Matthew Flinders' Cat

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘But these came from the Salvation Army shop in Queensland,’ Billy protested.

  ‘Sorry, mate, I’m just doing my job,’ the nurse said.

  ‘Now, if you’ll please strip.’

  ‘You mean, strip everything?’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid so, I have to give you a complete body inspection.’

  Billy rubbed the stubble on his head. ‘I’ve already been deloused and checked for scabies at Resthaven,’ Billy protested again.

  ‘Sorry, mate, gotta be done,’ the nurse said, shaking his head sympathetically.

  Billy, shivering in the damp atmosphere as he stood in front of the nurse, was examined front and back. He hadn’t noticed that Hamish was wearing a surgical glove on his right hand. It wasn’t hard to understand that anyone examining him would regard him as, he couldn’t think of the right word and finally settled for contaminated.

  ‘Bend over,’ the nurse asked, standing behind him. Billy hesitated. ‘What for?’

  Hamish sighed. ‘I’ve got to check your rectum for drugs.’

  ‘No!’

  The nurse looked relieved. ‘Thanks, it’s not compulsory.’

  Billy had expected an argument. ‘Why didn’t you tell me I had a choice?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m sorry. We have to try. The young blokes don’t mind, most of them have been in prison so they know the drill. Not nice though, is it?’ Hamish smiled. ‘I’m pleased to report that bodywise there are no creepy-crawlies.’

  Billy, who was still annoyed at the nurse’s rectal presumption, said, ‘I already told you that, son.’

  Hamish didn’t protest. ‘Nearly through, Billy. I have to take a urine sample and it’s over.’ He picked up the specimen jar from the floor. ‘I have to watch while you piss into this.’ He sighed, anticipating an objection. ‘Sorry, them’s the rules.’

  Billy wondered fleetingly whether this was why Vince Payne had urged him to have a cup of coffee. ‘Is this optional?’

  ‘Afraid not, thank you for co-operating, Billy.’ He handed Billy the jar and then stepped in front of him. ‘Do your best.’

  ‘What’s this for?’ Billy asked.

  ‘Same as the shunt in the rear. Drugs. We need to know a bit more about your immediate past.’

  Billy turned on him, his expression ingenuous. ‘Might as well admit it now, I’m taking Theobromaecacao!’

  ‘What’s that?’ the nurse asked. ‘Never heard of it. New drug, is it?’

  ‘No, very old. Chocolate. It’s the Latin name for chocolate.’ Billy knew it was a cheap shot, but as he attempted to empty his bladder into the specimen jar, it served to regain a small portion of dignity.

  Taking the bottle, the nurse said, ‘Latin, eh? We don’t hear of lot of that spoken here.’

  The kid was sharper than he’d supposed. He realised he was getting old, he’d always rather patronisingly thought of nurses as general factotums, glorified housemaids. Now, he realised, they needed a university degree to work. Hamish was sending him up, though somewhat gently. ‘I’m sorry, son, it was a cheap shot,’ Billy apologised.

  ‘That’s okay, Billy, I’m the one should be apologising. All this isn’t very nice for an educated bloke. I’m damn sure I wouldn’t like it done to me.’

  Hamish then explained that he’d need to take a shower and get into pyjamas ready for his medical. ‘You only need one shower and I won’t have to scrub you.’

  Billy didn’t need to have this explained to him. He’d been around derros long enough to know that cleanliness wasn’t prized among the fellowship. Casper Friendly and his mob probably took an average of one shower annually between them. After a while some drunks actually took pride in their unkempt condition, it became an affirmation that they were outcasts, different. Dirt became a badge of defiance.

  ‘I’ve already had a medical at Resthaven, the results are in the papers I brought in,’ Billy said.

  ‘I’m sorry, Billy, it has to be done. House rules, you spend the first day here being showered, deloused, medicated, examined, analysed and observed and then you’ll spend the rest of the day in bed in the clinic.’

  Billy didn’t suppose he minded all that much. The trip down south had been exhausting and while his diarrhoea and headache seemed to have ceased, he felt weak.

  Dressed in his pyjamas, he was taken through to the clinic where a second nurse, who introduced herself as Christine, weighed him and measured his height. Like most alcoholics he was considerably underweight. ‘Billy, we’re going to have to put some flesh on those bones! While you’re here, you have to try to eat more.’

  ‘May I start by having banana custard for lunch?’ The nurse laughed. ‘Of course! But try to combine it with a couple of chops and a helping of mash, will ya?’

  With the nurse still in attendance, a young doctor examined him, checking his heart and lungs and taking a blood test. ‘You’re a bit dehydrated, Billy. I’m going to put you on a saline drip. It’s into bed for you, young man, you’ll stay in the clinic until tomorrow and then you’ll go to your dormitory.’

  ‘Dormitory?’ Billy asked fearfully, thinking of the drunk tank in Foster House.

  Christine laughed. ‘It isn’t too bad, four to a room, and you’ll probably be the only one who snores.’

  Billy wasn’t sure he understood. The drunk tank, apart from all its other gastrointestinal disturbances, was a cacophony of snoring that would have put a rainy-season frog chorus to shame. He was to learn, as an alcoholic only, that he was more the exception than the rule. The days of the gregarious and harmless drunk manipulating the system and attempting to rehabilitate were largely over. Most of the clients at the William Booth Institute were a new kind of addict, they were young, aged from eighteen to their mid-thirties, often married with kids and addicted to both the bitch and the witch.

  In the language of the street, the bitch was grog and the witch heroin or amphetamines. Taken together, they made for a very difficult and dangerous mindaltering combination. Nerves were shot, tempers were often on a hair trigger. These were desperate young men, many of them in and out of prison all their adult lives. As a general rule, most of them had led reckless and difficult lives. They suffered from low self-esteem, were alienated, confused, angry and, when under the influence, very dangerous. AA had spawned a new organisation, NA, which stood for Narcotics Anonymous, a whole new ball game.

  ‘Tell you what, Billy,’ Christine said. ‘Tomorrow, when you come out of the clinic, we’ll give you bed seventeen in room five, it’s tucked around a bit of a pillar, it’ll give you just a tiny bit of privacy. I’m afraid the intake is just about all young blokes, there’s not going to be a lot of private space to go around, they’re a pretty noisy mob. If it gets too bad you can come into the clinic during your free time, have a bit of a lie down, be by yourself behind a curtain.’

  Billy, despite being exhausted, lay awake all afternoon. He was worried about Ryan and the letter he’d sent to Trevor Williams. He’d have to think the whole thing out again. It would be ten months before he would be free to be useful to either of them. For God’s sake! They might send him to Newcastle! Send him away again. He felt panic growing in the pit of his stomach. He began talking to himself, ‘Christ Almighty, Billy! Anything could happen to the boy in ten months. His grandmother is probably dead and his mother . . . ?’ He wouldn’t allow himself to think what might occur if Ryan was alone in the house with his heroin-addicted mother. He would, he decided, need to write urgently to the principal of Pring Street Public School. She was a decent and concerned woman, she would agree to be a link between himself and Ryan and help to hold the line until he got out. No, she wouldn’t. Yes, she would. She had too much on her plate to care about one child. Yes, she would, she was that sort. What sort was that? His mind spun with contradictions, each thought cancelling the previous one.

  Towards evening, Billy fell into a fitful s
leep, waking often with the singular thought that he should leave William Booth in the morning. His mind raced from one thing to another. Surely that would be the decent thing to do? Somehow he’d stay off the grog so that he could help the boy. By staying in rehab, wasn’t he simply doing what he’d always done? Wasn’t this just another case of copping out, retiring from the scene for ten months? ‘Nice one, Billy!’ he remonstrated with himself again. ‘If something happens to Ryan you can say it wasn’t your fault, your conscience is clear, you’re doing the best you can, all you were trying to do was to rehabilitate yourself so you could help the boy. What rotten luck it turned out the way it did!’

  Billy was stretched to breaking point. His mind was filled with confusion and self-loathing, the coward was back. So much for his Higher Power. It was Charlie all over again. Run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run! At last Billy’s mind reached overload, he could cope no longer and he fell into a deep, exhausted sleep.

  Christine arrived some time later with a bowl of banana custard left over from lunch. ‘Poor old bugger,’ she said, smiling down at Billy. ‘Never mind, mate, tomorrow’s another banana-custard day.’ She looked at Billy. ‘But I can’t say I like your chances, mate.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  The careless shouts of the two garbos working a truck on the street below woke Billy. It seemed to him that garbagemen, as a breed, were born with a compulsion to deny the rest of humanity any attempt to sleep beyond six a.m. The constant stopping and starting of the truck, the grind and whine of its bin-lifting mechanism, the crash of the impactor, the clink of bottles and the hollow clunk of plastic bins hitting the ground invaded the early morning air. Billy, as he always did, lay still, trying to listen for a snippet of birdsong through the racket, the call of a currawong or the carolling of a magpie. But then he realised that he was in the heart of the concrete jungle, the grey, sleazy end of Darlinghurst, where only the flying rats and the airborne shit factories, the pigeons and the mynah birds, were to be found.

  With no Arthur and Martha to wake him, Billy had no idea of the time, though it was only just coming up light and he judged it to be about six-thirty. He could vaguely remember someone making him sit up while they removed his drip during the night. Billy rose, parting the curtains around his bed, and stumbled towards a window. The winter’s morning seemed to be struggling to wrestle free from the night, the light in the street grey and uncertain, and the road wet from earlier drizzle. The garbage truck had moved on. The street, now thoroughly awake, was reduced needlessly back to silence. This was to be another of the rest of the days of his life, his sixteenth day without a drink, and while he felt physically a little better and his body stronger, his mind was still completely preoccupied with his addiction. His hope for a scrap of birdsong was so strong that he could block out his waking thought, the urgent desire to find something, anything, alcoholic to drink. He could understand Cliff Thomas’s need to concoct a mixture of metho, boot polish and brasso when on a dry exercise in the army. Billy would have gladly accepted this offering had it been available to him at that very moment.

  Not quite knowing what to do and with no street clothes to wear, Billy returned to his bed. He would need to write to Ryan at some time during the day and inform him that it would be six weeks before he would be allowed to visit Billy in the institution. The letter would be awkward to write as he was still uncertain whether the boy would accept him back into his life. To a young boy six weeks is a lifetime and it would be four weeks before Ryan could ring him or Billy could attempt to call the school to inquire about him.

  After the week spent at Resthaven, Billy had some idea of what was waiting for him and Vince Payne had told him he was required to do it again, as the procedure was somewhat different at William Booth. This didn’t trouble him too much. At Resthaven he’d been so zonked on Valium and preoccupied with the letter he was writing to Ryan that he’d hardly concentrated on the lectures and made almost no contribution to the group discussions.

  At seven o’clock, and still in his pyjamas, Billy was permitted to go downstairs to breakfast, which was a plate of oatmeal porridge with sugar and milk and a cup of sweet tea. Directly afterwards, he was taken to the Salvation Army shop to choose two sets of clothes and a pair of shoes. Though second-hand and no doubt from the charity bin, the clothes were in excellent condition and Billy chose a pair of blue jeans, a pair of khaki cotton pants, two well-washed, soft-blue cotton shirts, two long-sleeved jumpers and a couple of T-shirts. Socks and underpants were optional and supplied new by the Salvos, but Billy hesitated. It had been more than four years since he’d used either, but he decided to give them a go. It would be part of his rehabilitation, his return to normalcy. Finally he chose a pair of almost new, rather overthe-top red-and-white basketball boots, which he thought rather snazzy and which Ryan might think were cool.

  Billy was then taken to his dormitory, although it was referred to as a room and accommodated four men. He was given bed seventeen, the nurse’s promised intervention for a bed that had a little privacy. It was tucked away behind a pillar and allowed his head and shoulders to be concealed from the other occupants. Billy was to find that sixty centimetres of private space would prove to be one of the most important aspects of his recovery program. It allowed him to hide his emotions from the others, read and write without interruption, even to have a quiet weep when things got too much for him. He was yet to meet his roommates as they were out on their first exercise program, so he waited in a small area on the first floor that was used by the men between activities.

  At eight-twenty he was ushered by a counsellor into the lecture room where there were about thirty men all wearing name tags. Billy recognised the look in some of their eyes, they were still on 20 mg of Valium and just out of detox and their minds were turned inwards. Most mumbled a half-articulated greeting and, at the suggestion of the counsellor, they all sat down.

  ‘Righto, everyone, my name is Jimmy,’ the counsellor announced. ‘Just so you know, I came into William Booth two years ago for the second time, having messed it up the first time. Like all of you, I am an alcoholic and addict. At the time I was on heroin.’ He looked around, his eyes taking in each of them. ‘I only say this so you’ll know I know what you’re going through. Also, I’m not Salvation Army, I’m a trained psychologist and I’m paid to do this job. Having said that, I like what I do and I’m on your side.’

  Billy’s ability to read between the lines heard the translation as ‘Don’t try and pull a swift one on me, I know the score’. It was a good start, most drunks and many addicts become expert at conning and manipulation, and practise it almost without thinking, always probing for an advantage. Jimmy, who appeared to be in his mid-thirties, was making it clear that there was no point trying it on.

  The counsellor smiled. ‘This joint is run by the Salvation Army, the salvation part is up to you guys, but the army ain’t. They’ve got rules, strict rules, and if you’re gunna stay here, you’re gunna have to do it their way. Okay, guys?’

  What followed was a chorus of ‘yeah’, ‘no worries’, ‘sure’, ‘cool’, which surprised Billy as most of the men had looked a bit totalled coming in and he’d expected a muted and morose response. He was considerably older than the rest of the group, the youngest of whom appeared to be no more than a grown boy and the eldest perhaps in his late thirties or early forties. Perhaps the younger men had more physical reserves and this accounted for their reaction.

  ‘For a start,’ Jimmy continued, ‘don’t throw anything out of the windows. It’s been happening and if you’re caught doing it you’ll be discharged. The eight a.m. morning walk is compulsory. If you’re feeling crook you’ll need permission from the nurse and, I warn you, that ain’t easy.’ He grinned. ‘Hamish is easier than Christine.’ This caused a laugh and Jimmy let it subside before continuing. ‘You’ve all been given a set of rules, please read them. Like I said, they’re strict and ignoring them is going to get you
into trouble, it’s just the same as if you were in the army. Okay, sometimes there’s blokes come in who can’t read, no worries, catch me sometime and I’ll go through the rules with you. You’ve also been told this before, but I better warn you again, no bad language, no effing, b’s, c’s or s’s. The Salvos won’t tolerate it, so keep your language clean at all times. Oh, one last thing, you’ve also been told this before but sometimes blokes forget, the Salvos take seventy per cent of your dole or pension while you’re here. That just about leaves you enough for smokes and the odd Coke, so do yourself a favour, don’t try to borrow money from anyone, it always leads to trouble. Got me?’

  This last warning was received with less alacrity. Cadging, borrowing and bludging were accepted behaviour among derelicts and, in particular, heroin addicts, who were masters at it. Billy wondered to himself how successful this warning would prove.

  ‘Okay, guys, now I’ll give you a bit of a talk where I’ll keep stopping to ask questions and after tea you’ll go into groups of ten and discuss what’s been said in more depth. I’m afraid you have to sit through this first part, but I appreciate some of you are just out of detox and may be feeling pretty crook. If you can’t hack the group discussion, you can leave and go back to your room.’

  Jimmy moved over to a small table, on which rested an overhead projector. The word ‘Denial’ flashed onto the screen. ‘Here’s a word you’re going to hear a lot. Denial! What’s it mean? Anyone here tell me what it means?’

  The group remained silent.

  ‘Come on, somebody, please.’ There was still no response so Jimmy said, ‘Come on, guys, this isn’t a flamin’ examination, you’re not back at school.’

  ‘It means making excuses for yerself,’ someone said tentatively.

  ‘Yeah, not bad. What kind of excuses?’ More silence followed. As the oldest man in the room, Billy didn’t want to assert himself, and there was the question of his accent, but finally he said, ‘We deny to ourselves that we are unable to cope with our addiction.’