Matthew Flinders' Cat

by Bryce Courtenay

  At breakfast on the day of his departure, Billy was feeling bleary-eyed and miserable when Morgan came to sit beside him. ‘We were pretty rough on you last night, Billy. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Good morning, Morgan. No, I needed to know all that stuff. I’ve been a street drunk for four, four and half years, but that’s not my world. It will help me with Ryan, help me find him.’

  ‘I hope so, mate, I really do.’

  They were both silent for a few moments then Morgan said, ‘I haven’t told you a lot about myself, Billy.’

  ‘No, you haven’t, but that’s up to you, I guess.’

  ‘I hope we’ll meet again, Billy.’

  ‘Yes, of course, that would be nice.’ Billy sensed Morgan wanted to say something so he waited.

  ‘When you get out, I mean if you have a bit of time, could you go and see my girlfriend, Billy?’

  ‘I don’t see why not. Yes, of course.’

  ‘You see, I’m an actor. Well, that was my profession until I discovered heroin.’

  Billy now understood why Morgan’s reading at yesterday’s chapel had sounded so professional. ‘So your addiction wasn’t something from your teens, like Freddo and Davo?’

  ‘No, I came from a pretty rough family and I was abused, but I have no excuses. I was fostered out at eight into a pretty good home, my foster parents were very kind to me and treated me like one of the family. I did pretty well at school and then went on to NIDA, the National Institute of Dramatic Art, where I was nominated in my diploma year as outstanding student. My career, as they say, blossomed. I got married early to an actress of the bums-and-tits variety which my ego at the time demanded. From the very start it was a disaster, and I admit mostly my fault. I was drinking heavily, we quarrelled constantly and we divorced three years later. I was still doing well in television and there was talk of a prime-time show of my own. It didn’t eventuate but I won a Mike Walsh Fellowship and went to Britain for a year to study documentary drama at the BBC.’

  ‘Kids?’

  ‘Thank God, no! My wife wasn’t exactly Mensa material but she was bright enough to stay on the pill. Then I returned from England and met the love of my life, a blues singer, part-Aborigine. I wouldn’t say that normally but you’d never tell from looking at her. She’s a beautiful woman.’

  Billy looked at him. He still wasn’t sure about Morgan and this last remark didn’t help.

  Morgan continued, ‘I was crazy about her, still am. What I didn’t know at the time was that she was a heroin addict, though I don’t suppose it would have mattered, I worshipped her anyway. Well, no need to go into the whole sordid mess, but pretty soon I was also winding a tourniquet around my arm and sharing a needle with her. That was two years ago. Now I’m in here and she’s out there, still using. I know she wants to kick the habit, to get clean, but she doesn’t have the courage yet. She said if I could do it, she would.’ He stopped for a minute. ‘Mate, I love her with every breath in my body, she’s my Higher Power. If you could see her, tell her it can be done, that I’m surviving and you’re pretty sure I’m going to make it, she might just have the courage to take the plunge and go into rehab.’

  Billy turned to face him. ‘Morgan, of course I’ll see her, but you know as well as I do, she’s got to have a reason to give up. Your reason is her, is hers the same, you?’

  ‘I think so, I hope so.’

  ‘You don’t sound too sure?’

  ‘No, no, I am, we’re devoted. They say heroin destroys love but that hasn’t happened. Please, Billy, can you just talk to her? I know she loves me and wants to get back into singing.’

  ‘Where can I find her?’ Billy asked.

  ‘She’s moved into one of the casino apartments at Darling Harbour with two other girls.’ Morgan hesitated. ‘She’s working as a high-class whore at the casino, it’s how she supports her habit.’

  ‘Let me have her address, I’ll try. What’s her name, by the way? What if she won’t see me?’

  ‘I’ve written to her, telling her about you. She’ll see you, I promise.’ Morgan handed Billy a scrap of paper. ‘Thanks, mate, we’re going to miss you heaps. She calls herself Kartanya. She’s from the Kaura people from the Adelaide plains, though her mother is a white woman.’ He patted Billy on the arm and left abruptly. Billy wasn’t a man who judged others but he sometimes wondered about Morgan’s sincerity.

  Billy was waiting outside Vince Payne’s office for the program director to arrive. On the way he’d stopped at reception and handed them a note to give to Ryan on the off-chance that he might return. Billy was conscious that the police might come around and make inquiries, that Ryan’s principal might have told them of his connection with the boy, so the note simply read:

  Dear Ryan,

  I’ll be at Trim’s window,

  Billy

  Vince Payne came waddling into the building carrying his usual styrofoam cup of coffee from Rocco’s. ‘Come in, come in,’ he said, unlocking the deadlocked door to his office. He’d been around sufficiently to know that while some addicts are honest, others don’t bring a set of newly reformed morals into rehabilitation.

  Billy sat down on the now familiar straightbacked kitchen chair.

  Vince was all business, ‘We’ve fixed up your pension so it will go to the bank,’ he said. Then, looking steadily at Billy, he said sternly, ‘You haven’t changed your mind?’

  ‘No, Vince, I haven’t. I have to leave.’ The program director sighed. He was a good sigher and Billy suspected he practised squeezing the utmost disappointment out of a sigh. ‘I must be honest with you, Billy. Like I said yesterday, your chances out there on your own are not good. On the other hand, you have a mission to find the boy and that’s something at least.’ He reached for an envelope on his desk. ‘In here is the address of an AA group who meet every morning at the G’day Cafe Coffee House at the Rocks and at three or four other venues, none too inconvenient, in the late afternoon or evenings. I beg you to join them and to attend twice a day. Do you hear me, Billy? Not once. Twice. They’ll do the Twelve Steps you would have continued on with at St Peters. It’s not quite the same, the rigid discipline is missing and, of course, you’ll be constantly open to temptation. But if you’re determined, you can do it. You’ll get a lot of support from these guys. In here is a note to the fellow alcoholic who runs it. There are several of your type there, successful businessmen, professionals, you’ll probably be quite comfortable in their company.’ He stopped and picked up the biro. He’s going to start tapping, Billy thought. He does it when he wants to make a significant point. ‘Don’t, don’t, don’t go near a pub, Billy! You’re not cured, you never will be! One drink and you’re gone, back where you were when you went into detox.’

  ‘Thank you. Yes, I understand,’ Billy replied. The biro was going tap, tap, tap, tap. He’d been told the same thing maybe a thousand times since he’d arrived. Maybe if they said it less often, it might have more meaning, he thought.

  ‘Okay, let’s go upstairs and get your things,’ Vince said briskly, throwing down the biro and rising from his chair.

  Having signed for and collected his possessions, Billy stood at the front door with his briefcase handcuffed back around his left wrist. After being absent for three weeks the briefcase felt strange, no longer the essential friend it had been. So much had happened in such a short period, though he imagined he’d soon grow accustomed to the briefcase again being his constant companion and security blanket.

  Several of the men had come to his table at breakfast to say goodbye and to wish him luck. They were a strange fraternity. After three weeks of being locked into a small space they had become almost a family, exposing their emotions and sharing their innermost secrets. Billy couldn’t remember ever having been closer to his fellow humans.

  Now, as he stood waiting to be released, only Freddo and Davo were present in the foyer. Freddo hel
d Billy’s hand. ‘I’m gunna miss you a lot, Billy. I know you gunna make it, mate. You gunna make it for all of us. I hope you find the kid. I don’t write so good, but I’ve wrote down all the places you should look. Wait outside and watch who comes and goes.’ He handed Billy a carefully folded note.

  ‘Freddo, I am grateful to you and it’s important that good people like you get clean. Remember, I’ll be out there cheering you on.’

  Freddo’s froggy face beamed. ‘Nobody’s never called me good people before, Billy.’

  Davo stood awkwardly, kicking his right trainer against the side of the left one. He extended his hand, squinting slightly, glancing sideways at Billy. ‘I’m gunna make Team Fenech, Billy, you’ll see, mate.’

  ‘I know you will, Davo. I’ll come and see you fight.’ Billy gripped his hand. ‘It’s been good knowing you, son. I’ll be ringside watching on the big night.’

  Billy glanced towards reception and caught the receptionist’s eye, then heard the buzz as the electric door opened. ‘Goodbye, Freddo, goodbye, Davo. Good luck.’ He turned quickly and pushed open the door.

  ‘Billy!’ Davo called out suddenly.

  Billy turned back, hoping the purple bruises and his one bunged-up eye hid his nascent tears.

  ‘You and Jeff Fenech, you’re the champ of champs, the best that ever was, mate . . . The best there ever will be!’ Davo called, his voice trembling.

  Then Billy stepped out into the frightening sunlight.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Although he had been outside the William Booth Institute on several occasions when the men were taken for a short walk after breakfast, they had kept close together, a tight little group which, in their own minds, was marking time and so stood apart from the outside world. Now, as he walked away towards Oxford Street, despite the grubby and cluttered confines of Darlinghurst, Billy had a feeling of too much space, with the air surrounding him seeming to contain a tincture of malevolence.

  Billy was about to enter a recidivous and duplicitous world inhabited by male predators in thousand-dollar suits, silk ties and polished black shoes who knew their wine and groomed their sons and daughters to replace them in the better-paying professions. It was also a world of weirdos and deadbeats, tinkers, tailors and candlestick makers. Paedophiles are not a class of men but a malignancy in humankind, a suppurating mental sore carefully concealed behind a bandage of respectability. It was also a world, as Freddo had explained, where someone called The Queenie sent her honey-tongued scouts out onto the street to gather a harvest of hungry, frightened runaway children for the carnal appetites of powerful and outwardly sanctimonious men who laughed quietly amongst themselves over slogans such as Sex before eight or it’s too late!

  He decided that one of his first tasks was to visit the Pring Street school and introduce himself to the principal, Ms Flanagan. Ryan might just conceivably turn up there and Billy wanted to cover every eventuality. Besides, she had shown courage in telling Ryan of his whereabouts when she’d been specifically instructed not to do so and he wanted to assure her that he wasn’t a danger to the child. She might also have further information on why Ryan had chosen to run away and why the police were involved.

  But first he had an urgent need to visit the Botanic Gardens, which he’d greatly missed. It was nearly spring and while most of the native shrubs and trees wouldn’t be flowering at this time of year, many of the acacia varietals would be out and a number of exotic plants from Asia and Africa would be blooming. He thought particularly of a magnificent magnolia tree he would visit. He would sit quietly on his favourite bench, where he would have an opportunity to think, away from the confines of the William Booth Institute.

  Billy sat in the sunshine, listening to the fall of water over rock. The air around him had none of the malevolence he’d felt earlier in the day and it hummed with the sound of bees and other small pollen-collecting insects. A dragonfly, its wings trembling, hovered above the water in the small pond beside his bench. He could hear the distinctive chewee, chewee, chewee of a Restless Flycatcher coming from the direction of the great old Moreton Bay fig he so dearly loved. The tiny native figs would be ripening, the sticky fruit attracting insects and bringing the Satin Flycatchers into the Gardens.

  For the first time, he felt the unaccustomed effect of no alcohol in his bloodstream, and he realised he was beginning to imagine a life where he was not constantly preoccupied by the need for a drink. While he had been clean for more than a month, he had also been incarcerated with other addicts in the process of recovery and it hadn’t allowed him to see his life beyond the next twenty-four hours. One day at a time was the mantra of recovery and he had been warned not to abandon it lightly, each hour was a milestone and a day could feel like an eternity. Billy quickly shut out the thought that he might need to organise a permanent life where the need for alcohol no longer dominated every moment. He knew that such speculation would only cause him to panic, he was still too vulnerable to make plans and there were a great many questions to which he didn’t have the answers.

  The one great advantage of being a drunk was the freedom from any outside obligation and the knowledge that you had been cast aside by a society who largely didn’t care if you lived or died, as long as you didn’t invade their neighbourhood or interrupt their lives. Like sex workers on suburban streets, the chic weren’t supposed to mix with the shab. Living on the street, the decisions you needed to make were singular and uncomplicated and not necessarily chaotic. Billy’s life as a homeless person still consisted of an established routine, which was important to him. As an alcoholic in abeyance, his existence would need to be entirely different and he would need to think it out carefully. This was an unfamiliar dish he would have to taste one tiny portion at a time.

  For this reason he decided to remain sleeping on the bench outside the library, though of course the primary purpose for doing so was that Ryan might locate him. Billy unshackled the briefcase, took out his notepad and made a note to visit the the Wayside Chapel to obtain a blanket and a large plastic bag.

  The weather was still cold and, with his internal combustion no longer fuelled by a bottle of scotch, he would be cold sleeping on the bench at night.

  Billy replaced the pad and biro and opened the envelope Vince Payne had given him. It contained, as the program director had mentioned, a list of the morning and evening Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in the inner-city and Kings Cross environs. The AA meeting that evening, Tuesday, was at the Wayside Chapel in Kings Cross, which was only a couple of minutes’ walk from the main drag where he would begin his vigil in the lane behind The Queen of Sheba. Freddo had given him the locations of the three places in the Cross he claimed were frequented by paedophiles. He had also told Billy not to take up his observation post during the day, which was when most of the clubs were closed and when kiddy-sex took place in the various apartments rented by sex tourists. ‘Do it after eight and establish yerself as a derro who comes to the same place every night to drink and sleep, that way they get used to you being there,’ Freddo had advised. ‘There’s nothin’ more invisible around the Cross than an old derro.’ Billy would take the blanket along with him so that it appeared he was tucked up for the night and if anyone passed by he’d pretend he was either drunk or in an alcoholic stupor.

  His principal concern was how he would conduct his day without its customary alcohol content. He’d basically solved the mornings. The AA meeting would start the day and it would occupy the time when he used to cadge a cup of coffee from Con. After the meeting he would visit The Station just in time for breakfast, after which he’d shave and shower, a habit he’d resumed with some personal satisfaction at William Booth. It was a funny thing. Almost more than anything else, a wash and shave suggested to him that he was making progress. It was a habit he must be careful to continue now he was back on the street. After The Station, he’d visit the Botanic Gardens and continue his usual routine until it was
time for Operation Mynah Bird. In his absence, the birds had probably replaced the numbers he’d systematically culled from their ranks.

  Similarly, the evenings would involve a meal in Martin Place at the Just Enough Faith van and then he’d attend the other AA meeting. This would take care of the first part of the evening and the remainder would be taken up by his surveillance outside one or another of the addresses Freddo had given him.

  With the mornings and the evenings taken care of, Billy realised that the long afternoons were going to create a problem for him. With nothing to distract him, the craving for a drink would become overpowering. Billy knew that his life depended on using his time well, filling every available moment, or he was almost certain to crash. It was then that he hit on the idea of spending the afternoons in the Mitchell Library, where he would research and write the final part of Trim’s story. This would also help keep his hopes alive of finding Ryan, who, he told himself, would be the ultimate benefactor of his two new Trim stories. Having his mind occupied elsewhere might prevent his constant, gnawing urge to visit a bottle shop. It would also keep him in touch with Trim, his designated Higher Power for the AA Twelve Step meetings.

  Billy crossed the Domain, walked down past the back of the Art Gallery and crossed Crown and Bourke Streets in order to give the Flag Hotel on Cowper Wharf Road a wide berth, finally working his way through several small streets to Pring Street Public School. He’d timed it well and the children were out of their classrooms enjoying recess. To his delight, the playground was being supervised by the music teacher, Ms Sypkins, who, to his further surprise, recognised him immediately.