of blue metal in a cement mixer. If she possessed the heart of gold usually attributed to barmaids, it hadn’t been noticed by the patrons. She was tough and she was sexy, but Billy always suspected she was something else as well.

  Despite her Australasian Post magazine looks, Marion occasionally displayed a vocabulary that caught Billy by surprise. She’d once told him that the only thing she’d usefully acquired from the unending misery of attending boarding school at Santa Maria Convent in Orange was a love of the written word, though he doubted that this alone accounted for her lapses into correct grammar.

  It was generally agreed by the morning patrons that Snatch and Marion were on together. Why else, the argument went, would a great-looking sort like her work for a fat bastard like him? It was a good question, but as much as the proprietor of the Flag may have fantasised about a roll in the cot with his overendowed barmaid, it wasn’t true. What occurred between the two of them was strictly a business arrangement. Snatch allowed Marion to use the three rooms and bathroom above the pub, paying her well below her worth as a cocktail hostess, the difference being calculated as the rent for the rooms.

  The Inn Keepers Act required city hotels to offer overnight accommodation of at least three bedrooms and a communal bathroom, which in strictly drinking pubs such as the Flag were never utilised. In this way, Snatch didn’t have to show the rental income he’d deducted from Marion’s wages on his books, allowing the rooms to seem available to comply with the law. In fact, Marion used them for her business, one as a reception with a comfortable lounge and a TV set where videos were shown of models wearing the lingerie, the other as display, fitted with wall-to-wall mirrors with a small curtained-off area used as a customer change room. The third was a private office for Marion and her assistant and was always locked because it also contained stock. There was a bathroom and toilet next door and, because some of the customers liked to nip into the bathroom wearing something they’d picked out for themselves, there was a sign on the inside of the bathroom door which read:

  CUSTOMERS WEARING NEW LINGERIE IN THE BATHROOM MAY CONSIDER IT SOLD.

  The rooms upstairs were known to Marion’s regular customers as ‘The Boys’ Boutique’ although her business cards, many of which were carried in the innermost recesses of the wallets of some very unexpected people, read ambiguously enough:

  KINGS CROSS-DRESSERS

  Men’s Outfitters

  FLAG HOTEL

  WOOLLOOMOOLOO

  Marion’s business was a lingerie boutique for crossdressers, transvestites and drag queens, and was reported to be making her a small fortune.

  Marion was a triple-certificate bartender who had won the Suntory Cup twice as well as three International Bartenders Association (IBA) Australian trophies. She had represented Australia in the IBA International awards in Rome in 1987 and was runner-up to the winner, Anacleto Jose Abreu of Portugal, with her cocktail ‘Moonlight in Kakadu’. She could easily have doubled or tripled her salary in any of the fashionable bars catering to the new IT elite in town, but the Flag was the ideal location for her lingerie business. It was next to Kings Cross, the centre of Sydney’s various deviant communities, close to the CBD and also on the waterfront. Sailors from all over the world stopped off at the Flag and they, along with blokes in from the bush at Easter Show time, provided the cream on top. Her bread and butter came from the local transvestites and the legions of cross-dressers in the community.

  Cross-dressing has no social demographic and adherents ranged from panel beaters to barristers, men working on garbage trucks to others from the big end of town. They would drop in during the course of the day ostensibly for a quiet drink at Marion’s Bar, and at the same time do their business with complete discretion. After a drink, all it took was a nod and a wink and they’d be directed upstairs, where they could try on a range of beautiful local and imported French lingerie, attended to by an outrageous transvestite known as Gorgeous Gordon, who also doubled as a fashion adviser. Although most transvestites are extroverts and usually gay and mostly happy to be named and talked about, Marion’s more discreet clientele, the strictly heterosexual cross-dressers, knew that she would keep their identities secret to her grave.

  Sam Snatch appeared to have it, coming and going. Marion’s cross-dressing customers were always singularly serviced upstairs and so waited patiently downstairs with an overpriced cocktail in front of them. Once they made their purchases, they could leave by a set of back stairs leading directly onto the street from the pub.

  Billy didn’t feel up to meeting the two men waiting for him in the beer garden. ‘Don’t think I want to meet anyone today, love,’ he said to Marion. ‘Do I know them?’

  ‘Yeah, one, Casper Friendly. He’s with a new bloke, blackfella, haven’t seen him around here before.’

  Snatch turned, suddenly agitated, ‘Aboriginal? From Redfern? We don’t want none of them bastards in here.’

  Marion sighed, ‘How would I bloody know where he came from, Sam? And, by the way, it’s Aborigine not Aboriginal.’

  ‘He’s a bloody boong as far as I’m concerned. How’d yer see them anyway? It’s not your job to serve out there. Come in for a pair of pantyhose, did they?’ Marion looked scornfully at Snatch and took a drag from her cigarette, allowing t
he smoke to escape through her nostrils. ‘Yeah, right on, two blacks, one a derro, the other from the boonies. How many pairs of French knickers do you reckon they gunna buy between them?’

  ‘Yeah well, you know how I feel about Abos, nothing but trouble.’

  Marion shrugged, ‘What am I supposed to do, ask for his bloody passport? Shirley was late in so I served them in the beer garden. Casper’s a regular early drinker and he brought a mate.’ She commenced polishing the surface of the already immaculate bar, ‘Tell you what, though, the new bloke’s carrying a stash of fifties you could choke a horse on. They’s drinking scotch as well.’

  ‘Drugs! He’s a fuckin’ pusher!’ Snatch was paranoid about drugs. There were plenty of cops and judges out in get-even-land with old scores to settle with him. In his new vocation as a publican he was determined to keep his nose clean, aware that the next time he appeared in court he might not be fortunate enough to find another Billy O’Shannessy to defend him.

  Marion rolled her eyes. ‘Drugs? Now why didn’t I think of that? He’s a black Lebanese who wears moleskins, an Akubra and badly worn riding boots. As a disguise, it beats the hell out of a Hugo Boss suit, hair gel, gold necklace and a diamond-encrusted Rolex.’

  Snatch ignored her sarcasm, suddenly excited. ‘From the bush? D’ya say this bloke was from the bush?’

  ‘Can’t say for sure. Anyway, that’s what his clobber suggested. Maybe you’re right, he’s a pusher disguised as an Aborigine disguised as a stockman.’

  Billy knew what Snatch was thinking. It was unusual, though not unheard of, for an Aborigine to come to the big smoke after working on a contract for several months in the mines or as a stockman or fencer, his accumulated salary paid in a lump sum. Many of them would virtually hand their pay over to a publican, agreeing to drink it out, living and eating at the pub. These men, who also had their equivalent in merchant seamen paying off and waiting between ships, were a bonanza no publican could resist. They were usually loners who worked hard for a living and then went on a ‘booze and bird’ holiday for a month before returning to work. It was a tradition started by itinerant shearers way back in the middle of the nineteenth century and such men didn’t consider themselves alcoholics or layabouts.

  Snatch now turned to Billy. ‘Do us a favour, will ya, mate?’

  Billy knew what was coming, ‘What is it?’

  ‘The Abo bloke and Casper, them two, they come to see you. You know the drill, check the boong out for me, will ya? Bring him over after?’ He winked, ‘Could be a quid or two in it for you?’

  Billy looked up at the proprietor of the Flag Hotel, then back at the glass of scotch on the counter, and cleared his throat.

  Snatch got the message. ‘Scotch for Billy and yid better keep an eye on them two, Marion. Don’t let them scarper before Billy gets to them.’

  ‘Yeah, righto,’ Marion said, then looked at Billy, one eyebrow slightly arched, ‘Black Label, wasn’t it, Billy?’

  ‘Christ no! Red!’ Snatch yelled out. ‘Red Label! Bloody hell!! Think I’m made of money, do yer?’

  Billy smiled at the barmaid, happy enough at the prospect of getting a second scotch out of Snatch.

  ‘Jesus, you ain’t even touched the first! Drink up, mate,’ Snatch instructed, impatient to get Billy out the back.

  Marion gave a snort, ‘Take yer time, mate, them two aren’t goin’ nowhere. Casper was more than anxious that you should be informed of their presence the moment you came in.’ There it was again, two sentences, one coarse, the other well structured.

  Business among the homeless was usually conducted in the mornings when most of the derelicts were still sober. It invariably took place in the beer garden at the rear of the Flag Hotel, which, until the staff turned on the smokeless barbecue, Sam Snatch allowed to be used by the alkies. In this way he kept them out of the pub itself while ensuring that most of their dole or disability pensions would be spent at his bar or on supplies purchased from his bottle shop.

  At noon the beer garden entered another dimension when it catered to patrons drawn from the various small businesses in the area. They came in for a couple of lunchtime middies and one of Snatch’s famous aged Aberdeen Angus T-bones. At half-past ten, a barmaid would take the last orders from the morning drinkers and, precisely at eleven, Snatch’s huge frame would appear at the doorway leading into the pub, from where he’d shout out, ‘Righto, piss off, the lot of yiz! Out of the garden! I’ll be waitin’ for yiz in the bottle shop! Sorry, no credit, gennelmen, unless you bring yer bank manager to guarantee yer financial status!’

  Billy was usually called in by the brotherhood of inebriates when there was a problem with someone’s pension or the dole. More often it was the need to open a bank account. Welfare payments were now being paid into bank accounts and many of the alcoholics had never operated one. They usually fell far short of the mandatory requirements known as the Hundred Points, the criteria set by the banks to qualify for a cheque account. For many of the homeless it was a catch-22, the Department of Social Security insisted that all dole and disability pensions be paid into a personal bank account while the intended recipient often had no chance of qualifying for one. Billy would be called in to straighten things out with a bit of what he referred to as ‘creative paperwork’.

  Occasionally it was a more complex issue, with a wife or kids involved, where a letter was needed to one of the many authorities that control the lives of the poor. Often a legal document would be sent to a man who, at best, was semi-literate. It would need to be translated and replied to in kind. There was scarcely a drunk in the inner-city area who hadn’t at one time or another enjoyed Billy’s services.

  Billy now assumed that Casper’s new mate would have some sort of problem along the usual lines. But today, with his routine disrupted by the kid and the cop, he didn’t feel up to the hassle of dealing with someone else’s problems. However, Sam Snatch had forced his hand and he knew he lacked the internal fortitude to stand up to the aggressive publican.

  Billy took the first fragrant sip of neat scotch. Every morning he faced the same battle, forcing himself to drink his gratuitous first nip slowly. Billy told himself that while he maintained this go-slow ritual, he remained in some sort of control, a problem drinker rather than a confirmed alcoholic. Drinking branded scotch was an example of maintaining one’s standards.

  He knew he must avoid, at all costs, the way many alcoholics approached the first glass of the day. That is to say, holding the glass in both hands, its base resting firmly on the counter, then bringing the mouth down to the lip of the glass, tipping it very slightly and feeding the precious liquid down the gullet so as not to spill a drop. Billy would always drink his like a gentleman, lifting it to his mouth in one hand while seated on a bar stool, his back straight. Drinking his first of the day in this way was one of the many benchmarks he set for his self-image. It was undoubtedly one of the hardest for him to observe as, once the scotch was placed in front of him, every nerve in his body screamed out to him to swallow the lot in one gulp.

  Lifting the scotch glass carefully, he took a tiny sip and brought it back down to the counter. With his briefcase resting on his lap and his left hand still shackled to it, he was forced to keep his right hand steady. There had been times in the past when his hand had trembled so badly that he couldn’t lift the scotch glass for the first twenty minutes. But today, thank God, his hand was behaving itself and he reached over to the small glass jug Marion had placed on the counter beside him and added to the scotch an amount of water roughly equivalent to the sip he’d taken from the glass. The end of the first drink would eventually arrive when his final sip contained only a vague tincture of the beautiful malted whisky.

  He would never be seen drinking anything but scotch in public, and Sam Snatch’s free tipple meant that Billy could maintain his affectation no matter what the state of his finances. After this, Billy would make his wa
y to the bottle shop and purchase whatever type of booze his current finances would allow before leaving the pub and returning to the Botanic Gardens. It was only when there was business to attend to, such as today, that Billy remained at the Flag. Business meant two further glasses of scotch, the price for his services.

  Billy had done business with Casper Friendly before, but always with reluctance. The quarter-caste Aborigine was a notorious wheeler-dealer invariably operating some sort of scam involving the ignorant and the desperate. Even though Billy was always willing to help for a very modest cost in kind, many of the men were too ashamed to approach him directly. They may have been drunks but they still had their pride and they’d been concealing their inability to read and write all their lives. Billy, despite his status as a homeless drunk, represented some sort of educated authority they couldn’t bring themselves to face.

  On the other hand, Casper Friendly was illiterate. ‘Whitefella don’t give Abos no teachin’ in my time,’ he’d laugh. Knowing that some of the blokes in need of help would come to him rather than go directly to Billy, Casper’s illiteracy had become his calling card.

  Casper had an easy laugh and appeared generous with his money when he was working a client, so that it wasn’t difficult for a mark to confess that he had trouble ‘readin’ and writin’’. He often enough became the acceptable conduit for the help the homeless needed. The final thing in his favour was that he was perceived to be an Aborigine and therefore carried a status on the street even lower than the white alcoholic needing help, so there was no need to ‘eat crow’ by coming to him.

  Billy had no problem with any of this, it was Casper’s charges as an introduction agency he objected to. If he brought Billy a customer who needed to open a bank account, he would charge the customer ten dol lars a fortnight from his pension for the first year and five dollars forever after. The commission Casper earned helped to keep a gang of freeloaders faithful to him. They served as his standover men in the event that one of his clients failed to pay up on pension day.