Matthew Flinders' Cat

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘Surfers Paradise,’ Billy replied.

  The official shook his head and, as if talking to himself, said, ‘The derros and the Jews.’

  Billy hesitated, he had a hangover and was not prepared for a confrontation. He’d taught himself over the years on the street to be obsequious. There seemed little point in reacting to rudeness or insults as he knew some officials gave vent to their frustration by abusing a derelict. Billy half understood this, the public could be difficult to handle and the appearance of a derelict often allowed a clerk to let off steam. Had Billy not been carrying the self-anger he’d felt when he’d let Sally Blue sign his plaster cast, he would’ve let the young bank clerk get away with his offhand manner. Billy had come to accept rudeness as part of being a nobody, but he hated racism. He accepted that while most people are covertly racist to some degree, the overt kind not only showed ignorance but also a prideful and belligerent attitude challenging people to contradict the perpetrator. He couldn’t let the man’s anti-Semitic retort go unanswered.

  ‘Are you also encouraging Jews to leave town?’ he asked.

  ‘Joke, mate, joke. Surfers Paradise, Jew-heaven,’ he said, not looking up, his pen poised. ‘Name?’

  ‘Joe Homeless,’ Billy replied.

  The official shook his head and clucked his tongue, then looked up and asked, ‘Some personal identification, please.’ He held out his hand, an uninterested look on his face.

  ‘I have none,’ Billy said. He lifted his plaster arm and indicated the patch above his eye, ‘Mugged, they took my wallet.’

  The official scribbled something on the travel voucher. ‘Your name’s Brown, Joe Brown.’

  ‘Thank you, that will do nicely,’ Billy said, satisfied that he’d gained a small advantage.

  ‘Don’t thank me, Mr Brown, just don’t come back.’ The official pointed to the wall on his left, ‘Now, will you stand in front of that little window, feet on the yellow line.’

  ‘Why?’ Billy asked, immediately looking anxious.

  ‘It’s for your travel voucher, your picture, so you don’t sell the voucher to another Mr Brown.’ The clerk shrugged, knowing he’d regained the upper hand. ‘No photo, no voucher,’ he smiled, ‘them’s the rules.’

  ‘Yes, of course, the rules, must have the rules.’ The system had got him after all. Billy’s paranoia told him that the picture would have more than this singular purpose. He rose, far from happy, and walked over to the yellow line, which was a strip of plastic taped to the floor. He wasn’t the first by any means, the tape looked scruffy and worn at the edges. ‘What about make-up?’ Billy asked facetiously.

  The official didn’t respond. ‘Look straight at the camera, Mr Brown.’ Billy looked through the little window to see a camera lens pointed directly at him. A moment later a flash went off. The clerk must have activated the camera somehow, because Billy couldn’t see an operator behind the window. ‘If you’ll come back here, there’s one more thing,’ the official called out.

  Billy returned to sit at the desk, where the travel clerk pushed a clipboard across to him and slapped a biro down beside it. ‘Write your name and the reason why you chose the destination, then sign it,’ he instructed.

  Like all street people, Billy disliked giving his personal details to anyone, even if they were bogus. It was a question of principle, a freedom only the homeless enjoy. ‘Does it matter to anyone where I go and why?’ he queried.

  The official sighed. ‘Are you being difficult, Mr Brown? Just sign the friggin’ thing, will you, use your new name.’

  ‘I’d rather not,’ Billy said.

  ‘Look, I don’t care where you go, providing it’s out of the metropolitan area and you stay away as long as possible, for instance, the rest of your life.’ He pointed at the clipboard. ‘The mayor wants to know your choice of preferred destination and it’s not my business to know why. If you fill it in and sign it, you’ll get ten dollars travel allowance.’

  ‘This about the Olympics?’ Billy asked.

  ‘Who told you that?’ the official asked, immediately suspicious.

  ‘I can’t recall, I heard it somewhere,’ Billy answered.

  ‘Yeah, that’d be right, little birdie told you.’

  ‘Is this a practice run?’ Billy persisted.

  ‘Practice for what?’

  ‘The Olympics.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s a new event, first time ever in the Olympics, a race to see who can get out of town the fastest, derros, alkies, druggies, psychos, schizophrenics, intellectually handicapped, the no-hopers and the useless, the whole shambolic. Finish line is, you guessed it, Surfers Paradise!’

  Billy had to hand it to him, the man had a certain bizarre wit. His eyes met those of the official and held, ‘What about the Jews? They not included in the race out of town?’

  The official looked surprised. ‘You trying to be funny?’

  Billy placed the biro down on the clipboard and pushed it across the desk. ‘No, sir, there’s nothing funny to say about a racist.’

  At that moment the door opened and a young woman walked in and handed the official an envelope. He extended his hand and took it from her without saying thank you or even glancing up. She left, an obvious look of distaste on her face. Billy noted that he wasn’t the only person to find the man odious.

  The official held up the envelope. ‘I’ll ignore that last remark, Mr Brown,’ he said as he pulled open the flap. The light played through the back of the envelope and Billy could see three postage-stamp-sized squares showing through. The official dipped his fat fingers into the envelope and withdrew a single passport-sized photograph. He opened a drawer and produced a glue stick, applied it to the back of the photograph and stuck it to the travel voucher. Reaching for a rubber stamp, he pushed it into an ink pad and stamped the corner of the photograph, careful not to obscure Billy’s face. Later Billy would see that it contained the month and the words ‘Exit Sydney’.

  The man pushed the travel voucher over to Billy. ‘What about the other photographs in the envelope?’

  Billy asked. The official didn’t deny their existence. ‘Keepsakes,’ he said, smiling blandly, ‘to remind me of you.’ Then to Billy’s surprise he stood up. He was even bigger than Billy had supposed, the buttons on his white shirt straining fit to bust, the material between each button scalloped to reveal a thick matting of dark hair. He pointed to the door, ‘Garn, bugger off!’ he growled.

  Billy shook his head slowly. Taking the voucher, he folded it carefully and placed it in the breast pocket of his shirt. Bending down, he clipped the handcuff back about his wrist, picked up his briefcase, rose from the chair and walked unhurriedly towards the door. As he opened the door he turned to face the official, who was now in the process of sitting down. Billy clicked his trainers together, shot his left arm towards the ceiling and shouted, ‘Heil Hitler!’

  He went directly to the interstate bus depot at Central Station to discover that the bus for Queensland and Surfers Paradise was leaving in three-quarters of an hour and he’d arrive there in the early hours of the following morning. He had time to kill so found a railway cafe, ordered a takeaway coffee and bought six Mars bars to keep up his sugar level on the journey. Paying for them and the coffee, he asked the bloke behind the counter for a large plastic milk container. Billy knew these were readily available, all cafes used them. Con always had them on hand. But the proprietor was meanspirited, or perhaps just weary of the many derelicts who made their home in Central and begged him for money or goods. ‘No got! You go now!’ he said to Billy.

  Billy was quarrelled out, so he crossed the road to Our Lady of Snows, the government-funded restaurant that dispensed food to the homeless. The lady there, grey-haired with a pleasant face, produced a plastic bottle and Billy explained that it would need to be a two-litre milk container so he could grip the handle with the fingers protruding from the plaster
cast. She found one in the fridge and transferred the milk from it into the bottle she’d originally offered him, washed out the container and filled it with water. Billy thanked her. ‘You’re welcome,’ she said, then, noticing his takeaway coffee, added, ‘You could have had a coffee here, it’s free.’

  Billy grinned. ‘Thank you, I don’t wish to seem ungrateful, madam, but even free it’s not a viable proposition.’

  The woman laughed. ‘You’ve been here before then, it isn’t very good, is it? I think it must be the urn, they boil it. Taking the bus out, are you, love?’ Billy nodded. ‘Cold weather comin’, you’ll be better off up north,’ she said, then added, ‘You’ll need some sandwiches to take with you.’ She produced a used plastic bag and dumped into it five thick-wedged white-bread sandwiches, each pre-wrapped in gladwrap. ‘There you go, peanut butter, two jam and a cheese, that should see you through. Wouldn’t mind going with you, my rheumatiz plays up something terrible in the cold weather.’

  Billy laughed, affected by the woman’s chatterbox cheerfulness. ‘You’re a fine-looking woman, madam, I take that as a compliment.’ He put the sandwiches into his briefcase.

  She left him to take care of a couple of street people who’d come in for an early lunch so Billy sat quietly and finished his coffee. He rose and called over, ‘Thank you, madam,’ lifting the water with his left arm in recognition of her generosity.

  ‘Cheerio, then,’ she called over. ‘You know where to find me when you come back, name’s Gracie Adams,’ she laughed, ‘unmarried and ready to be kick-started!’

  Now as he sat in the bus, Billy thought about the man at the Town Hall. With his background in criminal law Billy had spent most of his adult life thinking about why people behaved in certain ways. Over the years he’d observed how attitudes were built out of an accumulation of small incidents and influences. If a series of negative influences resulted in making a criminal, would the same idea work within a society?

  The official at the Town Hall wasn’t really a Nazi, but given the benefit of the doubt, he was probably an unthinking racist, a Jew-hater, possibly without ever having experienced any harm to himself from someone who was Jewish. Ryan’s attitude towards Aborigines and his bias against the imagined sexual preferences of Greek men was a first planting of the seeds of racism, the tiny beginnings of the merry-go-round of hate.

  Billy now turned his attention to the coming Olympic Games, whose largesse he was currently enjoying in an airconditioned coach flying along the Pacific Highway. When it was announced that ‘Sid-en-nee’ had won the bid for the Games the nation had gone wild with joy, which was shortly followed by a great deal of officialdom waxing lyrically and much pontificating.

  It seemed to Billy that the Sydney Olympics weren’t just the usual bread and circuses designed for the pacification of five billion people locked into their lounge rooms for two weeks, but was instead the opportunity to show the world what Australia had to offer. Its major purpose was to attract new overseas investment and increased tourism. If the original purpose of the Olympics had been to create a celebration of youth, this didn’t seem to merit too much current mention in the newspapers. The main objective seemed to be to add infrastructure and hence increase potential wealth for the city.

  The city of burnished light was already encouraging its citizens to practise wearing their ‘nice’ faces, to become perambulating smiley badges. Sydney wanted the world to see it as the cleanest, neatest, sunniest and most welcoming destination in the world. Not for what it mostly was – a deeply divided and superficial city concerned at the top stratum with individual greed and the carrying-ons of a social pecking order dictated by personal wealth and largely consisting of cultural airheads, while at the middle and bottom strata there was a growing sense of anger and despair.

  With his bum ensconced on a plush coach seat heading for Queensland, he was now playing a part in the clean-up, with the evacuation of the hopeless and the senseless from the streets of the city. Billy hadn’t the slightest doubt that, as the Olympics drew closer, what he was doing willingly would eventually become a ‘highly persuasive’ exercise.

  While Billy was enjoying this bottom-feeder’s view of society and, he admitted, conducting a highly generalised discourse with himself, he was secretly aware that what he was really trying to do was to avoid the issue of his own cowardice. On the journey to the north, he was attempting to keep his mind sufficiently busy to delay the moment when he was forced to confront himself.

  On leaving the hospital the previous day, Billy had returned to the library steps to do his daily worst. Though he recited his poem at the usual aftermath, he’d done so with less conviction than normal, knowing that the flying shit factories would have time in his absence to repopulate.

  After that he’d crossed the road to the Gardens and made his way to his bench, where he composed a letter to Ryan.

  My dearest Ryan,

  By the time you get this letter I shall be well on my way to Queensland, where I plan to stay for a little while, perhaps for the duration of the winter. I am getting old and cranky and my bones hurt in the morning. The thought of spending the coming cold weather cooped up in a small, airless room in a hostel for derelicts is much less attractive to me than following the sun to the north.

  I truly regret that there was no chance to say goodbye, but an opportunity arose for me to travel to my destination immediately and I felt compelled to take it.

  We have known each other for a very short time, less than a week, but I count this time as very enjoyable and most helpful. You were generous and kind to me and I will always remember that.

  You are a young man of exceptional intelligence and I urge you to continue with your schooling. I truly believe you are capable of achieving anything to which you set your mind.

  As for me? You must try to see us as ships passing in the night, an old man with a drinking problem and a young man who showed him great kindness. You made a big impression on me and I shall find it difficult to forget you. I shall particularly miss telling you further stories of Trim.

  Now I urge you to think of me as a very small incident in your life, which I hope will lead on to great happiness and achievement.

  If you go to the Mitchell Library and stand in the centre of the top step and look directly across to the Botanic Gardens, you will see a mighty Moreton Bay fig tree. I have cut a small notch in one of its buttress roots. Concealed under fallen leaves, directly below the notch, you will find a book that tells you the story of Matthew Flinders and his circumnavigation of Australia and many more of his grand adventures. I hope you enjoy it.

  I leave you with the hope that you will grow up to be a splendid human being. To have known you, if only for a short time, was a far better thing than never to have met.

  I am attaching a small poem which was taught to me by my first teacher and while, alas, I have not lived up to it myself, it is a way of behaving in life to which we should all aspire.

  I remain in your debt.

  Yours,

  Billy O’Shannessy (without the ‘u’)

  On a separate page Billy wrote:

  I shall pass through this world but once,

  any good thing I may do,

  or kindness show, to any human being,

  let me do it now, for I shall not pass this way again.

  After completing the letter and its attachment, Billy visited a large bookshop in George Street and purchased the book for Ryan. He stopped off at the bank in Martin Place and waited patiently until the teller was alone. The badge on her blouse said her name was Fiona Mills.

  ‘Good afternoon, Ms Mills. I wonder if you could do me a favour?’

  Fiona Mills smiled, ‘If it’s bank business, certainly.’

  ‘Well, it’s just that I’ve been coming here for some time and the teller who usually looks after me is Suzanna Partridge and, well, I have some particular
business to conduct and I wondered if you would be kind enough to see if she’s in?’

  ‘Oh, but Suzanna’s been moved upstairs,’ she smiled. ‘It’s a big promotion.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but I would particularly like to see her.’ The teller looked uncertain. ‘I’ll see if she’s in. Would you excuse me for a moment, please?’ She walked to the rear, entered a small cubicle and picked up the phone. Billy watched as she nodded her head and smiled. She then returned and said, ‘Suzanna will be right down, sir.’

  ‘Thank you, Ms Mills,’ Billy said, relieved, remembering his previous experience with the testosterone-loaded young male teller.

  Suzanna Partridge appeared shortly and greeted Billy with her usual enthusiasm. ‘Congratulations on your promotion, my dear,’ Billy said.

  ‘Oh, thank you, Mr O’Shannessy, but I must say I quite miss the contact with people like you. Come through and we’ll sit in the customer interviews office.’ She laughed, ‘Only it’s called something else now, Client Interface Facility.’

  Billy explained to her that he was contemplating spending the winter months in the sun and wanted his account transferred to their branch in Southport where his future pensions would be sent. He also told her he wanted to withdraw all the money, with the exception of a hundred dollars, from his current account.

  After visiting the bank, he returned to the Botanic Gardens where he buried the book for Ryan. What remained of the day he spent visiting all his favourite walks and places within the precincts of the Gardens.

  In the fading afternoon, to the sound of magpies carolling in the trees, Billy made his way down the Domain steps to the Flag Hotel. Marion, he knew, knocked off promptly at five o’clock and Billy needed to see her before she departed. As Sam Snatch wouldn’t permit any of the derelicts to approach Marion’s Bar, except for Billy’s usual morning visit, Billy would have to take the chance that he’d be able to talk with her. Otherwise he’d have to wait outside the pub and catch her as she left. His need to see Marion had been one of his more compelling reasons not to allow the sadness within him make him reach for an early bottle.