Matthew Flinders' Cat

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘Hello,’ she said, smiling. ‘You’re back? Goodness, what have you done to your nose?’

  ‘Oh, you remember me? Billy O’Shannessy,’ Billy said, in case she’d forgotten his name. ‘I really did run into a door.’

  ‘Remember you? How could I forget?’ she laughed.

  ‘I hardly slept a wink the night we met.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, it was very kind of you to act as my courier.’

  A troubled look came over her face. ‘Mr O’Shannessy, if you’re looking for Ryan, he isn’t here.

  We’re all terribly worried, we haven’t seen him for weeks.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Billy replied.

  Sylvia Sypkins looked surprised. ‘Do you know where he is then?’

  ‘No, your principal wrote to me to tell me what happened. That’s why I’ve come.’ Billy paused a moment before asking, ‘Would it be possible to see Ms Flanagan?’

  The music teacher hesitated just sufficiently for Billy to sense that she didn’t know whether the principal would welcome a visit from him. ‘If you’ll wait here, I’ll ask her.’

  Billy waited, watching the children playing. Kids, it seemed, never really changed, the boys rushing around chasing each other, yelling, quarrelling, pushing, arguing, laughing, mocking and, in the process, burning up enormous amounts of energy. As always, the little girls were wiser and more sophisticated, either paired off or in small private groups, sharing secrets or sandwiches, skipping or playing hopscotch. Ms Sypkins returned to say that the principal would see him.

  After taking Billy to the principal’s office, Ms Sypkins said, ‘I need to get back to the playground; just knock and enter, you’re expected.’ She extended her hand, ‘Nice to see you again, Mr O’Shannessy.’

  Billy took her hand. ‘Thank you, and next time we meet, will you please call me Billy?’

  ‘Of course, Billy, I’m glad you’ve returned, you made quite an impact the first time we met.’

  Billy knocked on the open door of the principal’s office. ‘Come in, please,’ a voice called. Billy entered to see a pleasant-looking, grey-haired woman whom he judged to be the same age as himself. She was seated behind a desk and still had her fountain pen poised where she’d been writing. She capped the pen and placed it down. ‘Mr O’Shannessy, is it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Billy said, entering.

  Dorothy Flanagan smiled. It was a nice smile and Billy relaxed a little. She indicated one of two smallish green easychairs in front of her desk. ‘Won’t you sit down, Mr O’Shannessy?’

  ‘Please call me Billy,’ Billy said, sitting down.

  ‘I don’t think I could do that,’ Dorothy Flanagan replied.

  Billy looked up, surprised. ‘Oh, I do apologise, I didn’t mean to be familiar, Ms Flanagan. It’s just . . . well, you see I used to be Mr O’Shannessy, but that was an entirely different person. Once you’re on the street you’re only known by your first name. I’ve just spent a month in a detox and rehabilitation unit where only first names are ever used.’ Billy sensed that he was talking too much and that Dorothy Flanagan was from the old school and didn’t have the easy attitude of her much younger music teacher.

  ‘Nevertheless, I shall continue to call you Mr O’Shannessy,’ the principal said firmly. ‘Now, what is it we can do for you?’ Then to Billy’s surprise, she added, ‘Is it about the money you left for Ryan?’

  ‘Good Lord, no!’ Billy exclaimed. ‘I came to inquire about the boy himself.’

  ‘Did you not get my letter?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, it was very kind of you to write on all three occasions.’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure there is a lot more to add, Mr O’Shannessy, though we still have all the money you left, which I shall arrange to have returned to you.’

  Billy put up his hand to restrain her. ‘No, please, that’s not why I’m here.’ Billy began to sense that he might have a slightly hostile witness on his hands. ‘The money was intended to help Ryan. His grandmother was terminally ill at the time and expected to die; I simply thought the money would be useful with funeral expenses, that sort of thing.’

  ‘That was kind of you, but like so many of her generation, she’d already paid for her plot and her funeral. We sent a wreath but that was from a collection taken up here in the school.’

  ‘I had hoped there might be more news of Ryan since your last letter, for instance the specific reason the police wished to see the boy.’

  ‘I really can’t say, Mr O’Shannessy.’

  ‘Can’t say, or won’t say? There is a distinction.’

  ‘I am aware of that,’ said Dorothy Flanagan, a little tetchily.

  ‘Well, which is it?’ Billy said, surprised at the quiet yet insistent tone of his voice. He was back in court, ferreting out the truth. ‘May I put it to you this way, Ms Flanagan, did you personally talk to Ryan at any time in the three-week period prior to his mother’s death?’

  ‘Are you asking me if he attended school?’

  ‘Well, yes, that would be a part of it, unless you saw him after school hours.’

  ‘Yes, he attended briefly on two occasions.’

  ‘I see, and did you talk to him on one or both occasions?’

  ‘Look here, Mr O’Shannessy, I’m not at all sure that it is any of your business. You are not a relative and I have already been advised by the Department of Community Services that you are to report to them before any further commitment in the interest of Ryan can take place.’

  Billy spread his hands, trying not to show his impatience. He liked her careful and precise phrasing, she would be a good witness in a court of law, but now he needed to rough her up a bit. ‘Ms Flanagan, Ryan is a little boy who has recently turned eleven, he has run away from home and I’m sure you don’t need to be told that he is in moral danger. If he is on the streets of Kings Cross, anything can happen. He’ll be hungry and frightened and, with the fear that he is wanted by the police, will not go to any of the refuges for help.’ Billy sighed, ‘We can decide later whether I am a fit person to be with him, but first we have to find him and that’s why I’m here. Is there anything you can tell me? Anything! No matter how small or insignificant it may seem. Something he said, his attitude at the time, his reason for attending school, albeit for only a short period of the day on each occasion?’

  ‘I have done all I can. I advised him, against my instructions, of your whereabouts. I begin to see that may have been a mistake.’

  Billy ignored this last remark. ‘You would have told him that on the first visit. What did you say to him on the second?’

  ‘Really, Mr O’Shannessy, I don’t think I am prepared to say anything further.’

  Billy suddenly changed tack. ‘Did you let him know that I had left money for him?’

  ‘Yes. But I told you, his grandmother had already paid for her funeral.’

  ‘So the second time he came he asked you for the money, didn’t he?’

  Dorothy Flanagan remained silent.

  ‘Didn’t he?’ Billy insisted.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you give it to him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And why not?’

  Ryan’s principal was beginning to realise that she was trapped. ‘I just couldn’t, that’s all!’ She sighed. ‘It’s no use, Mr O’Shannessy, I’m not going to say any more. I’m afraid I must ask you to leave now, I have a great deal to do.’

  ‘Just one more question, Ms Flanagan, and then you may kick me out. I gave you sole discretion to decide how the money I left for Ryan was to be used and now you tell me when he asked for it, you refused.

  So, you used your discretion not to give him the money. Why? I think I have a right to know at least that much.’

  ‘He wanted it for drugs.’

  ‘Drugs? He came up to you and said, “Please, Ms Flanagan, I need
the money Billy left to buy drugs.” Is that it?’

  ‘No, of course not. He said his mother was ill with an asthma attack and they needed the money for the doctor.’

  ‘You knew he was lying?’

  ‘Of course. We know he takes her to St Vincent’s, Dr Goldstein is well known to the school.’

  ‘And knowing his mother was a heroin addict, you guessed it was for drugs?’

  ‘Ryan is street smart, Mr O’Shannessy, but he’s still a child. I’ve run a school for his kind of child long enough to know how to get to the truth.’

  ‘So, of course, you refused to give him the money?’

  ‘Yes, it would have been a dereliction of my duty if I had suspected why he wanted it and then allowed him to have your money, any money.’

  ‘Quite right, of course. You couldn’t have acted in any other way.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Dorothy Flanagan said primly. Billy was silent, then he said quietly, ‘And we both now know why Ryan ran away after his mother’s death and why the police want to speak to him, don’t we?’

  Dorothy Flanagan started to cry softly. ‘What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t give him the money, could I? I feel so terribly guilty, so terribly, terribly guilty,’ she sobbed.

  ‘Have you told all this to the police?’

  ‘Yes, I had no choice,’ she said in a small voice.

  ‘Did they tell you anything, why they were looking for him?’

  ‘Yes, Ryan had taken his skateboard and a gold wedding band and locket, I imagine they were his grandmother’s, and tried to borrow money on them from a cash converter.’

  Dorothy Flanagan reached into a drawer and produced a tissue and, first wiping her eyes, she blew her nose. ‘He was under-age and the merchant refused but was obliged to notify the police in case the child had stolen the ring and the locket.’

  Billy shook his head slowly. ‘No, that’s not sufficient reason for Ryan to run away. He would have faced up to the police, told them the ring and the locket belonged to his grandmother and that his mother was ill and they had no money to eat and she’d sent him to the cash converter. Tell me, did he come to you before he attempted to sell his skateboard and grandmother’s jewellery, or after?’

  ‘I’ve checked on that, it was after.’

  ‘I see. So you would have told the police about the death of the grandmother and suggested where the ring and the locket had come from, that there was no reason to be concerned?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘But Ryan had already run away so he couldn’t be told that the police were no longer after him?’

  Ryan’s principal sniffed. ‘Yes, but the point is they’re still looking for him.’

  ‘What, as a missing child?’

  ‘Yes, that also, the school made that notification.’

  ‘I see. So what you seem to be suggesting is that there is something else the police told you?’ Dorothy Flanagan burst into tears. ‘They said he had stolen money from a club in Kings Cross and used it to buy heroin!’ she wailed, no longer able to control her distress. ‘What have I done? What have I done to the child?’

  If Billy had ever known how to comfort a woman in distress, he’d long since forgotten. All he could do was keep repeating, ‘You haven’t done anything you can be blamed for, Ms Flanagan.’

  ‘I called the Department of Community Services after Ryan’s visit,’ she said. ‘The case worker they allocated arrived three days after the mother’s death. I should have gone to his house myself. I could see Ryan was distraught. I only have myself to blame, I’ve failed the child miserably!’

  ‘Please don’t fret,’ Billy said, aware that it was quite the wrong word to use and entirely inappropriate to the situation. As a good lawyer he’d broken her down methodically to get to the truth but now he had no idea how he might calm her and restore her to some sort of equilibrium. So he simply waited until she’d grown calmer, awkward that he could do no more to comfort her.

  Eventually Dorothy Flanagan dried her eyes. ‘I feel both a fool and ashamed,’ she said at last.

  ‘You are not a fool and you did what you could at the time,’ Billy replied, thankful that she had stopped weeping. ‘Now I need to know one more detail.’

  ‘What is it?’ Dorothy Flanagan asked, still a little tearful.

  ‘Did the police tell you the name of the club from where Ryan is alleged to have stolen the money to buy heroin for his mother?’

  ‘No, I didn’t ask,’ Dorothy Flanagan admitted. She hesitated. ‘I’m glad you came, Mr O’Shannessy. I have had sleepless nights over this whole thing. This is not the first time I’ve cried over what appears to have happened to Ryan. I’m terribly frightened for him. We see lots of distressing things in this school: children who are abused and neglected, and we do what we can for them, which frankly is never quite enough. They’re all special, I know, but Ryan Sanfrancesco is a brilliant boy, not just a musical one. When a boy or a girl like that comes under your guidance, and it doesn’t happen very often, they are the reason you teach in schools like this one.’ She stopped, tears brimming, ‘And now I’ve lost him,’ she said, her voice just above a whisper.

  Billy took his leave of the principal of Pring Street Public School after being assured that he was most welcome to return at any time. ‘We have a mutual interest in Ryan, Mr O’Shannessy, and I would be most grateful if you will let me know if you make contact. Anything we can do to help, you may take for granted.’ Dorothy Flanagan had also given him her afterhours number, telling him that he could call if he had news or needed help at any time. ‘I don’t want to lose him, this child is special,’ were her parting words.

  Billy found a nice blanket at the Wayside Chapel. He was tempted by a big thick Onkaparinga still in excellent condition but realised it would be too heavy to carry so settled for a well-used and much lighter blanket and, while he was there, found a blue shirt not dissimilar to the one he’d bloodied when he’d damaged his nose. Afterwards, he purchased a packet of mynah-bird bullets, as he referred in his mind to the rat-poison pellets. After doing the avian deed and reciting his poem on the library steps, he bought a sandwich and a cup of coffee, something he hadn’t done in all the years he’d been on the street, where alcohol had been his food and drink. It was yet another tiny step forward into a normal life.

  Billy was well enough known at the library for the senior librarian on duty, Marcia Trengrove, to comment, ‘Haven’t seen you in quite a while, Billy, been away, have you?’ She had known Billy since his legal days when he had been a member of the State Library Board.

  ‘Surfers Paradise,’ Billy said, not explaining any further.

  ‘Some people have all the luck,’ she said, smiling.

  ‘Let me know if you need anything.’

  What Billy would have liked to have said was ‘Ms Trengrove, if I make any attempt to leave these premises before six o’clock, will you kindly render me senseless.’ But, instead, he merely thanked her and added, ‘I’d like to research Matthew Flinders.’

  ‘Oh, how fortunate for you!’ Marcia Trengrove exclaimed. ‘We’re just beginning to curate an exhibition to celebrate the bicentenary in 2001 of his epic voyage and there’s a lot of material coming in. Is there any special area of interest?’

  Billy hesitated, rubbing his chin. ‘Well, yes, his cat, Trim.’

  Marcia Trengrove looked surprised. ‘His cat?’

  ‘Yes. And his capture by the French.’ She looked dubious. ‘The cat’s or Matthew Flinders’?’

  Billy was forced to conclude that the librarian wasn’t a cat person or she’d be sympathetic, knowing as she must of the statue of Trim on the window ledge near where he slept. ‘Well, Matthew Flinders, of course, but I understand the cat was captured with him. I thought it might be useful to er . . . write from the cat’s perspective.’

  ‘Hmm, I see,’ the libraria
n said, thinking no doubt that Billy was beginning to lose his marbles, and, lost for further words on the subject, she handed him his allocated number. ‘I must say, you look very well after your holiday in Surfers Paradise, Billy.’

  ‘Could you please call me at five minutes to six, Marcia, I have an appointment I must keep elsewhere,’ Billy said, hoping that he could last the remainder of the afternoon without attempting an escape.

  I shall resume the story of Matthew Flinders’ departure from the sandbank. Trim was sad at not accompanying his master and deeply concerned for his welfare in an open boat that seemed ill-equipped for such a journey. Master Flinders had pointed out to him that the great Captain Bligh had sailed nearly two thousand miles to the island of Timor in a very similar boat after the dastardly Fletcher Christian and his cohorts had mutinied on the Bounty.

  ‘Trim, think on this, lad. Mr Bligh’s boat was no bigger than ours and we sail no more than two hundred and fifty leagues to Port Jackson. We are stout-hearted and still well-nourished and the men I have chosen will row their hearts out when we are unable to hoist our sail.’ Then he chided him gently, ‘Thou art of little faith, Trim, dost thou not remember that it was the great Captain Bligh himself who taught yours truly the rudiments of navigation?’

  Trim, of course, knew all this but he told himself they’d struck a sandbank in the much bigger Porpoise, that there was a strong wind at this time of the year prevailing from the shore, and that the Indians they might encounter if they went ashore for water or to shelter from a high sea or storm could not always be counted on to be friendly.

  ‘Trim, you must take care of my brother, young Lieutenant Flinders,’ Matthew Flinders instructed and then explained, ‘He is far too phlegmatic for my liking, he is determined to be the calm and wise one well beyond his years and I should like him, with your help, to be more animated of spirit.’ He went on to explain further, ‘Men prefer calmness in a man who must lead them, but he must also show them, at the very least, a kindling of fire in the belly. My young brother is not yet sufficiently experienced to denote only calm in his character and it will be seen by the men under his command as a masquerade for uncertainty and inexperi ence.’